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Easter and the Tragedy in Boston

The events which have taken place around the Boston marathon have shaken our national consciousness and again raise uncomfortable questions about the world in which we are living. Struggling to come to terms with senseless destruction is necessary and understandable in the face of such occurrences, but equally important and worthy of our attention are the questions about the way that we experience these kinds of tragedies.

Boston makes us aware that our perception of world events is still very much geographical. Explosions in crowded public places are alas, commonplace in other parts of the world. They are not in our country. What does this mean for us? Why are the bombings in Boston so painful? Eastertide offers I think a few keys to answering this question. Read more

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How the Gospel Speaks in my Life: Easter

Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. (Mark 16:2-4)

That the women walking to the grave only realize a short distance from their destination that they cannot move the stone away! Yet, they might have bemoaned their lack of foresight and, without ever reaching the tomb, turned around. Or perhaps they could have quickly decided to search for someone who could move the stone, but instead they looked up! It is only then that they became aware: the stone has been moved already, and the passage is open to the place where they received further clues leading them to the resurrected one. Read more

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The Mission of Failure

Failure seems like such a negation. I did not….

It points to the fact that we are imperfect, incomplete; that our reach exceeds our grasp. Yet hidden in that very fact is a positive. I did try. I learned something. Thomas Edison famously said: I have not failed; I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

Our failures are great teachers, if we are open to the lessons. As it says in our Sunday Service for Children, we learn so that we may understand and work in the world. We are here to find truth, to expand our understanding of reality, to make a difference in the world. The fact that failure is often humbling is perhaps a lesson in itself – we are not yet all that we want to be. But we may have just found the 9,999th way that doesn’t work – one step closer to a way that does.

As Saul, St. Paul believed that Jesus couldn’t have been the Messiah. Jesus’ life ended as a failure – he was tortured and executed as a common criminal. Therefore Saul knew he couldn’t have been God the All Powerful’s Son. But what looked like a failed life became The Life, as Paul came to know at Damascus.

Christ came to the earth for the express purpose of becoming a human being. He came to experience, in the flesh, how human beings fail. How they learn. How they find truth. He explored the depths of human existence. And since he is an eternal being, what he did, he does eternally. He experiences the depths of humanity so that He, eternally present, can be here with us when we fail. When we learn. When we find truth, which is ultimately, Him.

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Christianity as Growing Wakefulness

Lo! I am coming like a thief! Blessed is he who is awake, keeping his garments that he may not go naked and be seen exposed. -Revelation 16:15

Christ’s coming again, which makes itself felt more and more as a spiritual fact, asks of individual human beings grave decisions. It does not leave us as we were before. If we sleep through the event, we are inwardly poorer – this is the point of comparison in the strange and yet realistic picture of Christ coming “like a thief”. In comparison with this is the blessing of him who is  ‘awake’.

In ancient times, the Lord gave to His own in sleep, but humanity has stepped out of the divine dream of the early childhood of humanity; mankind has to wake up – primarily at first to the earthly world. If the wakefulness is limited to the material world, however, there gradually arises the feeling: unfortunate are the wakeful. Then, we bear this adult wakefulness like a burden, and seek narcotics and opiates in order to escape the desolate reality. Rightly understood, Christianity is not opium. It means raising the power of wakefulness beyond the material world into the spiritual. Whoever shrinks back from the full adult responsibility of sober awakening in order not to lose his or her childhood faith does not yet know that all waking and knowing that could be dangerous to Christianity is always only a half-waking and half-knowing. It is precisely within the meaning of Christianity to penetrate to the full awareness and a full knowledge that includes the Super-sensible. Therefore “blessed is he who is awake”.

-Rudolf Frieling

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Gravity, Warmth and Light: Three Gifts of the Trinity

sunlight in treesThe Earth has sometimes been compared to a spaceship, a machine hurling through the black void of outer space. In this scientific vision space is stunningly cold and inimical to all life. But this simplified picture is wrong; it leaves out the Sun.

The Earth is not alone. The Sun’s gravity, warmth, and light, a trinity of forces, constantly bless the Earth. Read more

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God the Rebel

…Faith begins at the point where atheists suppose it must be at an end. Our faith begins with the bleakness and power which is the night of the Cross, abandonment, temptation and doubt about everything that exists! Our faith must be born where it is abandoned by all tangible reality; it must be born of nothingness, it must taste this nothing and be given it to taste in a way that no philosophy of nihilism can imagine. -H. J. Iwand

Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point – and does not break. Read more

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The Star of Grace

dark-woodsFrom time immemorial the stars have been, literally, a guiding light for mankind. In the dark nights of ancient times people lifted their gaze to the starry heavens: to navigate their way through the world, to know when to sow their crops, to receive guidance in making critical decisions. The world of the stars and the world of humanity were united in a symbiosis of which our times can only dream. The starry heavens, once the focal point of mankind’s relationship to the spiritual world, has been degraded to an object of pure science, functioning at best as a subject for sentimental art or religious metaphor. Read more

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Words for Epiphany from Evelyn Francis Capel

Man’s history since the coming of Christ appears as the long road of salvation stretching away into the distant future and ourselves as pilgrims upon it. Our present life is part of a long pilgrimage which we make in company with every other human soul in whom shines the true purpose of being human. Every day in each lifetime is a step forward, a standing still, or a step astray from the straight path. The way is long and full of effort. The end is in the distance and at times hard to see distinctly. The temptation is always near to sit down and pause by the roadside, to become an onlooker at the march of life. The road of salvation is trod with courage and a clear sense of purpose. Over it shines the star of Christ, pointing the way, sending the grace of warmth and enlightenment into human hearts. Strength and courage flow into us when we look up to see the star, calling us, as it once called the three wise men, to follow its guiding light… Read more

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Guardian Angels

Angel photo 1In artistic renderings of angels, three characteristics are frequently pictured. The first is of course that angels have wings. When we think of the earthly creatures that have wings, the birds, we realize that they inhabit a sphere above the earth, the airy regions. They live in a world of light and uplift not limited by earthly gravity. Picturing angels as having wings is an artistic way of saying that angels, too, are not bound to the earthly. They are limitless; they live in expanses. They live with the world of eternity at their backs.

Another characteristic is described in Ezekiel 10:12. It is a mighty description of great angelic beings covered in eyes. Therefore angels’ wings are sometimes artistically rendered as having eyes on them, often by portraying their wings covered in peacock feathers. Eyes convey consciousness. Angels take things in, into a awareness that is broader, brighter, clearer, purer and more transparent than human consciousness. Eyes also shine forth: the gaze of an angel radiates love and recognition. Read more

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Kings Offer Their Gifts to a Child

The Adoration of The Magi, Albrecht-Durer, 1504

The three Kings have recognized that something extraordinary and significant will come into existence. This insight gives them the courage to go on a long and dangerous journey. And when they finally find what they were seeking for, in a little child it makes sense to them as well – despite their age, wisdom and regal dignity – to kneel down, to worship and to offer precious gifts.

Within us also lives a divine child, which is to come, though not yet mature will develop in the future. The worldly “King in us”, who has already in his earthly existence acquired external power, knowledge and maybe even wisdom, and on whom we rely in our everyday decisions, is probably not very much inclined to bow down before a force in our soul which has the voice of a child and has not yet come to perfection.

The image of the three Kings, who bring their gifts, inspires us to see our possibilities to nourish this potential of the divine within ourselves and all human beings.