We have arrived again at the point of balance, as darkness and light share equal time, if only for a brief moment. The hard winter has loosened its grip and all of nature is coming alive again.
Our founders Father Paul and Mother Ruth also provided a balance in our spiritual development, noted in the powerful use of the Word of Christ and the softness of the Mother Mary.
Our nation too must find balance as extreme forces on both sides would force their will on the people. Extremes too in our own Spiritual family lead us to separation. To become mindful that the path our founders showed us is clear, it is the Middle Path, balance of heaven and earth, being in the world, but not of it, enjoying the beauty of the earth, as well as defenders of its health and vitality.
The coming months, as light increases on this side of the planet, will show much as to where we are headed. Walking the Middle Path will keep our focus on the goal ahead, let’s walk this path together. “Chilly, chilly, winds blowing, lovely Spring coming soon –Rev. Donald
SEEKING AND SEEING THE TRUTH
Excerpts from Class by Father Paul
Tonight I’m going to talk about those of us who approach and are approaching the time mentioned in the Testament as the coming of the new world, the new earth and the new heaven, as it is put. There are many people seeking to understand — what they call mysteries and revelations, whom have not even approached the Testament as a text. For in these teachings man is told that there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth, various other sundry statements which mean absolutely nothing to him, and he is left out in the dark, because few of the clergy and few teachers will approach the prophecies as given in the New Testament or in Revelations…
When one reads a chapter out of Revelations and they feel that they’re reading something out of one of Grimm’s fairy tales or out of some book or message which is bringing to us a grave disaster. But this disaster is not a disaster as most people have looked for.
Many things have happened in the past few years which have brought to our minds some of the quotations in Revelations…
The symbolism in Revelations is a standard symbolism and, of course as usual, we look for something that we can’t understand, and we must make it complicated.
If I were to sketch on the board here a woman with the earth at her feet and just leave it at that, and I’d say, “Well, this is in Revelations” — and it is — and ask you what it meant, you wouldn’t know. And yet it is so simple; if you will look at what you see, the pictures that are drawn, and not try to make them complicated, you would know that this particular thing was speaking of the time of the Mother of earth, and how she brought into birth the new Messiah and the Lord and Master who was taking over this earth.
It’s so strange to see people struggle against anything so simple. If I handed you a picture of my mother, you wouldn’t feel at all complicated about this. You’d look at it and say, “Well, now that is probably your mother or your sister”, and you’d think nothing of it. But because it’s in the Testament, you’ve got to make it complicated. Nobody could have written anything as simple as that.
Even when you see a picture of the earth in front of you, you can’t accept this. Because all of these great mysteries must be real deep and they must be real complicated. If you will just learn to be simple and take things as they are, as they’re stated. And when you see, when you read in the Testament that there was a crown of seven stars about some figure, well, now that’s something really from the higher heaven, isn’t it? Did you ever stop to think, or don’t you, that there were seven planets known at the time that Jesus was here, and accepted, on this earth? It’s so darn simple, and that’s why you forget it. And that’s why you can’t understand it…
You see, we go through life always seeking a mystery. Well, why seek a mystery when you’re seeking the answers? When you seek the answer to anything, never seek a mystery. Seek an answer. Or otherwise you will just find a mystery, and another mystery.
In the Testament it tells you, even outside of Revelations, it tells you there is a new heaven and a new earth at this particular time — that is, at the new age, at the return of the Christ. Now, “at the return of the Christ”. Well, this is the Aquarian age, and you’ve said so. You’ve all acknowledged this. It is the time when the Son shall take over. This has been demonstrated, this has been accepted. This is the age of Man. You’ll accept this, because this is what the Aquarian age is referred to, as being its most influential function.
Now, why and how would the Aquarian age be referred to this and where would we get the idea that this is a new heaven and a new earth? Well, in the first place, it says so, and he says “there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, and the old heaven and the old earth shall pass away.” And immediately everybody says, “Oh, earthquakes, catastrophes, fire, burnings.” …Everybody right now is going through a change. A new heaven and a new earth is now being formed, because there is a constant increase of energy in our atmosphere, there is a constant change in the density of the molecular structure of all things on this earth.
And someplace along the line in Revelations it says — and one other place too — it tells about the time when the sun and the moon will be needed no more, for there shall be continuous day. There’s only one way that could happen, of course, and that is that there was enough light here all the time. Well, this isn’t beyond understanding, because if the density of the earth gets light enough and it contains enough light and energy, why, it would be light all the time. We wouldn’t even notice the difference whether we were revolving around and had our one side toward the sun, or not.
And of course you probably don’t fully understand this, but it’s a reality and a real fact that if you turn your body to one side, to a stream of light, I suppose you think it’s just hitting that side of your body. Well, it isn’t. If that light is of any nature which it can absorb, the whole body gets it, because it will be picked up by the vital body or spiritual body of man; and it will be entirely infused with light, as far as he can pick it out, according to its nature. It won’t be just the side of the body that it’s on, that’s turned to it.
So you see it would make no difference, because there is a spiritual body to the earth, and the Lord of our earth, the Master Jesus, is here, and it’s under his influence, guardianship and directorship, and that is the Lord and Master who was born in the twelfth chapter of Revelations. Look it up, read it, and you’ll learn something from it. …Because everybody always looks for either a dire thing to happen, or a complicated thing to happen. If it isn’t destruction in some respect, it is not understandable.
Now you’re all getting new bodies, and of course none of you know it. And those who don’t get them, or that obstruct them, well, they won’t have much trouble with them too much longer, because they won’t be here. It’s that simple. And it hasn’t got anything to do with any fiery God reaching down and clonking somebody on the “knoodle” with a rod of judgment either. Because we’re too darn small for Him to do these things with — He’d have to do that in a microscope, you know. Just think it over. Read the first chapter of Genesis and read how He said that He made man in His own image. Well, how big is He? Think about that. Read the first chapter of Genesis.
I’m going to give you a lecture tonight that’s going to be a lecture of puzzles, because there’s things you can learn if you want to make the effort. And if you want to look them up in the Testament, you’ll learn something from them. And read it; you don’t have to be able to understand the Bible. If you understand English, you can understand what’s in them. You don’t have to be a theologian to understand the Bible. That wasn’t what the Testament was written for in the first place. Because the Master never came here to build a church in the first place, so he couldn’t very well be interested in theology. That was an aftermath that came along.
Just like the great Master Buddha came and tried to help people to raise their consciousness up at that time and, lo and behold, he had a worldwide church after him. He didn’t want that, he wasn’t interested in that, he wasn’t interested in teaching that. He wasn’t interested in a new faith in the East. He was just interested in getting the people to follow the faith they had. Well, the same thing happened with the Master Jesus when he was here. He was not, did not come to form a new church.
He did not come to form a new religion, he came to bring the people into a better understanding of what they’d already been talking about, and which they weren’t practicing.
Now metaphysics, mysticism, occultism, and all the other things put together, are absolutely worthless unless they’re used. You’re wasting your time if you’re just listening and not doing, because it’ll do no good for you unless you do. You have to do something or it can’t do anything for you.
The Master, when he was twelve years old, taught them[in the temple] of the many things which they wondered at. Now of course he came into this world with a consciousness of that type, and wisdom, but why was it so easy for him to understand? Because he approached this, the things that he knew, he approached this with the simplicity of a child, and therefore he could understand.
Our difficulty and great task today is to pick up the books that we read, and read them with that simplicity. Now there are thousands of volumes of good writing and it’s no trick to get a Bible these days, that I assure you. And if you stop thinking of the Bible as a book that can only be approached by a priest or minister, you may learn much from it, especially the New Testament. It’s an informative book, a handbook for those people that would like to learn more about themselves and the universe they live in. It is a book which will teach you how to use the many things that you come in contact with every day, and how to control them. It is a record of the law, it is a record of some of the mysteries and predictions of today..
.the Master said, “I shall come like a thief in the night”, and that’s just about as quiet as you can come into a place. And he said, gave this statement very distinctly; and that’s just what’s taking place.
He said another very interesting thing — and these aren’t from scattered chapters, they’re all on the same subject. I’m not pulling out a verse here and there like the evangelists, and using them to suit myself. These can be found. They’re right there in the book and they’re in the New Testament. He also said, “Woe unto him whom when I come has not his cloak in readiness.” And that’s just what I got through telling you a few minutes ago when I said that those that could not control and handle their own bodies would not be here. Those that did not develop some higher consciousness — I’m not talking about sprouting wings, but some degree of higher consciousness and sight — just won’t be here. That’s all there is to it, it’s that simple…
Because if you aren’t interested in how you can control your own physical being, make your life happier and prepare yourself for a journey, a conscious controllable journey when you leave this shell, then forget about it, because you’re only going to agitate and disturb your own self…
Of course if you’re just listening to resist and interested in being amused, well, it’s a nice amusement. Sometimes the words are pretty, but not too often here, because we don’t read much poetry and we don’t set and daydream. We’re factualists; we do. It’s a strange thing, I know, but we do. ..And if you’re not interested in doing, and this is something that those whom are here as scholars want to remember, that when they’re teaching…the individuals that they’re teaching on the outside in classes or something and aren’t interest in doing, you’ll save them a lot of grief and a lot of trouble if you will just tell them about it, so that they don’t have to bother wasting their time…
Some people spend a lot of time going to church and that’s as far as it gets, and they leave it at the door. But this is a waste of time. For you have to start everything from a useful base. And the first thing that is necessary is to get simple. Simple enough to read simple English and understand it in a simple way. The way a young man, a young woman, or a young teener would understand it when he reads English.
If you can’t accept things on that basis, then you have a problem, because you will not find any truth any other way. The reason that we have what is called the Christian mysteries, or the ancient mysteries — Christian mysteries actually, that’s the way the original terminology was, the things that are taught to the priesthood and the things that are taught in the inner temple as they used to be. The reason they were called mysteries is because they were entirely covered up by their simplicity…
Any time you want to keep a secret, just tell it right out on the street somewhere, to anybody, don’t try to hide it, just broadcast it. Inside of five days it’s all forgotten about. Nobody’s interested in it, because they haven’t found out a secret. And they may have found out the greatest truth in the world…
If you have a cup and you want a cup of tea, you go to the source, the teapot, and you fill it full of tea. Nothing mysterious about that, is there? If you want Christ illumination, to become an illuminated one, you fill yourself full of light. Nothing mysterious about that, is there? Now is there? No, I don’t think so. I’ve told you the whole process that men have sought many years for in just those few words. It’s that simple, and it’s true, because if you accept something, it will come into your being.
Jesus said that too. He said, “Thy word shall become flesh.” Did he mean it? Yes, he meant it, just what he said. Exactly what he said. No conditions: that’s it, nothing else attached to it.
…If you want to really know God, you stop thinking about trying to know how all to do it, and just act on it. Just act on it. ..You can probably take six or seven verses out of the New Testament and forget the rest of them; or you could take six or seven of Buddha’s statements and forget all the rest, and just act on them, live on them. ..
One Tradition Conveniently Forgotten
Rome asserts that from the beginning of Christianity women have never been ordained as priests. Yet, women were accepted into the diaconate which is a part of Holy Orders. The letters of Paul speak again and again of how Christian communities were led by women who were referred to by the title of diakonos, or, deacon.
- “Phoebe, our sister, who is a servant (diakonos) of the church at Cenchreae. She has often been a helper both to myself and to many others” (Romans 16, 1-2)
• “Greet Prisca and Aquila my fellow workers in Christ Jesus” . . . “Greet Mary who has worked so much among you.” In the same way “Tryphaena, Tryphosa and Persis labor in the Lord.”(Romans 16,1-16)
• “Evodia and Syntyche who have struggled together with me in the Gospel with Clement and the rest of my fellow-workers.” (Philippians 4,2)
In the fifth century the church spelled out the distinct roles of ‘deaconesses’. Councils laid down conditions for their sacramental ordination, e.g., the Ecumenical Councils of Chalcedon and Trullo both speak of the minimum age for the ordination of women deacons as forty.
“Let the canon of our holy God-bearing Fathers be confirmed in this particular also; that a presbyter be not ordained before he is thirty years of age, even if he be a very worthy man, but let him be kept back. For our Lord Jesus Christ was baptized and began to teach when he was thirty. In like manner let no deacon be ordained before he is twenty-five, nor a deaconess before she is forty.” (Council of Trullo)
Ordination rituals exist confirming that women were ordained into the diaconate. Over twenty women deacons are saints of the church. Holy Orders consists of ordination as a bishop, priest or deacon. Therefore, if women were validly ordained as deacons, they can, likewise, be ordained as priests.
Women deacons existed up until the ninth century. As adult baptisms declined so did the demand for deacons. The important role of women deacons in the early church was gradually forgotten.
“Be still and know that I am God.” The original Hebrew root of “be still” doesn’t mean “be quiet”, it means “let go.”
The Meaning of Dominion
…The common translation “have dominion over” is problematic, above all because “dominion” is so readily confused with “domination.” Since the Renaissance, Gen 1:26 has frequently been invoked in the West to support the project of “conquering,” “commanding,” or “enslaving” nature through scientific and technological means. Another difficulty with the common translation is that the Hebrew phrase (radah b-) includes a preposition that is in most cases not equivalent to the English preposition “over.” A more satisfactory translation of that crucial verse might be “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness, so they may exercise skilled mastery among [or, with respect to] the fish of the sea and among the birds of the air.” These are the same creatures that were specially blessed by God—“Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:22)—on the fifth day of creation, before humans were created. We fulfill our role in the created order only when we recognize our responsibility to help perpetuate other creatures’ fruitfulness.
Although Genesis does not specify what exactly the exercise of skilled mastery entails, an important clue appears in the immediately following verses (Gen 1:29-30). .- Ellen F. Davis Professor Duke Divinity School.
The world is literally a greener place than it was 20 years ago, and the data from NASA satellites has revealed a counterintuitive source for much of this new foliage: China and India.
This surprising new study shows that the two emerging countries with the world’s biggest populations are leading the improvement in greening on land. The effect stems mainly from ambitious tre planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries. In 2017 alone India broke its own world rec for the most trees planted after volunteers gathered to plant 66 million saplings in just 12 hours.
The greening phenomenon was first detected by researchers using satellite data in the mid-1990s, but they did not know whether human activity was one of its chief, direct causes.
This new insight was made possible by a nearly 20-year-long data record from a NASA instrument orbiting the Earth on two satellites. It’s called the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, and its high-resolution data provides very accurate information, helping researchers work out details of what’s happening with Earth’s vegetation, down to the level of 500 meters, or about 1,600 feet, on the ground.
Taken all together, the greening of the planet over the last two decades represents an increase in leaf area on plants and trees equivalent to the area covered by all the Amazon rainforests. There are now more than two million square miles of extra green leaf area per year, compared to the early 2000s – which amounts to a 5% increase.
“China and India account for one-third of the greening, but contain only 9% of the planet’s land area covered in vegetation – a surprising finding, considering the general notion of land degradation in populous countries from overexploitation,” said Chi Chen of the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University and lead author of the study.
Contacting Mary as “blessed and beloved”: love and blessing are fine, I felt, but I wonder if she doesn’t get tired sometimes of the tags stuck onto her of our appellations. They seem like weights to an already beauteous being. Then I felt that instead of our having to bless and love her, in order for her to function, in actuality it is she who is loving us and blessing us. We only need to acknowledge that.
Her blessing comes from above, not below.; and so does her love. she is so secure and filled with love and blessing from God as to be overflowing with it, and needs nothing more. Thus she automatically reaches out a hand to those who reach up from below.
No one can hold all of God’s love. She gets filled with all she can, and it spills over so her only desire is that others should know the same joy. God is All, the Whole of altruistic Love, but we have to start where we are to move toward the fullness of it. Altruistic love is the love of serving others regardless of their stand in the matter or whether they reciprocate.
Human love is just not big enough to fill the empty spaces in human hearts, and depending on a supply from others leaves man hungered. God could not depend on our love from below to fill Him, lest He be poor indeed.
Mary is called Beloved because she was chosen as a channel for God’s love to come down into the world and was undoubtedly loved by those who knew her well, yet was known but to a few and not in such a way that she was spared suffering.
Mary was Blessed because she was chosen above all others as most worthy to bring the Son of God into the world. But it was a secret blessing known only to a few while she remained on earth. It couldn’t have been nearly so precious a blessing if she had been picked from the crowd, then dressed in finery and set upon a throne for all to observe. -MRB
The Cosmic Hymn
Unheard the dews around me fall, And heav’nly influence shed; And silent on this earthly ball, Celestial footsteps tread.
Night moves in silence round the pole, The stars sing on unheard; Their music pierces to the soul, Yet borrows not a word.
Noiseless the morning flings its gold, And still the evening’s place; And silently the earth is rolled Amidst the vast of space.
In quietude thy Spirit grows In man from hour to hour; In calm eternal onward flows Thine all-redeeming power.
Lord, grant my soul to hear at length Thy deep and silent voice. To work in stillness, wait in strength, With calmness to rejoice.