A Christmas Thanksgiving
The Science of Man (and the Holy Order of Mans) have always been organizations primarily “not of this world,.” and that is why there are so many different versions in people’s minds, based upon their own personal experiences, both spiritual and physical.
My own personal experience impacted my life profoundly- and permanently gave a spiritual connection which has only deepened over time. Finding out without question that Jesus and Mary are divine beings who are instantly accessible and guide us through our solar journey has been a blessing that I am grateful for every day.
Entering the Order awaked soul experiences, memories of past incursions on this earth plane and appreciation for the community of souls so vast in every “chance” encounter and association. We’re still all finding each other “out there!”
Father Paul and Mother Ruth lived in a sacred space of Divine Purity which they shared with all of us unconditionally and at great personal cost. This purity was at times painful to me and at times so comforting I wanted to remain basking in it forever.
There is a sacred space revealing itself in the womb of our lives, and at the time of the Winter Solstice, the spirit spark of the Christ seeks incarnation, just as the early Order struggled to find room for itself in the material world.
May we find the Christmas Presence of overwhelming Joy, Gratitude, Divine Communion, and the Gift of Service -the whole package, delivered Now.
Love in Christ,
Rev. Mary Anderson
John 3:16-21
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
We have talked many times of Holy Season, the six month period starting with Advent and ending with Pentecost. During this time of year, we abstain from as much of the material business of life as is possible. This period follows, roughly, the interval between the Winter and Summer Solstices. It represents the upward cycle of the year. From the time of the Winter solstice, the days get longer each day until the Summer Solstice, at which time the days begin to shorten
All things in the created world are cyclic in activity and this holds true for the great body of this earth, which the Lord Jesus has made his own. It is quite reasonable that the great spiritual actions of Life should correspond with the “natural” cycles of the world. Indeed, these spiritual realities are the ultimate cause of all natural activities.
Understanding this, it is easy to see why the church holidays (Holy-days) do not vary greatly from what are now called “pagan” celebrations. The difference is mainly that now we have the Lord Jesus and this shows man how to be “natural.” His life was and is the pattern for man’s life. It was a life of great purity and power because He too, in dealing with creation, followed the Father’s Way. And He said we shall do this also.
We understand also that these festivals and Holy Days do not have to do so much with any particular religion as with Life itself. And the way we acknowledge that Life. We follow these cycles through the life of our Lord Jesus because He is Lord of earth. He said “follow me.”
Advent is the time defined by the first four Sundays before Christmas. It represents a time of preparation for the coming of the new Christ. Just as we would prepare for a personal initiation so must we help prepare for an event of such planetary importance. We have reaped the fruit of last years’ seed and have observed its quality. Now we must prepare the soil for a new planting.
Matthew 13:31-32
31 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: 32 Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.
The key in this season is judgment and repentance. The New Year’s Resolution is an offshoot of this.) By purifying ourselves we allow Christ to be more fully in the world. We are prepared for his purity when He comes. It is a time to prepare for new beginnings. Note: During pregnancy, the final preparations for birth are made by the incarnating one during the last month.
Luke 3:1-6
3 Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar…
, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.
3 And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins;
4 As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth;
6 And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
The Octave of Christmas
We are familiar with the word octave from music and its use here can be understood in those terms, especially the “music of the spheres.” The Jews circumcised the young boys on the eighth day after birth because they believed the “birth” was not complete until then. This belief has a cosmic origin.
In other words all “tones” are coming into “tune ” with the New Born Son. The Word from which springs the Seven Great Rays. A day is given for each. New Years’ Day brings the “harmonic” of Christmas.
Luke 2:21
21 And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
HAYYEI SARAH: GENESIS 23-25:18
SHARING SACRED SPACE –
This portion of Genesis is an end of life saga, but at the same time it is a secret testimony, a message delivered across the ages, as to what it means to perpetuate life on a promised land, how one can make it an eternal life on the land. It is momentous and dramatic, focusing both on the burial of the old generation and the continuity of the next generation, with Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah. None of these changes, however, guarantee any perpetual relationship to the land. The secret to that lies in the nature of their dealings with their neighbors.
There are two things that stand out that make this portion distinctive for coexistence and a rational approach to neighbors, but which simultaneously embodies the spiritual fulfillment of promised land. The text highlights the critical importance of land to the memory and place of ancestors in the life of a people, and that is why buying burial grounds was so critical. At the same time, Abraham acknowledged in every word that he said to the Hittites that the place that he wanted and needed for this spiritual fulfillment was a shared space. A shared space required–and still does to this day–something that is one of the oldest and most successful forms of conflict prevention in human history, and that is honorable and equitable shared commerce. That is why Abraham begins and ends his engagement with the Hittites with an insistence on proper buying and selling of property…
There is profound respect in the use of language, in the discourse going back and forth between Abraham and the Hittite community. ..The language and style suggests a classic encounter that Martin Buber articulated as the embodiment of the highest human ethical and divine encounter, the I-You encounter, where equals know each other deeply in terms of not only their needs and positions, but also their highest essence.
…. There is no bartering here, no competition, no posturing at all, just the meeting of true human beings. The first lesson for perpetuity on the land then is that commerce and legal interactions of equity, honor and in-depth knowledge of the other are critical to transactions that will last a long time, like a few thousand years.
There is another element here that is almost equally as important, and that is Abraham’s self-identification as Ger ve’Toshav, a stranger and a temporary resident. This is one of the most important concepts in Biblical literature. It stands out as one of the most frequently quoted commandments. Thirty-four times the Bible commands the Jewish people to love the Ger ve’Toshav, the stranger and resident among them. But that commandment, its exact language, originates in this self-identification of Abraham as the original resident alien among the Hittites. Further on in Biblical history there is the next critical phase of this idea, the recognition by the book of Exodus that the Jewish people as such were a community of Gerim, or a community of resident aliens in Egypt. That experience, both the positive aspects of it during Joseph’s time and the negative aspects of it in terms of the oppression of Pharaoh, were designed as a teaching of what it is to be a stranger in another people’s land or even another person’s city. Finally, later in the Bible is the lesson that we are all temporary residents on God’s earth, and that therefore we had better treat others and the earth itself with the utmost care as temporary stewards.
The encounter with the Hittites is the Ur-text, it is the original construct of what it is to create moral relationships of love and care across boundaries, where both parties are different, where they are not merging into one party, but where there is still the experience of love and respect across that boundary…
it is not a message of absorption of one into another. It is rather the lesson of honor of difference across borders of respect, love, care, and deep meeting. It is a lesson that the world cannot survive without, and it is a message across the millennia to those who would attempt to live in the Promised Land. –Rabbi Dr. Marc Gopin co-owns a multiple narrative peace tourism company, Mejdi Tours.
From Father Paul Excerpt from class June, 1971
He [Jesus} was interested in man. Good old down-to-earth fleshy man; because he knew that as these beings, these men, these women, were brought into the Light; were brought into the understanding, they were the ones that were going to save this planet in reality, in the finality of things. They were the ones that were going t make life worthwhile on this earth, and they were the ones that were going to (some of them) go into the other reaches of the Universe to teach other beings…
Now we talk about Christian purity and Christian charity and immediately when we talk about charity somebody thinks about putting $5 in an envelope for the United Christian Fund or something or other. Well now, that’s not charity, as such. And most people forget and lose track of the reality of what charity is. Now when somebody comes to you and says, “well you know Mabel over here, well now she um-etc” and you look at ’em and say, “well, I don’t know, Mabel’s trying…” That’s charity. That’scharity. Charity is not something where you give your money, but where you give the purest form of compassion and love to the other individual.,,for charity is the first act that is required of man to reach the reality of that pure fire that comes through the purity of the individual, of the seeker. Now purity is not being a celibate; purity is not being a loner, and purity is not being a ‘holier-than-thou.’ Purity is giving to the other person the unadulterated, unopinionated reality of what Jesus Christ told us and gave to us. Now, no church, no organization, no matter who they are, that has changed one dot of Jesus teaching has any purity. They can’t; because when you change Jesus’ teaching or the laws of creation, it won’t work; and that is purity. Because you cannot exemplify this facet of reality when you put your opinion in; because when you put your opinion in, it then becomes yours, not Jesus’ teaching. And when it’s yours, it’s no longer the Master’s, and it is no longer the unadulterated truth. Jesus said “I will come like a thief in the night” and I quote, boom That is purity. It is unadulterated. I have not got my personality into it; I have kept my personal opinions out of it; I have given it just as it is. This is true purity. What we call Christianity today has given themselves more lame duck interpretations of the Word of God and our Lord than anything else that you could think of. All because they wanted to open a way in which they could interpret it because they wanted their little thing, you see. They had to do their bit. Now this is not purity. And where you find this condition existing, you’ll find very little charity; because they will find something to find fault with you. If you cannot call them ‘brother’ and mean it, don’t say anything…
The pure reality; the purity and ‘Christian charity, and this is what he exemplified throughout his life. When he was breaking bread and drinking wine, he hit it right on the head when he said I didn’t come to be with the temple masters and the rabbis. I came here to save the sinners. And that was right to the point..
The purer elements of nature in creation cannot come through (and here we’re talking about the fire) but this cannot come through if the channel is not clear…
Student: And this purity, is a tool toward that?
Father: That’s right Fire. Fire, it’s there. It’s the thing that is essential for reproduction, for the reproduction of the fertile thoughts of the mind, for the fertile thoughts of the heart; ’cause you can think with your heart, you know. that’s one of the beautiful things that the old mystics used to accomplish, the thinking with the heart.
Madonna (excerpt from Pondering)
It appears that in this Age men and women are beginning to balance the scales toward a recognition of equal worth. They cannot be identical in function or activity, but are equally important in the whole scheme of things. It is helpful to have some ideal such as Mary set before us as a model of perfection. There have also been many great women in history with courageous and inspiring stories to tell.
We know that God is One, above the realm of our physical designation of male or female, yet including them both. In the distant past female goddesses were revered as givers and sustainers of life. Though mankind began to look more to the Father aspect as Creator of the universe, it does not follow that the other half has been permanently overlooked.
Even in mind, in the realm of the Abstract, there is the aspect of giving and receiving, the active and reactive. If God said, “let there be….”, was there not another part of Him that accepted His Word and moved to refashion the primal substance that it might truly be? If God’s Word flashed out in Glory and Power, to what did it accrue, and what great Intelligence matched His own to nourish His Creation into fullness of growth and expression?
In contemplation one may become aware of the great Presence of the Divine Mother. I would not restrict her name to Mary, because even if Mary was a divine incarnation, her eternal name in the heavens might not be that. But try to glimpse the higher female aspect in Creation, and you will know that She goes beyond human incarnation and that She rules over all the processes of Nature while transcending them, for she is equally at home in the heavens. You would receive an impression of great beauty, wonderful presence, and ever-ready compassion and love, of a sort of brooding, over-all Presence that is everywhere, as God is everywhere. Yet she cannot be separate from God, or else God would be incomplete. -RM Ruth Blighton
Origin of Life on Earth
When the Big Bang created the universe approximately fourteen billion years ago, the explosions was so hot that all matter existed solely as protons and neutrons. Then, one minute after the Big Bang, when the temperature dropped to only one billion degrees Celsius, some neutrons began to decay into hydrogen, while others collided with protons, creating helium These were the two original elements in the universe. Two billion years later, vast gravitational forces have slowed the expanding universe down, causing large quantities of hydrogen and helium to coalesce into what eventually became galaxies and stars. Some of these stars were so hot they “burned” their hydrogen and helium into heavier elements, including carbon, oxygen and iron over a few hundred million years. When these stars eventually exploded as supernovas, they ejected their heavy elements into space, to become raw material for the next generation of stars.
Our sun came into existence as the result of a localized “littel Bang” nine billion years after the big one. Scientists believe that an exploding supernova created a dense cloud of gas and dust that eventually birthed the sun and the solar system. Additional carbon arrived later, likely when nearby red giant starts blew off their outer, carbon rich atmospheres before collapsing and turning into white dwarfs. This carbon traveled through space mostly as stardust, riding interstellar winds, before coalescing over the eons into comets, asteroids, and small planets. This stardust carbon eventually found its way to Earth, and eventually into us. -Adapted from Grass, Soil, Hope A Journey through Carbon Country
Prayer of the Brothers
I strive, O Father, To be a Nameless Wanderer,
To be perfect and all-sufficient.
So poised, so balanced,
That none but Self can comprehend.
All of this was unknown, unknowable.
The greatness, the splendor, the magnificence of all,
with the Majesty of Thy Power
I more than mind of man can conceive.
For in the beginning, O Father, all-knowing,
Thou didst speak the word
And the Word was with Thee,
And the Word was Thee,
And the greatness and the splendor
Of Thy Power didst manifest,
Not through mind, but Thy Self.
For then the Word took flesh, and
The great being of the Christos was born
In all magnificence and Power.
For this is the mystery that man has not understood.
For Thy Word Thou spokest once again.
God in great humility
Sealed in the fleshly body of a little child.
Thus was the Master Jesus born.
My every prayer shall be, and is
That in this Holy Family I be received
To be the servant of all.
To receive the great call.
Glory, glory, glory, Lord God of all.
Amen.