Sexagesima 2009: Love in Action

My notes for Sunday, February 15, follow below.  For those who asked, the readings are those given in the Liberal Catholic lectionary.

Sexagesima (a Sunday whose name always invites a joke or two) brings us to a consideration of the Holy Spirit as sanctifier.  In the Gospel (from Mark 12), Jesus tells us that the greatest commandments are to love God and our neighbor.  However, we cannot force ourselves to obey these commandments.  Love flows from a secret inner disposition that cannot be outwardly compelled, or it is no longer love.  True love for God and for our brothers and sisters shapes our lives as the Spirit works in our depths, setting us at liberty and making us children of God.  These commandments are closer to signs of the regeneration God is already working in us, rather than rules to obey, although there are doubtless times when acting “as if” we were loving can open the door to the reality.  When this love is in us, changing us, making us useful to God’s purposes in the world, we are not far from the kingdom of God.

The Spirit’s work of love in us, and the imitation of Christ which is the living out of the same, does not make us into cookie-cutter Christians, or robotic followers of Jesus.  Rather as the Epistle (from I Cor 12) tells us, there are diversities of operations, but the same God who worketh all in all.  However widely varied the Spirit’s manifestations or gifts, they are given to each for the common good, to build up the body of Christ in which we all partake.  As Bishop Lloyd Meeker liked to say, blessings are not given to us for us – but through us to bless others, and to others that they may bring blessings to us, in a grand exchange of grace.  Each person and each community needs to watch for the Spirit’s unique gifts (which may not look religious at all), cultivate them, and find ways to bring them to the common table to share with others.  Sanctification looks different in each person and in each community, but it is always love in action.  May the Spirit brood over us, and shake us to our depths, making us secret agents of God’s transforming love, loose in the world.

Septuagesima 2009

It’s been a busy year.  I’m going to give this blog another try, at least posting homily notes from time to time.   From last Sunday:

Today we enter Pre-Lent, a little season of 3 Sundays devoted to the Holy Spirit, whose presence prepares us to undertake transformational Lenten discipline.   This week’s readings particularly speak of the Spirit under the aspect of wisdom.  In the gospel from Matthew 25, the illuminating flame of wisdom (or at least the oil that fuels it) is something which must be bought.  When the foolish virgins ask the wise ones to share their oil, the wise tell them to go and buy for themselves.   We have to ask carefully what this means.  All too often, religion and spirituality are treated as commodities in the marketplace of our world.  We are quick to purchase the latest book or DVD, and to sign up for the newest weekend workshop with the popular speaker.  We fill ourselves with cool theories and “spiritual” ideas.  We pay our ministers, our theologians, and other professionals to be religious for us.  We may have full bookshelves, impressive resumes, and a staff to boot, but does such heavy knowledge lead us to the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God and the image of his goodness (Wisdom 7)?

 How then do we buy this oil of wisdom, which illumines our souls, lighting the world around us as we await the coming Bridegroom?   Perhaps it is obtained precisely by trading away all our self-important cleverness which bars the way of the One who in all ages enters into holy souls, making them friends of God and prophets.  God’s wisdom is most subtle, and cannot be bound.  The Spirit of Wisdom does not bow to our plans or notions, cannot be controlled, and teaches us by taking us into places we never expected.  God needs friends who are willing to take risks, to be a little crazy, to love life, letting themselves be filled with joy.   No one else can do this for us.  The community of the wise, shining like brilliant stars in the night, is composed of those who have paid the price of wisdom, who have removed their own shackles and accepted their freedom in the Spirit.  Radiant with light and joy, they stand full of the power of life, watching, waiting, shining, until the dawning of the perfect Day.

A word from Catherine MacCoun

Tibetan Buddhists have an expression to describe life in a spiritual community. They call it “the Feast of Dharma.” In this Feast, what gets eaten is you. One’s whole being in all its redeemed and unredeemed aspects is offered up to the sangha to be torn to shreds and devoured. This is my body: take and eat of it. This is my blood: drink of it. Each member of the community is chewed up, swallowed and processed in the digestion of the others. It is a Eucharist both savage and ecstatic.

Catholics have a gentler phrase that carries much the same idea. They speak of the community as “the Mystical Body of Christ.” This body is crucified at the meeting point of vertical and horizontal, and there, too, each member is nailed. The vine and the branches and also the descending roots, sunk beneath the surface of the earth, metabolizing rot into nourishment with the aid of the sun.

(from “Work On What Has Been Spoiled”  – http://members.aol.com/kitmac/workon.htm)

New Year’s Absolution

A youtube video by Toni Petrinovich, who was once known to some of the readers of this blog as the Rt. Rev. Sarrah Brown of the Holy Order of MANS:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IddO5hsZZZo

Christmas thoughts

(From last night’s mass)

Whenever we come to Christmas, I remember the words from the close of Rudolf Steiner’s Foundation Stone meditation:

At the turning point of time
The Spirit Light of the World
Entered the Stream of Earthly Being.
Darkness of Night had held its sway.
Day-radiant Light streamed into human souls:
Light that gives warmth
To simple Shepherds’ Hearts.
Light that enlightens
The wise Heads of Kings.

O Light Divine,
O Sun of Christ,
Warm Thou our hearts,
Enlighten Thou our heads,
That Good may become
What from our hearts we found
And from our heads direct
With single purpose of will.

That turning point of time, the hinge where time and eternity meet, is found in each of us. It is the hidden place, the original point, where the flame of our being bursts forth from the dark of the void, from the womb of mystery. As Angelus Silesius once wrote, if Christ is born in Bethlehem a thousand times, but not in us, then we remain unchanged.

Christmas is a cosmic event – the Light which lightens every person, which was in the beginning with God and through which all the worlds were made, now coming into the world in a new and renewing way. Christmas is also a historical/mythic event – the birth of Jesus from Mary, at a particular time and place. And Christmas is an ever living mystery in each of us, as the inner pattern of the cosmic, historical, and mythic events unfolds, hopefully, again and again.

In the words of poet June Jordan (later borrowed as a book title by Alice Walker), “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” The redemption of the world, the healing of the earth and her creatures, the future of humanity, is – at least potentially – here, in our hands.

As Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, all creation groans and travails in labor pains, waiting for the children of God to be revealed, for the Christ to be truly born in us. We know, as we read in 1 John, that we are even now the sons and daughters of God, and yet what we shall be as we grow in the likeness of Christ, as we become more and more partakers of the divine nature, is a great mystery. Holding firmly to the light of our deepest and truest being, and nourished by him who was laid as a baby in the feed trough of a stable, may we take further, trusting steps into that mystery this Christmas.

Holy and vulnerable God, be with us, strengthen us, as we take you into our hands in this sacrament.

Memory eternal: Karl Pruter

Many of the regular readers here probably already know that Bishop Karl Hugo Pruter died yesterday evening, November 18, 2007, at age 86.  I blogged about his memoirs (The Blue Jellybean) back in March.  He wrote extensively on Old and Independent Catholicism (e.g., The Old Catholic Sourcebook) and was one of the best known and most loved bishops in the independent movement.  He was a former Congregationalist minister, and I think the intersections of free church/congregationalist thought and Old Catholicism in his work could stand more exploration than they have seen thus far – and might contain interesting hints for future ecclesial directions.  A project for someone!

A word from Harry Smith

I have been reading American Magus Harry Smith: A Modern Alchemist, edited by Paola Igliori (New York: Inanout Press, 1996).   If you don’t know Harry Everett Smith (1923-1991), look him up on wikipedia – it’s worth your time.  As the back of the book says, he was a “filmmaker, anthropologist, painter, ethnomusicologist, folklorist, magician, alchemist, and legendary archivist of sediments of human activity in motion.”   He was also a bishop of the thelemic Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica.  One snippet from an interview:

You are a Cabala expert, Harry?

Hmmmm.  Well, the word “cabala,” I suppose, means hidden or something like that, so I’m, of course, not. I would try as much as I could to give any kind of information to anyone.    (p.286)

That’s my kind of initiate.   The only real mysteries are the ones you discover through your own experience.  Everything else can be published on the front page of the newspaper. 

Memory eternal: James Niedergeses (1917-2007)

Last Friday, James Niedergeses, the retired Roman Catholic bishop of Nashville, died at the age of 90.   Bishop Niedergeses was a genuinely kind, wise, loving, pastoral bishop.   (Rare enough!)   My favorite memory of him is a class he gave for eucharistic ministers, years ago.   Inevitably, questions arose about who could receive communion, and what to do if someone who should not receive (according to the rules) comes up in the line.   The bishop told a story about a day when a homeless man from West End Avenue came into church during mass, and headed up front for communion.  Niedergeses asked him, “Son, are you Catholic?”  The homeless man looked the bishop in the eye and asked, “Are you?”  The bishop said he never questioned anyone again. 

May Bishop Niedergeses pray for us from his place within the Great Life.

Will Tuttle: The World Peace Diet

This afternoon, I had the great experience of listening to Will Tuttle speak.  (http://www.willtuttle.com/)   He’s very impressive and thought-provoking.  If you get the chance, you should not miss it.   A couple of years ago, I was asked by Quest Magazine to review his book, The World Peace Diet.   The review has been backlogged but should appear soon.  However, I am posting it here as a preview:

The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual and Social Harmony.  By Will Tuttle.  New York: Lantern Books, 2005.  Paperback, $20, 318 pages.

 

            Will Tuttle’s The World Peace Diet is a challenging wake-up call.  Many spiritual traditions, including Theosophy, have advocated ethical vegetarianism and care for animals.  However, the compelling reasons for such a position have rarely been articulated with as much detail and force as in Tuttle’s fine new book.  His tone is urgent and uncompromising, yet filled with compassionate understanding.  Even if one may not agree with him in every point, he forces the reader to consider matters which too often remain unconscious.

            Tuttle writes that his book is:

 

… an exploration of the profound cultural and spiritual ramifications of our food chain and the mentality underlying them.  By placing humans at the top of the planet’s food chain, our culture has historically perpetuated a particular worldview that requires from its members a reduction of essential feeling and awareness – and it is this process of desensitization that we must understand if we would comprehend the underlying causes of oppression, exploitation, and spiritual disconnectedness. (xiv)

 

            Graphically reviewing the horrors of factory farming and slaughterhouses, Tuttle reminds us that we reinforce our blindness to these realities with every meal that includes animal products.  Some of us may feel more comfortable with dairy and eggs, since animals are not directly killed to produce these foods.  However, Tuttle displays the deeply disturbing conditions under which chickens and cows typically live, as well as the character of theft which underlies milk and egg production.  He then relates this theft to “our culture’s basic repression, confinement, and exploitation of the female and feminine principle.” (115)

            Tuttle reminds us of the essential solidarity and interconnectedness of all life.  We cannot pretend that we can mistreat other sentient beings with impunity, regarding them as commodities instead of fellow creatures.  “Dominating others requires us to disconnect from them, and from aspects of ourselves as well.” (130)  From a theosophical perspective, we can welcome Tuttle’s examination of what we might call the karmic consequences of our treatment of animals raised for food, as well as the invisible, energetic realities which we consume in animal food. 

 

Metaphysical toxins – i.e., the concentrated vibration of terror, grief, frustration, and desperation permeating these foods, are invisible and completely unrecognized by conventional science, yet they may be even more disturbing to us than physical toxins, because they work on the level of feelings and consciousness, which are more essential dimensions of ourselves than our physical vehicle. (137)

 

“In the old herding cultures, animals were gradually transformed from mysterious and fascinating cohabitants of a shared world to mere property objects to be used, sold, traded, confined, and killed.” (25)   Insofar as we can see through this distortion, and make more conscious and compassionate choices, we will be better able to disentangle ourselves from other ways in which violence, destruction, and the treatment of others as objects have found their way into our lives.  After all, “our actions reinforce attitudes, in us and in others, that amplify the ripples of those actions until they become the devastating waves of insensitivity, conflict, injustice, brutality, disease, and exploitation that rock our world today.” (221)

A word from Rev. Mario

From the cross, the power of His blood flowed into the earth to make the earth his own.  It is the earth which is symbolised by the host used during Holy Communion. We say, ‘This is His body.’ Symbolically, because the host is round, we are lifting up the earth and saying the earth is His body.  This means that we are also being sustained by the body of Christ in the food we eat.  The more that we identify ourselves with Christ, both spiritually and physically, in our eating and drinking habits, etc., the more we take the Christ within ourselves.

- from Mario Schoenmaker, The Ultimate Vision: The Revelation to John, Development Course Lecture 2, page 5.