The Devon, Pennsylvania congregation proudly presents the Christian Community Calendar for 2018. They sell the calendars in their own congregation as a fundraiser for $35.00. They offer the calendars for just a bit more than cost price, not including postage. If you are interested please, click on this post to download the order form.
Deadline for ordering is October 31!
There is a sacred secret in human evolution. It is hidden. Yet, at the same time it is open to all human beings. This open secret is that within each human soul there is an inner bride. This bride of our hearts is being called to holy wedlock with a very special groom. The bride in every human heart is called to a holy union with Christ.
And yet, our Michaelmas gospel (Mt.22) tells us that if this hidden wedding for our heart is to take place, we must become worthy. ‘For all are called, but only individuals make themselves worthy.’
To be worthy of a wedding, the bride of our heart must first really believe: believe that the wedding is real! We must practice trusting that He is actually here; longing to unite with the bride in us; ready to touch us and make us whole…
To be found worthy for a wedding we are also called to receive. We are called to receive and put on the gift of the wedding garment. This means that we cannot remain the way we are. The bride must put on something new. To be worthy, we must have the courage to be changed, to be made new.
And finally, to become worthy for the wedding, the bride in every human soul must learn to speak. For above all, we cannot be found to be speechless in the presence of God. We must learn to speak with truth, directly to the beloved, our words resounding from our heart’s core saying: “Take me, as You have given Yourself to me.”
Looking for a place where your children can have a great time, live in nature, learn life-building skills and make lifelong friends? Look no further! The Christian Community children’s camp offers a wonderful program.
We have camps on the west coast, in the midwest and on the east coast. Visit our summer camp page to read more about our offerings this summer.
Click here to hear and see what others have to say in a short video. (You must be on the blog post page to access the video)
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.
Lamenting that the world and all knowledge of the world, like the mighty unmovable stone, leaves no room for the real working of the spirit, or the constant tendency to search for someone who will help or take the step for us: before these, the Easter deed must remain hidden.
The wakeful perceiving of world phenomena within the upward gaze is the key.
The practice of wakeful perceiving of world phenomena within the upward gaze, through which we gain clues leading us to the resurrected one: for this purpose the renewed mass, the Act of Consecration of Man was given.
-Engelbert Fischer
Priest of the Christian Community in Graz, Austria
During this time before Easter, we celebrate death. In other words, we celebrate the process of letting go, of emptying ourselves. We celebrate moving alone through the narrow gate of transformation. And it’s not that we are morbid or obsessed with the negative. On the contrary, we celebrate death precisely because in Christ, death becomes life.
If we have had the blessing of being with someone passing through the gate of death, it is often only when loved ones leave the room that the dying are able to make the transition from this world into the spirit. Death requires that we let go of something earthly; to die requires that we make the transition alone.
And yet, we are not so much celebrating dying at the end of life. Passiontide is the practice of dying during life.
We are called to die while we live by letting go of our blame and hate toward ourselves and others, so that the life of love can fill our hearts. We are called to die while we live by letting go of our inability to be alone, so that solitude and His constant presence awaken in us. We are called to die while we live by letting go of fear, so that we can stand at peace with the world.
Dear friends, in Christ every circumstance and situation in our lives is an opportunity to die into His life. For the open secret is, Christ is the reality in which we live.
Last week, those of us who were up early could experience an amazingly seamless transition: the light of the moon, which day by day became smaller and smaller, fading away in the growing light of the sun.
In this way, just before the beginning of Passiontide, four weeks before Easter, we were reminded of the cosmic Easter drama: how, after the equinox, once the sun has become stronger, the light of the waning moon will be transcended by the glory of Easter Sun-Day.
But what there happened, those early mornings, actually spells out for us that the drama of Passiontide has yet to begin – a struggle, which doesn’t play out in such a flamboyant way as the transition from Carnival, from Mardi Gras to Ash Wednesday, with which the old church shocked its people into their Easter preparations of fasting and penitence.
What we face, from the beginning of Passiontide onwards, is dramatic none-the-less, in a rather personal way; and it’s a struggle, too.
O Man, speak the Passiontide prayers, as well as those of Holy Week –
O, you Human Being here on earth: Come to terms with your own situation, your inner situation, your tragic loss of spirit – as well as with your situation here on earth, with the grave waiting at the end of your life.
Come to terms with all that, and (we have to add) come to terms with the spirits of deceiving false light, of sensual unworthy craving – with their impact on yourself and your earthly situation.
Learn to turn to the Spirit, which in this your life on earth, unites you with the encompassing cosmic realities. Then you will know the real drama of Passiontide, will inwardly experience what needs to be done – before the Sun of Easter can rise, for you as well.
Written by Rev. Arie Boogert in 2007.
“The actual poet’s task is true for the poetic spirit in everyone-the work of giving form, expression to everything that happens, thus discovering and revealing meaning, the ‘pattern of the glory,’ discovering that all experiences, light or dark, are stars and take their place in the constellation of wholeness.”
~from the journals of Helen M. Luke.
It is the last week of Epiphany, the festival of Candlemas, when we burn the last candles as a sign of the end of this holy time of inner light. We have been touched by the star of Grace. The three gifts which the Kings brought to the Child are also to given to us, to the “Christ in us.” Each one helps us to make “poetry” out of our experiences.
The first one is gold, the most condensed form of sunlight, pressed into a precious metal. Gold is pure, warm, soft, transparent as a crystal in the New Jerusalem. It once served as a foundation for our currency, and now “waits” perhaps, for our consciousness to catch up with the idea that money is there to cultivate brotherhood, not for greed and accumulation.
Gold has other properties in the human being. It is used in the remedy “boswellia” along with frankincense and myrrh to promote health and wholeness. Rudolf Steiner also says that gold has the same physical relationship to other substances that “thinking the thought of God” has to other thought.
So perhaps with the help of the gift of gold, we can learn to listen to the thought of God.Then there is frankincense, the rising smoke of prayer and offering. Reverence and devotion open out hearts in humility. Devotion is almost a lost quality in our times and yet, it is the first step on the path of spiritual knowledge of any kind.
And the third, and perhaps most obscure gift of the Kings, was myrrh which has to do with healing, preservation and immortality. That which is immortal in us, which will move on into future earth existence, needs strengthening, through recognition. We are destined for eternal life. Our higher selves need to be honored, protected, given space, given utterance! For the higher self is indeed the “poet,” giving meaning to our experiences.
We are not merely victims down in the valley, to which good and many bad things happen, but we are on the mountaintop, watching from above, saying “Aha, there is the pattern, there is the difficulty: how can I be of service? How can I make it whole? Make it poetry?
Not only do we celebrate the Three Kings on Epiphany, we also celebrate the Epiphany in the river Jordan- The baptism of Jesus. Because just like the Star of Grace that blessed the kings with its light, the Holy Spirit blessed Jesus with Christ’s light in the river Jordan.
And yet, as important as the baptism of Jesus is, being blessed by the light would be nothing on its own. Without Jesus giving himself to the death on the cross for the life of the world, the light He received at the baptism would have no meaning. Without the three kings being able to give their gifts to the Holy Child, receiving the light of the Star would have been for naught. The point is, the gifts we receive only become meaningful in as much as we are able to give back.
For all Epiphanies lead to one thing: the joy of giving something, of offering something, however humble, that has meaning for someone. Let us remember, that our old age is fulfilled in the end, not by what we have achieved or received, our lives are fulfilled only by the spiritual joy of giving for the life of the world.
Dear friends, in these times of political turmoil, unsolvable fears and anxieties about the future, epidemics of terror and violent oppression across the globe, let us remember again that the real world is not what we see on the news. Let us remember that the true world is being brought to life in this painful darkness by the Christ-filled giving of the human heart.
This contemplation by Rev. Evans was inspired by The Baptism.
And the one sitting on the throne spoke: See: I am making all things new. And he says: Write: These words are trustworthy and true. And he said to me: It has happened. I AM the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.
—Revelation 21—
More than six hundred years ago, Guillaume de Machaut, whom one could call the first composer of something like modern music, wrote a rather remarkable song for three voices. The text is very simple: In my beginning is my end, and in my end is my beginning. The two upper voices have exactly the same melody, except that the second voice is note for note the reverse of the first. The bass or tenor voice is a melody that goes forward to the middle of the song, and then winds its way back, so that it ends at its beginning. This song became one of the underlying themes for T. S. Eliot’s last great cycle of poems, the Four Quartets. And it is a theme that we can turn to as we look from an old year into a new, as from any ending to an new beginning.
What underlies the poems of T. S. Eliot is the truth that every end is a beginning and vice versa. Every sequence of development leads to a point of culmination. At that point we may leave the sequence behind—for instance, with the words “and they lived happily ever after”—or we must begin a new sequence. And as we follow events, we may begin to be able to form a picture of where in the sequence certain events belong.
To a large extent we imagine things around us at high points of their development. The fairy tale culminates with the wedding. We look at the roses on the altar, and we carry what we see there as our mental image of a rose. Who would imagine a rose that is not in bloom? And yet, most of the time, the rose is not in bloom. Indeed, a flower in bloom is for the plant a transitional stage. The plant does not cease to develop until it produces seeds, and then, especially in the case of the annuals, it withers away, leaving a seed pod which releases its seeds to be scattered on the ground. And there we come to the essential question as we regard the seed: is this an end or a beginning?
We may regard the events of the world in a similar way. Some of them carry qualities primarily of the beginning, germinating seedling. In others we may watch the possibility of growth and the spreading of foliage. There are the great culminating events where we sense that something in long preparation has come to blossom. Then there are those events, which come at the end of a sequence, where we may recognize how the activity has turned to contraction, withering, dying away. But in and around these latter end-events it is especially necessary that we look for the seeds from which new beginnings can spring.
In the past year we have seen world events and events in our lives which bear all of these characteristics. A great deal of our focus will have been on those events which are endings—endings involving destruction of one kind or another. In such situations it is all too easy to fall into a justification of quid pro quo, and the destruction becomes more widespread and universal. Or one can retreat into a protective position, attempting to preserve what is inevitably falling away. What is helpful to remember is that when something is destroyed, a space is created. The question can then be asked: what new thing can be built in that space?
Those of us with a more optimistic disposition may well turn to other great events. In some we may think to recognize a possibility for new beginnings. But we must be all the more concerned—are not many of those events like the roses in bloom on the altar? They have been years in preparation; many people have worked and sacrificed to bring about the conditions for such a moment. But a flower preserved has not completed its cycle; to be truly a flower means to wither away and scatter its seeds so that in the future more flowers may bloom. Perhaps we may even realize that some of the spaces opened up by the catastrophes we have experienced are the spaces to be filled by those future flowers.
Underlying all of these ends and beginnings—as both Guillaume de Machaut and T.S. Eliot well knew—is the alpha and the omega, the first and last of the letters of the alphabet of sounds from which all words are formed. At every moment, now and always, he is taking up the substance we are producing, errors and all, and transforming it into the substance from which he can make all things new. I can think of no better awareness to accompany us out of the year which is ending into the one which is beginning.
Even though I am from California, I’m beginning to love snow. Not only for its beauty, but most of all, for the peaceful silence that it brings, permeating everything.
Deep within each human soul there is also a silence, an inner peace-filled silence that wants to awaken in our hearts. But just like the silence that comes only after the snow falls down from the sky, inner peace comes only after we accept whatever falls down into our lives. Like the earth receiving snow, inner peace is given us only after we embrace what falls into our lives. For even when something comes to us that is cold and painful, it is through saying ‘yes’ to the challenge that peace is possible.
And yet there is so much in us that would hinder this embrace, this ‘yes’ of what is. We are hindered by the temptation to think that what has come down to me is unacceptable, that my life just shouldn’t be this way, that if something hurts it means something is wrong. We are called to always remember that in the eyes of Christ, everything that comes into our lives is an opportunity to get closer to HIM.
Therefore, dear friends, Let us become like the earth in winter and embrace what falls to us from the sky, or like Mary, who humbly receives her will from above, even though it is difficult. Then, just like after snowfall, we will be ready for the Christmas gift, the peace-filled silence of Christ bestowed on our hearts.
After Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge, …the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”[ii] Later we read: Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden … and … stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.[iii]
Being afraid is the very first human emotion the Bible explicitly mentions. It appears immediately when the ‘Fall’ into the world of sense-experience is initiated by eating from the Tree of Knowledge. In the biblical account, fear appears to be joined with all that we experience in the earthly world. This description of fear is coupled with God’s first question to the ‘fallen’ human being, “Where are you?” Notice that the question is not answered. The man only says, I hid myself, seemingly not knowing where or who he is and thus being afraid. Jewish legend refers to “naked” as the loss of the “cloud of glory,” [the sheaths of auric light] that surrounded the human being before the Fall. [iv]
The original fear led to hiding to avoid being “seen,” that is, being known in the “fallen” state. Since the way back into the garden was blocked, this leads us to consider that our state of being alienated from both our true being and the divine world, as well as being mortal, arose out of divine intention.
Obviously, this original fear originated earlier and lies deeper than any of the fears we normally experience in today’s life.
[i] Most of this article’s content is based upon statements about fear that were made by Rudolf Steiner. Most of the translations of his remarks are my own. Bible passages are from the New American Standard Version, but in places indicated with [ ] I have substituted my own renderings. Quotations or paraphrases from Rudolf Steiner are referenced by the volume of the ‘Gesamtausgabe’ (GA) or collected works. All quotations are given in italics.
[ii] Gn 3:9 – 11.
[iii] Gn 3:22 – 24.
[iv] L. Ginzberg. Legends of the Bible, The Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia & Jerusalem, 1992, 647 pp.
Read the entire article here.
These days we all live in two very different worlds, which are more or less separated from each other. The one thrusts itself upon us; the other is less obvious but no less real. We always have to make an effort to recognize that other reality.
A noisy world of power, money, and violence, in which the lie reigns, drowns out the soft forces of truth and love, so that it seems as if the lie has not only the loudest word, but also the last word. The noisier the world around us is, the more silent is that other, hidden world. But these two exist side by side, each with its own reality.
And we—each of us has the choice of the world we want to live in. Here applies the rule: Like recognizes like. The force of attraction of what belongs together enables each one of us to create our own reality, even though we are citizens of two worlds. Thus there is not only a declining, but also a rising world. The New Jerusalem is no fata morgana, no dot on the horizon, but a reality that becomes recognizable for everyone who seeks the truth and generates love.
Before the countenance of God that is the only reality that has a justified existence. An old proverb says: Not noise, but love penetrates to God’s ear.[*] Because just like for human beings, for God it is also true that like recognizes like. For those who seek truth and love with all their heart, He lets Himself be found.
Rev. Bastiaan Baan, November 26, 2023
[*] Non clamor, sed amor sonat in aure Dei.
November, the month of those who have died.
In these days death is omnipresent—not in the lofty rest that often characterizes death, but in the devastating battle that takes place between embittered peoples: hatred facing hatred, revenge facing revenge. The whole world watches with powerless rage or with powerless despair. In such a hopeless fight, taking place before our eyes, how can you still do something to create a counterweight?
These days I have to think of individuals who in similar situations looked annihilation in the eye, and in the depths of despair created a sign of hope. These individuals usually did not appear before the footlights. They did their work in silence. And if they had not left their visible footprints, they would have been long forgotten. Such a person was Etty Hillesum during the Second World War. She became known because of the diaries she left behind after her death. How did she do it—creating a counterweight in a world of death and depravation? She wrote in her diary:
“This is really our only moral task: cultivating great plains of rest in ourselves—ever more rest, so that one can emanate this rest again to others.”
Our apocalyptic time, when the old certainties are taken away from us, faces us with the question: Who can stand up to it?
This one thing we can do: “Cultivating great plains of rest in ourselves—ever more rest, so that one can emanate this rest again to others. The more rest there is in human beings, the more rest there will also be in this excited world.” [*]
Rev. Bastiaan Baan, November 12, 2023
*] Etty Hillesum suffered and died in German concentration camps during World War II. Her diaries were posthumously published: An Interrupted Life, the Diaries 1941-1943.