From a Sermon given Winter Solstice Worship Service  on December 27, 2020

Winter is traditionally the time of the year when life on Planet Earth slows way down, shifts into resting mode and begins to engage in the process of regrouping for the new seasonal growing period ahead.  Human animals usually use this time to engage in reflection about the events of the past few months; and to dream about the new directions we would like to take in the next phase of our cycle of evolution.

2020 has been quite the year, hasn’t it? A year for the history books. A year when our lifestyles, events taking place in the outer world and our society slowed way down.  That is not to say that events in individual internal lives slowed down. For some it did. For others it actually sped up, as people experienced confusion, acute anxiety and other busy, often chaotic emotional states. 

As the calendar year known as 2020 comes to an end, many are still lost to their fear, unable to believe in anything other than scarcity.  And of course, that belief in scarcity is mirrored everywhere around us by the society we have created. . .which then further feeds the fear.  For many people there is a frenzied dynamic interplay going on right now, a feeding frenzy, if you would.  Intense emotions are being triggered in their bodies which are then reinforced by irrational belief systems that are then surfacing in their bodies even more pockets of unresolved emotions that then cascade into greater distorted beliefs and on and on.  The amount of hysteria and totally weird conspiracy theories that are being promulgated right now by our national leadership as well as many of its citizens would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

As the foundation for life on Earth vacillates wildly between conditional and unconditional love, transitions from separateness to unity of purpose, from fear to faith in the enduring, unending presence of our Creator, many of us are suffering from acute motion sickness.  

Here in this community known as the Church of the Harvest we’ve been working to keep our head above the waters, in order to swim to the new shorelines; and help others who don’t know how to swim at least dogpaddle or float their way to safety.

We’ve been doing this in these services most recently by talking about the nature of Truth. In other words, that Truth is the sole domain of the All-Mighty.  That for those of us human beings who are made in its image, it is in our nature to seek it, like sunflowers that turn their head towards the Sun, but not to know it in its entirety.  Those who adamantly insist on the Truth before they are actually prepared to hear it, typically scorch and burn up. 

Truth for us is a becoming. . .not an end product.  As such we need to constantly set our intention on staying humble and being open to cultivating as many ways to receive a greater version of Truth from the source of our being as we can. 

As a process truth-seeking also greatly benefits from engaging with as much of our physical reality as we can.  This is because the Sun that we seek shines down on our beloved planet and wants to illuminate all on Earth that can be activated and nurtured by its light and coaxed into growing.

Right now the universe is telling us that we must learn not only the disembodied truth that can be accessed by our minds but the larger truth, that aspect of the Sun that has been embedded in the very rhythm of our breath and the coursing of our heart as the Sun’s energy flows through the structure of our organs, muscles, nerves, tissues, and bones.  In other words, we have to not only be in touch with emerging truth with our mind, we have to learn to experience it in our entire individual body.

In my role as someone who tracks the energy of the collective unconsciousness, as well as the consensual reality–which is the part where we have made agreements on a soul level about what we are going to bring into the physical world–I have been watching closely as America collectively embraces a larger version of the truth about our country, its history and its place in present time.  Like an amphibian or reptile, we have been shedding our old skin and moving into raw, vulnerable new containers with astonishing speed. This new version of the truth, this embodied vision, comes at a price for many.  As greater energy flows through our individual and collective bodies, it often lights up old wounds to be acknowledged and cleared. Thus the pain and agony for many these days.  It’s shock and awe time.    

The interesting part to me has been that the emerging deeper levels of truth are just that.  Contrary to popular opinion, for the most part they are not brand new concepts or ways of approaching life but very old ones that are being re-imagined, re-contextualized, like beautiful old paintings that are suddenly seen as richer, more nuanced because they have been taken out of dirty old frames and instead, surrounded in gold so as to highlight their glory.    

Whether its adding 3,400 Negro League players to the statistics of the Major League Baseball such that their contributions can be honored, taking down monuments to white supremacists, renaming military bases and sports teams or starting the annual New York City Macy Thanksgiving Day parade with a land acknowledgement to the native tribes that lived in the area before being deprived of their homelands, the shifting of perspective is phenomenal. 

Those who are trying to swim against the tide are framing their truth as the USA “rewriting history” or “cancelling its culture.” We are indeed rewriting the history books by including the stories of marginalized individuals and groups that were previously excluded.  We are realigning less expansive cultural stories from center stage to their proper new place on the outskirts.  Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your own version of the truth, some who oppose this opening up of historical perspectives are getting swept out to sea.  The abruptness of the tidal waves of changes with which we are all now engaged, is shocking to us all.  For some, it is jolting us awake. For others, it is just jolting.  Many of the latter are attempting to lighten the load for themselves by closing down their world vision, something dangerously at odds with how the collective energy is moving.

2020 is soon to give way shortly to 2021.  Collectively we have planted a few seeds to begin the growing season ahead; and we still have many more months of dreaming and resting and regrouping before we will have the entire new landscape seeded for the upcoming spring and summer.

Normally at this point in my sermon I make a number of suggestions. This year I have one brief further commentary and one major piece of advice.

The commentary is about pain. For those of you who follow American mythologist Michael Meade’s wisdom, he has been talking about pain a lot lately as well.  I was struck by a posting he did recently that I will quote:

                    “The pain we feel comes from the cross-wise energies that

                   keep curving back and canceling the wise self and the good

                   word that waits to be expressed from within us. Persistent

                   pain is usually the indication that we have become trapped in

                   a life too small for our true nature.”

Because on a soul level we are learning to come more fully into the physical world individually and as a whole, most of us will have more pain to clear as we go through the transformative process.  Don’t be afraid of this. We’ve got the tools we need. The universe has our backs. And this community has your back as well, should you need and desire our help.  As 13th century Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi tells us:  “The cure for the pain is in the pain.” 

And speaking of Rumi, here is my biggest suggestion:  Stay open to new ways of understanding, ways that are beyond your present understanding. They are coming, waiting for us to receive them.  As Rumi said long ago:

                    “The Truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell and broke

                   into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it and they looked at it

                    and thought they had the truth.”

We are beginning to see the natural world with new eyes. Earth has always been a planet whose “destiny” involves paradise. It’s just that the human species who right now are the co-creators with the divine, and therefore have a pivotal part in validating the master plan, have chosen heretofore to be largely out of sync with it and its creator.

Open your heart to the bounty and the beauty of creativity in the truest form it shows up in your life, but do so while acknowledging that only God contains the whole picture. Make your vessel ready to receive as much of it as you desire. 

Copyright 2020 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven