4th Advent 2012, Impending Birth

4th Advent

Luke 1: 26-38

Thomas Cooper Gotch

During the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth to a maiden engaged to a man named Joseph of the descendants of David, and the maiden’s name was Mary. And coming in, he said toward her, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.”

But she was she was confused at those words, and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God.

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall call him Jesus.

He will be great, and will be called the Son of the most High,

And the Lord your God will give him the Throne of David your father.

And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever;

And his kingdom will have no end. “

And Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have never known a man?”

And the angel answered and said to her,

 “The Holy Spirit will come upon you,

and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;

And for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God. And behold, even your kinswoman Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For no word is spoken in the worlds of the spirit that does not have the power to become reality on earth.”

 And Mary said, “Behold, I am the Lord’s handmaid; may it be to me according to your word. “

And the angel departed from her. 

4^th Advent

Mary and Elizabeth, the Visitation, unknown

December 23, 2012

Luke 1 39-56

The very approach of those souls not yet born works upon those with whom they are connected. They bring their parents together in love. Their impending arrival brings joyful anticipation. Their prenatal movements inspire joy and wonder.

Even before the Jesus child is born, his nearness affects those around Him. He brings together in a mood of service the two mothers, Mary and Elizabeth. He quickens John with joy in the womb.

So too in our lives; every year Christ draws especially near to us at this season. In the words of His mother, ‘Goodness and mercy springs new in His heart.’ Luke 1:54

The impending birth of Christ within our souls inspires us. We are prompted to support others in service. Christ’s nearness arouses our awe and our love. Our own quiet joy can enliven others. For ‘He bears us through all ages of the earth.’ Luke 1:55

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3rd Advent 2007, Dawn Chorus

3rd Advent

1 Thessalonians, 5, 1-8, 23, 24

About time spans and right moments, dear brothers, I have no need to write to you. You know very well yourselves that the Breaking of the Day of Christ comes like a thief in the night. When people say, ‘Now peace reigns, and all stands secure, then suddenly catastrophe breaks upon them, like the birth pangs of a woman with child, and there will be no escape for them.

You, however, dear brothers, are not to remain in darkness, so that the breaking of day will not surprise you like a thief. For you are sons of light and sons of the day. Our being is not filled with night and darkness. So let us not sleep like the others, but rather cultivate an alert and sober state of mind. Those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who are drunk are likewise of nightly nature. But since we belong to the brightness of day, let us be sober, clothed with the breastplate of faith and love, our head armed [protected] with the hope of healing….May God himself, however, the source of all Peace, hallow and heal your whole being. May your complete and undivided being,

Spirit

Soul, and

Body

remain pure and unclouded at the coming in the spirit of Jesus Christ, our Lord. You may trust in him who calls you. He it is who also lets you reach the goal. 

Elisabeth Carolan

3^rd Advent Sunday

December 16, 2007

1 Thessalonians 5.1-8, 23, 24

If at the right time of year one were to awaken well before dawn, say at 4 a.m., and go out into a wooded area, one would experience one of nature’s wonders: a symphony of birdsong, call and response, heralding the coming of the sun. Each bird is already awake; together they are the choir hailing the breaking of a new day.

We are now in the darkness of deep earth-night. But we are approaching a new dawn. Though it is yet dark, Paul urges us to be awake as we prepare to accompany the coming of the Day-Star. We are to be alert and sober in self-control. Through the closeness of the light of His return, our being aware of the coming light will fill us with an overflowing abundance of heart’s love. Loving kindness will spill out of our hearts like birdsong before dawn. Our thoughts are to be filled with the sure hope of healing that comes to mankind through the nearness of Christ. We will become those of warm and active good will. As we work together for Christ, in His light, earth itself will be healed.

Stones are longing for what you know…

Now awake, dear pilgrim…

Now awake with your love for the Friend and Creation….

We are companions on this earth

As the sun and planets are in the sky….

This love you now have of the Truth

Your joys and sufferings on this arduous path

Are lifting your worn veil like a rising stage curtain…

So that you can guide this world…

In the hidden Choir

God and His friends will forever

Conduct.[1]

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[1] Hafiz, “They Call You to Sing,” in Tonight the Subject is Love, Daniel Ladinsky, p. 42.

3rd Advent 2008, Living Green

1 Thessalonians, 5, 1-8, 23, 24

About time spans and right moments, dear brothers, I have no need to write to you. You know very well yourselves that the Breaking of the Day of Christ comes like a thief in the night. When people say, ‘Now peace reigns, and all stands secure, then suddenly catastrophe breaks upon them, like the birth pangs of a woman with child, and there will be no escape for them.

You, however, dear brothers, are not to remain in darkness, so that the breaking of day will not surprise you like a thief. For you are sons of light and sons of the day. Our being is not filled with night and darkness. So let us not sleep like the others, but rather cultivate an alert and sober state of mind. Those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who are drunk are likewise of nightly nature. But since we belong to the brightness of day, let us be sober, clothed with the breastplate of faith and love, our head armed [protected] with the hope of healing….May God himself, however, the source of all Peace, hallow and heal your whole being. May your complete and undivided being,

Spirit

Soul, and

Body

remain pure and unclouded at the coming in the spirit of Jesus Christ, our Lord. You may trust in him who calls you. He it is who also lets you reach the goal. 

3^rd Advent Sunday

December 14, 2008

1 Thessalonians 5: 1-8, 23, 24

The arrival of storms darkens the skies. But there are moments when the ever-present sunlight breaks through. And then, if we look for it, the rainbow with its seven colors glistens against the backdrop of darkness.

In ancient India, the god Indra used the rainbow to slay the serpent demon god. Later, in the Gilgamesh epic, the rainbow’s colors glisten in the fountain of life beside the tree of Immortality. And of course in Hebrew tradition, Jahwe places the rainbow spanning the heavens as a promise of future salvation.

The rainbow’s placement in the sky, and our delight in its ethereal colors make it seem more related to the human soul than to the earth. In the soul there also lives a rainbow of many colors. The outermost color, red, is the color of loving warmth, of courage, and of strength of will. At the other side, the innermost color is a barely visible royal purple, the color of the regal heights that the human being can and will attain in the future. It is the color of our innermost trust and faith in what is to come.

The Transfiguration

And in the center, at the heart of the rainbow, is the living green, the color of balance and of hope, the color of the Christ.  Our souls move through the colors. Starting with Christ’s living, balanced hope of green we can move out into the world with love and courage. And we can also move from hope’s green toward the inner depths from which our souls evolve toward the future. We will make it; we will move into the future; we will evolve. The rainbow is the seal of God’s promise.  For planted in the deep purple of the soul are the seeds of our future selves. In patient trust we can know that one day these seeds of our future humanity will sprout into the living green of the tree of immortality.

God placed the rainbow in the sky to remind all of mankind to abide in hope, especially in dark stormy times. The rainbow of the soul conquers the dragon of fear. And sometimes, up in the sky, we can all catch a glimpse of the colored halo of Him who was, who is, and who is to come.

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3rd Advent 2009, Birthing Christ

3rd Advent

1 Thessalonians, 5, 1-8, 23, 24

Sulamith Wulfing

About time spans and right moments, dear brothers, I have no need to write to you. You know very well yourselves that the Breaking of the Day of Christ comes like a thief in the night. When people say, ‘Now peace reigns, and all stands secure, then suddenly catastrophe breaks upon them, like the birth pangs of a woman with child, and there will be no escape for them.

You, however, dear brothers, are not to remain in darkness, so that the breaking of day will not surprise you like a thief. For you are sons of light and sons of the day. Our being is not filled with night and darkness. So let us not sleep like the others, but rather cultivate an alert and sober state of mind. Those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who are drunk are likewise of nightly nature. But since we belong to the brightness of day, let us be sober, clothed with the breastplate of faith and love, our head armed [protected] with the hope of healing….May God himself, however, the source of all Peace, hallow and heal your whole being. May your complete and undivided being,

Spirit

Soul, and

Body

remain pure and unclouded at the coming in the spirit of Jesus Christ, our Lord. You may trust in him who calls you. He it is who also lets you reach the goal.

3^rd Advent

Sulamith Wulfing

December 13, 2009

1 Thessalonians 5: 1-8 and 23, and 24

 “When people say, ‘Now peace reigns and all stands secure’, then suddenly catastrophe breaks upon them, like the birth pangs of a woman with child….” 1Thessalonians 5:3

Since the beginning of mankind, the birth of the new has been accompanied by pain. The Lord said to Eve, the mother of all life, that in pain she would bring forth children.  Genesis 4:16. This is usually heard as a curse, a punishment; but if we were to think about it a bit further, we may come to hear it rather as a promise: that pain will bear fruit. When we are in pain, we are also in the process of bringing something, someone, to birth.  When pain and catastrophe break into our lives, what is it that is trying to be born?

What is trying to be born is the Light, the Daylight of Christ. This is the Light that nourishes and supports life; it is the Light of His Love. His Light of Love shines before us on our path, showing us the way toward wholeness and healing.

This is the birth toward which we are all laboring. To help us to do so, we surround ourselves, clothe our hearts, in trust and in love. We keep our thoughts directed toward the goal of humankind’s wholeness and healing. We concentrate, attend to the birth of the Christ in us, through us. For humanity is the woman giving birth to the Christ. 

3rd Advent 2010, God With Us

3rd Advent 2010

Romans 8:15-39

translation by James Langbecker

You have not become victim to the spirit of slavery, so to become victim to the power of fear. You have received the spirit of sonship. When we say, “Our Father”, it is the Spirit itself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. When his passion and death think in us, then also his revelation.

I have considered that the sufferings of this age are not worthy to be compared with the revelation that will be opened to us.

Creation itself is eagerly awaiting the revelation of the sons of God, for the creation was caught up in the forces of decline, not for its own sake, but for the sake of man’s evolution, which is not hopeless, but full of hope.

And even the creation will one day be freed from its subjection to the forces of decline, and will share in the freedom attained by the children of God through their spiritual activity.

        Through spirit knowledge we know that the whole creation in its distress suffers the pains of unfulfilled birth, and not creation alone, but we ourselves, having in our human nature the first fruits of the spirit, we groan as we eagerly await our entry into full sonship, that the sickness of sin of the bodily nature of mankind be healed.

For in this hope is our life destined for eternity. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he already sees? But as we hope for what we do not yet see, we eagerly await it.

In this manner the spirit supports us also in our weaknesses. When we do not know how to speak to God in prayer, the spirit supports us inwardly in wordless prayer of feeling will. And he who can see into human hearts knows that the spirit speaks in a divine way in those who keep themselves whole.

We can be sure that everything works for good for those who love God, who are called by his destiny-ordering will.

Because those whose destiny he knew in spirit worlds, their destiny he ordered in harmony with the image of his Son, the first-born among many brothers.

Christ, Hans Memling

        And those whom he chose according to their destiny, he also called to spirit-awakening; and those whom he called to spirit-awakening, he also gave the spirit’s self-justification and self-revelation.

What remains to be said?

If God be for us, what power can succeed against us? He, who did not spare his own Son, but gave him forth on behalf of us all, will he not freely give us all we need through this Son? Who can condemn those in whom the self-evidence of the spirit is given by God?

It is Christ-Jesus, who died, yea, and who is risen, who has become the fulfiller of the fatherly deeds of the Ground of the World, who is the true Representative of Man before God.

Who shall separate us from the uniting power of Christ’s love? Shall difficulty or distress, persecution or famine, lack of clothing, danger or attack?

As it is written:

            To come to you we must die all day long;

            We are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered. (Psalm 44:22)

We will fully triumph over all these trials through him who unites his being with our being through love.

For I am confident that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor archai, nor things present, nor things to come, nor spirit-powers,  nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ-Jesus, our Lord.

3^rd Advent

December 12, 2010

Romans 8, 15-39

Sons and daughters, just by virtue of being their parents’ children, stand to inherit their parents’ estate. They have the hope and expectation of an inheritance simply by virtue of having been born into the family. At the same time, by virtue of having been born, they may also be ‘inheriting’ much else: family dynamics to be lived and grappled with, inherited characteristics of temperament and bodily health.

The family of man has inherited many characteristics from our first parents, Adam and Eve. Being part of the human family means grappling with illusion and sorrow, with illness, and ultimately with death itself. We were created in Paradise, but have been making a sorry mess of things since.

God saw that mankind’s God-given inheritance was depleted, ravaged by deep debts we could never hope to repay. The inheritance was in ruins. And so He decided to rebuild the estate by creating the possibility of a new ancestor. Thus He sent His own Son, Christ, to become a new Adam for us. The new body we are to inherit is the resurrection body, the light body of Christ. It is a body we are to inherit when we make ourselves available to take it in. Taking in Christ’s body makes us members of a new kind of human family. Taking in Christ’s body, His blood, strengthens our own light bodies. We begin to shine, to radiate His goodness and love out into the world.

And the world rejoices. It rejoices because the shining of the Sons and Daughters of the Spirit gives promise of release to all of creation; for all has fallen into darkness and bondage with us. All of creation rejoices in the hope and promise of its own inheritance from the sons and daughters of God. For what we will be able to give creation some day is its freedom. As the poet Nelly Sachs says:

All lands are ready to rise

from the map.

To shake off their skin of stars

to tie the blue bundles of their seas

on their backs

to set their mountains with fiery roots

as caps on their smoking hair...[1]

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[1] Nelly Sachs, from “And No One Knows How to Go On”, in O The Chimneys, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1967... Tranlated from the German by Michael Hamburger, Christopher Holme, Ruth and Matthew Mead, and Michael Roloff...

3rd Advent 2011, The Sun Orb Sings

1 Thessalonians, 5, 1-8, 23, 24

About time spans and right moments, dear brothers, I have no need to write to you. You know very well yourselves that the Breaking of the Day of Christ comes like a thief in the night. When people say, ‘Now peace reigns, and all stands secure, then suddenly catastrophe breaks upon them, like the birth pangs of a woman with child, and there will be no escape for them.

You, however, dear brothers, are not to remain in darkness, so that the breaking of day will not surprise you like a thief. For you are sons of light and sons of the day. Our being is not filled with night and darkness. So let us not sleep like the others, but rather cultivate an alert and sober state of mind. Those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who are drunk are likewise of nightly nature. But since we belong to the brightness of day, let us be sober, clothed with the breastplate of faith and love, our head armed [protected] with the hope of healing….May God himself, however, the source of all Peace, hallow and heal your whole being. May your complete and undivided being,

Spirit

Soul, and

Body

remain pure and unclouded at the coming in the spirit of Jesus Christ, our Lord. You may trust in him who calls you. He it is who also lets you reach the goal. 

3^rd Advent Sunday

December 11, 2011

1 Thessalonians 5:1-8 and 23, 24

The Sun’s radiance moves across the sky over the course of the year.

Sometimes it rides higher, sometimes lower. But with stately and steadfast grace, it inscribes itself across our world, shedding its daily blessings of light and life, to warm and nourish us.

The Advent seasonal prayer speaks of the sun’s chariot. This phrase is not only a lovely metaphor for a ball of gas millions of miles away. For the sun that we see in the sky is indeed a chariot, a chariot for higher angelic beings. Through the constant and continual sacrificing of their substance, they keep the sun and the world alive. They sacrifice their wisdom, their movement and their power to keep us and the earth, the body of Christ, alive. They pour out the substance of their being as a continuous song of praise.

The poet Goethe has the archangel Raphael, the angel of healing sing:

The sun-orb sings, in emulation,

Mid brother spheres, in his ancient round:

His path predestined through Creation

He ends with step of thunder-sound.

The angels from his visage splendid

Draw power, whose measure none can say;

The lofty worlds, uncomprehended,

Are bright as on the earliest day.[1]

The gospel reading reminds us that we are sons and daughters of the light, of the day. We are protected from darkness and lack of consciousness by our alertness, by our hope of healing, by our trust. For the great Sun-God is once again drawing near.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] W. Goethe, Faust Part 1.

3rd Advent 2012, Birthing Trust

1 Thessalonians, 5, 1-8, 23, 24

About time spans and right moments, dear brothers, I have no need to write to you. You know very well yourselves that the Breaking of the Day of Christ comes like a thief in the night. When people say, ‘Now peace reigns, and all stands secure, then suddenly catastrophe breaks upon them, like the birth pangs of a woman with child, and there will be no escape for them.

You, however, dear brothers, are not to remain in darkness, so that the breaking of day will not surprise you like a thief. For you are sons of light and sons of the day. Our being is not filled with night and darkness. So let us not sleep like the others, but rather cultivate an alert and sober state of mind. Those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who are drunk are likewise of nightly nature. But since we belong to the brightness of day, let us be sober, clothed with the breastplate of faith and love, our head armed [protected] with the hope of healing….May God himself, however, the source of all Peace, hallow and heal your whole being. May your complete and undivided being,

Spirit

Soul, and

Body

remain pure and unclouded at the coming in the spirit of Jesus Christ, our Lord. You may trust in him who calls you. He it is who also lets you reach the goal. 

3^rd Advent

December 16, 2012

1 Thessalonians 5:1-8 and 23, 24

Birth of the Light, Roland Tiller

The darkness of night hides what is happening on earth. And the darkness of our unawareness hides processes that may be gestating quietly below the surface. And just as the inevitable rising of the sun reveals the myriad majesties of the earth, so too does the rising light of the Christ-Sun work to reveal our secret selves, what we are laboring to become, whether for good or for ill.

Today’s reading suggests that there are processes in the world that are generating what appear to be catastrophes. Yet Paul compares them to the inexorable onset of a pregnant woman’s labor, which heralds a new birth.

So also are there such events in our souls. There are seeming catastrophes in our lives that may have been gestating quietly beneath the surface of our awareness. Yet even here, something wants to be born in us through such events. What wants to be born is our awareness and trust in a beneficent Providence; an admiration and love for our own God-given destiny; a compassionate love for the destinies of others; and a healing of our destinies through the pangs of conscience.

The trials we undergo are the labor pangs we must endure so that Christ, the Lord of our human Destiny, can dwell in us; so that the Being of Love can be born in us; so that through us, He can work His Peace into the world.

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