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.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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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.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

3rd Advent 2013, Promise

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.

3^rd Advent

December 15, 2013

1 Thessalonians 5, 1-8, 23, 24

The Advent prayers speak of the chariot of the sun, whose path inscribes an arc in the heavens. The mention of a chariot implies a Being that travels in it. In myth He is called Helios. He daily rises from the edge of the world, dispelling the darkness. He sets into the darkness at the end of the day, to rise again, moving time forward.

The prayers also speak of the bow of color, which also inscribes an arc in the skies. In mythology she is called Iris, the messenger of the gods. The interplay of light and darkness, of water and air, of Helios and Earth, create Iris the many colored rainbow. Her message has always been a promise; she brings hope.

Our deepest hope is that one day, Heaven and earth will become one; that the wounds of worlds will be healed; that love and peace will reign because Helios and Earth’s sons and daughters will hear Iris’s message. Her message continuously calls us, invites us to work on the creation of the new heaven and the new earth. All of creation is waiting for us. As the poet Mary Oliver says in a poem called “The Fist”, in Thirst:

Sulamith Wulfing

There are days

when the sun goes down

like a fist,

though of course

if you see anything

in the heavens this way

you had better get

your eyes checked

or, better still,

your diminished spirit.

The heavens

have no fist,

or wouldn't they have been

shaking it

for a thousand years now,

and even longer than that,

….

Instead: such patience!

Such willingness

to let us continue!

To hear,

little by little,

the voices -

only, so far, in

pockets of the world -

suggesting the possibilities

of peace?

Keep looking.

Behold, how the fist opens

with invitation.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

2nd Advent 2007, Guardians of Beauty

2^nd Advent

Philippians 4:1, 4:4-9

Therefore my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and my crown of glory, stand firm in the power of the Lord.

Rejoice in the nearness of the Lord at all times! And I say it again: Rejoice!

Let a gentle kindliness be evident toward all human beings you encounter. The Lord is near! Let not worry have power over you; let your concerns in all things be known to God by sending your supplication and prayer upward in thankful thoughts. And the peace of God, which transcends anything that the intellect can grasp, will keep your hearts and thoughts safe in the Being of Christ….

And lastly dear brothers I say to you:

all that is true,

all that is worthy of reverence,

all that is good and holy,

all that is lovely to look at and beautiful to hear,

all that has virtue and deserves praise:

let these be the content of your conversations and thoughts. All that you have had handed on to you, what you have heard from me and seen in me—put all this into practice; then the God of Peace will be with you!

2^nd Advent Sunday

December 9, 2007

Philippians 4.1 and 4.4-9

If you want to worthily prepare your home for a special guest, first you would de-clutter. You remove the ugly, the useless and outdated from the furnishings. Then you can proceed to add beauty: light a warm fire or fragrant candles, arrange fresh flowers, set the table and prepare refreshments.

On this our second Advent Sunday, we continue our inner preparations for Christ’s coming. We are preparing the house of the soul for the coming of the Guest.

Paul suggests first that we clear out the ugly debris of worry, through prayer. And when that inner housekeeping task is done, we can proceed with positive additions to our own soul space. Paul encourages us to fill our inner house with the aroma of gratitude and the warmth of loving-kindness. He suggests that we beautify the soul with thoughts that celebrate truth; with good and wholesome things to contemplate that evoke reverence; with lovely and praiseworthy virtue.

In this way we truly ready the soul’s house for the coming of Christ, by making our hearts a beautiful and worthy place for the Great Guest, the Prince of Peace.

For in the words of the poet:

We are the guardians of His Beauty.

We are the protectors of the Sun.

There is only one reason

We have followed God into this world:

To encourage laughter, freedom, dance

And love….

We are the companions of His Beauty.

We are the guardians

Of Truth.

Every man, plant and creature in Existence…

Is a servant of our Beloved—

A harbinger of joy,

A harbinger of

Light.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Hafiz “Guardians of His Beauty,” in The Subject Tonight is Love, by Daniel Ladinsky, p.46.