Spring 2012 Newsletter
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On Miracles and Recognizing the Saints in our Midst
The following short article was written in response to an article by Ann Marcaida, which was originally published on the website, “Gather”. Her article was titled, “Unconditional Love and a Modern-Day Saint”, and she recommended the writer and memoirist Deborah Digges for sainthood. This was written in support of her article and also originally published on “Gather”. She inaugurated the Losing Your Religion Sainthood Program and I hope to offer some thoughts that may strengthen her canonization work.
Ms. Marcaida did a first great deed in redeeming the idea of the saint by breaking away from the simplistic and inaccurate idea of saint as opposed to sinner, that is, Saints are “good” Sinners are “bad”. Read more
Easter 2011, Volume 198, Number 1
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Growing Up in the Christian Community
Children have a natural and evolving relationship to God and to the earth. At birth they come to us from another home, their home with God. With us, they hope to find on earth a memory and a reflection of the home from which they have come.
The Christian Community offers several religious activities for children. First there is the Baptism. In this sacrament, the child is received like a seed into a community that promises to carry this child within itself, and to help nourish the child’s relationship with God. Baptism does not make the child a member of the church; for membership will be his or her free choice as an adult.
With their entry into first grade, children step into the wider community as a learners. Now religious instruction begins. It is given mostly in the form of stories, plays, songs and verses that show the divine wisdom in nature, in the Old Testament history, and in the New Testament. For school age children, the practice of religion is now widened to include worshipping together with other children at the Sunday Service for Children. The content emphasizes the importance of learning the great lesson of earthly life: that Christ is love’s teacher in life’s learning and work.
In the Sunday Service for Children, the heart gently awakens the will to worship God. In religious instruction, the heart gently awakens the head to the understanding of the working of God. These two complement and balance one another, developing the child’s religious life from both sides, in a way that will enable him or her later to make a free but informed choice about religion as an adult.
During the summer there are two-week children’s sleep-away camps and in some regions family camps. These constellations provide another level for the healthy weaving of the religious life into a communal life, forming a reservoir of inspiration for the children for the rest of their lives. Confirmation at age fourteen is both a culmination and a new beginning. The seed of the young person’s religious life, which has been surrounded and nourished by the community, is released into life. The young person attends The Act of Consecration of Man as an independent adult, and at Confirmation receives his/her first Communion. After this, their attendance is their choice. Many still attend with their families. Much depends on whether there is a group of people their own age.
They may later want to become counselors in the children’s camps or to attend Youth Conferences or camps. There are also International Youth Conferences where older teens and those in their twenties find their own connections before settling down into the more local communities as young adults. Often it is the arrival and Baptism of their own children which stimulates their re-entry as active participants and creators of the life of The Christian Community.
Thoughts on Life and Death
Human life and its death is a singular thing. Animals live, and then they die, and their life is done. They are simply absorbed back into the great mother soul of which their lives on earth were extensions.
But human life and death is different. Our births on earth are already a death. Part of our spiritual being dies into the world of matter. Our births are occasions of mingled hope and sadness for the angels who watch us drop away into the far country. Our birth on earth is a death in heaven.
But each of us is given a seed to take along with us on the journey. This seed is present from the day we are born, safely embedded in our physical nature. It slowly germinates during the course of our lives. It is a fearsome gift, but nonetheless most precious, for it guarantees that we will be able to find the doorway back into heaven again. It is the seed of death.
The gradual growth of the death seed in us means on the one hand a gradual damping down of the power of life in the body. But it is meant to be accompanied by a corresponding growth in the scope, the depth, the breadth of our our consciousness. As we age on earth our death seed is meant to be growing and ripening fruits of inner awareness for us to bring back to heaven. The fruits of
- deep, rich memories of our past
- of clear wakefulness in the present
- of vigorous and enthusiastic plans for the future.
We meet the young man of Nain at the point of his earthly death. His fruits of past, present and future had fully ripened. He had brought to fruition all of his inwardness. And so his earthly life had come to its end. Seen from the outside this death is cause for weeping. But seen from the world of the angels, his death is cause for rejoicing; for as he was dying on earth, he was being born into the spiritual world;not merely absorbed back, like an animal, but born there again as a discrete entity bringing back ripened fruits from afar. The angels rejoiced at the arrival of this richly laden human soul in their midst.
Christ blesses the young man’s ripeness; and he empathizes with the suffering of those left behind-especially the mother, widowed and destitute, who has no future. Perhaps He recognizes that this particular man’s fruits are needed on the earth. And so the angels and perhaps even the young man himself, are asked to make a sacrifice.
Christ brings the young man’s ripeness back to earth. It is as though the young man is born again on earth, but this time out of the spirit. We can imagine the spiritual power of his words as he begins to speak.
Perhaps he would say, as does the poet:
Death is strange and hard
if it is not our death, but a death
that takes us by storm, when we’ve ripened none within us.*
He might remind us, as do the words of the burial service: that we are beholden to the spiritual world for every thing that we think and say and do.
In the depths of our being we know that the death seed within comes wrapped with this encouragement written in angelic script: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply your gifts of consciousness. And bring us back the fruits.
And we, musing:
We stand in your garden year after year.We are trees for yielding a sweet death.But fearful, we wither before the harvest.*
And, just beyond our ordinary hearing, they reply what angels always say:
“Fear not! Do not be afraid! Have no fear! For Christ, the Wakener of the Dead, is with you always.”
And so we pray:
God, give each of us our own death,
the dying that proceeds
from each of our lives
the way we loved
the meanings we made…*
*Rilke, Book of Hours
Prayers for Difficult Times, A Small Collection
Composure
We must root out of the soul all fear and horror of that which is approaching mankind from the future. How fearful and anxious man makes himself today before that which lies in the future, and especially before the hour of death! Man must make his own a calm composure in connection with all feelings and sensations directed toward the future, behold with absolute equanimity everything that may come, and think only that no matter what comes, it comes to us out of the wisdom-filled guidance of the world. This must be placed ever and again before the soul.
Rudolf Steiner, Nov. 27, 1910
(Beiträge #98, 1987, P. 21)
Prayer of St. Francis
Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is discord, union;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
For The Many Who Have Died
The Good Shepherd lead them
Where they are transformed
That they may breathe
The air of eternal Being.
Where they work as soul
For worlds to come
The grace of the Spirit
Unite us with them.
adapted from Adam Bittleston*
*Adam Bittleston, Meditative Prayers for Today, Floris Books
For the Ill
Hearts which love,
Sun which warms,
You footprints of Christ
In the Father’s Universe,
We call to you from our own hearts,
We search for you in our own spirits:
O stream toward him! [them]
Rays from human hearts,
Longing, warm with devotion
You homes of Christ
In the Father’s house of earth.
We call to you from our own hearts,
We search for you in our own spirits:
O live with him! [them]
Radiant human love
Warming sunshine.
You soul garment of Christ
in the Father’s human temple.
We call to you from our own hearts
We search for you in our own spirits:
O help within him![them]
Given by Rudolf Steiner for one severely ill.
For our Country
O Christ, you know
The souls and spirits
Whose deeds have woven
This country’s destiny.
May we who today
Are bearers of this destiny
Find the strength and the light
Of your servant Michael.
And our hearts be warmed
By your blessing, O Christ,
That our deeds may serve
Your work of world healing.
adapted from Adam Bittleston
Short Intercession
(for those who mourn)
May the Good Shepherd lead (him, her, them)
Into peace of heart
Into hopeful thinking,
Into patient strength of will;
Health of body,
Harmony of soul,
Clarity of spirit,
Now, and in the time to come.
Adam Bittleston
Approaching Christ in Freedom
The world of divine beings has enormous respect for our freedom. After all, God said, ‘Let us make the human being in our image and after our likeness. ’ Genesis 1:26 Since God is obviously a creator, and we are made in His image, made like Him, it follows that we were made to be creators as well. But how could we create, how could we be creative, if we did not have freedom of choice?
True freedom of choice also includes the choice to be destructive instead of creative. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be true freedom of choice. It even includes the choice not to decide. But its real creativity rests in our ability to make choices that support the good, the true and the beautiful.
Where freedom of choice really shines is in our ability to make choices that disregard our own instinct for self-preservation. We have the freedom to decide to give freely and lovingly to another, even to our own detriment. This kind of choice isn’t ‘natural’. It isn’t dictated by necessity. It is the expression of a true freedom of choice. It is an expression of our true humanity.
Christ, God’s Son, is the God who became a human being; He is our divine human brother. He confirmed that we are to exercise our God-given creative freedom of choice, our creative freedom to decide. ‘You shall be as gods’, He said. John 10:34. He was quoting Psalm 82, which says ‘You are “gods”; you are all sons of the Most High.’
He said to those becoming His students, that in studying with Him, ‘Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ John 8:32.
He also said of Himself, “I am the way, the truth, the life.” John 14:6.
Therefore, to approach Christ is to approach the truth; and at the same time to approach Christ is to approach the truth of our humanity. For our true humanity resides in our ability to make creative choices, self-forgetting choices, good moral choices uninfluenced by outer necessity. To approach the truth that resides in Christ, is at the same time to approach the very freedom that lies at the core of our God-given humanity. ‘Then you will know the truth [Me], and the truth [I, Christ] will set you free.’ John 8:32.
In the Act of Consecration of Man, the Communion service of The Christian Community, we pray that the Son God be the creative force in us. We also pray for the gift of the creating fire of love. Real love, capable of setting oneself aside, operates out of a truly human depth of freedom. It is indeed Christ’s self-sacrificing love, working in us, that ignites a creative fire in us. He is the guide for our use of our freedom.
Nevertheless, Christ, the Divine Human, has enormous respect for our freedom to choose. ‘Here I am!’ He says. ‘I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me’. Rev. 3:20 He stands outside, and knocks, and waits.
Seeking One’s True Self at the Altar
“Philosophy of Freedom #8” by Laura Summer
In the Sunday Service for the Children, we hear that we have come to earth to learn and to work. We hear that human life becomes desolate without enlivening force of love in our work. We hear that Christ is love’s Teacher. For the children, a direction and focus for any life is gently indicated—learning to develop love as a capacity.
One can see the communion service for adults, the Act of Consecration of Man, as an extension of the path suggested in childhood. For, by its very nature, this Act is an offering of self to God. We offer our purest thoughts, our heart’s love, and a will devoted to Him, to Him who is the very essence of love. We perform an act that He asked us to do in memory of Him—the offering in gratitude of substances of earth—bread, water, wine, to our Father, so that He can be present in them.
We bind our noble thoughts, feelings and devotion to the substances that we, too, are offering, noting that we do so in connection with the working of the Trinity. We pray that the Son God be the creative force in us. We pray for the gift of the creating fire of love.
Christ comes to dwell in them, to concentrate His power in them, in such a way that, through taking in His substances in communion, we can take the creating fire of His love as well, and He can be present in us. He, whose whole life was Love incarnate, sacrifices Himself ever and again for our well-being, for the nourishment and strengthening of the creating power of love in us. Christ dies again and again. But He, the essence of Love, rises again in the hearts of those who give Him a dwelling place.
Our truest, deepest self, our true being, resides in this capacity to develop creative love. Our true self is capable of transforming our narrow egotism into a broader concern for the furtherance of the world. This capacity exists in us as potential, as a seed planted in us by God. At the altar, in any of the sacraments, but especially in the Act of Consecration of Man, this potential to develop love, the characteristic of our truest self, is nurtured and strengthened.
Paul says, ‘your life is now hidden with Christ in God’. Col 3:3 Our true being, our true creative potential, resides with Christ. At the altar we practice offering ourselves to Him in love, taking Him into our selves. At the altar, we are nurturing and developing the life of our true self, with His help. For our true self is Christ, creating Love, in us.
God Becomes Perceptible in the Sacraments
The sacraments are liturgical acts performed by the community, in which the working of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy, Healing Spirit can become visible and audible.
In the Baptism, substances of water, salt and ash are re-united with their original power. They are brought into relationship with the qualities of the Father’s substance, the Son’s renewal, and the Spirit’s light. These regenerated substances are then inscribed on the head and breast of the child, that heaven and earth may come together in a fruitful way in his or her life.
In the Confirmation, we see and hear Christ’s intimate companionship on the young person’s individual path of life; He brings light, power, guidance and comfort.
In the Sacrament of Consultation, the renewed confession, we can hear the words of Christ, in Whose heart the red threads of all human destinies are joined. He encourages us to learn to offer and to receive.
In the Act of Consecration of Man, the communion service, Christ becomes visible in the elevation of bread and wine, transformed into His Body and His Blood, vessels of His Life. He becomes audible in His prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, and in His promise of peace.
In Marriage, the couple’s decision to join two lives together is strengthened in a way that creates the space for a third entity. This space is a place where Christ can appear, as His loving power of sacrifice.
In the Sacraments around death—a Sacrament of Consultation, a Communion and an Anointing— Christ accompanies our crossing of the threshold between earthly life, and the life after earthly life. We hear the words He speaks to His Father the night before He dies, His prayer for us. He opens the eye of the soul to life after life.
In the Ordination of Priests, embedded in the Act of Consecration of Man, the power to celebrate all the sacraments is conferred as a gift from the divine world. The candidate’s soul forces of thinking, feeling and willing are linked to the Trinity, so that the words and actions of the Trinity, and Christ especially, can be conveyed to the congregation in the sacraments.