“I am learning to live close to the lives of my friends without ever seeing them. No miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine.” ― John Muir  

From time to time we may be confronted with questions such as: “What is your church like? Why do you attend? ” or “What is The Christian Community anyway?” We may struggle for an answer because it is almost as if we were asked why we are here on earth! We are striving toward an understanding and recognition of the living Christ; the life-affirming, renewing, empowering source of unlimited love that yearns to illuminate every human being. We have a shared destiny with those who seek to know Christ in freedom and who accept the Sacraments as an aid to their seeking. We have to remind ourselves from time to time, why we gather together and why it is important for the evolution of the earth and for all of humanity. To that end we are inviting you to a larger gathering of the greater North American Christian Community, to celebrate, learn, explore, and share our questions and discoveries together.

What moves us to travel several hundred, even thousands, of miles? To ask questions? To seek answers? To knock on each other’s doors? Yes, all of the above and more will be happening during the festival time of John the Baptizer this coming June in College Park, Georgia, close to Atlanta. An evening celebration and bonfire will be the kickoff to five days of meeting one another and asking, seeking and knocking together.

Following in the big footsteps of the North-South conferences and the North American conference in Staten Island a while back, the priest circle of The Christian Community felt it was time to call its members and friends in North America together. And what better location than the Atlanta area? Enthusiastic folks from Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee have come together to form a planning group. In November 2018 we met for a retreat in Decatur, Georgia at ‘The ARC’ and have since been meeting regularly with a team from the priest circle to envision this gathering.

We began with the theme: what questions are people living with? What keeps me awake at night, or, even better, what gets me going and keeps me going all day long? Contemplation of a lecture by Rudolf Steiner given on September 29, 1922 in Dornach helped set the mood and focus of the work to come:

“Think of the earth and within it the different processes of nature and plant life. All this will pass away. But on this earth, in future time, sacred rites will be enacted out of a true understanding of the spiritual world. Through these rites and sacred enactments, spiritual Beings are called down. As I have said, a time will come when the material substance in minerals, plants, animals, clouds, the forces working in wind and weather and also, of course, all the accoutrements used in rites and ceremonies, will pass away, will be dissipated in the universe. But the spiritual Beings who have been called down into the sphere of the rites and sacred enactments — these will remain when the earth approaches its end.”

Isn’t that what we do every time we unfold spiritual activity, even as individuals in our quiet space at home? How much stronger can the effect be when we gather together and participate in “rites and sacred enactments”? How to bring this impulse down to Earth?

At a crucial moment in the conversation one of us opened the New Testament and read from the Gospel of Matthew “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” And so, the conference topic was born:

Ask, Seek, Knock – ASKATLANTA2020 – Walking with Christ.

In the meantime, the venue has been found, speakers and workshop leaders have been engaged and many more exciting events are being prepared. All you need to know can be found on the website: https://ask2020atlanta.org/

–Rev. Craig Wiggins
Lenker, North America