The planning team for the “100 Years The Christian Community” festival is sending this e-mail to all priests, coordinators, and to our correspondents and friends.
Dear members and friends of the Christian Community,
The greatest closeness is: being far and feeling near. The greatest distance is: being near and feeling far.
So we may also keep contact to the preparation of our festival “100 Years The Christian Community”, use our technical communication channels: www.cg-2022.org.
With warm greetings and good wishes for the ending Advent season and for a Christmas that challenges us all.
–Dr. Wolfgang Jaschinski
Redaktion des CG-2022 Newsletters “100 Jahre Die Christengemeinschaft”
Editor of the CG-2022 Newsletter “100 years The Christian Community”
Tagungsbüro / Conference Office: Mergelweg 31, D 42781 Haan
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In a world of estrangement, the concepts of nearness and distance are no longer unequivocal. Is someone near because he happens to sit next to me? Some people may live together for years and experience nothing but loneliness, as if they were miles away from each other in their estrangement. And in reverse, people may live miles away from each other, separated by mountains and oceans, but in spite of this feel each other’s closeness in unbreakable friendship.
There is a saying that expresses the paradox of closeness and distance in the words:
The greatest closeness is: being far and feeling near,
The greatest distance is: being near and feeling far.
Between these extremes human relationships grow or starve.
Only one being on earth is simultaneously present everywhere and near to each human being separately, as if that human being were the only one He is concerned with. His presence is as the air that envelops the earth like an invisible mantle. The apostle Paul expressed this omnipresence with the words:” In Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) Since his Second Coming, Christ is present every day, just as truly as the air in which we live and move and have our existence.
For each of us, and for humanity as a whole, there will come a moment in which all that surrounds and carries us will fall away, when the moment has come to go through the eye of the needle. Then only He will be close to us and lead us to a new form of existence. That is the reason why Paul, who was the first to see His Second Coming, could say: “Rejoice! … The Lord is near!” (Phil.4:4-5)
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Waiting and watching—that is the characteristic position of the human being who observes the world around him without doing anything himself. It is the attitude of the modern person who watches events around him from a distance: “Wait and see.” Most of the time, this expression means that we are standing aside as silent witnesses.
But in our time it is beginning to look as if we are less and less inclined to watch the world scene from a distance as objective spectators. As soon as fear starts playing a role we look at the world around us with different eyes. And fear reigns in our time. In a state of fear we are no longer awaiting things from a distance; our view is no longer impartial or objective. Fear makes blind.
A well-known playwright once depicted a dramatic expression of blind fear: in his drama Dream Play, August Strindberg displays a scene in which a ship is in distress, rudderless in a storm, big waves washing over the deck. In their mortal fear the people aboard cry to Christ for help. Suddenly a bundle of light breaks through the clouds, and a shining figure walks to them over the water. In their panic, the people on the ship fail to recognize that their prayer has been heard. In confusion they jump overboard and drown in the sea.
That is what happens when people are blinded by fear, and no longer understand the signs of the time: they drown in the chaos of events.
Advent is the time of year that calls on us to await and watch; in the best sense of the word: we begin to expect. Are we able to keep our footing in the storm, and recognize what is coming to us? Are we prepared to stand before Him, who is coming?
At the time of Advent, words are spoken at the altar that sound as an echo of the past. It seems as if these words no longer fit in our hectic world. What are we to make of the expression the world-calm around us? Where can that calm still be found?
When we listen to the world around us we usually hear nothing but noise: traffic, machines, masses of people who are restlessly on their way. And when we listen more deeply than the audible noise, we hear inwardly a world of anxiety and pain, a world that is shaking on its foundations. Even when some people show outer self-confidence, under the surface you can sense profound insecurity. Is that perhaps the world that Christ meant when He said: “And human beings will lose their heads for fear and expectation of what is breaking in upon the whole earth”? (Lk.21:26)
When you listen even more intensely, more deeply than anxiety, more deeply than the ground of the soul, more deeply than the abyss, you find the ground of existence—a world of infinite calm and unshakable security. That is what in the Advent epistle is called: the working of the Father Ground of the world.
And when in a chaotic world you look higher than our restless cities that never sleep, you find at this time of the year the rays of the dimming sunlight, that change everything they touch into gold—even the most banal and unsightly things people build on earth. And above it the unshakable firmament.
Our priest families are supported through the freely given donations of their congregational members that cover the basics of housing, food, utilities, transportation, health care, etc. One key expense that is not typically included in the priest support is the cost of educating their children. North American congregations have helped to raise money for the Priest Child Education Fund which is distributed to priest’s families to help with educational costs. No matter how large, or how small the gesture, it helps! Click here to read more about this fund and to donate.
In the Apocalypse, which describes a world in downfall, there are sometimes sudden moments of calm. A power that is stronger than all destruction brings the storm of annihilation to a standstill. As a spectator, you have just a moment to catch your breath before the irrevocable demise of the outer world rushes on. The course of events is literally stopped by a command from on high: “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have set our seal on the foreheads of those who serve our God.” (Rev.7:3)
In an apocalyptic world such as ours, time is compressed—events on the world stage take place at incredible speeds. And not only on the grand stage—our own lives too are usually breathtaking.
And yet, when you develop a sense organ for the quality of the time, you discover that in the midst of all the rushing and stress life also creates brief breathing spaces. The trick is to observe these moments consciously, to briefly step out of the maelstrom of time, and to catch your breath before life rushes on again. At such moments you are, as the painter Picasso once expressed it, “secure in insecurity.”
What or who is it that bestows such moments on us? Someone who was able to look behind the screen of time, behind the veil of the perishing earth, once expressed it with the words:
“Be mindful of the breaks, the brief moments destiny often unexpectedly bestows on you. In the same way, the Coming One will also one day come.” (Friedrich Doldinger)
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A well-known theologian of the 20th century once said: “God feeds us with hunger and quenches us with thirst.” That is an eloquent and partly true saying, but this truth is usually overshadowed by another reality: we suppress our spiritual hunger with all that chains us to the earth. And we disguise our thirst for the spirit through all that benumbs the mind. That mixture of materialism and intoxication, of yearning for the earth and flight from the earth, is usually called prosperity. And the more prosperous we are in this outer sense, the poorer in spirit we are likely to become. From the point of view of the angels we are, as stated in the Book of Revelation, “…how pitiful, pathetic, and poverty-stricken … how blind and how naked.” We have become poor as church-mice. What do we have that we can give to the spiritual world?
And yet, this is being asked of us in the contradictory words: “Therefore I counsel you to obtain gold from me which is refined by fire, so that you may become rich again…” How can anyone obtain gold who is poor?
Indeed, the only thing we can give to Christ is our poverty. The only things with which we can feed Him and quench Him are our hunger and thirst. But whoever becomes a beggar for the spirit, who ardently longs for His presence, on those can He bestow His wealth.
For He is Himself as a beggar: a human being who knocks on our door, who asks and implores us to open—to share His meal with us.
When we are tired after a busy workday and look back on what we have done, we are likely to feel the heavy burden of all the obligations we had to fulfill. That is because our pace of life does not allow us to stand still. We run from one obligation to the next. And when we are not running, we get left behind by the facts. Our hectic world cannot be compared with the time when daily life consisted of work and prayer: ora et labora. When prayer started to disappear from daily life, the motto became: work and relax—in which relaxing usually means: do nothing, do not think, look for recreation. In our time there is a new, grim perspective: work and burn out. In a world that roars past at a breathtaking speed we run the risk of being driven on until we fall down. How can we stand up in such a world?
Sooner or later we will be facing a moment when we realize: this is the last day of my life. Would we then still think the same way about all the so-called obligations of our existence?
From the perspective of eternity, everything looks different. Much of what on earth looks necessary becomes insignificant, or even less. For the spiritual world we humans are like walking dead: “You have the name of being alive, and you are dead.” For our narrow-minded, utilitarian thinking, to pray or to sit before an altar is a waste of time: we are doing nothing, producing nothing, earning nothing.
But for the spiritual world things are different. In prayer, at the altar, our mortal existence is called to life. There Christ invests our perishable being with the white robe of His pure life—that we bury not our eternal being for the sake of our temporal.
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After an exhausting, eventful life, the wish to finally find rest is perhaps as old as humanity. The most common expression of it can be found in our cemeteries. Time and again we see the words chiseled into headstones: “Rest in Peace,” or even “Here Rests…” As if all is past—no more troubles, sorrow, tears. Is it really that simple? Or is this wishful thinking?
One day Rudolf Steiner was walking in a cemetery with a friend. As he was reading the constantly repeated words on the headstones, his commentary was: “First of all he is not here; second of all he is not resting.” In other words, the deceased evidently are having a very different life than we imagine or wish.
The Book of Revelation of John helps us to get to know the sobering reality of the spiritual world. Instead of finding comfortable rest or an eternal paradise we are confronted with a world of crisis and battle—just like the world we have daily around us and which we would rather not see.
The word of the white horseman is as a sword that strikes humanity and causes separation. With the staff of iron He reigns as shepherd and warrior at the same time. Christ is more than the gentle shepherd of a flock of sheep, the way He is so often represented in tradition. He is the shepherd who leads humanity to the moment when we are irrevocably confronted with ourselves and the consequences of our deeds. He is the shepherd who wants to wake us up: do not fall asleep with the promises of false prophets who delude us with hopes of an earthly paradise or eternal peace.
Wake up to Him who will gather the harvest of the Earth. We—humanity—we are the harvest. The harvest is His alone.
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