Advent IV - Love

Advent IV - Love

Today, according to SOMEBODY'S calendar, we have lit the candle of love. As the moment of the incarnation of the Christ Consciousness approaches, we are impressed with the idea of love born anew in our hearts, because love bears us into a new, and ever new, and ever renewing reality of spirit.

1 John 4:7-16

7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. 12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.
14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

There can be no more important subject, than love, for human beings to consider at this time of year; and yet the vastness of the subject makes it difficult to approach in anything like a systematic way. Love is an easy word to bandy about, because it has so many meanings and inflections; therefore, it might behoove us to first narrow the field a little, so we have some clear idea of what we are talking about. A general definition of love will help me clarify my understanding of the meaning of Christmas love.

To me, the ultimate, all-purpose definition of love is as a synonym for CONNECTION--either that, or SYMPATHY. In either case, the implication is that people who love each other have something in common--they are connected by spiritual ties that enable them to share feelings, thoughts, and experiences, etc. It is love that enables us to magnify the resonance of our connection to our neighbors into a dynamic energy level that is cosmic in scope. The love at the source of all being brings us together through realization of the Christ Consciousness. Since the beginning of time, (and before then), we have been ONE in love, and, thanks to Jesus we can know it here and now. At Christmas we remember that the Christ Consciousness descended to earth in the body of Jesus Christ because God loves us, because God in us sought to reveal to our limited rational consciousness the CONNECTION between Himself and us. Furthermore, we, all of us, seek our places of harmony and sympathy, somewhere on the continuum of the manifold levels of human consciousness, through love; I say we SEEK it through love, but we FIND that place through the grace bestowed on us by the heavenly entities assigned to care for and guide us through the entanglements of mundane existence.

Here are a few quotes from famous people about love at Christmas. Usually, I present my quotes in a large block, and then comment at the end. Today I am taking a less structured approach, in the hope that this element of improvisation will discover its own implicit meaning. Some of these quotes are serious, some are just for fun, like these first few:

Benny Hill

Roses are reddish
Violets are bluish
If it weren't for Christmas
We'd all be Jewish.

Garrison Keillor

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.

Eric Sevareid

Christmas is a necessity.  There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we're here for something else besides ourselves. 

Ogden Nash

People can't concentrate properly on blowing other people to pieces if their minds are poisoned by thoughts suitable to the twenty-fifth of December. 

Bing Crosby

"Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our
blessings, all the snow in Alaska won't make it 'white'."

Now for some more serious ones:

Helen Keller

The only blind person at Christmastime is he who has not Christmas in his heart.

Remember that we have spoken at length about the lights of Christmas. Imagine a person who has no memory of light--how can they see the lights on the trees, in the shop windows, on the angels' wings? How deprived they must feel; and yet Helen Keller denies the lack. Perhaps the light of heaven possesses a quality of intelligence that enlightens the mind through the heart and not the eyes.

Christina Rossetti

Love came down at Christmas
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Stars and angels gave the sign.

Besides being a wonderful poem we can never be reminded too often that love came down.

James 1:17

17Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

What a miracle that love falls on us from above, like the thrill of mental energy that radiates downward through us, when we make contact with higher worlds, or experience tangible spiritual blessings. Or, is this such a magnificent condescension after all? Does this love interpenetrate existence at every level, such that love coming down is the same thing as us reaching up? Again, if there is one dogmatic principle, I have become intellectually committed to since taking over the responsibility of composing these sermons, it is that love through grace is GIVEN, but the Personal Love of God is CHOSEN. Heaven came down and glory filled my soul--hmm--this construction leaves out the CHOICE. I think, maybe it should go:

"Heaven came down
and then we all moved in."

Maybe that doorman is not that reliable? Saint Peter was always a little eccentric don't you think?

Clearly, though, the word "interpenetration" should appear somewhere in our definition of love. If we are going to succeed in "pumping up" our spiritual sensitivities this Christmas, we will need to focus conscious attention on states of mind that lean outside of the box. We must seek love in places where we don't usually seek it; we must look below in pre-conscious wells of collective memory, and we must look above at the glare of heaven, at the light, still too bright for our puny powers of apprehension.

Author Unknown

The message of Christmas is that the visible material world is bound to the invisible spiritual world. 

Of course, no collection of Christmas quotes would be complete without something from the Christmas Carol:

Charles Dickens

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. 

The image in this quote of humanity flowing down a common road toward a common goal, is very compelling to me. I like, especially, to imagine the light of Christmas love drawing us closer together for a short season, focussing the crowd a little more densely on the road. It is tempting to wish for this common goal all year round, but the comfort of that idea is quickly dispelled when we remember that God's love makes us highly individual, with destinations on many difference street corners.

C. S. Lewis was quite definite about this point. He insists, repeatedly, that Losing your SELF in God (that is, losing the self you have made up in your mind)--losing your made-up self allows you to FIND your true self; a self that exceeds, in magnitude, all the distinctions and possibilities ever dreamt of by the made-up self. Thus, giving yourself to God realizes more of your one-of-a-kind self than any paltry literal definition ever could.

C. S. Lewis

The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in His own favor that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor's talents--or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognize all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things. He wants to kill their, animal self-love as soon as possible: but it is His long-term policy, I fear, to restore to them a new kind of self-love--a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbors as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbors. For we must never forget what is the most repellent and inexplicable trait in our Enemy; He really loves the hairless bipeds He has created, and always gives back to them with His right hand what He has taken away with His left.

As an artist, this passage always gives great comfort because the problems of ego are so troublesome. C. S. Lewis speaks of animal self-love, and "a new kind of self-love--a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own." Christmas reminds us to sublimate self-love, into divine love connecting us to our neighbors, to God, to our-neighbors-in-God, and God-in-our-neighbors.

Pope John XXIII

Mankind is a great, an immense family.  This is proved by what we feel in our hearts at Christmas. 

Washington Irving

Christmas is a season for kindling the fire for hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.

Leigh Hunt

Fail not to call to mind, in the course of the twenty-fifth of this month, that the Divinest Heart that ever walked the earth was born on that day; and then smile and enjoy yourselves for the rest of it; for mirth is also of Heaven's making. 

This invitation to merry-making, to celebrate the feast with song and trivialities, confirms my feeling that that materialist side of Christmas is really okay. I like presents, I like Santa Claus, I like getting out in that stream of life (I mean big-city commercial life) once in a while and tasting the excitement of the teeming masses before I retreat once again to my mountain hideaway. The laughter of man and the laughter of the Gods will be indistinguishable before my fire, and the silver giggles of giddy angels shall echo in the still of the following night--night that holds the promise of eternity.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.

Dale Evans Rogers

Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas.

George F. McDougall

Best of all, Christmas means a spirit of love, a time when
 the love of God and the love of our fellow men should prevail
 over all hatred and bitterness, a time when our thoughts and
 deeds and the spirit of our lives manifest the presence of God.

Author unknown, attributed to a 7-year-old named Bobby

Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen. 

Taylor Caldwell

"This is the message of Christmas: We are never alone."

Let us pray: Jesus, thank you for the love. Bless the remaining hours of this holy day celebration. Lend us power to see the potential of the coming year with enthusiastic hope. Wait for us while we reach for your arms, and save for us, as the wrapping paper flies, an angel kiss. Amen.

Advent I

Advent I

Last Sunday we took a tour through some background material on Advent, and suggested the proposition that the coming of the Christ consciousness is given through grace and taken through choice. We also talked, in a general way, about the signs and symbols of the time and how a childlike perspective on the season's archetypal energies may reveal phenomena of a pre-conscious quality--may, in fact, lead to a perception of these symbols at a higher-than-normal level of magical resonance.

This magical resonance may be said to derive from the deep past of Man's sojourn on Earth--from a time when Man's literal consciousness was not so dominant, and his "unliteral, or non-verbal consciousness" allowed shifts from one consciousness state to another with more freedom, less inhibition, than is typical in people today. I'm glad I can talk and I'm glad I can think, but I know the talking and the thinking have cost me something: they have cut me off from a more primitive version of myself. Indeed when I think of Santa's elves, or Narnia's centaurs, I think of something quite ancient, something buried quite deep in my collective memory. Perhaps Christmas is such a nostalgic time because the radiance of primordial light beacons out of these ancient symbologies like searchlights of memory, enlightening our vision, but directing our eyes BACKWARD.


When one asks oneself, "Am I better off now, with all my fancy pants ideas, expressions, and concepts? or was it better back then, when we traveled, unhindered, over the rolling planes of experience, in a relatively mindless medium of intuitive understanding, connected to the infinite, but lacking definition? In this regard, I am reminded of the remarks I made in the sermon on New Wine:

. . . let us not forget that, seen from the spiritual perspective, the new is always contained in the old, and we MUST keep the eternal in our sights, as we struggle to find new ways of articulating transient, temporal, earthly experience. . .

Jesus, lend us your divine intelligence so that we may see ourselves growing and changing in your transforming light. Prepare us to accept the new wine of your eternal changeless truth as it leads us ever upward to a heaven where all contradictions are moot, and all peace and love calm our clamoring voices into silence.

Yes, we must always have the infinite before us, regardless of the level of consciousness on which we may find ourselves at any given moment; and yet, eternity notwithstanding, the ancient images seem so much more powerful at this time of year than they do at other times. Is it the time of year that evokes the images, or do the images evoke the time of year? Perhaps it is, as C.S. Lewis says, the RHYTHM of the seasons that makes each phase seem unique and significant? that makes Christmas the special, stand-out time that it is.

We hear a lot about keeping the spirit of Christmas all year round. Yuck. True, Christmasy attitudes of generosity, cheerfulness, intimacy, and grace, are qualities we would like to see regularly inspiring all our daily doings with heavenly radiance; but to have Christmas ALL YEAR ROUND? Who could handle it? To me, Christmas is like a great oasis in the sea of life's journey. To enjoy the oasis is our pleasure and our right, but to stay forever at an oasis, when the rest of the journey is yet to be traveled? No way! I think our attraction to, and comfort in, the deep past works like this: when a child is first learning to walk, or do some other independent act, he may push off from his mother's lap, take a few steps, return, take a few more steps, return, take a few more steps, return, and so on, each time returning to the mother before taking bigger and bigger steps, off on his own; perhaps connecting with the ancient symbols for a season, and getting in touch with pre-conscious states, is the kind of motherly confidence builder we need to help push on out to sea in search of our own personal adventure, and, eventually, next year's oasis.

No matter how you cut it, we are in a season all of whose social conventions direct our attention to the mind states of ancient days; and although the symbols have been massively trivialized, so that nochildisleftbehindeverybodyisequalandgetsavoteGodblessuseveryone,
the latent power of these symbols still works its way into our pre-consciousness (where it belongs), and registers its presence as a background hum that sometimes sings louder, sometimes softer.

Today's featured work is Steiner's Signs and Symbols of the Christmas Festival, a lecture given in Berlin, December 17, 1906

The Christmas festival, which we are about to celebrate, gains new life through a deepened spiritual world view. In a spiritual sense the Christmas festival is a sun festival, and as such we shall become acquainted with it today. To begin, we shall hear that most beautiful apostrophe to the sun that Goethe puts in the mouth of Faust.

Refreshed anew life's pulses beat and waken

To greet the mild ethereal dawn of morning;

Earth, through this night thou too hast stood unshaken

And breath'st before me in thy new adorning,

Beginst to wrap me round with gladness thrilling,

A vigorous resolve in me forewarning,

Unceasing strife for life supreme instilling.
—
Now lies the world revealed in twilight glimmer,

The wood resounds, a thousand voices trilling;

The vales where mist flows in and out lie dimmer,

But in the gorges sinks a light from heaven,

And boughs and twigs, refreshed, lift up their shimmer

From fragrant chasms where they slept at even;

Tint upon tint again emerges, clearing

Where trembling pearls from flower and leaf drip riven:

All round me is a Paradise appearing.

             Look up! —
The peaks, gigantic and supernal,

Proclaim the hour most solemn now is nearing.

They early may enjoy the light eternal

That later to us here below is wended.

Now on the alpine meadows, sloping, vernal,

A clear and lavish glory has descended

And step by step fulfils its journey's ending.

The sun steps forth!
— Alas, already blinded,
I turn away, the pain my vision rending.
             Thus is it ever when a hope long yearning

Has made a wish its own, supreme, transcending,

And finds Fulfilment's portals outward turning;

From those eternal deeps bursts ever higher

Too great a flame, we stand, with wonder burning.

To kindle life's fair torch we did aspire

And seas of flame — and what a flame! — embrace us!


Is it Love? Is it Hate? that twine us with their fire,

In alternating joy and pain enlace us,

So that again toward earth we turn our gazing,

Baffled, to hide in youth's fond veils our faces.
             Behind me therefore let the sun be blazing!

The cataract in gorges deeply riven

I view with rapture growing and amazing.

To plunge on plunge in a thousand streams it's given,

And yet a thousand, downward to the valleys,

While foam and mist high in the air are driven.

Yet how superb above this tumult sallies

The many-colored rainbow's changeful being;

Now lost in air, now clearly drawn, it dailies,

Shedding sweet coolness round us even when fleeing!

The rainbow mirrors human aims and action.

Think, and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing

Life is but light in many-hued reflection.

Goethe lets his representative of mankind speak these mighty words in the presence of the radiant, rising morning sun. But it is not this sun, awakening anew every morning, with which we have to deal in the festival we will speak about today. This sun is a being of much profounder depths, and the nature of it shall be the leitmotif of our present considerations.

We shall now hear the words that reflect the deepest meaning of the Christmas Mystery. These words have been heard by the pupils of the Mysteries of all ages before they entered the Mysteries themselves:

Behold the Sun

At midnight hour,

And build with stones

In lifeless clay.

So find in world decline

And in the night of death

Creation's new beginning

And morning's youthful strength.

Let heights above reveal

The Gods' eternal word,

May depths preserve and seal

The peaceful treasure-hoard.

In darkness living

O now create a Sun!

In substance weaving

O know the Bliss of Spirit.

Many people who today merely know the Christmas tree with its candles believe that to have a tree symbolizing Christmas is a traditional custom dating from ancient times. This, however, is not the case. On the contrary, the custom of decorating a tree at Christmas is most recent and does not date back more than a few centuries. The custom of decorating a Christmas tree is a recent phenomenon, but the celebration of Christmas is old. The festival at Christmas time was known in the most ancient Mysteries of all religions everywhere, and has always been celebrated.

It is not merely an outer sun festival, but one that leads man to a divination of the sources of existence. It was celebrated annually by the highest initiates in the Mysteries at the time of year when the sun's force was weakest and bestowed least warmth upon the earth. It was also celebrated by those who were unable to participate in the entire celebration, but were permitted to experience only the outer pictorial expression of the highest Mysteries."

It is worth it to interrupt the flow here, to comment on the subject of "parable". Remember, we have commented profusely on Jesus' use of the parable in transmitting his good news. We have mentioned how Jesus' message is appreciable on many different levels of meaning--that there is in it, indeed, something for everybody. My point here is that, yes, you guessed it, Christmas has something in it for everybody. The glitter, and the tinsel, and the fluorescent lights can never completely shout down those mystic voices singing to us from distant peaks, crooning the old songs. I think it must be impossible for any individual to be completely unaffected by the celebrations of the season, but I'm sure there are various degrees of inspiration.

This brings us to us: we can enhance the degree of inspired connection with the spiritual potentials of the season through acts of choice and will--we can use this heightened psychic atmosphere to pump up the volume, and get more out of the time than if we just passively let it happen to us. I'm saying that one of the prime spirits of Christmas should be enthusiasm. I'm saying we should "seize the day" and hasten its blossoming with blessings of power. I'm saying we should get going while the going is good. I'm saying we should look into some candles around here and see Baby Jesus smiling back His fragile, pathetic smile.

Back to Steiner:

"This imagery has been preserved throughout the ages and has assumed forms in accordance with the various religious confessions. The celebration of Christmas is the festival of the Sacred Night, which, in the great Mysteries, was celebrated by those personalities who were ready to bring about the resurrection of the higher self within their inmost being. Today we would say, "Within their inmost being they gave birth to the Christ."

. . . Those who were prepared for the awakening, as were pupils of the Mysteries, were first taught what the awakening signifies in the great universe; only then was the rite of awakening performed. It took place at the time when darkness on earth is greatest, when the outer sun has reached its lowest point at Christmas time, because those who are acquainted with spiritual facts know that at that time of year, forces stream through cosmic space that are favorable to such an awakening.

[There's the answer to my question about whether the season brings the symbols or the symbols bring the season.]

In his preparation, the pupil was told that the one who really wished to know should not merely know what has taken place during thousands and thousands of years on earth, but he must learn to survey the entire course of human evolution, realizing that the great festivals have their place within this, and that they must be dedicated to the contemplation of the great eternal truths.

. . .The pupils were prepared by these teachings, which were constantly impressed upon them. Then they were led to their awakening. The moment arrived when, as chosen ones, they experienced by means of their awakened spirit organs, the spiritual light within them. This holy moment came when the outer light was weakest, on the day when the outer sun shines least. On that day the pupils were gathered together, and the inner light revealed itself to them.

Those who were still unable to participate in this celebration were able to experience at least an outer likeness of it from which they learned that for them, too, the great moment would come.

[Here we return to "parable". Note the reference below to "lesser Mysteries.]

"Today," they were told, "you behold only an image; later you will experience what you now see as a likeness." These were the lesser Mysteries. They showed in pictures what the neophyte was to experience later.

We shall hear today of what took place in the lesser Mysteries on Christmas eve. . . Everywhere the pupils of these Mystery Schools had the same experience at the midnight hour on the Night of Consecration.

The pupils gathered in the early evening. In quiet contemplation they had to make clear to themselves what this most important event signified. In deep silence they sat together in the darkness. By the time midnight drew near, they had been sitting in the dark room for hours. Thoughts of eternity pervaded their souls. Then, toward midnight, mysterious tones arose, resounding through the room, up welling and diminishing. The pupils who heard these tones knew that this was the music of the spheres. Then the room became dimly lit, the only light emanating from a dimly lighted disc. Those who saw this knew that this disc represented the earth. The illumined disc became darker and darker, until finally it was quite black. Simultaneously the surrounding space grew brighter. Those who saw this knew that the black sphere represented the earth. The sun, however, which ordinarily irradiates the earth was concealed; the earth could no longer see the sun. Then around the earth-disc, at the outer edge, rainbow colors formed, ring upon ring. Those who saw it knew that this was the radiant Iris. At midnight a violet-reddish circle gradually arose in place of the black earth sphere. On it a Word was written. . . Christos.

Those who saw it knew that this was the sun, which appeared to them at the midnight hour, when the world around rests in deepest darkness. The pupils were now told that what they had experienced was called, "Seeing the sun at the midnight hour." . . .

[That it was] a symbolical indication of the fact that from apparent death life springs forth . . . They were told that just as the sun force, after it had seemingly died, waxes anew from this day on, so does new life forever arise out of dying life.
The same event is indicated in the Gospel of St. John in the words, "He must increase, but I must decrease." John, the herald of the coming Christ, of the Spiritual Light, whose festival day falls in the course of the year in mid-summer — John must decrease, and simultaneously with his decrease the force of the coming light waxes, increasing in strength as John decreases. In like manner the new, the coming life prepares itself in the seed that must wither and decay in order that the new plant may spring forth from it.

The pupils of the Mysteries were to experience that in death life resides, that out of decaying matter the new, glorious blossoms and fruits of spring arise, that the earth teems with the forces of birth. They were to learn that at this time something happens in the inner being of the earth — the overcoming of death by life that is present in death. This was shown them in the conquering light. This they felt and experienced when they saw the light arise and shine in the darkness. They beheld in the stone cave the sprouting life arising in splendor and abundance out of the seemingly dead. . . the spiritual essence will remain with all men who have become radiant in their innermost nature through the spiritual Light. Earth and humanity will then awaken to a higher existence, to a new phase of existence.

When Christianity arose in the course of evolution, it bore this ideal within it in the highest sense. Man felt that within Christianity the Christos was to appear as the great Ideal of all men, that He had been born on the Night of Consecration about the time of deepest darkness as a sign that out of the darkness of matter a higher man can be born in the human soul. . .

Everything in the cosmos takes its rhythmic course. The stars as well as the sun follow a great rhythm. Were the sun to change this rhythm but for a moment, were it to leave its orbit only for a moment, a revolution would result in the entire universe of quite unheard-of significance. Rhythm rules all nature, right up to man. Only with man does the situation change. The rhythm that rules until death throughout the course of the seasons in the forces of growth, propagation, etc., ceases with man. He is to stand in freedom, and the more highly civilized he is, the more does this rhythm decrease. Just as the light disappears at Christmas, so apparently has rhythm disappeared from the life of man and chaos prevails. Man, however, gives birth to this rhythm out of his own initiative out of his own inner nature. He must so fashion his life out of his will that it takes its course within rhythmical boundaries, steadfast and sure, like the course of the sun. Just as a change in the course of the sun is unthinkable, even so is it unthinkable that the rhythm of such a life be interrupted.

Christ Jesus was also a Sun Hero and was conceived as such in the first centuries of Christianity. His birth festival was, therefore, placed at the time of year when, since primeval days, the birthday of the Sun Hero has been celebrated. This is also the reason for all that was linked with the life story of Christ Jesus. The Midnight Mass, which the first Christians celebrated in caves, was in memory of the Sun Festival. In this Mass an ocean of light streamed forth at midnight out of the darkness as a memory of the rising sun in the Mysteries. Christ was thus born in a cave in remembrance of the cave of rock out of which, symbolized in the growing stalks of grain, life was born. Earthly life was born out of the dead stone. So, too, out of the lowly, the Highest, Christ Jesus, was born!

Thus, in the meaning of the Christmas Festival, we feel something echoing to us from the most ancient ages of mankind, and it has come down to us in the special coloring of Christianity. In its symbols we find images for the most ancient symbols of mankind. The Christmas tree with its candles is one of them. For us, it is a symbol of the Tree of Paradise, which represents all of material nature. Spiritual nature is represented by the tree in Paradise that encompassed all Knowledge, and by the Tree of Life.

There is a narrative that imparts clearly the significance of the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life:

Seth stood at the Gates of Paradise and begged to be allowed to enter. The Archangel guarding the portal let him pass. This is a sign for initiation. Seth, now in Paradise, found the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge closely intertwined. The Archangel Michael, who stands in the presence of God, let him take three seeds from these intertwining trees, which, standing there as a single tree, pointed prophetically to the future of mankind. Then the whole of humanity shall have been initiated and shall have found knowledge. Only the Tree of Life will still exist and death will be no more. For the time being, however, only the initiate may take the three seeds from this Tree, the three seeds that signify the three higher members of man.

When Adam died, Seth placed these three seeds in Adam's mouth, and from them grew a flaming bush. From the wood cut from this bush, new shoots and green leaves continually burst forth. Within the flaming circle of the bush, however, was written, "I am He Who was, Who is, Who is to be." This points to the entity that passes through all incarnations, the force of evolving man repeatedly renewing himself, who descends from light into darkness and ascends from darkness into light.

The rod with which Moses performed his miracles was carved from the wood of the flaming bush. The portal of Solomon's Temple was fashioned from it. This wood was carried to the waters of the pool of Bethesda, and from it the pool derived its power.
From the same wood the Cross of Christ Jesus was fashioned, the wood of the Cross that shows us life passing into death, but which at the same time bears the power in itself to bring forth new life. The great world symbol stands before us here — life, which overcomes death. The wood of this Cross grew out of the three seeds from the Tree of Paradise.

The Rose Cross also expresses this symbol of the death of the lower nature and, springing from it, the resurrection of the higher. Goethe expressed the same thought in the words:

As long as you have not

Died and been reborn,

You are but a gloomy guest

Upon the darkened earth.

What a wondrous connection there is between the Tree of Paradise and the wood of the Cross! Even though the Cross is a symbol of Easter, it also deepens our Christmas mood. We feel in it how the Christ Idea streams toward us in new welling life on this night of Christ's Nativity. This idea is indicated in the living roses that adorn this tree. They tell us that the tree of the Sacred Night has not yet become the wood of the Cross, but the power to become this wood begins to arise in it. The roses that grow from the green symbolize the Eternal that grows from the Temporal.

At this point, Steiner gets into describing a group of geometric shapes and detailing their symbolic significance. He does this with everything--I have a book in which he gives the precise spiritual significance of every single musical interval. I'm cutting most of this, but the last one, the star, is of great interest:

Finally, all that permeates the cosmos is present in man and is symbolized in the pentagram at the top of the tree. The deepest meaning of the pentagram may not now be mentioned, but it is the star of mankind, of mankind developing itself. It is the star that all wise men follow as did the priest-sages in ancient ages.

It symbolizes the earth that is born on the Night of Consecration, because the most sublime light radiates from the deepest darkness. Man lives on toward a state when the light shall be born in him, when one significant saying shall be replaced by another, when it will no longer be said, “The Darkness does not comprehend the Light” but when the truth will resound into cosmic space with the words, “Darkness gives way to the Light that radiates toward us in the Star of Mankind, Darkness yields and comprehends the Light.”

This shall resound from the Christmas celebration, and the spiritual light shall radiate from it. Let us celebrate Christmas as the festival of the most lofty ideal of the Idea of Mankind, so that in our souls may rise the joyful confidence: Indeed, I, too, shall experience the birth of the higher man within myself. The birth of the Savior, the Christos, will take place in me also.

Let us pray: Jesus, we call you to come to us in as many guises as you care to put on. We will look for you in candle flame, in wreaths of red, in decorated trees, and tinsel. Most of all we will seek you in the eyes of our friends. Amen.

Advent in Fairyland

Advent in Fairyland

Today is Thanksgiving Sunday, and I want to thank God I don't have to give a Thanksgiving sermon. I know, I know, gratitude is one of the highest states of mind we can enjoy, and drawing attention to it on a special day is not a trivial pursuit; however, with the coming of Christmas I think I am going to have other fish to fry, or turkeys to bake, sermonwise. 

Advent and Thanksgiving always come about the same time, and, this year, I am more interested in observing the religious holiday than the national holiday. Nevertheless, in looking back at the year gone by, nothing could solemnize the day more than to fill our hearts with prayers of thanksgiving for the incalculable gifts of grace that have been showered on us over the past year. Holiday--that means, "Holy Day", and I would like to solemnize the day with meditation and communion.

As you know, since the beginnings of Christianity in the Catholic church, a different spiritual significance has been assigned to each Sunday of the year. If my calculations are correct, today is the LAST day of the church calendar, a good day to say good-bye to things--a good day to prepare for the newness of life that comes whenever spirit revisits the flesh. As we finish out this year, we can look back (maybe even on Thanksgiving) with gratitude; we can see the things that were good and we can see the things that were not so good. In preparing for preparing, we ought to take a good long look at the things that were not so good, and try to sweep them out before the visitation of the Lord graces our humble dwelling place.

From Wikipedia:

"In Anglican churches the Sunday before Advent is sometimes nicknamed Stir-up Sunday after the opening lines of the Book of Common Prayer collect for that day. In the Roman Catholic Church since 1969, and in most Anglican churches since at least 2000, the final Sunday of the liturgical year before Advent has been celebrated as the Feast of Christ the King. This feast is now also widely observed in many Protestant churches, sometimes as the Reign of Christ."

So, according to the church calendar, we should feast today in preparation for the fast that begins next week. Next Sunday is the first of the four Sundays of Advent, the period of sacrifice and preparation for the coming of the Christ. We need to impose some kind of rigorous discipline on ourselves to help us  concentrate on this idea: out with the old, in with the new. For, whatever else may be said of it, it cannot be denied that Christmastide is a time of renewal, and a certain amount of garbage must be taken out before the new can take its place in our lives.

It's just not possible to be a human being and not, (over time), fill up a hefty-sized garbage can of leftover junk--waste matter--that was not part of the program but got stuck to us anyway. Think about the accumulated trash that clutters your life; ask yourself if you really need any of it, or if you are just hypnotized by it dancing glitter; try to free yourself from its thrall, and come before the lord naked and open. Advent is the time of preparation, (purification, say), for the coming incarnation of spirit into the material plane; it is a time of a mental bracing of our egos against the devastating breath of God that wipes away the old and ushers in the new; the rod and staff of the Shepherd. So, even though the official first Sunday of Advent isn't until next week, I want to get the preliminary background on Advent out of the way today, so that next week we can focus on the spiritual resonance of the so-called first day of the church year.

Today's sermon's inspiration was an offhand remark made in Wikipedia concerning Theosophy and angels:

"It is believed by Theosophists that nature spirits, elementals (gnomes, undines, sylphs, and salamanders), and fairies can be also be observed when the third eye is activated. It is maintained by Theosophists that these less evolutionarily developed beings have never been previously incarnated as humans; they are regarded as being on a separate line of spiritual evolution called the “deva evolution”; eventually, as their souls advance as they reincarnate, it is believed they will incarnate as devas."

So, according to Steiner, if you develop your third eye, you can see fairies, a kind of low-class angel. I was thinking how this fairyland is so much more visible to youngsters than it is to grown-ups; after all, what kid doesn't understand and believe in the tooth fairy, or Santa Claus? Perhaps the use of the third eye is more native to innocence than to the jaded worldly perspective. Maybe it is just this, as I heard a Waldorf teacher once declare:

"All human nerve cells, in order to properly transmit chemico-electrical signals to the muscles, and so forth, are protected by a kind of insulation material called myelin sheathing. The growth of myelin sheathing around the nerves in the brains of young people being is not competed at birth; in fact it is not completely finished until, say, the age of eight or nine."

This leaves the tender brains of children, in their formative years, exposed--unprotected from the subtle electromagnetic influences that radiate all around us, all the time, but which are invisible to our grown-up perceptual apparati. As we get older all our physical equipment becomes more and more stiff and inflexible, and we have to find other ways to move from one consciousness state to another, in particular, to pre-conscious states. Indeed, the spontaneous sensitivity of children to magical realities comes from their ability to freely cross over boundaries of different mind states. As my son Emlyn once said, when he was two: "I fly with the angels at night in my bed."

I was thinking that the magic of Christmas involves a self-willed descent into a primitive mind state in which beings who live on the borders of our reality are more apparent, more glowing with astral resonance, and more connected to the subtle terrains of super-mundane existence. Perhaps this is a good thing, as it connects us to higher worlds; but perhaps all the sugar-plum fairies and Santa's elves are just some phenomenological trash we need to get rid of. This brings us to Advent:

Advent
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Advent (from the Latin word adventus meaning "coming") is a season observed in many Western Christian churches, a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas. It is the beginning of the Western liturgical year and commences on Advent Sunday, called Levavi. The Eastern churches' equivalent of Advent is called the Nativity Fast, but it differs both in length and observances and does not begin the church year, which starts instead on September 1.

The progression of the season may be marked with an Advent calendar, a practice introduced by German Lutherans. At least in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and Methodist calendars, Advent starts on the fourth Sunday before December 25, the Sunday from November 27 to December 3 inclusive.
Latin adventus is the translation of the Greek word parousia, commonly used in reference to the Second Coming of Christ. For Christians, the season of Advent serves as a reminder both of the original waiting that was done by the Hebrews for the birth of their Messiah as well as the waiting of Christians for Christ's return.

Traditions
The theme of readings and teachings during Advent is often to prepare for the Second Coming while commemorating the First Coming of Christ at Christmas. With the view of directing the thoughts of Christians to the first coming of Jesus Christ as savior and to his second coming as judge, special readings are prescribed for each of the four Sundays in Advent.

From the 4th century the season was kept as a period of fasting as strict as that of Lent (commencing in some localities on 11 November; this being the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, the fast became known as "St. Martin's Lent", "St. Martin's Fast" or the "forty days of St. Martin"). The feast day was in many countries a time of frolic and heavy eating, since the 40-day fast began the next day. In the Anglican and Lutheran churches this fasting rule was later relaxed, with the Roman Catholic Church doing likewise later, but still keeping Advent as a season of penitence. In addition to fasting, dancing and similar festivities were forbidden in these traditions. The third Sunday in Advent was a Rose Sunday, when the color of the vestments was changed and a relaxation of the fast was permitted. The Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches still hold the tradition of fasting for 40 days before the Nativity Feast.

In many countries Advent was long marked by diverse popular observances, some of which still survive. In England, especially in the northern counties, there was a custom (now extinct) for poor women to carry around the "Advent images", two dolls dressed to represent Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary. A halfpenny coin was expected from every one to whom these were exhibited and bad luck was thought to menace the household not visited by the doll-bearers before Christmas Eve at the latest.

In Normandy, farmers employed children under twelve to run through the fields and orchards armed with torches, setting fire to bundles of straw, and thus it is believed driving out such vermin as are likely to damage the crops. In Italy, among other Advent celebrations, is the entry into Rome in the last days of Advent of the Calabrian pifferari, or bagpipe players, who play before the shrines of Mary, the mother of Jesus, the Italian tradition being that the shepherds played these pipes when they came to the manger at Bethlehem to pay homage to the infant Jesus.

In recent times the commonest observance of Advent outside church circles has been the keeping of an advent calendar or advent candle, with one door being opened in the calendar, or one section of the candle being burned, on each day in December leading up to Christmas Eve."

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis spoke of the rhythmic succession of Holy days of feast and fast, under the general subject of Man's need for variety in unity; he said that the return to an immemorial theme was an archetypal aspect of Human spiritual anatomy, and helped put him in touch with the divine. Indeed, the symbologies, associated with feast days, evoke a particularized mind state that is able to find the universal in the individual.

As to the quality of Advent as time for spiritual "cleaning house, and preparation" the following quote from A Grief Observed, concerning the rhythm of death and rebirth is of interest:

"My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are "offended" by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not. But the same thing happens in our private prayers."

I confess, as much as I enjoy the healing, restorative energy of Christmas, I usually do feel pretty shattered for awhile somewhere in there. Revisiting the past and kissing it good-bye will do that to you. And making yourself receptive (in preparation) can make you fragile; your ego's guard is down, and you feel fragile, and weak, and incapable. But it is this very fragility that allows spirit to gain a foothold, inviting it to imbue the non-resisting flesh with heavenly light.

By the way, this passage (from C.S. Lewis' Letters to an American Lady, Dec. 29, 1958) is fun:

"Just a hurried line...to tell a story which puts the contrast between our feast of the Nativity and all this ghastly "Xmas" racket at its lowest. My brother heard a woman on a bus say, as the bus passed a church with a Crib outside it, "Oh Lor'! They bring religion into everything. Look - they're dragging it even into Christmas now!""

It must be admitted that there is an enormous amount of junk that Christmas brings in with it--so much it is hard to see, like the lady on the bus, the forest for the trees. The good news is that: however much of the stuff that symbolizes Christmas, hanging from every streetlight on  every corner, attempts to trivialize the eternal into invisibility, there is still discernible, at heart, the spiritual truth, the WORD, that brought it all into being. Martin Luther will have something to say about this further down, but we begin our section of Luther quotes with this from the CLASSIC FAITH FOR MODERN TIMES website; this is from the Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent; Matthew 21:1-9 preached by Martin Luther in 1521.

"If you believe in Christ and in his advent, it is the highest praise and thanks to God to be holy. If you recognize, love, and magnify his grace and work in you, and cast aside and condemn self and the works of self, then are you a Christian. We say: "I believe in the holy Christian church, the communion of saints." Do you desire to be a part of the holy Christian church and communion of saints, you must also be holy as she is, yet not of yourself but through Christ alone in whom all are holy."

The words "magnify his grace and work in you" sounds a lot like developing the third eye; the act of will that "magnifies" grace must involve a consciousness state that rubs against the borders of fairyland. When the angel came to tell Mary she was to bear a Holy Son, "her soul did magnify the lord".  Perhaps the good news magnified itself in her soul? Maybe it was a team effort? In any case, there is in Advent time a feeling that we can somehow "pump up the volume" of spiritual transmissions, and more easily make contact with higher magical planes.

This is from a Luther Sermon on the Nativity that he preached in 1530:

"The inn was full. No one would release a room to this pregnant woman. She had to go to a cow stall and there bring forth the Maker of all creatures because nobody would give way. Shame on you, wretched Bethlehem! The inn ought to have been burned with brimstone, for even though Mary had been a beggar maid or unwed, anybody at such a time would have been glad to give her a hand. There are many of you in this congregation who think to yourselves: "If only I had been there! How quick I would have been to help the baby! I would have washed his linen! How happy I would have been to go with the shepherds to see the Lord lying in the manger!" Yes you would! You say that because you know how great Christ is, but if you had been there at that time you would have done no better than the people of Bethlehem. Childish and silly thoughts are these! Why don't you do it now? You have Christ in your neighbor. You ought to serve him, for what you do to your neighbor in need you do to the Lord Christ himself."

Again from the Luther Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent:


"14. Thirdly be says:"Behold." With this word he rouses us at once from sleep and unbelief as though he had something great, strange, or remarkable to offer, something we have long wished for and now would receive with joy. Such waking up is necessary for the reason that everything that concerns faith is against reason and nature; for example, how can nature and reason comprehend that such an one should be king of Jerusalem who enters in such poverty and humility as to ride upon a borrowed ass? How does such an advent become a great king? But faith is of the nature that it does not judge nor reason by what it sees or feels but by what it hears. It depends upon the Word alone and not on vision or sight. For this reason Christ was received as a king only by the followers of the word of the prophet, by the believers in Christ, by those who judged and received his kingdom not by sight but by the spirit-these are the true daughters of Zion. For it is not possible for those not to be offended in Christ who walk by sight and feeling and do not adhere firmly to the Word."

"With this word he rouses us at once from sleep and unbelief." Advent rouses from sleep energies that lie latent within us all year, waiting for the right combination of archetypal and higher spiritual symbologies to motivate them into action--action on our hearts. As mentioned above, the truth of the Word is at the bottom of all the glitter and gleam of Christmas images. The kids may be able to see Santa's elves, and the ruby slippers may transport us to Oz, but the WORD is the razorlike ray of light that exposes all the dross in its true nature and leaves visible the TRUTH behind the phenomena.


The following article, Advent, the Human Season, by Eugene Cullen Kennedy develops the theme of Advent symbology; in particular, it mentions the role of candles in symbolically representing the themes of the season:

"Advent is a season made for imperfect people, all of us, in other words, trying to maintain our balance as we scramble up the final slope of the shadow seamed mountain of the year. Advent's climb leads us to a view of the far reaches of the heavenly but in a profoundly human way. We pass through its weeks as we stroll by a succession of Christmas windows, surprised by images of ourselves superimposed on the displays, behold, as the angel of Christmas might say, this is what you really look like in everyday life.

Perhaps that is why the knowing liturgy allows us to view ourselves by candlelight so that we can gradually revise our self-images softened by its glow and be born again to a more homely, more human, and more livable understanding of ourselves.

These candles placed regularly along our climb toward the top of the year also embody the truth about the calling that transcends our occupations and professions. By their very nature, as we by ours, the candles let their substance be consumed by giving light, no matter how brief or flickering. These illuminations weave the weeks of Advent together by their symbolization of the Mystery of the Light of the World toward whose celebration they lead.

These tapers, like the Christmas windows from which our avatars stare back at us, also illuminate how, as psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan expressed it, "we are much more simply human than anything else." We are called to give off the great human signal of the season to all the searching and the lonely in the growing winter darkness, come over here, there's plenty of room, we all belong to the same family.

Advent is from the Latin that means "to come to," catching the period's significance as an ongoing journey, the being "in via," or "on the way," as our spiritual lives were described by ancient Christian writers.

The word "Advent" is a plum pudding of meanings, for it signifies a "coming or arrival, especially of something awaited or momentous." We are aware of the biblical mystery of this long awaited coming but there are no feelings more familiar to men and women than those generated by our hellos and our goodbyes, by our longing for union and suffering separation, for our looking forward to comings or arrivals of all kinds, from graduations to weddings, to birthday parties and family reunions.

Perhaps this wonder, that Advent underscores as it recognizes its utter humanity, is most powerfully experienced everyday before our eyes. As Joseph Campbell expressed it, "The latest version of Beauty and the Beast is taking place right now on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street." That is the Christmas-like wonder repeated when lovers find each other in the airport crowd as they first did, against all odds, in the great shouldering crowd of the world itself.

If we travel far enough back in the origin of words we find a distant root of Advent in gwa that means "to come" but that is also linked to "welcome" and "guest." This archeological dig of words helps us grasp the many layers of the Advent Mystery and of how, in its illumination of our natures, it overflows with sacramental manifestations of what it means to be human.

Advent allows us to rediscover not the sour version of a puritanical religion that is hard on humans but is one of living mystery and wonder. We feel this mystery in greater and lesser ways in all the comings and goings of this time of the year. We are all on the way to someplace else or are restlessly waiting for someone to come to us; we are suffused in the small mysteries of these defining human transactions that reveal the heart of our humanity.

It also underscores all that is wondrous even in the more homely aspects of being human. We are always on journeys of one kind or another and the whole mystery of our destiny is repeated every time we leave home for work, take up an unfinished task, or dream about the future. There is nothing more human than our setting up camp only to break it at dawn and set off for another that seems filled with more promise or more challenge for us.

These all fit with Advent's pilgrimage that, as we reflect on it, puts us on a track that intersects with the Divine journey to the very same destination, to the "end," as Chesterton wrote, "of the wandering star," to becoming human that is the fathomless Mystery of Christmas."

Again from Luther's Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent; Matthew 21:1-9, 1521.


"24. Again, it is not by virtue of your power or your merit that the Gospel is preached and your king comes. God must send him out of pure grace. Hence, not greater wrath of God exists than where he does not send the Gospel; there is only sin, error and darkness, there man may do what he will. Again, there is no greater grace, than where he sends his Gospel, for there must be grace and mercy in its train, even if not all, perhaps only a few, receive it. Thus the pope's government is the most terrible wrath of God, so that Peter calls them. the children of execration, for they teach no Gospel, but mere human doctrine of their own works as we, alas, see in all the chapters, monasteries and schools.




25. This is what is meant by "Thy king cometh." You do not seek him, but he seeks you. You do not find him, he finds you. For the preachers come from him, not from you; their sermons come from him, not from you; your faith comes from him, not from you; everything that faith works in you comes from him, not from you; and where he does not come, you remain outside; . . ."

In these two paragraphs Luther affirms the idea of salvation through grace. In the context of Advent, the coming of the Son is the grace for which we pine and wait, chosen, as we are, by the great plan of pre-destination, devised by God before the foundation of the world. This idea has brought me, once again, to a point of disagreement with Matin Luther: as we have discussed in our previous presentations on the subject of free will versus good works, there is a very thin line separating the chosen from the choosers--one may PREPARE to be chosen, and thus may CHOOSE TO BE CHOSEN. This has led me to the only salient point I have to make today. First to review some of the points made in the sermon on "Many Are Called but Few Are Chosen":

In After Many a Summer, Aldous Huxley writes:

"There must also be the recollection which seeks to transform and transcend intelligence. Many are called, but few are chosen--because few even know in what salvation consists. . . . Only a few are chosen because it is only the few who choose to hear and heed the call – they choose to be chosen."

"In CHOOSING we are CHOSEN.

To bear the cross assigned to us is never easy--if it were easy they would call it something else. Suffering is how we choose, or, rather, it is the suffering that validates our choice, because only by suffering is our will tempered, is our test passed. Some sacrifice is necessary; we exchange our suffering for spiritual rewards, we give up what is given us in exchange for what was ours before the world began.

Thus the WILL to choose, and choose over and over again the virtuous path, is the key to being chosen."

We are chosen through grace, but the preparations we make to receive the gifts of grace are good works which work on us from the inside out. As the Grace of God approaches in the raiments of Christmas, we know it will be ours, but we also know that the more worthy we make ourselves, the greater will be the gift--we take what we can get, and we get what we can take. We look forward to the coming of the Christ with longing and anticipation, but also fear and trembling because we think that we may not have done enough to deserve this great coming. Undoubtedly we haven't. Let us pray.

Jesus help us prepare to prepare. Assault our stubborn hearts with rays of love that break us down. Let us try to look at life from the bottom up, and rise with the phoenix and the dove to heavenly heights. Amen.