1st St. Johnstide 2012, Budbreak

St. John’s
Mark 1, 1-11

This is the beginning of the new word from the realm of the angels, sounding forth through Jesus Christ. Fulfilled is the word of the prophet Isaiah:

Behold, I send my angel before your face.

He is to prepare your way.

Hear the voice of one calling in the loneliness of the human soul

Prepare the way for the Lord within the soul,

Make his paths straight, so that he may find entrance into Man’s innermost being!

Thus did John the Baptist appear in the loneliness of the desert. He proclaimed Baptism, the way of a change of heart and mind, for the acknowledgement of sin. And they went out to him from all of Judea and Jerusalem and received baptism from him in the river Jordan and recognized and confessed their failings.

John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist. Fruits and wild honey were his food. And he proclaimed:

           

‘After me comes one who is mightier than I. I am not even worthy to bend down befpre Him and to undo the straps of His sandals. I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the fire of the Holy [healing] Spirit.’

In those days it happened: Jesus of Nazareth came to Galilee, and was baptized in the Jordan by John.

And at the same time as he rose up again out of the water, he beheld how the spheres of the heavens were torn open, and the spirit of God descended upon him like a dove.

And a voice sounded from the world of the spirit:

‘You are my son, the beloved —in you is my revelation.’ [‘Today I have conceived (begotten) you.’ Luke 3:22]

1^st St. Johnstide

June 24, 2012

Mark 1:1-11

The plant sends forth green leaf after green leaf. Then quietly one day, something different appears at the growing point. It is a bud that will break forth into the color and beauty and complexity of a blossom.

John the Baptist announces the arrival of the new flowering of humanity. The old ways are completed. The new blossoming of humankind is a bud-break. And all of us are exhorted to make ourselves ready to join in the new way of being—to change our thinking, to let our hearts open.

In our lives there come moments, months, or even years, when we are called upon to open our hearts to something new, to frame our thinking in a different way. For the spheres of the heavens are open. Our future is descending upon us like a dove. In our loneliness may we hear the voice of the Father, calling us the Beloved, whom He is creating anew.

www.thechristiancommunity.org 

1st St. Johnstide 2014, Light Always Rises

St. John’s

Mark 1, 1-11

This is the beginning of the new word from the realm of the angels, sounding forth through Jesus Christ. Fulfilled is the word of the prophet Isaiah:

Behold, I send my angel before your face.

He is to prepare your way.

Hear the voice of one calling in the loneliness of the human soul

Prepare the way for the Lord within the soul,

Make his paths straight, so that he may find entrance into Man’s innermost being!

Thus did John the Baptist appear in the loneliness of the desert. He proclaimed Baptism, the way of a change of heart and mind, for the acknowledgement of sin. And they went out to him from all of Judea and Jerusalem and received baptism from him in the river Jordan and recognized and confessed their failings.

John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist. Fruits and wild honey were his food. And he proclaimed:

           

‘After me comes one who is mightier than I. I am not even worthy to bend down befpre Him and to undo the straps of His sandals. I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the fire of the Holy [healing] Spirit.’

In those days it happened: Jesus of Nazareth came to Galilee, and was baptized in the Jordan by John.

And at the same time as he rose up again out of the water, he beheld how the spheres of the heavens were torn open, and the spirit of God descended upon him like a dove.

And a voice sounded from the world of the spirit:

‘You are my son, the beloved —in you is my revelation.’ [‘Today I have conceived (begotten) you.’ Luke 3:22]

1^st St. Johnstide

June 24, 2014

Mark 1: 1-11

Govert-Flinck

At Christmastime, we awakened into mid-winter darkness. The starlit heavens opened up, and a choir of angels announced the approach of the great Sun-Spirit who was to be born in mankind. Through late winter and spring, we watched him grow as Jesus of Nazareth, teaching and healing. He died. He overcame death.  And he appeared to his disciples as they learned to know him in a new way. He united heaven and earth in his Ascension. At Pentecost he sent his Spirit awareness to keep himself alive in the hearts of men.

Now we stand at the turning point of the year.  It is mid-day [midnight in the Southern Hemisphere] in the earth’s year. And oddly the gospel readings go back to the beginning.  The story seems to start over--Jesus is baptized.  It is as if the gospel readings would like us to take a closer look, to focus in on

Bellini

something.  We see the moment in which Jesus, the man, offers himself.  He steps into the streaming, living waters of the Jordan.  The heavens are torn open. He sees, he hears. The Fathers voice resounds, affirming His Son. The Sun-God himself enters him.  He becomes the Christ-bearer. 

At midpoint in the year, instead of a choir of angels, one lone human voice, John the Baptist, urges up to offer ourselves, as Jesus did, to the intimate working of Christ in us, through us.  Now it is we who are to become Christ-bearers.  Now it is we who are to become sons and daughters of the Father. 

From now on the outer sunlight will gradually lessen [or grow] as the days grow shorter [or longer].  But the Christ-Sun wants to rise within us.  He wants to irradiate our being as he once did the man Jesus.  He wants us to see and hear, to change.  Within us he wants to become the light that always rises.  

www.thechristiancommunity.org

1st St.Johnstide 2013, Ideal Future Self

St. John’s

Mark 1, 1-11

This is the beginning of the new word from the realm of the angels, sounding forth through Jesus Christ. Fulfilled is the word of the prophet Isaiah:

Behold, I send my angel before your face.

He is to prepare your way.

Hear the voice of one calling in the loneliness of the human soul

Prepare the way for the Lord within the soul,

Make his paths straight, so that he may find entrance into Man’s innermost being!

Thus did John the Baptist appear in the loneliness of the desert. He proclaimed Baptism, the way of a change of heart and mind, for the acknowledgement of sin. And they went out to him from all of Judea and Jerusalem and received baptism from him in the river Jordan and recognized and confessed their failings.

John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist. Fruits and wild honey were his food. And he proclaimed:

           

‘After me comes one who is mightier than I. I am not even worthy to bend down befpre Him and to undo the straps of His sandals. I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the fire of the Holy [healing] Spirit.’

In those days it happened: Jesus of Nazareth came to Galilee, and was baptized in the Jordan by John.

And at the same time as he rose up again out of the water, he beheld how the spheres of the heavens were torn open, and the spirit of God descended upon him like a dove.

And a voice sounded from the world of the spirit:

‘You are my son, the beloved —in you is my revelation.’ [‘Today I have conceived (begotten) you.’ Luke 3:22]

St. Johnstide

June 24, 30, 2013

Mark 1: 1-11

As we grow older, our awareness expands. Imagine going back in time to visit our younger self. Imagine what we would want to say to that younger self out of our years of experience since our youth. Imagine how possibly painful our older self-awareness would be in the face of our former innocent intentions. And imagine how terrified our younger self would be to encounter this someone from the future who is so strangely familiar, who so intimately knows us.

John the Baptist is humankind’s older self. He is the older self who has gone ahead of us. He has something he wants to say to us. He is acutely aware of his own and humankind’s failings. Out of his broader awareness, he encourages us to change our way of thinking, to undergo a change of heart. This is all in preparation for an encounter with Christ Jesus, the innocent younger self of humankind.

John encounters the innocence of Jesus, and the enormity of the spirit of God that descends upon Jesus like a dove. The result for this older self of John is a deepening of humility. ‘I am not worthy’, he says. I am doing my best to serve what God has as intention for humankind. But HE is the embodiment of the pure and grand intentions of the Godhead. He is the true prototype.  And thus He is even older than I. He is my own younger self as God intended me to be.

Painful self-awareness of our shortcomings, our failures to be what both God and we intended to be; and at the same time, this is a deep experience of God’s love for us, His willingness to sacrifice Himself for us, so that we can start over, begin again to be what we, and He intended to be. We shy away from such encounters; such painful self-awareness terrifies us; and to be so intimately known can be devastating. But it is a necessary step on the way to experiencing the mildness, the acceptance, the calm radiant forgiveness of the One who is our ideal future self. Such self-awareness is a necessary passage into the forgiveness that allows us to start over, to begin at the beginning again. It is the experience of what the poet speaks of when he says:

I am not I.

                I am this one walking beside me whom I do not see,

Whom at times I manage to visit,

And whom at other times I forget;

The one who remains silent when I talk

The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,

The one who takes a walk where I am not.

The one who will remain standing when I die.^[1]

^{www.thechristiancommunity.org}

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[1] “I Am Not I”, by Juan Ramón Jiménez, in Risking Everything, ed. By Roger Housden, p. 19. Picture: Baptism in the Jordan, by Jacob de Wit.

2nd June Trinity 2014, Helping Guide

June Trinity

John 4, 1-26

  

At this time the Lord became aware that it was rumored among the Pharisees that Jesus was finding and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, though his disciples did.) Therefore he left Judea and went back again to Galilee.

Now he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the plot of land Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was also there. Jesus was weary with the journey, and he sat down by the well. It was about midday, the sixth hour.

Then a Samaritan woman came to draw water. And Jesus said to her, “Give me to drink.” For his disciples had gone into town to buy bread.

Then the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman?” For the Jews avoided all contact with the Samaritans.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew how the divine world now draws near to men, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me to drink’, you would ask him, and he would give you the water of life [the living water].

“Sir,” the woman said to him, “you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From where will you draw the living water? Are you greater than our Father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I will give him, his thirst will be quenched for all time. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up as true life for eternity.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may never be thirsty again, and need never come here again to draw.”

He said to her, “Go call your husband and show him to me.”

“I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You have well said that you have no husband. Five husbands you have had, and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews say that only in Jerusalem is the place where one should worship.”

Jesus answered, “Believe me, o woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship a being you do not know; we worship what we do know. That is why salvation had to be prepared for among the Jews. But the hour is coming and has now come, when the true worshippers will worship the Father with the power of the spirit and in awareness [knowledge] of the truth.”

Then the woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming who is called Christ. When he comes, he will teach us all things.”

Jesus said to her, “I AM he who stands before you and speaks to you.”

2^nd June Trinity

June 22, 2014

John 4: 1-26

If we wish to journey through an area foreign to us, we may engage a guide. The guide knows where best to stop for food and water, for shelter. We depend on his familiarity with the terrain to get us safely through to our destination.

There is a certain sense in which our own five senses are guides.  They each offer specific information about where we are. Taken individually each sense gives such different information that we cannot depend on them singly. We ourselves need to sift through what we receive from them. And further, their information is limited to the earthly, sense-perceptible world.

In the non-material world, the world of life and living beings, the world of love, we need another guide; someone who knows the territory, who will nourish and shelter us on the way; who will see us to our destination. The Act of Consecration of Man (communion liturgy) speaks of One who is our helping guide through the territory of our freedom.

The Samaritan woman meets him by the well. In tradition she is called Photina, ‘the luminous one’. In her conversation with him she realizes that relying only on the guidance of her five senses, (her ‘husbands’) is not taking her where she wishes to go. Her soul is parched. Christ offers himself as the living water, and as her guide on her journey. She recognizes that he knows, in fact is the way; that he stands before her and speaks to her of where she truly wishes to go; that He is her helping guide.

Psalm 121 speaks of this guide:

 ….The Unnamable is always with you,
shining from the depths of your heart.
His peace will keep you untroubled
even in the greatest pain.
When you find him present within you,
you find truth at every moment.
He will guard you from all wrongdoing;
he will guide your feet on his path….*

*A Book of Psalms, trans. and adapted by Stephen Mitchell

4th St. Johnstide 2013, We Forget

John the Baptist

St. Johnstide

Matthew 11: 2-15

When John heard in prison about the deeds of Christ, he sent his disciples to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”

Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are awakened, and those who have become poor receive the message of salvation. Blessed are those who are not offended by my Being.”

When they had gone, Jesus began to speak about John. “Why did you go out into the desert? Did you want to see a reed swaying in the wind? Or was it something else you wanted to see? Did you want to see a man in splendid garments? Those in splendid garments are in the palaces of kings. Did you go to see a man who is initiated into he mysteries of the spirit, a prophet? Yes, I say to you—he is more than a prophet. He it is of whom it is written:

           

            Behold it well: I will send my angel before your face;

            He shall prepare the way of your working in the hearts of men

            So that your being may be revealed.

The truth I say to you: among all who are born of women, not one has risen up who is greater than John the Baptist; and yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist, and even more now, the kingdom of heaven will arise within human beings through the power of the will; those who exert themselves can freely grasp it. The deeds of the prophets and the content of the Law are words of the spirit that were valid [worked into the future] until the time of John. And if you want to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

4^th St. Johnstide

John in Prison

July 21, 2013

Matthew 11: 2 – 15

It may seem amazing that John the Baptist has doubts. After all, he witnessed the Holy Spirit descend and remain on Jesus at the Baptism. He witnessed him as the Lamb of God who bears the burden of humankind’s guilt. Yet it is as though he begins to question what he saw – ‘Are you the one who was to come?’

John is imprisoned; imprisoned in a jail; imprisoned perhaps in the popular expectations of what the Messiah would be; imprisoned in his temporal, mortal body.

Yet Christ is not offended by John’s questioning. Rather than answer directly, he points to the healing fruits of what he is doing. And he continues to speak lovingly and affirmingly of John.

Christ is the ever-faithful friend of our soul. He gazes ever upon our eternal self.

It is in the nature of our spiritual experiences that they come and go. They are born, they die away; they are buried in the everyday. And when they disappear, doubt arises.  But for Christ, this does not matter. He is not offended, for he operates in a realm outside of time’s annihilation.

And he holds fast to what is eternal in us, to the eternal facts of our experiences. What dies away for us is resurrected in Him. Although John, and we, forget what we saw, what we knew, he holds them for us. Christ is the loving and objective witness of our soul.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

June Trinity 2007, Forever Give

White Rose, Dore

June Trinity

John 17: 6-11

Father, I have revealed your name and your being to all human beings whom you have led through destiny to me. They were yours; they lived out of the powers that worked in folk and family, and now you have given them to me, and into my working that lives in the Self, and they have kept your word in their inmost being. Thus they have recognized how all the spiritual power that you have given me truly proceeds from you; for all the creative spiritual power that you have given me, I have brought to them.

They have taken it up into themselves and have recognized that in truth I come from you, and they have gained insight, and trust that I have been sent by you. I pray to you for them as individual human beings; they who are to live out of the power of the self, as individuals, I pray to you for them; not for mankind in general, but for the human beings which you have given me. For they belong to you, just as everything which is mine is yours, and what is yours is mine, and the light of my being can shine in them [I am revealed in them]. I no longer live in the outer world, but they live in this world.

My whole being is devoted to you. And I am coming to you.  Holy Father, you who give healing to the world, keep in your name and in your being all whom you have given to me, so that they may be one even as we also are one. 

First Trinity Sunday

June 3, 2007

John 17: 6-11

Some types of roses grow in great clusters. Yet this form is created by the ordering of many smaller individual blossoms, each complete and unique in itself.        

          Mankind is a great cluster. Yet the Gospel reading emphasizes that Christ prays to His Father, not for the greater cluster, but for the single individuals who are close to Him. What is important to Him, that out of which He operates, is a relationship of love, active from both sides. He is a Divine Human Being, a Human Divine, who wants an intimately personal relationship with each of us.

          In recent years there appeared a collection of modern Christ experiences.[1] One recurring theme in these accounts was each person’s experience of being seen, known by Christ, and at the same time being deeply loved, in spite of His full awareness of their weaknesses or failings. The overriding experience was of being intimately known, loved and supported. Out of this experience of being known and loved by Christ, we in turn can learn to love others in a similar way.

          Before His total sacrifice of Himself out of His love, Christ prays to His Father: “Keep in your Name and in your Being all whom you gave given to me, so that they may be One, even as we are also One.” John 17:11

How can we be One? The poet suggests a way:

…narrow the gap

Between you and God.

I [we] have many younger brothers and sister

Scattered upon this earth

There are always friends of God in this world.

Find on and offer service

For their glance is generous and cannot help

But forever give. [2]

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[1] C. Scott Sparrow, I Am With You Always: True Stories of Encounters with Jesus, Bantam Books, 1995.

[2] Hafiz, “Narrow the Difference,” in The Subject Tonight Is Love, collected by Daniel Ladinsky, p. 37.

June Trinity 2008, Guiding Spirit

Birds in Flight

June Trinity

John 17: 6-11

Father, I have revealed your name and your being to all human beings whom you have led through destiny to me. They were yours; they lived out of the powers that worked in folk and family, and now you have given them to me, and into my working that lives in the Self, and they have kept your word in their inmost being. Thus they have recognized how all the spiritual power that you have given me truly proceeds from you; for all the creative spiritual power that you have given me, I have brought to them.

They have taken it up into themselves and have recognized that in truth I come from you, and they have gained insight, and trust that I have been sent by you. I pray to you for them as individual human beings; they who are to live out of the power of the self, as individuals, I pray to you for them; not for mankind in general, but for the human beings which you have given me. For they belong to you, just as everything which is mine is yours, and what is yours is mine, and the light of my being can shine in them [I am revealed in them]. I no longer live in the outer world, but they live in this world.

My whole being is devoted to you. And I am coming to you.  Holy Father, you who give healing to the world, keep in your name and in your being all whom you have given to me, so that they may be one even as we also are one. 

First June Trinity

May 15, 2008

John 17: 6-11

Mother Nature provides us with examples of what a community looks like. One can watch the flights of flocks of birds – the orderly V-line of migrating geese accompanied by call and response; or the astonishing swoop and swing of a flock of pigeons. How is it that in their sudden turning and wheeling they don’t crash into one another? They act smoothly as an organic whole, tuned into the same guidance. Each bird senses its place in the form. Their working together in fluid movement is a thing of great beauty.

Through Christ and the Guiding Spirit He sends from His Father, human groups can begin to function with something of the beauty and grace we see in the flight of flocks. Attending the Act of Consecration of Man is like practicing migration. One calls; from the two immediately behind come the responses. The whole flock moves together toward a common goal, singing praises. We move as an organism toward the Father, Christ’s words resounding throughout.

The rest of community life can also embody the beauty and swing of a flock – each person contributing their share to the harmonious functioning of the whole, as it wheels and turns, wherein community life becomes a thing of beauty.

We were created to become creators, not only as individuals, but also in groups. Our guide is the Holy Spirit, the spirit of wholeness, whose form is the dove. This guiding Spirit helps us recognize when we are on a collision course with our neighbor. We each have particular gifts to offer to the whole; some offer leadership, some wisdom and insight; some the work of their hands. We are all called upon to be creators, creators together of the nest wherein the dove, the Father’s Spirit of peace, of harmony and of beauty, can find its dwelling. For as the poet says,

Now like a radiant sky creature

God keeps opening

God keeps opening

Inside

of me.[1]

            [ Inside of us.]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Hafiz, “What Do White Birds Say?” in The Gift, by Daniel Ladinsky, p. 98.