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| Durer |
1st November Trinity
Revelation 7: 9-17
Next I looked and saw a great crowd beyond anyone’s power to count, from every nation and all races and peoples and tongues standing before the throne and before the Lamb, draped in garments of white and with palm branches in their hands, and they shout with a great voice saying, “Healing and help [salvation] to our God who sits on the throne and through the Lamb.”
And all the angels were standing in a ring around the throne and the elders and the four living beings, and they fell down in front of the throne upon their faces and adored God saying,
Yes, so be it. Amen. [To our God be blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength for an age of ages. Amen.”]
All the blessing power of the Word, that creating permeates the world, all the revealing might of the spirit, that enlightens the senses appearance, all the light of wisdom that leads us to true knowledge, the secret of transformation which gives worth to all being, that brings the world forward, and all the strength and power of the spirit –they belong to our God from aeon to aeon. Yea, so be it, Amen.
And one of the elders spoke up, asking me: “These people draped in garments of white, who are they and where did they come from?”
And I said to him, “Good sir, you yourself know.”
And he said to me:
These are the ones just come from the great Suffering. They washed their garments clean and made them shining white in the blood of the Lamb.
That is why they can stand here before the throne of God
And serve him day and night in his temple.
The One who sits on the throne shall settle down upon them [dwell upon them].
They shall not hunger ever again, nor thirst again;
The sun shall not bear down too hard upon them, nor anything burn them,
Because the Lamb, in the midst of the throne, will be their shepherd
And guide them to the springs of the water of life,
And God will wipe away each teardrop from their eyes.
3rd November Trinity
Oct 29, 2017
Revelation 7:9-17
To extract the juice from the grape, it must be crushed. The useless is removed and the pure, and its strengthening essence is released. The grape must, so to speak, suffer so that its essence can flow outward.
In the gospel reading, we hear of those who have just come from the great suffering. From time to time, we too are crushed. It is not because we are evil and deserve punishment; it is because we are ripe. Our essence is ready to be separated out from the non-essential, from the useless in us. Meister Eckhart* writes:
When I was the stream, when I was the forest….there was nothing
I could not
love.
It was when I left all we once were that
the agony began, the fear and the questions came
and I wept, I wept, tears….
Christ is present within our suffering. He suffers within us. He wipes our tears. He helps us separate the bitter from the sweet. He washes us clean and clear in the wine-blood of his lovingkindness. He leads us to the spring of ever-transforming life. As Meister Eckhart continues:
So I returned to the river, I returned to
the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again.
I begged—I begged to wed every object
and creature,
and when they accepted,
God was ever present in my arms.
…For then I knew my soul—every soul—
has always held
Him.*
Our purest essence, at the center of our being, is lovingkindness. Our true nature flows outward, to comfort and strengthen others. Our true nature is wise and knowing. Our true nature willingly undergoes a transformation so that the world’s evolution moves forward. We are crushed so that our pure essence, the lovingkindness of Christ in us, can flow out into the world.
*“When I was the Forest,” in Love Poems from God, Daniel Ladinsky, pg. 91
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2nd 3rd or 4th Michaelmas Sunday
Revelation 19, 11-16
And I saw the heavens opening up. And behold, a white horse! And the rider who sat upon it is called faithful and true, who judges justly and battles for justice. His eyes are like flames of fire, and his head wears many crowns, inscribed with a name which no one knows but he himself. The cloak that covers him has been dipped in blood, and he is known by the name “Word of God”.
And the warriors of the sky ride behind him upon white steeds, clad in clean, white linen. And he has a sharp-edged sword coming out of his mouth with which to subdue the nations, and he will shepherd them with a staff of iron. He treads on the winepress holding the wine of the wrath of the will of God, the ruler of all.
And written on his cloak and on his thigh is the name: King of all kings, Lord of all lords.
4th Michaelmas Sunday
October 22, 2017
Rev. 19:11-16
Some plants bloom, set seed and die in one year. For a plant to exist for more than one year, to exist perennially, say a rosebush, a part of it must become wooden. It is the hardness, the thorny wood, that allows the plant to continue to live year after year.
There is a hard edge to today’s gospel reading. It speaks of sharp swords, iron staffs, winepresses. As paradoxical as it may seem, their very hardness is what makes our continued lives possible.
The sharp sword is the discerning word of truth from the mouth of God. We may prefer the soft greenness of our wishes and hopes, of our desires and illusions. But there is no progress, no growth or evolution of our being without the sharpness of truth.
The rod of iron is the starry iron in our own blood. It makes it possible for us to be upright, to rise above the forces which would chain us in slavery to the earth. Our uprightness, a gift from the stars, allows us to continue to grow toward the Sun-God.
The winepress is another instrument of discernment. It is the divine instrument that discerns how much of our blood’s uprightness has been dedicated to God’s will for our development, and how much of our blood’s self-will needs to be discarded as unfit.
A rose blossom is not possible without the support of the thorny wood. Without a hard-edged capacity for truth, without uprightness and discernment in our growth toward God’s will, the continuance and blossoming of our deepest and truest being is not possible. For true life is not about comfort. It is about overcoming—overcoming illusion and self-deception, overcoming being chained to the earthly, overcoming our little ego’s self-satisfaction. The deep life, the truly continuing life, is aligned with truth, with uprightness, with developing the wine of a true love for others.
When we have been cleansed, or have cleansed ourselves, of deception and illusion, we become trustworthy. We finally arrive at the place of our deepest and inmost soul, the place where Christ, the King of kings, he who is faithful and true, lives in us.
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2nd 3rd or 4th Michaelmas
Revelation 12: 1-17
And a momentous image was unveiled in the world of spirit: a woman, clothed
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| Benjamin West |
with the radiant power of the sun, the moon under her feet, her head adorned with the crown of the twelve stars of heaven. And she is with child and cries out in the labor and pain of giving birth.
And at the same time. a second image was revealed in the heavens: a great fiery-red dragon with seven heads and ten horns. On its head, it has seven crowns and its tail is sweeping a third of all the stars in heaven and dashing them onto the earth. And the dragon is standing before the woman about to give birth so that when she bears the child he can devour it. And she bore a child, a son ”who would shepherd all nations with a rod of iron.” And the woman’s child was caught up to God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place that God keeps ready there so that they can take care of her for days numbering one thousand two hundred sixty.
And a war flared up in the spirit world. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. And the dragon fought in the midst of his own angels, but he was not strong enough, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. Down came the dragon, the giant, the serpent, the evil one called both Satan and the devil, deceiver of all the world. Onto the earth, he came hurtling down, and all his angels with him.
And I heard a great voice in heaven, saying:
Now can begin the working which proceeds from our God—
The power to heal the world,
The power to transform all being,
The power to draw everything into godly being.
Arisen is the spirit leadership of his Christ.
Overthrown is the accuser of our brothers,
He who accused them night and day before the countenance of God.
They have overcome him through the blood and the sacrificial power of the Lamb
And by the divine Word to which they bore witness.
They did not love their own lives too dearly, nor did they fear death.
Therefore, rejoice you heavens
And all who lodge therein!
But woe to the earth and the sea:
For the Adversary has come down to you,
And he seethes with measureless fury,
For he knows that his time is short.
And when the dragon recognized that he had been cast onto the earth, he began to persecute the woman who had borne the son. Then the woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she could fly into the desert to her appointed place, where she is to be nourished for a cycle of time, for cycles of time, and for half a cycle of time, far from the face of the serpent.
And the serpent opened his mouth and spewed out a river of water after the woman so she would be swept off her feet by the river. But then the earth came to the woman’s assistance; it opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the dragon spewed from his mouth. And the dragon burned with fury against the woman. He stormed away to make war on the rest of the woman’s seed, people who keep to the divine world aims and who are united with the destiny and witnessing of Jesus. As I saw this I was standing on the sandy shore of the sea.
3rd Michaelmas Sunday
October 15, 2017
Revelation 12: 1-17
The Book of Revelation describes mighty events. These are letters from the spiritual world to us. They apply both to great spans of time, and also to our individual lives. The cast of characters consists of both great spiritual beings and at the same time parts of our own souls.
There is the soul-woman in all of us who is about to give birth to the spirit child. The very existence of this child is opposed by destructive beings who once lived in spiritual realms and now live with us on earth. For the time came when the heavens had to send the forces of destruction to the earth so that we human being would grow strong in dealing with them. Heaven was cleansed so that the heavens were free to offer us the power to heal, the power to transform, the power to spiritualize both the earth and ourselves.
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| Bernhard Eyb |
The dragon persecutes us, breathing destruction. But we are given wings of thoughtful prayer with which to rise to a place of nourishment and strength. The dragon seeks to drown us. But the absorptive power within our souls’ own groundedness in the earth keep us from being swept away. The dragon breathes a burning fire, but our soul’s solidity finds the cooling waters with which to smother the flames.
The forces of the soul with which we defend ourselves from the dragon are the forces of the Archangel Michael and Christ, He who lives in the deepest part of our souls. He gives us the resurrection force with which to rise above the dragon. He gives us the absorptive power to accept that we must battle evil. He gives us the power with which to subdue the dragon force within.
All this takes place at a depth within which is mostly for us a darkness. But it is
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| Jean Bourdichon |
the darkness of a womb, that one day will give birth to light. We shall not fear the darkness.
In the words of Rilke:
I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.
Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that’s wide and timeless.*
*Rilke, The Book of Hours, Love Poems to God, trans. by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, p. 51
