Whitsun 2011, Hidden

Pentecost

John 14: 23-31

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Jesus replied, “He who 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]. He who 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.

I have said this to you while I am still with you. But he who is called down, the health-bringing Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will awaken within you all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid [have no fear].

You have heard how I said to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you’. If you loved me you would rejoice because I am going to the Father[ly Ground of the World], for the Father is mightier 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 prince of this world is coming. Yet over me he has no power.

But the world shall see in this how I love the Father [Ground of the World] and how I act in accordance with the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted to me. Arise, let us go on from here. [let us be on our way.]

Pentecost (Whitsun)

Danny Hahlbohm

June 12, 2011

John 14:23-31

One of the most elemental games we play as children is hide-and-seek. Everyone hides and one child looks for them. One of the comforting rules of the game is that if, after diligent searching, maybe with help of others hidden and found, one can call out, ‘Come out come out wherever you are!’ and the one still hidden will show himself.

Today is Pentecost or Whitsun. The disciples had lost sight of Christ ten days previously at His Ascension into the realm of the clouds. He hid Himself in the biosphere. In today’s reading Christ stresses trusting and loving Him even when He seems to have gone away. He said he would not leave us as orphans; He said he would be with us till the end of the ages. Christ assures us that although He seems to be hidden, we can trust that He will appear, though not in the way we might expect. We are not to become upset or afraid; but to trust. He will send us His Spirit of Healing Love. For He has hidden Himself in plain sight.

John O’Donohue gives us some hints about seeking and finding this Spirit of Healing and Love. He says:

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

….Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.

Learn to linger around someone of ease

Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,

Having learned a new respect for your heart

And the joy that dwells far within slow time.[1]

Christ’s disciples, waiting mournfully for Him to appear, experienced wind and fire, visions, speech and an upwelling of joyful enthusiasm. They had to wait for ten days. But they stuck it out. And He came to them through what they saw and heard, as understanding and inspiration.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] John O’Donohue, “A Blessing for One who is Exhausted”, in To Bless the Space Between Us, p. 125. 

Whitsun III 2012, Awaken

He Qi

Pentecost

John 14: 23-31

Jesus replied, “He who 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]. He who 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.

I have said this to you while I am still with you. But he who is called down, the health-bringing Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will awaken within you all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid [have no fear].

You have heard how I said to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you’. If you loved me you would rejoice because I am going to the Father[ly Ground of the World], for the Father is mightier 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 prince of this world is coming. Yet over me he has no power.

But the world shall see in this how I love the Father [Ground of the World] and how I act in accordance with the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted to me. Arise, let us go on from here. [let us be on our way.]

Whitsun III

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

John 14: 23-31

Coming back into our bodies from sleep, we experience the lighting up of our consciousness. We become awake and aware of the things that surround us.  Sometimes we can even have this experience during our waking hours—we suddenly become aware of something that was perhaps always present, and our consciousness expands. Perhaps this leads to our understanding things that seemed like puzzle pieces before—they fall into place.

On the first Whitsun, the disciples experienced a great expansion of awareness. They had been benighted by their grief over the loss of their Beloved. But at Whitsun they wake up. The puzzle pieces fall into place. They become aware of how Christ’s Spirit of Oneness surrounds them, surrounds everything. They understand in retrospect how everything He does is immersed in His love; how everything He does generates life; how everything He gives us wants to increase the light of our awareness.

He Qi

The poet Antonio Machado said:

I love Jesus, who said to us:

heaven and earth will pass away.

When heaven and earth have passed away,

my word will still remain.

What was your word, Jesus?

Love? Forgiveness? Affection?

All your words were

one word: Awaken.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

---

[1] Antonio Machado, (Translated by Robert Bly, in The Soul Is Here For Its Own Joy,

Whitsun II 2012, Invisible Element

Pentecost

John 14: 23-31

Jesus replied, “He who 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]. He who 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.

I have said this to you while I am still with you. But he who is called down, the health-bringing Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will awaken within you all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid [have no fear].

You have heard how I said to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you’. If you loved me you would rejoice because I am going to the Father[ly Ground of the World], for the Father is mightier 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 prince of this world is coming. Yet over me he has no power.

But the world shall see in this how I love the Father [Ground of the World] and how I act in accordance with the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted to me. Arise, let us go on from here. [let us be on our way.]

Whitsun II

Monday May 28, 2012

John 14: 23-31

We are all surrounded by an invisible element. It is an element that is vital to our life. It weaves among all things. It is the air. Filled with life-giving oxygen, exhaled by the plants, the air sustains our life. Yet most of the time we remain unconscious of it.

There is another invisible element that weaves among all things, that surrounds and sustains the very nature of the universe. This invisible, omnipresent element is God’s love. God’s love for all of His creation surrounds everything, sustains everything, gives everything existence and life.

After their apparent loss of Christ at His Ascension, His disciples were encapsulated by grief. After ten days Christ sends His and His Father’s healing Spirit of Love. This Spirit of Love, of understanding and comfort now not only surrounds them, but in fact enters into them. Christ and His Father make it possible for their radiant, life-giving and sustaining love to begin to enter and operate from within human souls.

This is what He means when He says: He who truly loves me reveals my Spirit, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and prepare with him an everlasting dwelling. John14:23 But we need to make space in our hearts. The poet says:

What makes a fire burn

is space between the logs,

a breathing space.

….

When we are able to build

open spaces

….

then we can come to see how

it is fuel, and absence of the fuel [air]

together, that make fire possible.

….

A fire

grows

simply because the space is there,

with openings

in which the flame

that knows just how it wants to burn

can find its way.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Judy Brown, “Fire” in Leading from Within, ed. by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner

Whitsun 2012, Creative Love

Pentecost

John 14: 23-31

Jesus replied, “He who 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]. He who 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.

I have said this to you while I am still with you. But he who is called down, the health-bringing Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will awaken within you all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid [have no fear].

You have heard how I said to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you’. If you loved me you would rejoice because I am going to the Father[ly Ground of the World], for the Father is mightier 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 prince of this world is coming. Yet over me he has no power.

But the world shall see in this how I love the Father [Ground of the World] and how I act in accordance with the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted to me. Arise, let us go on from here. [let us be on our way.]

Whitsun I

May 27, 2012

John 14: 23-31

Continuously the sun streams its warmth and light onto the earth. It stimulates and supports the life of the plants. It warms and sustains both bodies and souls. For the warmth of the sunlight is the vehicle for the light of God’s life-giving love.

On the first Pentecost, or Whitsun, the disciples are sitting together, mourning the loss of their Beloved at his Ascension ten days earlier. In his expansion into the universe, He was lost to their view. On Whitsunday, at first they experience a movement of air, the sound of a mighty wind. And then a fire descends, which divides itself into single flames. A flame comes to rest on each one of them. And they are filled with God’s Spirit of connecting love.

There are times in our lives, too, when we have our Whitsun moments. A flame of warmth descends; we sense it, we open to it—the fire of a creative love. We become vessels for God’s love, His light, His purpose for the earth. We become suns on earth.

There are words to a hymn that express this wish of ours, to be a vessel:

Come Down o Love Divine

Seek thou this soul of mine

And visit it with thine own ardor glowing

O Comforter draw near

Within my heart appear

And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

…For none can guess its grace

Till he become the place

Wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] “Come Down, O Love Divine”, words by Bianco da Siena, translated by R. F. Littledale, set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

3rd Whitsun 2014, Healing Spirit's Light

Pentecost

John 14: 23-31

Jesus replied, “He who 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]. He who 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.

I have said this to you while I am still with you. But he who is called down, the health-bringing Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will awaken within you all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid [have no fear].

You have heard how I said to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you’. If you loved me you would rejoice because I am going to the Father[ly Ground of the World], for the Father is mightier 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 prince of this world is coming. Yet over me he has no power.

But the world shall see in this how I love the Father [Ground of the World] and how I act in accordance with the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted to me. Arise, let us go on from here. [let us be on our way.]

Whituesday III

Raphael

June 10, 2014

John 14: 23 – 31

When God created the world, his living spirit of love created an order to the world and purpose, a plan for us. This plan involves our learning to love; learning to choose to love others and the world through our won free choice. Eventually the Father sent his eternal Son, his Creating One, to the earth. Christ came as a human being in order to teach and to heal. Ultimately he also came to suffer, to die and to rise to life again.

He demonstrates how we are to live. We are to live in peace; we are to live without fear; for only so can we learn to love.

Aligning ourselves with Christ allows the Father’s all-encompassing love and his plan for us to live and work in us’ working in us it is the healing, holy spirit. The healing spirit brings us the warmth of compassion, the light of understanding. It brings us the light of an awareness that we are all sons and daughters of God. We all, like Christ, are spiritual beings having a human experience. We are all human beings learning to love, to live, to be aware of the divine in everything. This is the healing spirit, the truth that embraces all.

May we in our human state grasp the healing spirit, the spirit of love, the spirit of understanding the shining, living truth. For as David Whyte says:

 ….You were there in the beginning

you heard the story, you heard the merciless

and tender words telling you where you had to go.

Exile is never easy and the journey

itself leaves a bitter taste. But then,

when you heard that voice, you had to go.

You couldn't sit by the fire, you couldn't live

so close to the live flame of that compassion

you had to go out in the world and make it your own

so you could come back with

that flame in your voice, saying listen...

this warmth, this unbearable light, this fearful love...

It is all here, it is all here.[1]


www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] David Whyte, “ In the Beginning” in Fire in the Earth

Whitsun III 2013, Reaching Infinity

Pentecost

John 14: 23-31

Jesus replied, “He who 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]. He who 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.

I have said this to you while I am still with you. But he who is called down, the health-bringing Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will awaken within you all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid [have no fear].

You have heard how I said to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you’. If you loved me you would rejoice because I am going to the Father[ly Ground of the World], for the Father is mightier 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 prince of this world is coming. Yet over me he has no power.

But the world shall see in this how I love the Father [Ground of the World] and how I act in accordance with the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted to me. Arise, let us go on from here. [let us be on our way.]

Whit-Tuesday

May 21, 2013

John 14: 23 – 31

At the end of the day children often have a meltdown over something relatively minor. The parent knows that the child is experiencing this because he is tired and hungry, or maybe even getting ill. The light of the parents’ awareness reaches higher and more broadly than the child’s. The parent knows that the child needs comfort, nourishment, and rest, not whatever it is that sparked the tantrum.

The divine Father’s Spirit also has this quality of higher and broader awareness. He knows that we are experiencing disasters because we are tired and overwhelmed. He knows that we suffer under the sickness of sin.

And so the Father sends His healing spirit, the active messenger of His love, to help heal us. He comes to comfort us, to nourish us, to give us the solace of his love.

The spirit of Love that operates behind the evolving situations in our lives knows what we need; it sees and operates out of a broader and higher level of awareness. It comes to heal the evils we face.

The poet imagines a bird asking a human being a question:

What's it like to be a human

the bird asked

…. it's being held prisoner by your skin

while reaching infinity

being a captive of your scrap of time

while touching eternity

being hopelessly uncertain

and helplessly hopeful

….

it's being on fire

with a nest made of ashes

eating bread

while filling up on hunger

it's dying without love

it's loving through death

That's funny said the bird

and flew effortlessly up into the air.[1]

---

[1] Anna Kamienska, “Funny”, in Astonishments: Selected Poems of Anna Kamienska,

 ed. and trans. by D. Curzon and G. Drabik

Whitsun II, 2013, Be Ignited

Pentecost

John 14: 23-31

Jesus replied, “He who 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]. He who 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.

I have said this to you while I am still with you. But he who is called down, the health-bringing Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will awaken within you all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid [have no fear].

You have heard how I said to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you’. If you loved me you would rejoice because I am going to the Father[ly Ground of the World], for the Father is mightier 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 prince of this world is coming. Yet over me he has no power.

But the world shall see in this how I love the Father [Ground of the World] and how I act in accordance with the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted to me. Arise, let us go on from here. [let us be on our way.]

Whitmonday

May 20, 2013

John 14: 23 -31

To grow a garden, there are a few requirements. First one needs a living seed, for one cannot plant stones and expect something living to emerge. Then one needs to plant the seed at the right time, according to its nature. For it needs the  warmth and light of the right season in order to enkindle. And a garden needs the warmth of our loving attention.

We are all living seeds planted in God’s garden. For the Father’s creative spirit is life. He has chosen the right season for us, so that we will receive the light we need. For the Father’s spirit is light. And He lovingly tends us, so that we will grow to blossom and nourish the world. For the Father’s Spirit is love.

As Mary Oliver says:

All summations have a beginning

All effect has a story

All kindness begins with the sown seed.

Thought buds toward radiance.

The gospel of light is the crossroads of—

Indolence or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Mary Oliver, “What I Have Learned So Far”, in New and Selected Poems, Volume Two. Picture artist unknown.