Ascension II, Seed-Force

Ascension

John 16:22-33

William Blake 

So you have to suffer pain now. But I will see you again, and then your hearts will be filled with joy, and no one can take that joy from you. Up to now, you have not prayed in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day, you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father, and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world, you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

  

Ascension II

May 27, 2020

John 16:24-33

Jan de Kok

The blossom opens itself to the sunlit air. In doing so, its beauty and fragrance expand outward. It sends out its pollen and in turn it receives the warm impregnating power from without. Through this fertilization, it becomes fruitful. At its core, seeds of new life begin to form.

The deepest core of our humanness lies in our heart. As we open our heart, we can stream forth the fragrant beauty of our gratitude for all that we have received. Through opening in gratitude, we continue to receive what we need for our future existence. We receive from the future the force that engenders new life, a force that enters and settles into our inmost core.

Christ’s love is that impregnating power for new life that fertilizes our open, thankful hearts. He is the gentle fire of love, creative of being. His power engenders in us new, future life. His love in our hearts is the seed-force for a new earth.

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Ascension 2020, Embrace What Is

Ascension, around 1030, Codex Aureus

Ascension

John 16:22-33

So you have to suffer pain now. But I will see you again, and then your hearts will be filled with joy, and no one can take that joy from you. Up to now, you have not prayed in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day, you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father, and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Ascension, Ninetta Sombart 

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world, you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

Ascension

May 24, 2020

John 16: 22–33

Contemporary Resurrection Icon

At night we may be troubled with bad dreams. But in the morning, we rise into our day-waking consciousness.  Our awareness overcomes the dream state and we understand that what troubled us was only a dream.

Our earthly lives can have something of the quality of a dream. We may be troubled by an occasional or even continuing ‘nightmare’ situation. But we can make efforts to awaken, to rise beyond even our ordinary dream-like day-consciousness.

Christ lived the nightmare. He suffered and died. He descended into hell. He rose on the third day. And then at His Ascension, he rose even further—and descended even deeper. For at His Ascension, His loving consciousness, His Life, spread out over the whole world. The Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield said, “The unawakened mind tends to make war on the way things are.” Christ the Awakener has aligned Himself with the world, in loving acceptance of what is. That is the first step toward transforming the way things are into the way they can be. 

Ascension, Sombart

In our moments of earnest prayer, we rise toward Christ, who stands embracing the world with His peace. “Pray from the heart and it will be given to your heart,” He says. “Feel my power in your heart….so that you may find peace.”(John 16:1, 31, and 33) Only by awakening to a higher level of awareness can we, like Christ, embrace what is, in love, and with courage. With Him we can recognize that our own lives are enmeshed ultimately with the life of the whole world; and that only through Christ’s power of transformation can the nightmare be overcome.

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Ascension Thursday 2020, Rising Like Incense

Ascension

John 16:22-33

So you have to suffer pain now. But I will see you again, and then your hearts will be filled with joy, and no one can take that joy from you. Up to now, you have not prayed in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day, you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father, and I have come into this world.

Stephen B. Whatley

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world, you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

Ascension

May 21, 2020

John 16: 24-33

Observe a rosebush over time, and you will see how its leaves appear with

rhythmic frequency—one set, a pause for the rise of the stem, the next leaf, another rise. The leaves appear as pulses of the rose’s life, as beats of the heart of its life, ascending heavenward.

Our prayer life is like that. Prayer creates a living form in the garden of God. Christ advises us to pray from the heart. We can imagine that praying from the heart creates a kind of rose tree in His garden. As we pray, we are regularly sending out the leaves on this spiritual rose tree. As we pray, the stems rise higher. As we pray, Christ and his angels guide and tend and nurture what we create, drawing us upward.

       

Like the rosebush, sooner or later, the intervals between the leaves become shorter, the leaves more compressed. The time of transition, of the great change, is near. Christ knows how it is. “In this world, you will have great fear and hardship.”

Charles Andrade

But as we continue praying, straining to keep on rising, ascending, struggling to transform, we can also hear His words echoing: "Take courage. Do you now feel my power in your heart? Take heart."

And as we labor through the transition, something new begins to happen. Amid the deepest trials, the heart blooms. The roses of peace appear, opening to the light of the Spirit Sun. And Christ, the Spirit Sun, in turn, sends His encouragement: “All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world, you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

And in the light of his encouragement, our hearts blossom forth roses of peace, their fragrance rising like incense to fill the atmosphere around us.

                                                                                               

5th After Easter 2020, A Sweet Death

5^th Sunday after Easter

John 14:1-31  

Durer 

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Trust in the power that leads you to the Fatherly Ground of the World and me. In my Father’s house, there are many rooms. If it were not so, how could I have said to you, ‘I go there to prepare a place for you?'  And when I have gone and prepared a place for you, I will come again and take you up into the realm of my being and working, so that where I work, you also may work. And you know the way where I am going.”

Then Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

Jesus answered, “I myself am the Way—the Truth— and the Life. No one finds his way to the Father but through me. If you had known my Being, you would have recognized my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen Him.”

Then Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father; that would satisfy our deepest yearning.”

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Does your heart’s voice not tell you that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. But the Father, who lives eternally in me, continues to do his works in them. Build your faith on the power of my Being that lets you know: I in the Father, the Father in me. Or at least learn to trust through looking at the works themselves that have arisen.

Truly, truly I say to you, whoever trusts in my Being will also do the works that I do --and greater deeds will he do because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask for in unity with me, I will do it, so that the deeds of the Father may be revealed in the working of the Son. When you turn to me in prayer in the power of my name, I will be the Creating One in all your works.

Jan von Kalkar

If you truly love me, you will share in my spiritual goals. And I will ask the Father, and He will send to you another Counselor, who will stand by you forever, even the Spirit of Truth. The earthly world cannot receive this Counselor, for it cannot perceive his working and does not recognize him. But you know him, for he will live with you and will work in you.

I will not leave you desolate—I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you will live also. On that day, you will truly know what it means that I am in the Father, and you in me and I in you.

Whoever bears my spiritual goals within himself, and brings them to revelation in his working, is one who truly loves me. And whoever truly loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal myself to him.”

Then Judas (not the Iscariot) said, “But Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the people who are in the world?

Jesus replied, “Whoever truly loves me reveals my Spirit, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and prepare with him a dwelling in the everlasting [an eternal dwelling]. Whoever does not love me cannot reveal my Spirit. And the spirit power of the word that you hear is not from me; it is the speaking of the Father who sent me.

These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the health-bringing Spirit, the Counselor whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled nor let them be afraid.

You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I am.

I have told you now before it happens, so that when it happens, you may find trust. I no longer have much to say to you, for soon, the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me.

But I act in accordance with the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted to me so that the world may know that I love the Father. Do the same. Arise, let us be on our way.

5th after Easter

May 17, 2020

John 14:1–35

Plant one seed, and in time it will produce hundreds of seeds, all replicas of itself. In this way, the living entity that produced the seed maintains itself through cycles of time.

Christ the Gardener Tapestry, Coxie or da Cremona

Out of the Father Ground of all Being, who is existence itself, there emerged the first seed. That seed was (and continues to be) the Logos-Word, the I AM. This Logos-Word spoke, and all of creation came into being. Into all creatures, especially into us, He placed a seed of Himself, an I AM. This seed germinates as we are born, blossoms when as a small child we begin to say “I”. This little but all-encompassing “I” continues to blossom and engender seeds throughout our life. The seeds of myself are my words and my actions. I am what I say. I am what I do.

In an ordinary plant, form and seeds are fixed by type. We human I-AM-beings, however, have the capacity to create various types of seeds. For we have choices in speaking, choices in doing. And these choices can create seeds of magnificence and nourishing beauty. Or they can create seeds of weeds and thorns.

Our words and deeds are the seeds from our own Selves. God will reap what we have sown. And in the afterlife, the quality of the word- and deed-seeds we have produced will be what we bring to Him for the future.

The poet Rilke speaks to God and says:

We stand in your garden year after year

We are trees for yielding a sweet death.*

Christ the Gardener and Magdalene, Burne-Jones

Christ is the gardener who watches over our growth and progress. He is the Water of Life. He feeds here, prunes a bit there, trains toward the Light of Himself. He is the Way, and he hopes for a harvest of words and deeds done in His Spirit, done in love, in truth, and from goodwill. For He will plant the seeds we produce, the seeds of our Selves, and we will germinate again with Him in His garden, in another place, in another season. And so we may pray with Rilke:

God, give us each our own death,

The dying that proceeds

From each of our lives:

The way we loved,

The meanings we made,

Our need.**

*Rilke, The Book of Hours, translated by Macy and Barrows, pg. 133.

**Rilke, The Book of Hours, translated by Macy and Barrows, pg. 131.

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