A New Understanding of the Eucharist

 This morning  I was reading a book that pointed out the traditional Eucharist, saying it's a mystery that cannot be logically explained. Something in me shouted out BUT THAT'S NOT TRUE!!! Wow. I will share what came to me.

If we look deeply at any natural thing it will lead us into the mystery in whatever direction we go - bread and wine for example. Each has a story that leads into the Mystery.

Look deeply at a piece of bread. You will see the wheat growing in the field. You will see the rain watering it with water coming from the lakes and streams  and oceans of the world evaporating up to the clouds. You will see the rays of  sunlight warming the growing wheat and activating photosynthesis. You will see the wheat take in carbon from the air and give off oxygen. You will see our orbit around the sun, the seasons created by spin and tilt. You will see our solar system, the Milky Way and the vast universe of which our bread is a part. 

You can see the roots drawing up nutrients from the top soil created over the centuries. You can see the farmer, the harvest, the mill turning it into flour. You can see the trees that make the paper for the bag to carry the flour to your kitchen.

You can see how the bread in your hand connects you to everything, and then to The Creator. You can see the story of the grape too, actually the story of everything can lead us into The Mystery.

So take the bread and wine and remember how they Connect you to the entire web of all that is.  Remember they Connect you ultimately to The Creator

Remember you too are part of it all. Everything is sacred. Let your next Eucharist be a true sacred experience of Oneness.

Messiah People

 Two thousand years ago Paul and Barnabas spent a year in Antioch teaching the new community, Christianoi said Luke in Acts. That was most likely a nickname, as Christian was not used for several generations. N. T. Wright wrote that it might even have meant something like Jesus freaks when spoken by the general population.

At any rate, it was a completely new kind of community, a never before community, a never before even thought of community. Think of Paul's statenment in Galations:  

Thereis neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

All people, across all strata of society, across all divides, all people of every kind are one in Christ according to this new idea that poured forth out of Paul's mind and his dramatic awakening. It was shocking to almost everyone of the day, but it grew and grew.

How did we get so far away from that? In not too long a time, lines were redrawn. There were limits. There were rules made up by men. There were no open and welcoming places for everyone once again. Women were demoted to be possessi0ns.Those named "other" could be treated with rejection and violence. And the great dream of the kingdom of heaven coming to earth faded far away. In fact, for many it shifted to a place after death for those who did and believed whatever the current theology decreed. The excitement and joy of these early Christianoi seemed naive. 

BUT I have long had a vision that it would be possible for us humans to create a heaven on earth. It would require a shift in consciousness, but it is really not impossible.

Shift to see all as sacred beings - all people, all animals, all plant life, the entire planet. Treat it all by thought. word, and deed as precious and sacred. Make our lives a sacrament, so that whtever we do or think or say is a testament to the Divine Presence and our part in It.

When we see evil, we help those bent (per C. S. Lewis) people to be healed, to be set free to the goodness imprisoned within. We encourage and help to create healthy, nurturing environments so people don't get bent in the first place.

We set our aim high. Even though it is aspirational, it shows us where to aim. If more and more of us try. things can and will move in the higher direction.

We're going to be here for awhile, so why not use whatever time each of us have left to aim high?

Enter the Flow

 I've been pondering how incredible it is, when we enter the flow of God. I've often said that there have been times in my life that I experienced being in God's jet stream. How do we get there? We can't force it to happen. What we can do is prepare ourselves. I think of Jesus saying no one knows the hour, and that relates to so many things.

What to do? Prepare our hearts and minds. As a pianist practices and practises to attain a high skill level, so too we on the spiritual path  need to practice. Still our minds, pray everyday, and pray without ceasing - for example thank God for the beauty you see as you walk or drive around. Disengage from the upsetting news, politics, cultural fights, etc. on a regular basis, so that we are not consumed and enraged by outer things constantly,  things that serve as a distraction from our spiritual goal.

Some people recommend, what has for some reason come to be called the Jesus prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  I prefer to affirm rather than reinforce the negative. So, another prayer came to me this morning:

            God of all

I open to you

Fill me with Your Grace

Guide me in all ways 

Say this slowly, calmly, repeating it for a few minutes several times a day. Let Peace fill you. Let your mind be still. Let it come to mind during the day. Let yourself become more and more in tune with the Infinite, even as you walk your busy life.

 

Would You Jump Off A Cliff?

 I can still hear my mother: "If everyone was jumling off a cliff, would you just follow and jump?"

Perhaps we humans are jumping off a cliff together. With the majority of people now having internet access, and putting private information on it for the world to see, relying on it for information, and AI growing so that people have virtual friends and "love" pseudo relationships, etc. etc. etc. --- we may be jumping into huge problems together, jumping off the cliff of humanity. 

AI is obviously not fully developed yet, but it is quite convincing to many. There are little things that are amiss. For example I Googled something about 1st century Galilee. and the AI summary said it was a wealthy area - but in my studies, I know it was primarily poor peasants with literacy at perhaps 1%.

I read about a wide range of disturbing things happening via our new godlike entity, the internet. I read about not only false information,  but also such things as children  being groomed by preditors and addicted to porn; about people falling in love with their AI companion, even proposing marriage to it; about children being talked into gender dysphoria; about people being turned into terrorists; about Christianity and Judaism being subverted; about people being convinced they have entities inhabiting them or that they are animals; on and on and on go ideas and behaviors not long  thought of as psychiatric problems.

It seens crucial to me that we become aware. use critical thinking (evaluate, hypothesize, examine, look for motivation of what you see or hear or read, make tentative conclusions, etc), notice cognitive disonance (there is tension as two or more things don't make sense together), challenge every idea we encounter, at least ideas not part of our great heritage, bearing the test of time and experience. Everything needs to be examined against what we know to be true.

At the same time, develop our inner core. Develop our relationship with God. Find a church or synagogue and participate. Spend time in nature. Spend time with real people and real conversations. Read classics. Learn or increase our abilities in a hobby or two. Spend less and less time surfing the web.

And, pray, forgive, meditate, contemplate.

All can be well with us and with humanity.

The Meaningless Crisis

The old saying - if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything - came to mind this morning. We humans seem to be in the agony of a meaninglessness crisis.

The old mores and values for many have been thrown on the scrapheap. The new anything goes culture leads to emptiness. The empty try to fill or numb themselves with outer things - consumerism, drugs, alcohol, random sex, hysterical and illogical demonstrations for things that are opposite of even self interest, or lose themselves in technology screens. They are overwhelmed by input, unable to discern what is and what is not accurate or helpful. They fall for the facism of wokeness - agree with me or be cancelled, fired from your job, excluded.

Spirit is divorced from the physical, no longer known to interpenetrate it and be part of everyday experience. Delusion of being able to control the manifest brings on a frenzy of bad ideas. Marxism, fell with the wall and the realization it was terrible inside the Ieon Curtain, but was kept alive by some so-called intellectuals. It  entered the colleges and universities and then the high schools and elementary schools. The youth are taught our amazing way of life is bad, and Marxist ideas are great. 

If God is no longer part of everything, calling us to higher ground, and is even said to not exist, nothing has meaning. One can do to their bodies and to the bodies of others and to  Mother Earth whatever enters their minds. Nothing is sacred. God is said to not be there, as creation is some sort of random accident.

I suggest it is time to offer experiential Christianity. A Christianity that moves people deeply, to feel and know the sacredness of everything - of our own bodies, the bodies of every living thing, of the earth and the cosmos. To be able to have metanoia experiences where we personally come to know the things taught by the great Avatars, personally come to know things written and known by the great mystics.

It is time to awaken our spiritual senses, to go beyond theological arguments, to have moments of entering the Great Mystery. Not entertainment pseudo-church, rock bands, and loudness. Contemplation, meditation, deep prayer, transporting music, journaling, contact with nature, readings from the enlightened, and so forth. I have had a vision of this. I hope and pray someone feels this call, or many someones. If I were not about to turn 85 in a few days, I would go for it. I may go for it in a small way. I also know the following generation can step up and turn this meaningless crisis around. I ask you, do you feel the call?

The Wonder ofIt All

 I was watching on YouTube some of the 2025 ARC (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship) meeting. The speakers are stimulating. On a panel I heard Rod Dremer speak about our loss of enchantment in the West, as we have gone to the left sides of our brains almost entirely in the past 200+ years, blocking out mystery. That is right up my alley, so I downloaded his latest book.

If the cosmos is constructed the way the ancient church taught, then heaven and earth interpenetrate each other, participate in each other’s life. The sacred is not inserted from outside, like aninjection from the wells of paradise; it is already here, waiting to be revealed. --- "Living in Wonder" Rod Dreher

Absolutely!  We live and move and have our being in the Divine More. Some of us are blessed to have moments when the veil thins or pulls apart. In those precious moments, we know and know that we know, penetrated to our core with direct filling of More. We SEE, HEAR, FEEL, KNOW, TASTE what had once seemed unknowable, even fantasy. It is because of this, that I write and speak.

I endeavor to lead others into the great and grand Mystery that I know to be true. There is way, way, way more than our physical senses focused on the third dimension on earth can ever touch. There is  a Divine Presence that we can come to know. Everything, everyone, every moment is sacred, including ourselves.

God calls from our core - awaken, listen, come to me all you who are tired and heavy laden. Open to the Mystery of More.

Rufus Jones

 One of my favorite mystics, Rufus Jones, was a modern Quaker who was filled with the Spirit. I reread his writings periodically. His"Inner Life"is overflowing with wonderfully powerful ideas in every sentence.

This morning, I've been contemplating his ideas about Pharisees and the Sermon on the Mount. He says the Pharisees' focus was on following the 600+ laws in the Torah, and doing that was their goal and their reward. It was an outward practice, do this and do that, don't do this or that. They did it because they thought they had to. They did what was required of them. There was no spontaneity, no passion.

The Sermon on the Mount, however was aspirational, inspirational, and an inner shift. Jesus tells us that we are salt, bringing savor, uplifting, all we touch. We are to pour goodness into all the channels of the world. We are to become lights of the Lord. When we are on fire with God, we draw others to us, and the fire of love ignites their souls too. We are contagious. Lighting the world with God's Love changes everything. 

It's not about following laws, about being uptight and judgemental. It's about becoming a new person so filled with God that we participate in bringing about a Godly kingdom here and now, not in some distant future. We are part of the plan. We need to awaken, rise up, and be God's unconditional Love.

I urge you to read Matthew 5, 6 & 7 with different eyes and a different heart. Realize it is not plain prose. It is Near Eastern imagery, paradox, and is rife with layers of inner meanings.

Enter the spirit of 2,000 years ago. Hear with ancient ears. See with ancient eyes. Listen intuitively. 

If you do, something wonderful will happen.