climate change

Whispers From Mother Earth:  Live and Let Live; Live and Let Die

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given at the Autumn Equinox Worship Service on September 24, 2023.

This morning we are going to be working with the energy of communication.  We are going to look at this concept from the largest vantagepoint, that of spirit.

As I like to remind folks in this spiritual community, communication is central to the mission of the Church of the Harvest.  According to our founding documents filed with the Secretary of the State of Washington we exist to “encourage spiritual growth in church members, the community, and the world-at-large by teaching and employing skills that enhance connection and communication with the Creative Source of the Universe.”

Communication as we are going to explore it today. . .has little to do with spoken words. Words can be completely valid in the context of examining physical events. But we are all MUCH BIGGER than that. . .and words often do not do justice to spiritual communication.

Words can often be very reassuring and helpful to our brain and the rest of our physical body. They can illuminate and guide the process of trying to make sense of what we are seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. For spirit though, communication happens through images, not words. Words can slow us down and detour us from where we are trying to go.

Language can illuminate important points and guide us to inner wisdom. “Weave a Million Words,” words by Broms the Poet and art by Amie Crux used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

Spirit is always communicating. It is our natural state, a state that can be associated with joy and enthusiasm. There is SO MUCH communication floating around the airwaves that our bodies can easily become overwhelmed. On any given day, our bodies are the recipient and processor of billions of data interacting with and adding to our already voluminous storehouse of feelings, thoughts, and experiences. And that is just what is going on with our physical sensory systems. I don’t actually know a word for the quantity of data with which we are capable of interacting on a spiritual level. Even the descriptor “infinite” is not really enough.

Handling this amount of information with grace and ease has always been a challenge for human beings. Individuals and cultures have attempted to engage in all this communication in a variety of mostly ineffective ways. Most of us have repeatedly tried to isolate ourselves. Some have created entire lifetimes based on isolation, whether it’s choosing a career like a trapper or explorer in the wilderness, choosing to be born into an area bound by external isolative geographic factors like Mongolia, Tibet or the Artic; or becoming a part of cultures and communities committed to being cut off from the rest of the world like certain religious groups or entire countries such as North Korea.

Some of us try to remain around a multiplicity of others but find individualistic means to isolate, for example by becoming obsessed with the world of video games or social media; living with a disability to cut down the chatter; or getting lost in an addiction. On a society-wide basis various policy makers think erroneously that they can force others to isolate by banning books and access to the internet, shutting down schools financially or physically, or mandating distorted, reductionistic versions of history and culture in the schools and venues that are allowed to operate.  

These are short term “fixes” for a bigger problem. You have only to examine the “lone wolves” of our societies who are increasingly turning to violence; or witness the suffering of a person struggling with mental illness because they are tortured by more data than they have the ability to process, to realize these “fixes” are illusionary. They are fragile and temporary and can easily make things worse in the end. 

Folks, it’s the information age on Mother Earth. It’s the data revolution, the apocalypse when all that is hidden is revealed. It’s the time of AI where machines can work with more of the tangible than humans can; of 4G and stronger communication pathways being hijacked by commercial forces jamming up the collective airwaves in their battle over who is going to control space itself. It’s the time of weird new microorganisms in the very soil beneath our feet, popping into our awareness along with variations of more familiar old ones, sometimes viruses trying to restructure DNA in help us keep up.

We are shifting from the linearity of being obsessed with things; to the circularity of relationship to all of life, requiring a new focus on the basic organicity of nature.

To handle this shift and the increased volume of information that we must negotiate in order to make it, we are going to be required to learn to TRULY communicate. This means that we not only we need to learn to use words constructively with people; but also that we need to learn ALL the ways spirit engages with itself. We need to greatly level up our spiritual communication skills with ourselves, with each other, with all life forms animate and inanimate, with the Creator-of-Us-All and all created order.

That is where meditation comes to play. Those of us in this community and those elsewhere who practice some form of meditation have an edge, a head start, so to speak.

The great thing about sitting down and closing your eyes and turning within, no matter what type of meditation you are using, is that you are placing your physical systems in the back seat as you learn to communicate. Sure, it can be confusing for a while, maybe even a long time, maybe even painful at some points, as one begins to recognize how out-of-touch we have become in our collective groups that do not validate spiritual communication. If you keep going with the practice of turning within though, eventually that ability to communicate naturally begins to develop. You sort out which internal voices are your own, which belong to other beings, both those with physical bodies like family and friends, and those existing purely as spirit. . .and you figure out what you truly have to say.

These days a lot of people are using the phrase “speaking my truth” as a means of inserting their perspective into the conversation. Be very careful. Although this is a grand ideal, it remains out of reach for many or most. It often takes years of healing before one can truly distinguish truth from societal and familial programming. Speaking One’s Truth by Myron Dyal, used by permission of the artist.

I’d like to tell you a story now from a time when I learned a lot about the nature of spiritual communication. Twenty years ago, I was sitting at my desk in our meditation center in Lacey trying to work on some important paperwork. I was having trouble concentrating, something that was atypical for me. I tried to focus on the project but an internal dialogue was going on and building and telling me in no uncertain terms that what I really needed to do was stop working and start meditating. The various voices in my head were fighting with each other with escalating tension. I finally realized my responsibility pictures were losing the war. Not only couldn’t I complete the paperwork, I had become SO frustrated that I found myself wanting to throw something against the walls of the room. Instead, I yelled out loud to some unseen aspect of universe “I give up!” I began to meditate to see what was going on within me, what the message was that was trying to reach me.

Fifteen minutes later, after I had cleared a bunch of energy from my space and was considerably calmer, I called another church member and asked her: “What the hell is global warming? Does it have something to do with the depletion of the ozone layer?” This individual was a biologist who at the time was in charge of a large section of the Olympic National Forest. She responded that she did not know but that she had been seeing that term come through her emails recently, and she would look at the situation and get back to me.

Thus began my journey into understanding what Mother Earth had been trying to tell us/me all along. Please notice though, how spiritual communication works. When the divine needs to speak to us, first it whispers. If we do not pay attention, it sends hints. If we still do not let ourselves receive the message, it speaks more loudly and directly. Eventually if the stakes are big enough, it begins to shout.

Bhatapur, Nepal after their 2015 earthquake. Photo used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

When the social conversation is full of other shouting voices, the message from the one that really matters is not received. The Creator-of-Us-All then often has to pull the plug or take some other drastic measure to get us to pay attention. I have witnessed this dozens of times with my students who sometimes create what I call “crash and burn” scenarios where they have to endure a major health crisis, a car accident, a financial or relationship meltdown, or some such so they notice they have temporarily lost their way.

We’ve all done it. Multiple times. Don’t waste any time on guilt. We have all had those moments where we KNEW better because some little voice was trying tell us that the decision we were about to make, the person with whom we were about to engage, the experience we had just created, was NOT the right decision, person or experience. Nonetheless, we let that voice be drowned out by a cacophony of shoulds, perfect pictures, and various opinions and emotions from others.   

Back to my story, after my own crash-and-burn moment about global warming I spent the next several months and even years trying to understand my role in the collective crisis before us. I reached out to key “ahead-of-their-times” individuals who were discussing global warming. I read everything I could get my hands on in the scientific and popular press. I had returned to graduate school in psychology. That gave me the opportunity to process my increasing panic as I came to terms with the fact that global warming was going to end life as we knew. I turned every paper or project we were required to do into one about “global heating,” (a term that was subsequently abandoned because it was not “friendly” enough for the public to stomach.) I created power points and other presentations for everyone who would listen.

A few individuals who liked to follow my story listened politely. Most did not.

This sculpture entitled “Follow the Leaders” by Spanish visual artist Issac Cordal was created nearly 15 years ago and installed in Berlin in 2011. Cordal has been frequently commenting on climate change and often depicts images of ineffectual politicians. He reminds us that we cannot wait for others in so-called positions of power to change our relationship to Mother Earth. It is up to all of us! Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

Which brings to my second point about how real spiritual communication works, as opposed to just words expressed in the physical world. Spirit is interactional. It is not linear. Both individuals and collections of individuals have free will in regards to what experiences they want to have, including what they want to hear, pay attention to, understand, and work with. If you try to force communication onto others, at best all you get is the deer-in-the-headlights response. At worst you risk invading others energetically and having to deal with physical life consequences and/or karmic ones.

This is a humorous look at the mental trajectory many have been on. Humor can bring emotional relief to very difficult subjects, and thereby open up an avenue for action. Now is the time for action. Image is used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

After I got beat up quite a bit energetically and otherwise by my need to “rescue” the world from global warming, I eventually heard another message from Mother Earth. If I were to put it in words it would be something along the lines of: “This is not your work. This is my place. Your path is elsewhere. Leave it to me to speak with human beings about what must change for them to live in my paradise.”

 

Holy man attempting to honor the Hindu god Ganesh through the polluted waters of the river Yamuna in New Delhi, India where inhabitants do their laundry. In the Indian pantheon, Ganesh is known to be the “remover of all obstacles.” Photo used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

Which brings us to the present time frame. Mother Earth is busy whispering to some, speaking loudly to others, and shouting to many. What I have found fascinating to witness is not so much the collective crash-and-burn scenarios themselves, but the uniqueness of how they are actually received and experienced. Have you noticed that in addition to all the horrific mass casualty events lately that go as expected, there are also plenty of extreme weather events that somehow end up differently than they should “logically?” For example, we have huge destructive tornados that touch down destroying hundreds of homes but leaving a couple of houses or a church nestled in the midst, untouched in a way that cannot be explained by different building materials or landscaping. There are epic hurricanes that total all existing physical structures but against all odds do not harm a single human, even when large numbers of people are silly enough to stay behind.

Without the expanded perspective made possible by a full range of communication, people typically see themselves as separate from Mother Earth. Not so. This image of a mountain range that overlooks Cooper Lake in Woodstock, New York by Mighty Xee is used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

I am in awe of the ability of the universe to craft individual stories within powerful, huge collective events. 

As I watch all this, our human destiny has been a major subject in my ongoing conversations with the Mother Earth aspect of the divine. I know many of you are angry at what humans have chosen to do in our time on the planet; and many of you are pessimistic or even fatalistic about our survival as a species. I have heard the telepathic skepticism when I have failed to endorse the idea that it’s game over on Planet Earth for human beings.

On the other hand, I also know that many of you remain willfully ignorant at what humans have chosen to do in our time on the planet. Some of you who are rigidly optimistic or somehow convinced that our survival as a species is a given, have not appreciated my messages that humans may not survive climate change.

For myself, I have been waiting to hear what Mother Earth herself has to say on the matter. I come to you this morning with the whispering that I have begun to hear from her very recently. Of course, I can’t articulate much of this message, both because it transcends words and because each of you need to and will hear a different version of the message according to the dictates of your heart.

But here is my best attempt:

It’s not too late. It is very late. Humans still stand a chance to remain in the paradise I have created for you, but you must embrace my mystery. I want you to live and let others live. I want you to die and let die. If enough of you can do that, my grace will surround you in ways you cannot yet even imagine.

What does that mean? Again, the meaning here is different for each of us. But here are a few thoughts I have on the subject, take them as you will:

Life is not just a question of breathing in and out. Spirit is fully capable of creating the experience of have a body which is then more-or-less abandoned. Spirit is also fully capable of using the body for what it was designed–as a vehicle for great creativity as can be seen in some artists. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

The life referenced here is not life as we know it currently. It is what some meditators label “lived experience,” which speaks to when spirit is fully or nearly fully embodied in physical form, therefore living out a life rich with creativity, joy, truth, freedom, peace, and social justice/service to others, amidst the full range of human thought and emotion.

Those who have experienced a religious background might use the terminology “born again,” if you can get beyond religious dogma into the essence of what it means to genuinely be reborn into a spiritual perspective.

For this kind of life, one must extend one’s aliveness to every other aspect of the whole. The life talked there is about making every mundane choice an act of sacred worship.

The practice of meditation increases one’s ability to communicate with all life, as this Buddhist practitioner and teacher demonstrated. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Live and let live requires full engagement with all aspects of what God has created. It involves waking up the morning and being grateful for each breath, appreciative of the body giving form to and making possible one’s ability to experience the natural world, despite aches and pains, warts and physical imperfections.

It involves taking good care of the physical form—humans and nonhumans alike–while transcending the limits of said physicality with consistent ongoing awareness of and communication with spiritual reality.  

The death referenced here is not death as we fear it. It is the other part of eternal life, the shedding of old forms in order to make way for rebirth. There will continue to be many other human beings that choose to leave the Planet at this time; and start again afresh another time if they can. It is celebrating their departure, albeit awash with the grief and tragedy of it, and wishing them well in their next steps.

Most of this community know at least theoretically that death of the body is a temporary shift of state. Can you really embrace that truth?

The Old World is Dying but it still can offer solace to those who are attempting spiritual rebirth. Art by Alexandria Dvornikova used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Die and Let Die has also to do with shedding the old collective forms we have developed over the centuries, those that are in conflict with Mother Earth which is almost everything. That is what is new about this time frame. Most everything has to go, or at least be destroyed and reinvented: political and economic systems, health care, housing, transportation and city infrastructure, food generation and delivery, everything.

When our current world order is dead, then we stand a chance. Then Mother Earth can return us to the living Paradise that awaits us. Why? Because creation and destruction are intimately connected.

Human beings can be at their best during moments of great destruction. This 2015 photo by Vladsylav Musiienko entitled “The Human Spirit,” used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals, was taken in Ukraine.

The Planet itself, of course, will continue in any case. The living heart that is the Earth itself will be here for the created order. It is just a question of whether human animals, the species that was given the learning opportunity of leading the world forward in conjunction with the divine can keep pace in this time of re-ordering.

It’s our move.

Raise your glass and give a toast to more communication as we sort out what is possible and what we will ultimately choose. Let’s talk.

Copyright by the Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven, 2023.

Dancing on the Strings of Time; When it comes to Karma, payback is a bitch

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Winter Solstice Worship Service on January 1, 2023.

It could be argued that American singer and songwriter John Denver did not completely master the time element of the time-space continuum. . .but he sure got closer to the Truth than many or most. Through his commitment to Mother Earth he accessed many essentially elements of the All-That-Is and used his clairvoyant abilities to forge a path for the rest of us to follow. It is no coincidence that he is singing here directly to the Russian people in 1985, as the contemporary world reels from the shock of the slaughter of Ukrainians. This battle has been generations in the making. It is a crucial healing opportunity for humans all over the globe as we decide whether to support violent or peaceful solutions to conflict.

Recently I had the opportunity to work in a healing clinic with a young woman in a great deal of torment who was seeking help in regards to her relationship with her family. This woman had a brother who had become the legal guardian of their mother and the mother’s estate; and was blocking contact between the mother and daughter and siphoning off family funds to his own financial benefit. As you could imagine, the woman was in horrendous pain, a big component of which was due to something in psychology we would label cognitive dissonance. She just could not understand what was happening, and it was rocking the very foundation of her worldview.

In these sessions there is a very limited amount of time, usually less than 15 minutes. For me it’s always a question of how I can make the best impact in such a truncated time frame. I watched the other healer in the room talk to the woman about society’s current collective energy space, in which the toxic male is coming out from the corners swinging to eradicate all that could become the sacred feminine. This was a framework the woman could understand somewhat. I could sense she felt a bit of relief from her pain as she recognized she was part of a bigger picture. 

But her central disorientation remained. She wanted to know why the situation was happening specifically to her. On some level she knew that we all as individuals create our own reality, even when we do that in a group context. Spiritually she recognized that there was more to the story than just her family going along with how people are doing things these days. I could see her struggling with guilt and ongoing confusion, and more importantly, I watched her getting lost to the perspective that she was the victim here. This can be a problem in that many seekers after the Truth fall prey to the blame-others game that is so prominent in human cultures. Believing one is a victim can significantly slow down the ultimate resolution for individuals for many years in any one lifetime, or even many lifetimes to come. 

So, what I talked to her about was the fact that she and the soul that is her brother have been in an escalating situation since Babylonia. For centuries they have been playing a kind of psychic ping pong game. I saw the two of them as part of a snowballing joint venture, where the actions of the one led to the next lifetime in which the other had the opportunity to respond in kind or add a different element to the story. They were drawn to each other like moths to a flame both getting burnt over time, without awareness of the full picture.

In other words, the elements of their cosmic dance were not confined to fun adventures. The “good times” were there, but they were increasingly overshadowed by the painful events. Brother and sister had had many mishaps in which they had harmed each other. The sense of betrayal and distrust from these wrongdoings built up and escalated to the point that it overwhelmed the real spiritual connection behind it all, such that in in 2022 the dance had became all about revenge.   

In 2022 and now in 2023 I am increasingly running across folks like this sister and brother, in agony and screaming for help without knowledge of what is causing their distress. Given that we are living in the apocalypse, the time in which all that has been hidden is being revealed, many people are peeling their particular onion, weeping as they go. Individuals who have been victimized through criminal acts or dehumanizing actions are rightfully finding their voice in demanding an end to the abuse. Society as a whole has been working through layer and layer of excruciating heartbreak as we wrestle with the revelations and details of how various groups of people have done horrible things, seemingly inhuman things, to various other groups of people.

Lately I have talked with this community quite a bit about the need for folks to take the healing one step higher, the need to distinguish between justice and revenge. Today I want to add in an important consideration–the dimension of time. Unless you truly understand that time is an illusion, real justice is evasive. Unless you understand that time as an illusion, you are stuck on what some label the carousel of time.     

So back to my story about the healee in a great deal of turmoil about the relationship with her brother.  When I attempted to reframe her situation from what is happening in the contemporary moment to what had been happening over time, she drew a blank. My words did not appear to make sense to her in any immediate sense.  I could hear the telepathic communication from her.  Her response more or less was along the lines of “I don’t know if I believe in reincarnation, but if it is real so what? So what if we have been in relationship since the dawn of civilization, since when does what he is doing now make it OK?”    

Thing is, it doesn’t. Nothing about the choices this brother is making to isolate and exploit the members of his family is OK. That said, what is going to permanently stop the abuse and is going to make possible a real level of healing for all is outside the boundaries of time.

Ironically, one of the main “tricks” to transcending time is to give yourself enough of it. This is because you as spirit exist independent of time even though your body can only really understand life in the present moment. It takes a solid relationship with its “owner” before a body will gracefully go to places it does not understand as life; and it often takes a lot of experience before an energetic spirit will learn to slow down enough to build that relationship. Ultimately, it is all about self-love, people. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

I’ve been at that place where she lives, the place where very little information about time and about how reincarnation really works can get through the massive amounts of societal programming to the contrary.  I understand the mindset where the only thing that is considered real is what has occurred in the life experience of the body in which one is inhabiting. Decades ago as a seminary student I did over two years of reading hundreds of past lives in others. The only way I could make sense of what I was seeing was by setting aside the strident, outraged objections from my analyzer about how crazy what was coming out of my mouth sounded. I knew I had to be true to myself and the person I was reading in the sense of accurately describing what I was seeing. Disconnecting my brain from my mouth was the only I could figure out to not let my cognitive dissonance destroy what I recognized as my vital, emerging spiritual perspective.   

Many Eastern religions that recognize reincarnation often talk about Maya the “veil of forgetfulness,” the energy that works to protect human beings by helping us forget our past life experiences, and thereby not get lost to all that we have thought, felt and done over sometimes millennia. But the thing is, the energy of this veil itself is shifting under the apocalypse, the great time of revelations. It is no longer universally protective for us to forget what has occurred through other of our physical bodies. We have more important challenges now. . .challenges related to finding entire new ways of making sense of the world around us.

As much as I get overwhelmed episodically like the rest of humanity, I have to say I am glad for the new challenges. I don’t know about you, but I personally do not want to explore the same lessons over and over and over and over and over and over again because I keep forgetting what I learned. Yes, the infinite Godhead who operates outside of time and space allows spirit who has incorporated into a human body to reexperience toxic relationships with ourselves, each other and the environment around us as much as we want, as many generations and lifetimes as we desire. But know this–some of us are figuring out that we no longer value chaos and pain as the price of our forgetfulness.      

Mastery of time involves accessing the past with discernment, setting your intention for the future, while living as fully as possible in the present moment. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

In the present time frame, enough of us are saying enough is enough. Most are not aware that it is time we are attempting to transcend. We just know our individual and collective lives seem at best, like a hamster madly dashing-on-its-wheel-for hours-or-at-least-until-it-is-exhausted kind of thing, getting nowhere real; at worst a painfilled death-enhancing rat race with others. Many want to jump off the wheel, that carousel of time.

Folks in the Eastern part of the globe often recognize that the wheel upon which they are stuck has to do with time, or what is often referred to as karma. Before you get inundated with perfect pictures or illusions that those folks have it all together about karma though, let me assure you otherwise. As someone who has recently been binge watching dozens of Netflix series from Japan, China and Korea, most of which directly explore spiritual themes like the astral plane, ghosts, guides, demons and other spiritual players, reincarnation, and the afterlife, I can tell you this is definitely not the case. These cultures may have a significant heads up when it comes to openness towards considering concepts about karma. However, they are no farther along with fully incorporating how to work with it; how to resolve it from a place of neutrality. I would love to teach a few million people in Asia how to approach embodied life on Mother Earth from the center of one’s head. 

Ironically, we do not have enough time in our short worship service today to explore much of what karma is and what it is not. So let me jump to a bottom line. If you think something bad that is happening to you or someone else needs to be met with some kind of payback; if you find yourself thinking some distressing event is due to your karma or some one else’s, you are still lost to the spinning of the wheel of time.   

Both action and nonaction can create karma, as they can both lead to other events that at another time need to be resolved. In the current time frame, there is a myriad amount of hurt we are trying to purge from our individual and collective soul from our ignoring of historical social injustice played out between individuals, countries, ethic groups, and other human societies. Just be sure that whatever action or inaction you are choosing as a consequence for the past does not continue the strife. As Martin Luther King Jr. frequently reminded us, only love can resolve hate. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

Whether you use the increasingly old-fashioned term “ego” to describe that stuck place where the hurt seems bigger than the solutions; whether you are now talking about the solutions for individual trauma or “complex trauma” for extraordinarily harmful events; whether you are focused on multigenerational transmission of limiting concepts like scarcity and hatred; or whether you are fond of working through a big-picture symbol such as Kali, the dark Mother Goddess–it’s all about time. After all, in the Hindu pantheon Kali is not only the ultimate energy behind both creation and destruction. She is also known as the Goddess of Time. Why? Because spirit cannot fully explore creation and destruction without also mastering time.

So, what did I do with my healee who did not understand the dance with which she and her brother have been engaged?  I cleared the pain from her energetic body so she had the best possible chance at ultimately getting beyond the blame-game. I considered sharing something of my own story of my brother’s abject treatment towards me, which included stealing several thousand dollars of my inheritance. She might have felt less alone if I did, but I realized that she had already gotten some of that sense of connection. The next important step in her healing had more to do with other things. Rather, telepathically from soul-to-soul I thanked her profusely for bringing up my matching pictures in regards to my hate-filled brother.  And then I planted what seeds she might find useful for a a new way to look at the situation. I worked with her future self for when she is ready to address what she has been creating with her brother for 4,000 years.

  

As to those of you here today and here at some point in the future, this is what I have to say about transcending time. Learn to dance. Give up the marching towards an endlessly-repeating cycle in which others are in charge of the reality you are creating over all eternity. Rather, tiptoe your own way through the tulips, lightly, with as much awareness and amusement as you can muster.

Image of the Solar Plexis or Third Chakra by Brenda Erickson used in accordance with Fair Use Principals. When the soul has cleared enough programming that says power over other people is useful or even needed, that soul can get to using the third chakra for what it was designed: locomotion through the physical world. As you move your body you make the choices of how to do so. You can do so by marching in lockstep or flail around seemingly randomly. You can move to the tune of others or make up your own music. You can dance gracefully nimbly around the veil of time or stick to a particular frame of reference. You can dance solo, in line with others, or in a highly interactive format like the waltz or tango.

Fox trot, do the Texas two step, swing your arms around madly in your private space, I don’t care. Just get out there and dance. Move that body. Listen for the beat of the music. Be in the present moment as fully as you can, and notice what sensations you get from your body where the past has perhaps dulled your aliveness. And then dance some more, lightly. Live that life, noticing the flow, changing steps as you need for your healing. Explore your essence to whatever extent you can. Let the rest play itself out.

You have all the tools you need. You know what to do if you falter or miss the beat. You have the life-affirming support of those in this community and in other spiritual and other kinds of communities, including in the spirit world. You have the blessings and full and ever-present support of your Creator to meet any and all stumbling steps and as-of-yet unmet challenges.

Dance on the strings of time like your life depends upon it.

(Pro Tip: Please feel free to listen to this beautiful song with discernment. In other words, absorb the intent of the song and save triggered thoughts and feelings either for or against the concept of God being presented as masculine, kneeling as a form of surrender, prayer as the major means to change, etc. for your healing meditations.) Thanks be to Reba and Lauren et. al. for this important reminder that we are seeking to return to Paradise.

Copyrighted by the Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven, 2023.

Death of the Old World; Birth of the New

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Autumn Equinox Worship Service on September 25, 2022.

Here we are at the autumn equinox, a time harvesting and storing the summer’s fruits and vegetables, beginning to feel the seasonal Halloween effects as the intersection between the spiritual and the physical world gets thinner, for many of us transitioning into having more time at home when there are often longer periods of rest and recuperation from the days behind us and opportunities for dreams of the days ahead.

This year is a particularly poignant time for reflection, for the review of what we have individually harvested in our lives in 2022, as well as the hopes and the fears and the curiosity of what we may be sowing for the seasons in 2023. 

There is more to be examined and discussed because collectively there is more going on than ever before in the collective space. The ending-old-cycles and creating-of-new-ones that individuals always go through at this time of the year, is currently being massively magnified by this also being played out in the world-at-large.

Human beings may arguably be in the middle of the most important transition we have experienced for at least 2,000 years. Endless discussion and debate are happening in the astral plane right now about what we want to be creating as a whole for human animals and other life on Planet Earth.  More controversies are at play, some are at war. More of our mutual past is being reviewed, cleared or updated and/or resisted than most of us have previously experienced processing.  And of course, our weary physical bodies feel the effects of all this on top of meeting our everyday challenges.  The consensus reality these days is very busy trying to make sense of a physical world it no longer recognizes.

It is human animals who are the most at risk as a form of life, when we denigrate and destroy Mother Earth. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

In this community of healers most of you know that the tricky part of growth periods is almost always that intense final rush right before the completion of the cycle. This is the point where we start to really understand that the patterns that have carried us here no longer work and cannot and will not continue. Regrettably though, this is also the point in which we cannot see our way forward, since it’s all a new game. As Albert Einstein is said to have put it:  We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Additionally, it’s at this point in the growth period that things can get particularly dangerous. Many human beings do not do well with fear, with uncertainty. Their resistance to change makes the changes much worse. Thus, they seek to escape a world they do not understand through substances, destructive relationships, illnesses, accidents, delusional ideation or impulsive actions. Many who are unwilling or cannot tolerate the changes human civilization is currently undergoing have already left.  Many more will do so in the coming months.

We are truly at the tipping point. But not the tipping point about which climate activists talk. The tipping point we are experiencing right now is infinitely more profound. It is a spiritual tipping point. It is being felt and experienced by every individual on the planet, recognized by few. It is a preordained shift in human consciousness, taking many forms, leading us as the species on Mother Earth that currently determines the quality of life, to a place of decisions.

Photo used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

You can frame this point in human evolution a number of different ways.  I’m fond of talking about it as the shift from the toxic male to the sacred female that has been happening in people no matter the gender of their body. Worldwide society has been rapidly transitioning from the wars and competition for greed and power and exploitation of all life on Earth that is sick version of the male aspect in every person. . .to the cooperative, creative, nurturing version of the healthy female aspect in every person.  

There are other viewpoints that are equally valid and useful in talking about this shift in human evolution.  Some of those differing perspectives were mentioned in the invocation from the Gospel of Thomas, multiple examples of which can be seen any day one tunes into the news. 

When Jesus was talking in this passage about the two being made into one, the reference here was from the shift in human consciousness of seeing others as outsiders to simultaneously seeing others as a different version of oneself.  When Jesus talked about making the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, he was validating our apocalyptic digital age environment in which everything that has been hidden becomes revealed, whether it be the genocide of indigenous populations in Canadian and North American boarding schools, or the theft aka “storage dispute” of top-secret governmental documents at Mar-A-Lago.

To understand Jesus’s reference to the upper like the lower, you need look no further than the culture wars that have blown up recently in the United States in regards to state rights versus versus federal rights; or the dictators around the world who are struggling to maintain their grip on the people beneath them as the energy moves downward.

We are tipping over into a new world.

Every quarter when it is time for another worship service, I usually tune into what this community says about what it sees as its next step, what theme people want to explore in our joint healing adventure. This equinox though, something happened that has only happened once before. The universe told me the theme:  Death of the Old World, Birth of the New.

The Old World is dying but it still can offer solace to those who are attempting spiritual rebirth. Art by Alexandria Dvornikova used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

It was a gift from the universe to this powerful group of healers. The universe wants us to prepare, not in the way of preppers who address their fears by building bomb shelters or storing dehydrated food.  Not preparation in the form of surrendering to comforting but false belief systems like QAnon or other conspiracy theorists, or even belief in the rapture like those who participated in my dissertation study, bless their hearts, who were trying to manage their fear by assuming Jesus would whisk them away from a dying planet at some final hour.

The universe wants this community to prepare as we always do, by grounding, working in our individual space with our own energy system, healing our way to more completeness, growing closer individually to the God of our Heart, one step at a time. . .and thereby helping others as we go.

We are to get even more ready for a future we cannot yet see, get stronger, clearer, more integrated within ourselves, more physically and mentally healthy, and more able to work with each other in harmony and ease.

You see, the final battle being played out, Armageddon if you will, is within each one of us, the energy of which gets magnified and radiated externally into shared space. But as always, it starts with each one of us. 

So how exactly does any one individual work through Armageddon?  What do you need to know?  What do you need to keep in mind?

The roadmap for each is different, although there will be common themes among us. I can’t tell you specifically what you are going to experience as you explore your own space, what keeps you still in conflict with yourself, unable to be aware of the dictates of the indwelling God, struggling to understand why others around you are reflecting back strife and unhappiness. But I can perhaps offer some clues by sharing one exploration of an Armageddon process that has begun to unfold in my life.

When I asked the universe how I needed to prepare, what came back was a handful of words from an obscure sentence in the Sermon of the Mount. What I mean by “obscure” is that I had personally had no interest in this teaching previously. I have had a minimum of interest in the Sermon on the Mount in general, and no interest in truly understanding this particular phrase.  However, lately this phase has been ringing in my mind like the church bells on Sunday I used to hear when I lived in Europe.  Loud, reverberating through every fiber of my body, seemingly never-ending until I heed the call. The phrase? The meek shall inherit the earth.

The thing is, Eashoa was a master of everything energetic. He knew how to transcend time and space completely, as well as how to dwell in it with others who were unaware of the spiritual realm.  And so, he knew how to encode spirit into words on so many levels that people from various levels of consciousness in wildly divergent cultures existing in different time periods could get his meaning to the extent their individual embodied life experience allowed.  It was and is of no great concern to him if a few individuals actually heard what he said at the actual occurrence of the Sermon of the Mount in real time, or if he was just planting the seeds for the people who would be able to receive his message two thousand years later.  

Time is a universal social construct only in the physical world. Even then, it can be experienced by individuals in vastly unique ways. In the spiritual realm, time is an illusion. Successfully negotiating time everywhere is an advanced skill open to all but mastered by few. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Have you ever had those moments–we often label them epiphanies–when something you’ve heard numerous times suddenly makes sense to you? This is simply when your consciousness has grown enough that it can finally contain the meaning of the words or the event. 

Let me tell you my epiphany about how I personally need to prepare for the Armageddon of my soul. I want to read the words to which I am referencing in context.  I’m going to repeat an expanded version here from Matthew, Chapter 5, Verses 3 to 8, translated from the Aramaic by George Lamsa:

            Blessed are the unassuming, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

            Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted

            Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth

            Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice for they shall be well satisfied.

            Blessed are the merciful, for they shall have mercy.

            Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 

I have heard many things in these words lately that I did not hear before. I hear the echoes of the Black Lives Matter, the Me-Too Movement and other waves of recent social protest.  I hear the anguished cries of Ukraine, Sandy Hook and other mass shooting events, the flooding of Pakistan and Puerto Rico, the frightening despair of those who are working through ancestral memories of the internment of Japanese citizens during World War 2, the murders of forgotten Native American women and the Holocaust. I hear The Christ advising us to look these wrongs straight on, shed the seemingly endless tears, and work diligently to make our heart space big enough to contain it all.

In regards to those pesky words that have been haunting me recently, that stuff about the meek inheriting the earth–mostly, I had to clear some energy from folks who did not want me to learn from within my body what it REALLY means to turn the other cheek.  I had to get beyond how triggered I was by the word “meek.”

Turns out meek is not about being passive. . .or silent. A translation of the concept that resonated with me that I eventually uncovered is that a meek person is one who endures injury with patience and without resentment, as in a mild-tempered child who does not respond to bullies by passing the hurt onto others but rather by taking on the hurt in their own space in a time-honoring pace. In other words, the meek are those who may respond to wrongdoing a number of ways over time from a place of neutrality, not revenge.  This is certainly an area where I have more to learn.

Finally, the inherit the earth part. The reverberations here were easier for me to discern. Jesus talked about the upper and lower becoming one. The American Franciscan priest Richard Rohr talks about our need in the present time frame to “grow down.” Rohr uses the words Yin (down) with the Yang (up). He encourages us to be more human, to be embodied in a community of others who are working with the deeper levels of pain and confusion; and embrace the paradoxes.  

Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

As Rohr tells it: “Human consciousness does not emerge at any depth except through struggling with our shadow. It is in facing our conflicts, criticisms, and contradictions that we grow. It is in the struggle with our shadow self, with failure, or with wounding that we break into higher levels of consciousness.”

We have to grow down towards Mother Earth, enveloping whatever is a necessary correlation showing up in our physical body in the process. . .and then, and only then, the world around us becomes truly ours. 

So, brethren, Happy Autumn Equinox. I am going to leave you with more words. These are from Henry David Thoreau.

Live each season as it passes. Breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the Earth.

In doing so as you work through whatever it is you are working through, you will surely inherit the Earth; and help all of us birth the New World.

Copyrighted 2022 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

Justice, Mercy, Kindness and Karma, Part I

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Summer Solstice Worship Service  on June 22, 2020

Hello.  I’m glad to see you all at the 2020 Summer Solstice Service of the Church of the Harvest.  My job as Presiding Minister of this spiritual community is to tune into the energy of the group, and do whatever I can to bring it to the next higher level.  I offer my personal perspective as a way of doing that, hoping to awaken the truth that is contained within your heart and your mind.  Today my topic is broad-ranging.  Please know that each of you absolutely has my blessing to use any of these words that resonate with you, and discard the rest.  Above all in this Church we believe in free will.  By that I don’t mean freedom to act however you want to act towards others around you.  What I specifically mean is freedom to feel whatever you want to feel, believe whatever you want to believe; and act in accordance with other people in a manner that also honors their essential freedom. 

It is always a challenge for me to write and deliver these sermons.  Spiritual reality is never fully explored through the medium of words, but under the best of circumstances we can dance with words in a way that allows dancers to sense the melodies within their eardrums and feel the rhythms in their bones.  So please forgive me if I dance around our topic. . . because it is too big and too rich to be fully captured by words.  You are invited in as I try to encapsulate what I believe is true about the spiritual journey upon which we are engaged in the present moment.

Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Let me start by talking about why I am framing this sermon as occurring in the “days of reckoning.”  Most of you present today know that I have speaking for many months, several years even, about the end times, and as well as the apocalyptic times.  If you heard me, you will also likely remember that I do not believe the end times necessarily mean the end of the physical world, only that the world as human beings have known it is ending.  The word apocalypse comes from the Greek. It translates simply as the unfolding of things not previously known.

For most people, there is a lot of scary energy on the phrase “the end times” as well as on the word “apocalypse.”  Likewise, there is a great deal of fear for many people when they hear the phrase “the days of reckoning.”  That is because for most people these three concepts are all firmly associated with religious dogma, mostly in regards to the abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  As such, these phrases are fraught with the assumption that we are sinful, about to be judged and most of us found horribly wanting, soon to be condemned to deep, endless amounts of suffering.  

In my meditations I have spent considerable time stripping away religious programming from my energy system.   For me, these ideas are no longer a source of anxiety. I am happy that the Creator-of-Us-All is dissolving our illusions through the apocalypse.  I was never very good at living the lies with which most people seem to be content. The end times for me personally seem to be bringing an end to my suffering, the completion of a journey of many lifetimes of brokenness in which my sense of living in the hell-of-my-own-choosing far outpaced those few moments of heaven-on-earth that I could manage to create for myself. 

In the world of energy there is no time. We are all going to the same place but our individual journey towards that place depends on the choices we make along the way, including our sequencing and timetable. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles

As to the days of reckoning, let me just say that it is very clear to me that our God is a loving God that does need to judge.  We humans do a more than adequate job of that all on our own.   

What happens when you put all these ideas together?  What are the days of reckoning. . .if they are not the time after death as Muslims and Christians are told in which one has to account for one’s actions before God in order to determine whether you go to heaven or hell?  Stripped of religious programming, a reckoning is simply a time when people are forced to deal with unpleasant situations which they have avoided until that day.  A reckoning is a settling of accounts.

 

 

 

 

When are the days of reckoning? Typically they occur when an entire people are forced to deal with that which previously they as a group have avoided confronting.  You know. . .like what is currently happening with a lot of white people who were previously not really required to notice that they had certain resources and opportunities largely unavailable to people of color. Or what is happening for the more economically privileged around the globe who previously could pretend that destruction and exploitation of the environment was a problem for other people until the entire climate of the planet began to crash and effect them as well.  This is the apocalypse at work, the dying of illusions.  These are the true end times, the end of centuries-long chapters of human evolution.

I want to jump now to another concept, one that is currently consuming the national conversation and saturating the energetic airwaves.  Let’s talk about justice.  If you watch any news broadcast, participate in any social media, interact with the public in almost any context, you are going to be having conversations about justice.  Suddenly everything seems to be about social justice.       

One of the things that interests me about these conversations that people are having on the streets and in the media is how closely the concept of justice is being paired with the idea of people speaking up.  Over and over you will hear people say how vital it is, how important for people to speak up.  Many times folks don’t really even know what they want to say. . .as they busily extoll each other to speak their minds. We are searching for our collective voice, even when we don’t know what we want to do with it. 

The emphasis here is on the collective part. Previously some individuals have been vocal.  Whether or not they were truly heard is another matter but they had the opportunity and/or the desire to express themselves.  But as a collective body human beings have usually only come together as a group to express themselves in opposition to another tribe. The human brain has always overwhelmingly done an us-versus-them kind of thing when expressing group norms.

This is what we are changing. What is new here and now is our coming together to express unity rather than division.  We may not know what true unity really looks like as of yet, and we’re not very good at it so far, but we’re doing our damndest to try to figure it out. The implications for this shift are enormous. The result of this task will be to create a new world order. 

Justice, aka a place in society for all. is always inclusionary. One can see from the heated debate going on in the United States right now that what is or is not every person’s right is a topic upon which we still significantly lack agreement. Our collective political, religious and other systems need to “catch up” with the “golden rule” aspect that is fundamental in all world religions. Image by Mary Engelbreit used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Those present today will understand some of the ramifications of what I mean when I say that human beings all around the globe as a group, are attempting to bring into their physical bodies the highest vibration of energy which is founded on all of us being connected.  Last year the consensus reality, that is to say all of us on a spiritual level, made the decision to rewire the world into one based on love. Right now we are taking the first real step in bringing that commitment into the physical world, right down through our emboded individual energy systems as we talk to ourselves and each other about what that real unity will take, what that will look like.     

In recent history we had the first major wave of this new commitment to collective expression when gay men and lesbians were given the political green light to come out of the closet, the oppressive cloak of invisibility they had endured for centuries. More recently the #MeTooMovement encouraged women to explore their truth and men were told to take a back seat, listen and learn.  Those conversations involved communication. . . but they weren’t yet contextualized in the intention of unity. The latest cultural shift, this spotlighting the stories of black people and other people of color is a double whammy.  It is shifting both the message and the medium.  

Huge assemblies of people are marching together through our urban centers, often without clarity about why they are marching.  They walk under the banner of “Black Lives Matter” and articulate that they want justice in the form of an end to racism, but it is clear that there is so much more to their message. 

There is accompanying conversation about the police which is framed using a variety of filters such as police tactics, accountability, reform, brutality, etc. The police are the boots-on-the-ground highly visible reminder of the justice system.  Law enforcement serve as the tangible symbol of law and order, an order that is seen by most as overdue for an update. The interactions between police and protestors vary widely as a result not only of the personal experience of the individuals and communities involved but also the meaning those individuals and communities read into the symbol. 

Which brings us to the other aspect that fascinates me about the vibrant national dialogue we are having in the United States these days centering around justice. Journalists and other witnesses have commented upon, but I have not seen them really able to interpret the significance of the fact that the public protests are largely leaderless.  These events typically have initial organizers of sorts and periodic visible key players pop up and often disappear again but the groups are essentially coming together and going about their business with a degree of spontaneity and fluidity between huge, divergent elements not usually seen in protest movements. 

Mass movement without direction from a handful of individuals is consistent with the top-down shift of energy I’ve been talking about for awhile.  I’ve been watching the energy move downward, closer to Earth, not only in the protestors but now in the police. Even a year ago it would have been unthinkable for police officers to publicly disagree with each other. The code of silence subscribed to by those in that line of work was rock solid as a result of the perception that such group solidarity was necessary for the welfare of all, to protect members of the profession from a challenging and dangerous job.  Suddenly all over the country, individual and small local groups of police are “breaking ranks” to take differing and sometimes contradictory positions in the discussion about justice.  

The energetic shift from power being welded from the top levels to the lower levels, specifically from national and international forces to state and local forces, is the tidal wave of the future. It is consistent with and necessary for the huge shift of consciousness going on currently for human animals.  The universe is moving us from being dominated by tribal thinking to each of us finding our own individual truth as individuals within collective society. 

Many people are emotionally and cognitively devastated by this change. The anxiety and outright paranoia is enormous as people discover they can no longer rely on the religious, political and social figures and organizations they have always used to tell them what’s up. We have to break down our reliance on others to tell us what to think and feel and do. . .so we can develop the skills and abilities to manifest our own individual creativity. . .and join it with the creativity of others for common goals required to meet our present world-wide challenges.   It has been and will continue to be a really rough ride for those individuals to make sense of the changing world who do not have the experience and lack basic skills on finding their own truth.

But if you think confronting and ending systemic racism is an overwhelming task, wait until you see in the days ahead what we have to do in order to end systemic economic injustice; and what is going to be required to keep the planet from continuing to slide into a terminal tailspin.  

In human society justice is truly a concept whose time has come due. People around the world are calling for it in increasingly passionate voice. This image of Justice used in accordance with Fair Use Principles is from Palestinian artist Malak Mattar who is currently a refugee. She first started painting at age 13, during the 51-day Israeli military assault on on her homeland in Gaza in 2014.

The protests around the country are often described as “passionate” and I hear a lot of participants talking in rather vague but deeply-held language about desiring change. As a people we are trying out new abilities to speak in one voice from different life experiences.  The universe is speaking within us and through us even as few understand as of yet what is being channeled.  What is uniting those on the streets and those participating by their witnessing right now is not message or even motive as much as something much more profound and fundamental.  

To focus on what I believe is the energetic core to these demonstrations; I’d like to return to invocation used at the start of this service. Let me repeat it. This is the statement from the Christ speaking about the end times in which we are living. This is from Verse 10 of the Gospel of Thomas:

            “I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I’m guarding it until it blazes.”

Elsewhere in both Luke and Matthew of the Christian Bible, Jesus talks about a time of turbulence that would bring division to households, between father and son, mother and daughter, etc.  Jesus was all about applying the love of his father to everyone, no exceptions. He understood that this would take a burning away of social norms. He was always the social revolutionary when it came to modeling for others and urging them to follow him as he challenged tribal thinking that held tightly to the domination of the many by the few.  As he blazed a trail for us, he made clear that it would be a fiery one.  So here we are, folks. Welcome to the reckoning.     

I like the Thomas citation because to me, it also speaks to the emotional passion of the protests. Our world is on fire right now, both literally with periodic wildfires breaking out all around the natural world. . .and metaphorically.  Individuals and our society as a whole are experiencing the bonfire of the vanities, a holy fire, if you will. 

Image by Elise Huther used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

We are burning away the essential impurities that must be released it we are to survive.  The passion of these crowds that are protesting around the globe in the name of justice is a kind of collective rage built upon a foundation masking deep, deep sorrow. We have a lot of thoughts and feelings to process, an ocean of rage against the world we have created as a species.  This is the same righteous anger that had the Christ overturning the tables of the moneylenders in the temple.  We tend to think it’s about others but at its core, this anger is the natural consequence of having defiled the sacred with our profane need to exploit each other.  

For some of the protestors and many of the politicians and others commenting on them, this fire quickly loses its essential heat and illumination, and devolves into the petty squabbles of the blame-game.  Lots of folks are getting stuck on an old testament vib of guilt and shame and punishment.  At its spiritual essence though, this righteous anger is paving the way for everyone to have a seat at the table, not just the powerful, the elite, the privileged. 

Benjamin Franklin, that iconoclastic rascal of an American founding father talked about the importance of passion igniting true change  Let the outrage play out its part.

Welcome these fires of transformation, and let them burn through your life.

The world is in a 5th chakra growth period. It does not matter that most do not really understand the nitty-gritty of what they are protesting.

Spirit communicates through images. Learning to add words to the mix is an acquired taste that takes skill development. This is true both for individuals and groups of individuals. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles

The first stages to owning the upper three chakras in our collective energy system has to be with opening them, and letting whatever they contain spill out. It doesn’t matter that we don’t yet know what we want to change into. We can figure that out as we go. It’s enough for now that we are open-hearted as the universe moves us, like crucial chess pieces, into the right positions to be available for its mercy.  

 

 

 

I want to remind the people here today as well as those tuning in at a later time, that we each have a part to play here.  There are no coincidences. The protests are showing up in your life because you also have fifth chakra movement to make.  Take inventory of your communication ability and find out where you need to grow.  If you are one who has spent time in the language of emotion, help others learn to regulate theirs.  Model for others as you identify your own emotions, separate what is yours from what belongs to others, express your genuine emotions without using them to attack, and maybe even help people learn that the emotional system is simply a means of communication between the individual soul and its physical body.  On an spiritual level it is not really about other people.

Speaking One’s Truth by Myron Dyal, used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

If you are one who is cautious with your words, typically expressing your true thoughts and feelings only to a few or only to those who will agree with you, take a few calculated risks and expand your repertoire of experience. 

 

 

 

 

One of the most powerful means for healing yourself and others requires no words. The witness is an underappreciated, often incredibly profound agent of change. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

If you have no trouble speaking up, maybe you need to learn to listen more or more effectively with people from a different cultural experiences than your own. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And pretty much all of us need to learn to be more gentle, more kind. . .even as we hold feet to the fire for ourselves and any of our brethren who are resisting a more just society.        

Used in accordance with Fair Use Principles

In 1968 Martin Luther King spoke to an elite section of Detroit about nearby riots going on in the city.  He was nearly drowned out by the heckling when he dared to put into words the fact that the economic and social plight of African Americans had worsened in the previous years and promises of justice from a white culture were not being met. He told the crowd that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” He was assassinated three weeks later.  We are listening now, Martin.

As spirit we move through the natural world that includes time and space.  Our bodies, which are a physical manifestation of the natural world require time and space.  The universe has grown weary of our tendency to kill each other when we disagree with one another even if the battle being fought needs to happen.  We are being called right now to both address injustices and to do so in a way that honors life. 

For many thousands of years, human animals have equated survival with domination over other groups of humans. It is time to update our thinking. Cartoon by Man Martin used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

That is the essence of leaving behind tribal thinking in which one group tries to overpower another group. Getting to a higher plane is going to take many new experiences starting with new levels of interactive communication.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not at all saying that we stop at the communications level.  Just speaking up about racism and other forms of social injustice is a good start but is entirely insufficient by itself.  It is no more appropriate to just mouth apologies and epiphanies about systemic racism then it is to offer thoughts as prayers as a solution to gun violence. Having the necessary discussions is just the first part. Translating thoughts and feelings into action is the end game and it can’t come soon enough.

The world is in a great deal of turmoil in part because human animals keep trying to use our limited brain capacity to negotiate an increasingly complicated path. To survive we area going to need to learn new ways of processing issues, develop new epistemological strategies and cultivate humility. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

We need to fix the obvious and immediate problems as quickly as we can; but not rush to judgment about complex actions and policies that require careful dissection and extensive public discussion.  Knee-jerk reactions are not helpful.

Now is the time for a new kind of diversity, not just one of basic role equality and opportunity but diversity of thoughts and feelings.  But be careful . . .because true change does not arise from a place of judgment. The medium has to match the message.  Otherwise you are just swapping one illusion for another. If you are demanding justice, it is likely not justice you are seeking. It is revenge.    

In this assembly we will talk at a later date about developing our other collective upper chakras including folding in mercy and kindness and stepping off the carousel of karma.  But for now, let us join people all around the world in the direction gracefully captured by these words from the great poet Maya Angelou: 

If you’re not angry, you’re either a stone or you’re too sick to be angry. You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host.  So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.”      

Copyright 2020 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

 

 

 

Listening to the Mountains; Honoring Mother Earth

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Spring Equinox Worship Service  March 22, 2020

In Greek mythology there is a story about how the seasons came to be created that is worth retelling this morning.  According to early Greek culture, Demeter, the Goddess of Harmony and Fertility, had a child with Zeus, God of the Sky, King of all the Gods.  Their daughter Persephone was a beautiful young woman, if somewhat naïve.  Demeter was overprotective and usually kept her daughter very close.

One of the other Gods, Hades, who ruled the underworld, fell in love with Persephone.  Zeus had promised Hades that he could wed one of Zeus’s daughters but Hades knew that Demeter would never allow the marriage. . .so one day when Persephone was in a field picking flowers by herself, Hades showed up, kidnapped her and took her to his kingdom beneath the earth.

Demeter didn’t know what had happened to her daughter and was extremely distraught. She spent all her time weeping and searching endlessly.  As the months went on, all the plants and animals on Earth withered and died because Demeter completely neglected her duty to tend to them.  In order to save humanity who depended on the plants and animals Zeus realized he had to intervene so he brokered a deal between Hades and Demeter.

In this classic 1891 painting from Frederic Leighton entitled “The Return of Persephone,” the Goddess is returned by Hades to the arms of her mother so that spring and new life can come again to the Earth. Painting used in accordance with Fair Use principals.

From then on Persephone lived with her mother six months out of the year which is when the Earth experiences spring and summer; and with the husband she eventually fell in love the other six months, which is when we experience fall and winter.

Origin stories are always rich conveyers of spiritual truth, using symbols to remind humans of what we need to understand to act as spirit in the material world.  Greek and Roman mythological tales are particularly important to those of us in the United States since they reflect the thought forms upon which Western civilization was founded.

There are many important messages imbedded in the story of Demeter and Persephone but the one I want to direct your attention to this morning is the theme of the Earth dying; and being resurrected again when fertility in the form of the Goddess of Spring returns after a period underground.

We are indeed loved by thousands. Not only do we “stand on their shoulders” in regards to any movement we make forward, we also have them always with us and accessible to us if we know how to tune into the spiritual world. Spirit knows no time or place. Image used in accordance with Fair Use principals.

Persephone spent time in Hades but Hades was not an evil place like we Westerners might assume. To the Greeks, Hades was simply a resting place for the dead.  Death itself was not resisted and rejected in the same way we approach it in the “New World.” Hades was a place for the ancestors and also for the unseen.  From a psychological perspective, one might say that Hades was the residence of the collective unconscious, a place where thoughts and feelings reside until they can be acknowledged and brought back into the light.

 

 

 

 

So here we are on Planet Earth.  In the calendar year 2020 we have just entered springtime. This isn’t the usual springtime of daffodils and baby bunnies, though, because in this calendar year we are also beginning a new phase of human consciousness.

Many are still in Hades, struggling to find their way out of the depth of unconsciousness represented by that formidable location.  Those who have been working to become aware of and heal uncomfortable aspects that in our guilt and shame we previously buried, have a heads start on emerging from the underworld into the fertility that is Gaia.

Many of us have even been focused on our healing long enough that we are beginning to effectively work more consciously with the ancestors, angels, saints and other non-embodied spiritual presences that have always lived alongside of us, been available and been waiting for our invitation to join us in the abundance that is Mother Earth. Some of us are even on the threshold of learning to bend time, a necessity for the human race to persevere.

One of the ways I find myself thinking about the world right now is that our illusions are being forcefully stripped away so we can find our way back to Mother Earth if we so choose. For many this is a violent and painful process, in part because their individual foundation for changes of the magnitude of this kind is not yet in place.

Many people are finding it very emotionally difficult to shelter-in-place, a key component of physical safety right now. It has been a wake-up call for them to discover how much they have depended on busyness to distract them. Loneliness is one of the most painful kinds of intrapsychic pain. The good news though, is that it is also one of the biggest lies on Planet Earth. You are never alone, even if you live by yourself. Loneliness is one the illusions that is being stripped from those who have been avoiding turning within.

For some the resistance to change is too entrenched, and/or the pain is too great and the choice is being made to leave the Planet altogether, in hopes for a new beginning at another time.

People who are waiting to be rescued by others are learning they must find the creativity within themselves and their immediate surrounding community to withstand the ongoing forces of hurricanes and tornadoes, fires and floods and famine and the like.  Some folks like those of us in the Pacific Northwest who have been privileged to avoid the worst of climate change are discovering that we don’t get to fail to connect the dots to other people and retreat into “life as usual” mode when things get overwhelming. We might not yet have the same level of extreme weather events, but we are increasingly impacted by what the rest of the world’s population is going through.

The “new normal” is that nowhere is there normality. Nor is there going to be when the coronavirus crisis is handled. Our old way of life is toast. Our new way of life involves a vastly different lifestyle.

People like the professionals in our health care system who are used to casting themselves in the role of rescuer are learning that to survive, we must all dig deeper into our soul to find those parts of our psyche and prioritize rescuing ourselves so we may re balance in a new place.  Additionally we must learn to serve others under the direction of the divine, rather than ego.

I guarantee you as we move forward into this year nothing substantive in our physical world is going to ever look the same again.  The corona virus pandemic is giving many a taste of what is further to come.  Don’t hold your breath waiting for vaccines or whatever to eliminate it; and then expect your world to return to the way it was previously.

Human history has had multiple times in which viruses and other smaller forms of life break down our man-made defenses when we become seriously out of balance with Nature. The Bubonic Plague that killed 200 million people in the 1300s, smallpox that disseminated 56 million in the 1500s and the Spanish flu that killed close to 50 million in 1918-1919 are just a few such episodes. These figures of “Plague Doctors” were done by Susan Reisner and are used in accordance with Fair Use principals.

This “novel” form of a biologically-based organism that has been around for years is only the tip of the iceberg. Technically it may have been named after its shape as a virus but it is no coincidence that energetically it reflects a “new crown” chakra tying together all of humanity, which in some people is attacking the part of their physicality most closely aligned with their fourth chakra—the energy center that at its best, connects us with ourselves, each other, and the God/Goddess within each of us.

Even as the virus currently isolates us, so too is it going to demand that we abandon our ways of working in isolation from each other and from the environment. Humans are no longer going to be allowed to live cut off from ourselves, from each other, from other life forms and from Mother Earth itself.

Earth is ever the planet of dichotomies and paradox. The ironical dichotomy here is that response to the pandemic is requiring us to separate ourselves from others aka “social distancing” and at the same time is bringing us into the awareness that “we are all in this together.” In the external material world we are working through a seeming conflict between the fact that we are all of one spirit and at the same time we each have a physical body that separates us from all other spirit. As embodied spirits evolve, we come to realize that these are not incompatible truths for the All-That-Is. Image by Jennifer Wagner is used in accordance with Fair Use principals.

Get real about this. The universe has just given us a cosmic slap down, a means to slow down, look around us, and smell the roses.  Use your time wisely. The corona virus will be contained eventually, but the main impact of the economic tsunami associated with it will be arriving shortly; and there are lots of other challenges laying in wait for human animals, including some much more dangerous ones in the long term, should we continue to try to bury our awareness in Hades as we have been doing for such a long time.

 

What does “use your time wisely” look like? Of course it will be different for each of us. Here are a few “practice tips” to help you brainstorm what that might look like in your life:

 

1. Ground. Persephone aka in Greek as Kore, she who became the Goddess of the Underworld, was sometimes referred to as the Goddess of Rooted Things.

Persephone is sometimes referred to as the Goddess of Rooted Things. This nomenclature not only reinforces the mythological storyline but also reflects the underlying spiritual truth of Mother Earth being a safer haven for life when we connect the spiritual and material dimensions. Image used in accordance with Fair Use principals.

Grounding to Mother Earth itself allows you as spirit to manifest yourself in the physical realm as safely as possible; and as a bonus round, gives you a relatively painless means to release what you need to release right now.  If you do know how to ground your energy system from your first chakra, do so with awareness several times a day.  If you don’t know how to ground from your first chakra, find someone who can teach you how.  If you can’t find someone, go sit among big trees and ask the universe to help you match them.

2.  Rest/Recharge. We are in a lull between storms of change. The universe answered our prayers and pulled the emergency break.  Thanks be to God.  The corona virus is not something to be battled, shunned, ignored or feared. It is something to be thanked and gently but firmly put back in its proper place in the created order.  Show as much gratitude as you can muster. Consolidate whatever gains you have made in your spiritual awareness to date and prepare for the next round of wake-up calls.  Help those who are ill and/or terrified and rest up for the next challenge. Have as much fun as you can right now not from a place of escapism but from a desire to follow the divine’s lead into the place of joy, peace and abundance that is our birthright, should we choose it.

3. Prepare for a Global Economy. Here I am not talking about prepping.  Prepping is just an extension of the same obsolete thinking that consumerism will fix everything.  It’s hoarding on steroids. What the universe has in mind for humans is not something that can be waited out with a few months or even years of dried food. By all means, stockpile some supplies for those inevitable times when our old infrastructure is not useable for while. But don’t stop there.

I’m talking about making the deep economic transitions that we can expect after a global monetary system that has been dependent on fossil fuels comes to a grinding halt abruptly and permanently, not just because of a temporary health threat.  The illusion there is value based on domination over nature has been destroyed.  The world is currently downsizing to make room for a place where nothing is real unless it is grounded in human kindness.

The “All-American buck” has no intrinsic value. It is simply a symbol of a transactional agreement containing energy from a monetary system heavily based on profits from fossil fuels and the combined experience of many to use said system for greed and domination. Like all symbols its underlying meaning can be changed but not quickly or easily. Energetically, the world-wide economy based on “dirty” energy, i.e. energy that has been so harmful to Mother Earth has been destroyed. Greed and exploitation are also on their way out, but on an individual rather than a collective basis. The most likely scenario at this point is that some paper money will be around for awhile, but in increasingly smaller quantities as societies all around the world return to more life-affirming methods of exchange.

What would you do if overnight all the money that normally comes to you and all the money that normally you pay out to others disappeared? What kinds of goods and services would you still really want to have in your life; and what kinds of activities would you engage in with others?  Figure that out and then make it happen NOW before the choices around the transactional nature of real relationships is made for you.

What I am talking about is MUCH more difficult than just buying a few extra supplies.

One critical component of the world-wide growth period that is going on right now is in regards to action versus contemplation. Many well-intentioned people have been sorely out of balance with this dichotomy. Effectively being spiritual in a material world in the present time frame requires both body and mind. Action without direction from the indwelling divine is busy work. Focusing one’s mental energy on spiritual goals is very important but not sufficient. We are being called to act in conjunction with and at the behest of Mother Earth and our fellow inhabitants. Image by Brian Andreas used in accordance with Fair Use principals.

This is the time for ACTION.  And the action involves changing your entire lifestyle to suit the new economy in which money will be stripped of its illusionary nature. Don’t misunderstand me. There is ENOUGH FOR ALL that engage in real relationships. There is just not enough of frivolous purchases based on ego.  Find out what makes the God of your heart really sing and let go of the other unnecessary temptations offered by your now-out-of-present-time materialistic urges.

4. Listen to the Mountains, the rivers, the oceans, the trees and other plants and nonhuman animals. There is a reason why people have always sought to connect to our Creator by immersing themselves in the natural world; and have often gone to the highest terrain on Mother Earth for our deepest conversations with God.  There are many other sacred areas as well.

Pablo Neruda was a Nobel-prize winning writer and diplomat who is sometimes considered the national poet of Chile. He passed away in 1973. This image used in conjunction with Fair Use principals.

You don’t have to journey to a mountaintop or anywhere else to find your truth. You can just shut your eyes where you are and find everything you need there.  All of Gaia is sacred and your body was designed to be an extension of that sacredness, a finely tuned instrument of access to everything you really need.  Find the places that have absorbed the purest intentions of the human spirit both within you and outside of you.

Human survival, both individual and collective, is now in a furious evolutionary dance that requires us to match our inward essential nature with the outward physical manifestation of Nature. This self portrait by Cuban-born surreal artist Jorge Ignacio Nazabal is used in accordance with Fair Use principals. Butterflies are a universal symbol of inner transformation

Choosing the best natural settings helps expedite the optimal outcome.  Go to the mountain or another sacred site nearby either in your physical or your astral form if you are so inclined. And then LISTEN.

Most people need to actually learn what it means to pray; and stop mistaking God for Santa Claus. It is the time to let go of the arrogance of telling God what we want done. Talk/dream if you want, but the real challenge right now is for all of us to up our skills at hearing from the Source as reflected in our gorgeous physical homeland.  Many of the planetary changes that are occurring right now are beyond our imagination.  Let the Cosmic Consciousness show us the way.

The Creator gives us the frame. We fill in the canvas. Any viewpoint that human animals have the only or the final word in the process of creating on Planet Earth is misguided hubris. Image used in accordance with Fair Use principals.

 

 

Gaia is screaming at us right now because we have forgotten how to listen to her. For all of our sakes, heed her call.

Copyright 2020 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

Welcoming Scarcity in the New World

/ Church of the Harvest

 

From a Sermon given Fall Equinox Worship Service  September 29, 2019

Over the years I’ve been blessed to have the opportunity to learn many things in my role preparing sermons for this Church community.  Most of the time my words have been appreciated and gracefully received by people coming to the worship services.  I have noticed however, that whenever I venture into talking about money or economics in general people often go into anxiety, resistance and on one occasion even outright hostility.

Rationalization is the norm any time the talk turns to money. Cartoon used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

I can almost see the fear pictures flying through the air for the people with less resources; and the boredom aka resistance pictures for the people with a good amount of resources who don’t want to think about that it might ever be otherwise.

 

 

 

 

So let’s get something straight from the start, shall we?  We are going to talking about the “new economic norm” that has been unfolding in stages and will now rapidly be manifesting in the United States right now.

Countries around the world have suffered from an inadequate amount of resources for day-to-day living for several decades and this inequality is exponentially increasing under climate change. This is an image of Bhatapur, Nepal after a quake. Picture used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

We are no longer living in a time of shrinking resources. The resources have shrunk and many have shriveled up and are starting to be blown away with the same earthquakes and hurricane forces that have been ravaging our landmasses and oceans.

 

 

 

 

People, we are going to be experiencing some really lean times unlike anything we have known in our country in our lifetimes.  Historically we’ve seen it before, like during the Great Depression, but not recently, not in the lived experience of the people in this room. It is going to be challenging for ALL of us, albeit in different ways. This time around, none of us will escape the consequences of our new way of living in the world, not even the rich folks.

There is no part of the planet, no underground bunker or gated community that will protect human animals from the effects of climate change, “Warming” by Shayla Maddox. Art used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Hopefully by the end of the service and in the next few days however, you will find yourself beginning to view this time of austerity as nothing to be feared, something that is necessary and maybe even in certain ways a good thing.

So let’s put on our big boy pants and see if we can raise the level of our awareness from the physical to the spiritual in how we view one of the last and most fear-provoking of the changes our world is undergoing right now.  And when I say world I mean the whole world, but my emphasis this morning is on the United States.  What is happening economically is certainly global in character, but in some ways we in this country have the most to deal with energetically because we have had the most.

After World War 2 the United States moved into the position of being the prominent peace-keeper of the entire world on the surface; as well as the most aggressive war monger out of view through our role as the world’s premier arms dealer.

Every country has its own energy. This depiction from Christian Chinese American artist He Qi depicts the essence of the United States of America as Peace and Freedom. Picture used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

We amassed great financial wealth through participation with conflicts on every continent.  This was our national destiny so to speak, and we played it out well, with the implicit energetic support of people everywhere.  We set the energy but the world created the scenarios with us and followed our lead.

On the physical level the American dollar became “the almighty dollar.”  Our lifestyle was the envy of the world.  Everyone wanted to be a part of the American dream in which those with few resources could rapidly transverse into a higher socioeconomic class. Unfortunately, as we transformed ourselves into a country of great material wealth and political status, as a country we essentially did the collective version of getting lost to our ego, aka our perfect pictures.

In the last few decades people would occasionally engage in intellectual talk about the fact that the United States was consuming 80% of the world’s resources even though we were only 20% of its population; or the fact that we were competing with each other to waste much of this material wealth in lavish display of conspicuous consumption.  There were a few conversations now and then about the fact that this level of consumption and waste was not environmentally sustainable.  For the most part though, most Americans continued to buy stupid stuff and throw it away at the first opportunity for something better; worked very hard at not noticing the far-reaching effects of our individual and collective choices; and continued to ignore the cost of our lavish lifestyle on ourselves, each other, those in other countries and on Mother Earth.

Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

These days one of my favorite synonyms for the Creator-of-Us-All is the “Great Equalizer.”  It is the time of the Great Balancing when all will be called to task.  The United States has been on the highest rung of the economic pedestal of the world for about 70 years now, so our fall back to Earth has the potential for being the most jarring, the most painful.  Like everything else about how we create spiritually through matter however, it is up to us, up to choices we make through our free will.

To talk this morning about how we can cushion our fall and maybe even tumble in a manner that allows us to pop right back up, I’d like to switch it up and focus on spirit, and what we know about economics from a spiritual perspective.  For this I’m going to use the Christian Bible.

To me, one really interesting thing about what Jesus of Nazareth says about money as recorded in the Bible is how much he says.  As I understand it, other than the “Kingdom of God” he talked more about economics than any other subject.  Even taking into consideration the fact that he lived in a time period where almost all human beings were still dealing with basic survival, this is an extraordinary amount of attention paid by a religious leader to economic status.

Keep in mind though, that Jesus knew everything there is to know about how energy works on Planet Earth.  He certainly knew that money is just a symbol, a stand-in for power.  As the master of parables, he talked with everyday folks using stories to which they could relate, stories about food and oil for lighting and heating and other basic necessities to keep one alive. In this way he also taught people about individual and group energy and where and how to focus it.

So let’s review the overarching Truth said by Jesus as quoted in Matthew, Chapter 6, Verses 24-33:

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. . . your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Since the time of the Christ people have struggled to hear the messages he embedded in his stories; and in typical human fashion have frequently projected onto those words their own wishes, desires and meanings.  In my opinion biblical passages about economic matters are not only among the most prolific in terms of numbers, they are also among the most distorted in terms of interpretations.

Everyone wants to cherry pick the Bible to look for justifications for their own actions.  On the one hand, you have the people who want to dwell on the words of Jesus that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to gain eternal life.  This passage is used by many and particularly I have noticed by people who are struggling with survival or jealousy and competition pictures, to conclude that all wealthy people are wrong and maybe even evil, who need to give away or have taken from them everything they own.

On the opposite side of the dichotomy you have the political and religious folks who want to dwell on Jesus saying the poor will always be among us.  These are the people that say that all wealth is from God and interpret being wealthy is a sign that one has been rewarded or blessed by God.  If they are more political than religious they may talk about wealth coming from hard work, good values or superior family; and demonize poor people as lazy, stupid,  mentally unstable, morally corrupt, etc.

It’s all the same energy. Whether you attempt to use the words of the Christ or more secular language to rationalize economic oppression, it is all about marginalizing people without economic power.  This is the injustice, the imbalance, this is the lack of righteousness that will be disappearing shortly, one way or the other, as a result of the master plan in which we are all living.  This is the time and the place where the Great Equalizer will be doing its magic to help us come to our senses.

What do we need to keep in mind, to help this equalizing process go as smoothly as it can in our individual lives and the lives of those around us?  Let me read this again:

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. . . your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Please notice two things here.  Please notice that the Christ is not saying you cannot have both God and wealth. He is saying you cannot serve both God and wealth. One will invariably be the master.

Please also notice how similar this passage to what has been called the “greatest commandment,” the teaching of the Christ in Matthew 22, Verses 36-40.

Love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it:  Love your neighbor as yourself.

Image of Scrooge McDuck from Carl Banks, in conjunction with DIsney, used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

The point here is that FIRST you start with finding God, aligning yourself with God, committing yourself to God. And then you have the guidance you need to fully allow the Love that is God to flow outward to others.  You get to have as much money and other resources as you need to fulfill the divine’s purpose; but if money is your master, you are in for a rude awakening .

In the coming days, the economic oppression that was such a major talking point for Jesus of Nazareth will be the focus of a world-wide turnaround as directed by his father.  Everyone from the 1% that own the 30 trillion dollars of financial assets in the United States, as well as the bottom half of Americans who have less than nothing, in other words more debts than they have assets, will have to come to terms with what is the guiding principal in their life:  God or ego.

Money as one physical reflection of energy, needs to flow freely and not become stagnant. An informed reading of the words of the Christ reveal that the real problem for people with economic resources results when people hoard wealth, in other words accumulate wealth beyond what they individually need or need to serve others.

Usually at this point in the sermon I would be starting to talk about the need for grounding, approaching the subject of your private economics neutrally by living in the center of your head and finding your own truth by seeking direction from the God(dess) within you in your meditations.  Do that. Do all of that. But the meditators in this room know how to use these tools so I’m going to move on from here.

Because the topic of money brings up such overwhelming amount of fear and resistance for most of us, I want to share some personal cliff notes I have worked out over the years, in regards to part B, i.e. loving our neighbors as ourselves economically from a spiritual perspective.

  1. If you fear you won’t have enough. . .work on your fear. . .because that is all it has to be. . .unless you empower it with your belief.  Trust me, there is enough.
  1. If your life purpose requires a great deal of resources to accomplish, if it truly is a spiritual-based calling, that is to say that if you truly are co-creating with God, the resources will appear. But then remember that they are not yours, they belong to the divine.

Gratitude by Linnea Tobias. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

                         Give thanks for being one of the                                 few rich people that is privileged                             enough to “get it.” Continue to act                              frugally towards yourself and                                      remember you are simply                                             the caretaker of the remaining                                    wealth.  That means that you will                              be gifting the excess you don’t need                          directly to others or it means you                                will be using the resources to build                            something of more long term                                       benefit to others.  

  1. If you catch yourself using any resources beyond basic levels on yourself, ask if you are threading a camel through the needle. . .and go back to those conversations with the God(dess) within.

                        You don’t have to be a Gandhi living only with a robe, food bowl and a book of                                  sacred writings.  Recent technological advances have made it possible for all of us                         to have a higher standard of living. Sometimes “discretionary” money spent on                                  travel, beautiful objects, art supplies, even good but high-end food is needful for a                          higher purpose such as creating peace, joy, health or beauty; and sometimes it is                             done for escapist or prideful reasons.

                       We all fail prey to our ego at times.                        Only you and your creator will know                        the difference. If you find you have let                       your ego rule, no problem, just do a                         little mid course correction and renew                      your commitment to using collective                       resources for spiritual rather than                              material goals.

  1. If you see others hoarding wealth that should be given to others, speak out and otherwise do whatever you can. By his words and his example, the Christ was quite clear that loving your neighbor as yourself means advocating for the oppressed, the marginalized and the poor. Unfortunately this will put you in the cross-hairs of most of our religious, commercial, governmental and other collective forces. . .but it’s the least you can do.
  1. Understand that in the present time period things are unfolding in the manner that is needed. Do not give in to despair. We had to destroy our castles built on the sand of conditional love, no matter how painful, so that we have the means of rebuilding on the bedrock of unconditional love. 

                         For human animals to continue our experience on this magnificent planet, for us                             to return to the garden, we needed to live the experience of losing our way so we                             had the possibility of choosing a more righteous path that recognizes that all life                              is connected. 

Our bodies are experiencing a great amount of fear right now but if you tune into the spiritual reality you will know we stand to gain riches beyond our wildest imagining.  Making it through the next stage will require that we grow up and leave behind our adolescent striving.

Image by Louisa Cannell, used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

It will require more faith than most of us have ever had. It will require us to learn how to focus all our God-given spirit-driven abilities.  But the journey can be exciting, the creativity awesome, and the resulting world truly humbling in its majesty.   

It is for this reason that I entitled this sermon “Welcoming Scarcity in the New World.”  Thanks be to the Great Equalizer for this marvelous opportunity.

Copyright 2019 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

 

Making America Great, for the First Time

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Spring Equinox Worship Service  March 25, 2018

Spring is typically the time when the natural world wakes up from a long period of resting and dreaming, and begins to manifest the new life that have been put in place during the fall and winter.  As part of the natural world, human animals do this as well.  I am always intensely curious, eager to see what we have called forth from the depths of our imagination.

Energetically we have toyed with a lot of possibilities on a spiritual level during the past six months and now we get to see what the bulk of our final selections will be for this year,  We get to witness the manifestation of energy we have agreed to as individuals and in our communities.

At our Winter Solstice Worship Service shortly after the 2016 presidential election we talked about the Wintering of America, how to “weather” (pun intended) our new cultural environment in the USA, as our world turned topsy-turvy almost overnight.  I talked about the perfect pictures that we all have of the United States, energetic pieces of programming that have us stuck on an image of our country that is erroneous, and that keeps us from actually moving towards the ideals to which we aspire.  The campaign slogan “America Great Again” is an example of an image of national perfection that is not really warranted historically speaking; and thinking of ourselves that way is holding us back contemporaneously speaking.

Perfect pictures always eventually crash under their own weight.  I talked about how we need to rethink our social, political, religious, economic and other systems as they are at the very least transformed, and in the worse case scenario, altogether demolished,.  We need to rebuild our American way of life on something other than a foundation of sand.

For many or most people in the United States and our fellow citizens on Planet Earth, as well as the other species with which we inhabit this awesome planet, it’s been a very chaotic time since the election; and a long-hard winter these last few months.   Even those of us fortunate enough to live in the Pacific Northwestern part of the USA, where we have been blessed with a relatively calm and livable environment free or war, famine, drought, tornadoes and the like, have been awash in the same vast ocean of fear, despair, and confusion as everywhere in America and beyond.

There is more chaos and fear etc. to come but Spring is here, the time of renewal.  Surprisingly, I find myself increasingly hopeful.

 

 

 

Oscar Wilde was once criticized for being a dreamer.  Oscar Wilde, of course, was the incredibly brilliant and spiritual Irish poet and playwright that at the height of his fame in the mid 1800s was persecuted and jailed for his sexuality.

Many people have dreams of flying, a metaphor for the yearning of the soul to experience itself working through the physical world while maintaining its spiritual nature. “I Dreamed I Could Fly” by Carlos Almara, posted in accordance with fair use principles.

To his critics he replied:  “Yes, I am a dreamer, and a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight; and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world does.”  To Oscar Wilde I would like to say, “yes, but your reward is that you see the dawn before the rest of the world does.”  And to the people in this room, those of you who are in touch enough with spirit to do your own dreaming, I say that we humans are in the fight of our lives for our very lives on Planet Earth.  This is a fight that we needed to undergo.  And now we are in the midst of it.  And it’s springtime!

A colleague of mine who is quite tuned into energy calls 2018 “The Year of Transformation.”  I think she is right.  This is the year when cycles we have completed, some of which started hundreds or even thousands of years ago, are going to blow away in the wind,

When a dandelion flower is at its end, the seeds of the next generation of life are widely disbursed in search of fertile new territory.

like the seeds of the head of a fully opened dandelion.  And there is Grace to that, even though one way to look at it is that everywhere around us things are dying.

 

 

 

I see this in the news every day and every night.  Did you actually think that the national conversation finally becoming obsessed with AR 15s and guns in the schools after years of mass murders, did you think this was really just about gun control?  When you hear the politicians talk about the “opioid crisis,” and the president say that the way to solve it is to bring on the death penalty for drug dealers, did you really think this was only about fentanyl and other pain killers?

Pain is certainly not the only way for humans to make changes happen, but it tends to be the go-to vehicle for many or most who are otherwise unable or unwilling to change their relationship to the physical dimensions.

What I hear is a society coming to terms with the fact that it is in a death spiral, a cycle of destruction that could bring a “premature” ending, particularly for its youngest members.  And I hear a country trying to figure out whether or not to face its pain about what has been created, which it has to do to arrest that downward spiral.

I think that 2018 is the year in the “New World” that we have been trying to create since 1776.  This is the year where it will become so glaringly obvious to WethePeople that we kind of missed our original mark.   For many  spirit in bodies for which there is too much cognitive dissonance going on between perfect pictures and reality, there will be too much suffering.  And consequently, some may choose to go elsewhere.  For those who can accept the “new normal,” who are willing to face their pain and make the necessary changes internally and externally to experience a vastly different way of life, things will be OK if very different. It’s not a question of who deserves life.  It’s a question of who chooses life, eternal life, not life based on an illusion lost to materialism.

And this is where I become hopeful.  Until recently, pretty much all I saw were the signs of the destruction side of the creative/destructive dichotomy.  But recently, just in last few weeks, as  the daffodils and crocuses have been peaking up through the ground of our gardens, there has been a small but intensifying pattern of what I like to think of as the True American Spirit showing up in public places.

Every group of people have their own unique energy, sometimes labeled as “culture” or “worldview.” This is true of countries. Here the Christian artist He Qi depicts the essential energy of the United States as Freedom and Peace. But Freedom struggles with grief, perhaps at not yet being able to fulfill its destiny.  Posted in accordance with fair use principles.

It appears that large numbers of people are waking up, standing up, speaking up, and making choices for connection to the divine through each other.

I’m not talking here about the obvious political protests and huge increase of lawsuits in opposition to congressional and state legislation.  I’m not even talking about individual acts of courage.  There have always been individuals willing to devote all of themselves to the greater good.  I’m talking about the quiet stuff that is frequently missed, the cultural shifts, changes in the way we as a nation full of diverse individuals think about our world.

I’m talking about individuals like the farmers and ranchers who have recently bequeathed or turned over land to which they had legal title which previously had been stolen from Native Americans when their treaty rights were ignored.   I’m talking about corporations like the Gerber company choosing the image of a Down’s Syndrome baby as its 2018 Gerber Baby;

With his obvious infectious joy, Lucas is inspiring thousands to rethink their prejudice against spirit born into different or physically challenged bodies.

and Apple introducing emojis to which people with disabilities can relate.

Lady Liberty 225th Anniversary US Mint coin

 

 

 

 

Then there is Black Lightening taking Hollywood by storm, and the U.S. Mint issuing a 100 dollar coin with the image of a Black  Lady Liberty stamped on it.

 

I’m talking about scientists as their vision expands with the rest of us “discovering” new species of animals that have been there all along but were never previously noticed, like the flying squirrel recently found at Mt Rainier Park; and the US Postal Service passing on a growing understanding of life with its new stamp series on bioluminescent animals as we begin to understand what we’ve done to our oceans.

Most of all I’m talking about a validation of our real individual and collective stories.  Rather than disseminating fear-based conspiracy crap like denying the holocaust, or reinventing history to pretend that slavery is a good thing, an increasing number of people are standing up for authentic stories.

Lt. Wesley Clark Jr. and other veterans kneel in front of Leonard Crow Dog on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation on Dec. 5, 2016. Vets asked for and received forgiveness from Lakota and Sioux elders for crimes committed against indigenous peoples by the US military.  Words were coupled with actions as nearly 4,000 veterans helped protect Dakota Access pipeline protesters. In less dramatic ways, these times of humility, healing, and honoring spirit are being played out increasingly around the world.

Granted, some are acknowledging past wrongdoings because with the increasing amount of light in the world, it’s harder to get away with the lies any more.  But also–an increasing tide is moving us towards the Truth.

Using DNA, scientists have recently discovered that these Aboriginal men from Australia belong to a tribe of  people who have maintained the oldest continuous human habitat on Earth, going back some 50,000 years to the Old Stone Age.  Rather than being seen as a “rather insignificant” marginalized people of little interest, they now will likely gain significant social status as original human ancestors, rock stars of modern anthropology.

When National Geographic apologized for “decades of racist coverage” I don’t believe it was because they had to, as much as because it is right to take ownership of past wrongdoings so we can learn from them and transcend those limited perspectives.  Granted their admission may ultimately improve sales but still, no one forced them to try to gain more legitimacy that particular way.

When Israeli televangelist Benny Hinn confessed last month that he has come to understand that his belief in the “the prosperity gospel” was an extreme interpretation of scripture that was not “God’s work,” this was a watershed moment for his thousands of followers.   Yes, it remains to be seen what he is going to do with the reported 42 million dollars he has amassed by believing what he wanted to believe but at least he has admitted his transgression and stopped speaking for God in an area where clearly his ego was calling the shots.

Unfortunately, I believe we are far from done with the process of destruction for our way of life in the U.S.  We have had too many decades of picture pictures that we now have to resolve, and a population that still is highly resistant to doing the hard work that it takes to change one’s worldview.

Perfection belongs only to God. For the rest of us, harmony comes only after a true dedication to our spiritual goals. . .while still acknowledging and gaining seniority over our human animal attributes.

Frankly, the worst is probably yet to come. . .as the consequences of our recent choices in regards to the social fabric and particularly  the physical environment become manifest. 

 

 

 

 

 

The worst may yet come. But despite it all, I am hopeful.

As many of you know, for 15 years at the direction of the universe I have been closely following the issue of climate change.  I’ve heard a lot of key scientists and the like, use the phrase “tipping point” to describe the point in time in which human destruction would bring the Earth to the point where it could not sustain life.

As we face a potential human-caused extinction event on Earth, human animals are in an existential crisis of sorts. This 1846 painting by Edward Hicks is called “Who will Save Us This Time.”

God is not going to let us destroy the Earth.  It will let us destroy each other, and in doing so, ourselves if we need that learning experience.  I’m pretty sure the planet’s destiny is to be a Paradise of Love and Life.  If human animals cannot buy into the master plan, then we are free to go the way of the dinosaur, making room for another species to be given dominion to try their hand at creating through matter in an environment reflective of God’s majestic life forms.

What I’ve always been aware of though, as people talk about “tipping point”– when it will occur, if it’s occurred, that sort of thing–is that the dialogue rarely takes God into consideration.

It is no accident that one of the most common words for the divine is the Creator. God is creative beyond our wildest dreams, and as we are made in its image. so too are we.
“God the Creative Spirit” by Alex Grey, posted in accordance with fair use principles.

Human beings are co creating with the divine in this world.  The Supreme Being puts into motion the greater context, and gives us just the one rule about free will, and a whole lot of pointers, and we fill in the details.  In our fear of our physical mortality and seeking our own immortality, we can fill in a lot of those details with stupid adolescent-level death-dying stunts.  Some or many of us may not physically survive the risks we have been taking. . .but God is still our creative partner in this venture.  There is still this little thing called miracles, and there are still means beyond what our puny human brains can comprehend, for the Grace of the Almighty to save us from our stupid selves.

Think 2018 as a sort of energetic “tipping point’ of sorts.  This is the calendar year in which our choices as human beings, we who have the God-given will to freely choose to harness our energy for the Greater Good under the direction of the Supreme Being. . .or not, will make the choice to do so,or turn the tide against our kind continuing to have this gorgeous planet as our playground.

Door of the Shiva Temple at Lakhamandal, Uttarakhand, India. Shiva in the Hindi pantheon is the God of Death and Transformation. Can we allow ourselves to walk through this door to our destiny?

Vast numbers of spirit are just waiting for humans to call them to help with our current Earthly challenges. Because of free will, they cannot be activated without our explicit thoughts and/or prayers. Image is “Angel Thinking” by Dee L. Sprague, posted in accordance with fair use principles.

The good news is that the forces of the heavens have been mobilized to help us in every way they can, to make the choices that will lead us, one way or the other, to our Creator.

 

We can do this.  I know we can.  We can make America Great, for the first time.

 

 

 

 

We can put spirit in charge and restrain and retrain ego.  We can give up our addiction to greed and power.  Individually and collectively we can join the All-That-Is in whatever way it has in Mind.

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s bring forth the American Spirit!    Let’s Make America Great, for the First Time!

January 31, 2018 Moon over Lady Liberty

Copyright 2018 by the Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

 

 

For Thine is the Power; A World Based on Love Rather Than Corruption of Power

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Winter Solstice Worship Service  December 2017

At these services recently, I’ve been talking a lot about climate change and the extreme weather events we have been experiencing nationally and internationally.  It has seemed important to look at these occurrences from a spiritual perspective so we might be prepared as much as we can as individuals, and help things move in the right direction where possible.

This morning I want to take a step backwards and look at what is even the bigger picture from a spiritual perspective.  I want to talk about energy, pure and simple.  I want to talk about how the energy that we work with on Planet Earth is shifting.  And in some surprising ways that you may or may not have noticed.

Energy is always dynamic, always in a transformative state, whether it is transforming in shape like a butterfly from a cocoon, or an ice-cube melting into liquid.  Depending on the frequencies involved, this transformation can be rapid or slow, such as the difference between an ice-cube melting in the refrigerator or that same ice-cube changing shape in the sunshine.

Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-American who Einstein once called the “smartest man in the world” is singularly responsible for many key modern inventions such as light bulbs, radio, electrical motors used in cars and other mechanical devices, laser, robotics and X-ray technologies as well as our entire electrical grid. According to Tesla: “If you wish to understand the universe, think of energy, frequency and vibration.” 1899 photo of Tesla and his transmitter in his lab.

We know things are changing rapidly right now.  Many of us are feeling vertigo as the vibrations transform the air around us, the Earth beneath our feet and even the very molecules in our bodies. This can be terrifying to those who have no accurate information about energy, and even scary for those of us who do.  Most of the people in this room are consciously aware of some details of these changes, such as that the Planet itself is running kundalini energy intended to help human animals wake to their nature.

This morning I want to talk to you about another way of looking at big picture energy fluctuations about which you might not have thought.  I want to address the direction of those enormous shifts going on.

You all have heard me say that we are all here on this world to learn how to manifest as spirit in the material world.

We are made in the image of our Creator. Hands are a tradition symbol of human creativity as there are important energy channels that run through our arms and our hands that manifest our creativity. This prehistoric tribute to creativity is from Cueva-de-las-Manos in Argentina.  Photo by Pablo Gimenez  posted in accordance with fair use principles.

For most people, how that process actually works, though, is a little on the dreamy side.  That is hardly surprising because creating as spirit in the material world involves a lot of dreaming.   Whether you start by dreaming when you are asleep or through daydreams happening in your waking hours, the creative process almost always starts with a dream.  It starts with imaging something in the world that isn’t yet there.

We all have a plethora of dreams, some of which are passing fancies, whims in a way.  It’s like we do shopping in a big store in the sky, and occasionally get distracted by the overpriced and poorly made objects set at counter height near the checkout stand. 

Particularly when we are hungry, we get tempted to do impulse buying. For most of us though, these passing fancies get pruned out.  They are culled and they disappear over time as we cease to pay attention to them.  The energy involved with them goes elsewhere, becomes a different dream, a different creation.  Those dreams that more fully activate us emotionally, cognitively, spiritually may change form a bit as we gain life experience and mature, but their essence only becomes stronger as we add more and more energy to them over time.

So one thing I want you to understand from my little digression into how creativity works, is that the trajectory here for the vast majority of creative projects, is that FIRST the dream, and THEN that which is dreamed can become “real” in the material world.  Or as it says in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. “

When spirit is out of the body at night, all kind of possibilities are created. Subsequently some are brought into the physical world; and some are reabsorbed in the spiritual realm. Image by Brett Jones. This artwork is posted in accordance with fair use principles.

Notice the direction here.  Notice that the direction here is that first there is God’s will in Heaven, and then it is done on Earth.  FIRST comes the energy.  THEN comes the manifestation in matter.  This is the inside-out direction of the flow of energy.  It is particularly strong and getting stronger in these apocalyptic times when the divine master plan is to make all things that have been lurking underneath the surface known.  

(Inside-Out)   Why is this direction important?  For many reasons but one big one is because once you realize where change is really made, you can become WAY more efficient at it.  We change things from the inside of us, where our thoughts and feelings reside, where our dreams either originate, or are experienced in conjunction with others dreaming of the same reality.  Only then, when those dreams, those thought-forms, those prayers are sufficiently strengthened, can cosmic forces bring them to fruition.   If you try to change things in the material world without first changing what is within you that is contributing to the situation, at the least you will be a hypocrite who is not likely to be taken very seriously by others; and at worst you could be violating free will at some serious jeopardy to your soul.  This is what Jesus was concerned about when he said in Matthew, Chapter 7, Verse 3:

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

This morning, though I want to talk about two other directional shifts that the world’s energy is taking right now that are pivotal.  Because the reality is, the huge fluctuations in weather in our physical world are really only a manifestation of the ground swelling of energetic shifts we are all making within each one of us and between all of us.  The storms and hurricanes and fires and such in Mother Nature are all very dramatic. . .but they almost pale in comparison to the storms, hurricanes, fires and seismic tidal waves going on right now within human consciousness.

Bhaktapur, Nepal after the 2015 earthquake

The energy trajectories I want to talk about besides from inside-Out is Top-Down; and Sideways.  These are relatively new developments in human history and ones that I would like this powerful group of mediators, through your awareness, to help shape.

Top-Down   I have been watching the heated national conversation about a new tax system in the United States with, among other things, amusement, a response I typically have when people are not aware of what it is about which they are really arguing.  Keep in mind that money is just a material form of energy.  If you listen carefully what you will hear is that pretty much the heart of the disagreement in the national conversation is what direction the energy should move.  Should the energy move upward, as in the argument that when the lower socioeconomic classes have more to spend, the people with greater economic resources reap the monetary benefits; or should the energy move downward, as in the trickle-down economic theory?

So let’s step back again to look at the big picture.   We know from anthropology that the earliest human civilizations, the hunter/gatherer societies, were almost always egalitarian in structure.  Everyone had a voice in some form or fashion, and when leadership roles were needed, they were usually distributed among a mix of experienced elders, guidance from the spirit/natural world through shaman and other religious figures, as well as leadership by the most skilled and/or strongest clan members.

About 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, when the world’s population grew too large for hunting and gathering, human society evolved into agricultural/industrial societies who organized their members hierarchically.  Counsels of elders and clan leaders eventually gave way to leadership by warlords, familial dynasties, and theocratic/civil governments who had the authority to intervene in human life but were sometimes removed from the real consequences of those interventions. Whoever held the political reins could advance their social and economic interests to the detriment of others not in power, and they could do so without having to see, feel or hear from the people affected by their decisions.

Now don’t get me wrong.  There is nothing intrinsically wrong with hierarchies.  As our military and first responders can tell us, they can be very efficient and vital, particularly in times of crisis.  The dangers with hierarchies are two-fold.  One comes when the people at the top of the pyramid have not worked through their own issues, have lost themselves to their individual ego(s), succumbed to the temptations of the material world, and forgotten for whom they work.  And the second problem with hierarchies as a standard form of government which has grown exponentially in recent years, is that as the human population has grown, hierarchies have gotten taller and the distance between those at the bottom and those at the top much more steep.

The pedestals are now so high that the people at the top and the people at the bottom can no longer see or hear each other.  Governmental officials and agencies are increasingly making monumental gut-wrenching, sweeping policy changes that change people’s lives dramatically from behind closed doors, figuratively and sometimes literally.

Hierarchy. When the distance is too great between those making the decisions and those affected by them, it wreaks havoc on human relationships.

Ten days ago, we watched three people on the Federal Trade Commission impose a business model on the way Americans use the internet, an action that will affect approximately 240 million individuals, and probably every organization in America.  The Commission had to stop their proceedings right before the vote for unknown “security” reasons.  We know that their decision was opposed by approximately 240 million people (83-87% of 287 million users) that they will never meet.

We are also watching those officials, who are still trying to listen to the public directly, get absolutely skewered verbally and emotionally, sometimes assaulted and even occasionally shot at by those on the bottom (such as happened to Representatives Gabrielle Gifford and Steve Scalise) because folks are so frustrated at not being seen or heard.

This morning I’m here to tell you that the energy is moving downward.

And I don’t mean the manifested energy such as money trickling down.  I mean the universe is increasingly “setting” the energy at a lower level.  Under globalization, the world will no longer be exclusively ruled by the United States despite the fantasies of our President and his followers.  The federal government in the United States is being dismantled and though I pray it will be put back together again to some degree, I believe it will never be as vital as it once was in shaping our country.  Assuming the world survives, those of us in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere will have our hands full bringing into line our own region and states, who struggle with their local version of corruption  of power.

And this is how it should be.  Because ALL power belongs to the Almighty, and if you are not using the power you are given in the service of the divine to help all of life around you, you have corrupted it.  Which has become pretty much the norm for human beings, particularly in the modern era.

The sun has often been a symbol of the divine in indigenous cultures and depth psychology. Isn’t it interesting that on Planet Earth we are now experiencing a more direct interaction with the sun’s effects as a result of greenhouse gases?

Corruption Is a word that not only refers to political processes through bribery aka in the our times as lobbying and PACs.  In the larger context, corruption just means something that is changed from its original intended use to something that is used incorrectly, but by doing so, is debased.

Power is something that was given to us by the Creator-of-Us-All, the fuel for us to create a reality based on Love.  Instead of Love however, we have chosen to use our power to subject others to our will, our domination.  We corrupted the power available to us and used it not to live such as to become the willing instrument of the divine to manifest its Love but rather, to force others to our way of thinking, to violate other people’s freedom and require them to do the bidding of our ego(s).  And because ego can never fully satisfy, only Love can do that, we became drunk with power, always craving more.  At this point, when I talk to students about claiming their power, they almost always initially bristle or get very confused because all of our experience with power is such that we equate it with power over other people; and not our own power used in the service of the indwelling divine.

Obviously we are awash in a sea of corruption of our own making; and it’s time to change that.  As I have told you all frequently, when one misuses our God-given energy it is taken away; not right away, but eventually it always flows to the situation that is more in keeping with God’s will.  Or as Martin Luther King says it:  

Recently in a Christian blog of which I am fond a writer used a different euphemism for God:  The Great Equalizer.  Time for the leveling, folks.  The Great Equalizer is bringing us to a greater state of sharing.  I know it doesn’t look like that as we watch the HUGE and growing inequality of income and wealth that is occurring in this country and the world, even as our society increasingly demonize those with less.  But you all are healers, and you know how it goes.  When the universe decides to change, everything that is in the way of that change has to come up for healing.  FIRST the inequality surfaces, and THEN the equalizing can happen.

Sideways Between Groups   So the energy shifts that I want to talk about the most this morning are the sideways ones.  There are significant shifts of power between groups of people that I think have been a source of confusion for most or all of us.  To mention a few—there are the suddenly daily allegations of sexual harassment, personal intimate assaults by people with power, and discussion about the true nature of consent in sexual activity.  There is an intense examination of the dynamics of white supremacy, arguments about whether or not racism in America is getting better or worse, and increased dialogue about our history of slavery:  what it really is, and the best way to deal with it.  And let’s not forget the tidal wave of anxiety and conflict around the topic of which group of people get to be Americans aka immigration, and our national history with indigenous Native American people.  All of these discussions arise from and result in rapid fluctuations not only in the energetic field around the people having the conversations, but in our bodies and the Earth itself.

To date, there has been a need of sorts for humans to engage in strife, competition for resources, warfare and the ilk, if only to rule out what does not work. No longer.  Now is the time to learn to engage in “friendly disputes” when perspectives differ.

Sometimes when I look at what we have stirred up most recently in our interactions with each other, I’m just amazed there aren’t more earthquakes and hurricanes and volcanoes erupting.

Sideways Within Groups   The shifts in energy that are quite possibly going to affect those in this room the most directly are those happening in our very own closely held groupings, our families.  For many in the United States, these might be the most profound and potentially confusing or even painful changes we have or will experience in our lifetime.  That is certainly ironical since these energetic shifts are the ones most clearly foretold by the New Testament of the Christian Bible.  Sideways shifts within families are the ones I hear people talking about with such anguish on television and in social media, particularly around the holidays.  There have been entire programs devoted to how to behave at Thanksgiving when some of the family voted for Trump and others for Hillary or Bernie.  Everyone seems to be talking about the divisions in America as if they are something new.  They are not.  The energy of our apocalyptic times is just bringing them up for examination and healing.

I’d like to read you what Jesus of Nazareth had to say about the energetic shifts that we would be experiencing in our families in the end times in which we are currently living.  This same message is also in two sections in the Gospel of Luke but I’m going to quote his words as recorded in Matthew, Chapter 10, Verses 34-38.

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace but a division.

For I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother–in-law.

And a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.

 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

And whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

 So before anyone panics, feeling like you might lose your family, let me tell you what I hear in these words.  Let’s contextualize them.  Remember that Jesus was a master of energy and knew everything there was to know about how it works.  Remember that he understood the will of the divine, that at the point when he talked about family here, he had already surrendered his own individual will to the divine and was completely his father’s son, the embodiment of God on Earth.  Many of you may recall from the stories in the gospels how he took some heat, that he had been criticized for not showing his mother/family more deference.  The Christ made it clear to his followers that his love was for all beings equally, and that his allegiance to family, his tribe, did not trump his connection to all humanity.

So what I hear him saying is that if you embrace him, in his manifestation as the God of your heart; or as evangelical Christians might say, through your personal relationship with Jesus, any divisions between you and others in your tribe will arise, and that is part of the process.  This is your cross.

Many people have an inaccurate understanding of the concept of karma. They think it has to do with being judged. It is not about judgment. It is about consequences. What you put out into the world energetically returns to you eventually. “Unfortunately” karma is not subject to the illusion of time. We can be off-balance and suffer accordingly as a result of experiences lifetimes ago and if we are not careful, we pass that suffering  onto those around us.  Instead we must learn to take up the cross of our own pain.

We all must bear responsibility for our individual selves, and work through whatever we need to work though in conjunction with the divine will as guided by the indwelling God, in order to affect a more perfect union.

 

 

 

 

 

This teaching also appears in the New Testament in three gospels in a passage known as the Greatest Commandment.  The version from Matthew, Chapter 22 is as follows:

Then one. . .asked him a question. . . Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Do you recognize this direction?  This is the inside-outside perspective.  We are told to start with ourselves, experience the Love as we sync with the divine, and then extend that Love to all of our relationships.

Ultimately, you should not do what your parents want you to do, or be what your parents want you to be, unless those actions or states are what God wants for you.  Nor can you necessarily do what your children want you to do, or be what they want you to be.  Rather you must find yourself and be true to yourself, and follow the lead of the indwelling God.

Face of Christ, Painting by Myron Dyal, used by permission of the artist.

Listen to the words of the master again:

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

And whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

I do not believe the Christ was saying that you are intrinsically unworthy or have to live alone, cut off from others.   What I hear is the Christ saying that you will be called upon to do the work on yourself you must do if you want to follow his example, and that your family cannot distract you from that work.

You may have to be alone at least some of the time, if that is a part of your cross, your individual journey.  No matter how much family we have, who they are, and how close we feel to them, we all experience a sense of separation at times until we are fully reunited with God and understand to the depths of our soul that separateness is an illusion.

The sideways movement of energy is bringing us an opportunity to be more closely aligned with our Creator whether we want that or not.  And if we do want it, and act upon our desires, then the love of our family, our entire human family can truly come into play. So. . .

And be prepared for the divisions.  Thank the energy for moving sideways even when it feels like the tidal waves of movement through the very structure of our blood lines is terrifying.  And don’t feel disheartened, because that is how it should be.

When you come up against those tensions, take up your cross.  Ground.  Center.  Run your energy.  Clear your space, a little at a time.  Move the log jams of old programming out of your eyes and other parts of your energy system, so you can be less judgmental and more present with yourself, your  family, your community, and all of life.

Know that what is awaiting your presence and the presence of all those around you is the enduring, endless Love of your Creator where there are no divisions.

Copyright 2017 by the Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

Money in Apocalyptic Times

/ Church of the Harvest

 

From a Sermon given Autumn Equinox Worship Service  September 2017

Last time when this community came together for the Summer Solstice, the topic was learning to co-create with God.   I talked about how as our world falls apart and as we start to even begin to think about putting the pieces back together, we are going to need to change the way we think, in order to create a new world under the direction of the light within each us, that spark of divinity within each of us that every human can access if they so desire.   I also talked about the need to let go of ego, get out of our own way, and this time, create a world in conjunction with the divine and not in opposition to it.

Today I want to talk with you about a specific system that we are going to have to redesign:  our monetary system.  Economics is only one of the systems humans have created that are now in our collective way but it is a pivotal system; and one that must be changed rather quickly in order to keep the majority of us from prolonged and excruciating suffering.

You all have been aware of the extreme weather events this summer and fall.  And I’m sure you also aware that these events are very costly in monetary terms as well as psychological terms.  At a time when the national government is telling our State that it does not have any more funds to help us fight the wildfires that are destroying our forests, the potential costs from Hurricane Harvey alone is somewhere over 200 billion dollars.

Hurricane Harvey, near Rockport, Texas

That doesn’t even take into consideration Hurricane Irma, Maria or the fact that we’re not even done with hurricane season this year; recent and upcoming earthquakes, floods, fires or the wall that the President wants to build between the US and Mexico, the 80 billion increase of the military budget that Republicans have just approved.  Certainly there is nothing set aside to deal with the economic costs of the whatever major future slaps in the face Mother Nature has in store for us until we decide to understand and respect what she has to say.   In the world of shrinking resources that we all live in, the resources that we have been recklessly squandering and consuming like there is no tomorrow have shrunk to the point that tomorrow really is in question.

All currency derives its value ultimately from the agreement of the people in the country where it is in use.  In the United States, the dollar enjoys the” full faith and credit” of the U.S. Government.   This is actually a phrase from our constitution.  But the government itself in our country is in the process of being destroyed, at least the government as we know it.  Many have speculated that we will experience a collapse of our monetary system.  We could see something like occurred in Germany in the last days of World War II after the energetic tide had turned against the Germans.   The Reich mark became obsolete; people burned them in their fireplaces for heat, and resorted to trading cigarettes to purchase items from each other.

I don’t imagine the total collapse of the U.S. dollar is going to occur.  It’s not that I’m overly optimistic about the road ahead.  It’s more that I think other factors will destroy us before our currency goes belly up.  What I do think is that we’re going to see some profound changes in how we view and how we use money.  So let’s talk about this “medium of exchange” that most of us use daily with little awareness.  Let’s look at it from a spiritual perspective and let’s see if we can help swing the inevitable changes to our monetary system in a direction that minimizes suffering.

A popular aphorism is that money is the root of all evil.  Like many aphorisms, that one is a little simplistic. . .but there is a kernel of truth underneath.  Our currency is just paper.  Are these pieces of paper the root of all evil?  Not really. As quoted in the invocation to this service, money is not the root of all evil, love of money is. Our currency is a reflection of and often the continuing source of a HUGE amount of abuse of power.

Hopefully you all have had a chance to take a look at the sermon on our website written 17 years ago about where the economic energy has been going for the last 10,000 years or so.    https://churchoftheharvest.info/2013/02/20/the-economy-i-where-were-coming-from-2/  ) For thousands of years humans have increasingly engaged in business deals that too often involve exchanging goods and services in a manner to increase glory, power, status, and hedonistic pursuits.   These days it’s just a given that the marketplace is almost exclusively about exploitation.  Our societies honor and glorify those individuals and cultures that grab up the most power, the most resources.  That energy, that way of doing business, that way of thinking about the world we create, saturates our money to its core.

Currency is paper.   It’s about 75% cotton, 25% linen.   It’s neither good nor bad.  It’s a piece of paper that can be used to create a world based on heavenly principals, or one that can be used to create Hell- on-Earth.  Our task these days is to de-energize it and strip it of its abusive qualities; and if we can’t do that over time, well then I guess we will have to burn it in our fireplaces or whatever.  How do we do that?  Simply by the way we use it.  If enough of us change our thinking and our actions, and use money as a neutral medium of exchange and not as the instrument of abuse that it has become, we will shift the economic tide in this country.

Money is a major symbol in our country.   We even recognize that factor by stamping it in indelible ink with some of our dearest images.

So let’s talk about symbols for a bit.  As a community of meditators you all are somewhat aware of the incredible power of symbols.  One symbol can contain billions and trillions of bits of energy.   Symbols are to the world of energy what super hard drives are to computers.  When we want to store a lot of thoughts, emotions, programming, and other bits of energy in our bodies or in the world at large, we create a symbol as the shell that contains that energy.  A symbol is like a humongous compressed file.

These symbols were created by the US Army to alert all personnel of the imminent danger of mass destruction. As one could imagine, running into any of these symbols would cause a very strong visceral reaction for the viewer who recognized it.

You can create a symbol that is stored in your own space for your personal use; or you can be subject to a symbol that is outside your body that is collectively shared by thousands or millions of other people. You may or may not have noticed that our country is quite interested in symbols these days.  It’s a part of the waking up process going on, the learning that many are doing on how not be fooled by surface appearances.  Recognizing what is really going on underneath has always been the important part but many people have not known that until recently.   But after all, we are living in the apocalypse.  I remind you that the word apocalypse comes from the Greek, meaning the uncovering of hidden knowledge.  Humans are waking to the fact that symbols are full of power, although like any manifestation of energy we often greatly disagree at what to do with all that power.

Symbols can be incredibly useful and they can also be divisive. They can keep people confused about reality because while some of them are static, many symbols change their energy and therefore their meaning over time.  The rose is an example of a symbol that has changed very little over the centuries. The rose depicts the soul or individual spirit manifested in life.  An example of a symbol that has changed a great deal is the swastika.  The swastika was a symbol for good luck and well-being used for thousands of years in sacred Sanskrit and Buddhist texts, by ancient Greeks, Christians, Nordic cultures and the Navajo,

was adopted by Coca Cola, the Boy Scouts and the Girls Club of America before being hijacked by Nazi Germany.

If you want to see how confused people are about symbols, all you have to do is watch people argue about confederate statues, whether it’s OK or not for athletes to sit during the national anthem, students to refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or whether or not we should be celebrating Columbus Day as a national holiday.  We are not really arguing about history or what are correct social actions, what we are arguing about is how the power of a symbol is going to be used, what you will sometimes hear me refer to as “setting the energy.”   In the previous example, for example, is the swastika going to be used to promote a sense of well being or to promote hatred?

Taking down a statue of Napoleon, circa 1871.

Veneration of an image of Stalin during the post-communism purge of monuments.

 

 

 

 

 

You see the biggest problem with symbols, apart from the fact that they can confuse things because they can have different meanings for different people,  is that they can and often are used to control the minds of individuals who have not yet found themselves.  Symbols have SO much energy that they can overwhelm people and almost poison their thinking.  If you want to see an example of that, watch films of Hitler addressing the Germans during Nuremberg rallies from 1935 on.  You don’t have to speak German or even know what he is saying.   The symbols are intimidating, the emotional sense of the rallies is terrifying, and you can almost see the brainwashing that is occurring as the energy of the symbols overwhelms any rational thought process.  The audience becomes a mob willing to do whatever it takes to please Hitler.

Like many despots and cult leaders, Hitler was a master at using symbols to intimidate, dominate, and psychologically enslave. This is from his declaration of war against the United States in 1941.

Our currency is a major national symbol that has accumulated energy over 200 years and more.  In our country we have so lost our space to the dollar such that it is essentially worshiped. 

We need to change that, to topple the American dollar off its pedestal, to return it to its rightful status as just a shortcut to fair exchanges between people.   Ironically, this would be returning the dollar to one of the symbols we have printed upon it:  In God We Trust.

I have LOTS of ideas on the topic of how to change the energy of the US currency but this morning  I primarily want to talk about three economic areas. . .and then maybe hit you with a bonus round.   These are things you all know, but hopefully after our time together, you will see them more from a spiritual perspective, and be more able to help our country and world heal.

FIRST:  Spend less. Figure out how to cut down on the amount of money you actually use in pursuit of your life. Make sure that everything you acquire is something you actually need and not something you bring into your life because you can. Don’t allow your desires to be in charge of your monetary practices; or submit to the programming we all receive in massive quantities to be consumers.

I’m not talking here about deprivation.  I am talking about being mindful and frugal.  Give your body everything it needs in terms of the basics of good food, well-designed clothing and a decent home that allows you to rest and recharge; and also feed your soul with great company, music, art, traveling, whatever. You don’t have to be a Mahatma Gandhi with only a robe and a tattered copy of the Bhagavad Gita to your name.  That was his path; you have yours.  Create and use shared resources when you can:  tool banks, renewable energy coops, community land trusts, etc.  And live more simply.

Don’t spend money you really don’t need to be spending even if you have it.  Because when you do spend money recklessly, the energy of money is controlling you, not the other way around.

Would any of you feel anxiety if I tore up a dollar in front you? That’s the programming speaking.  That’s the stuff that says these pieces of paper have intrinsic value that might go away if you don’t hoard them or convert them to other “valuable” items.

Cover the financials basics and accumulate enough of these pieces of paper for a small safety net for you and your family.  And then give the rest away to the people and causes that don’t have the basics.   You don’t need much of a safety net.  Because trust me when I tell you that if the world makes it through the next couple of years, it will be because we have actually integrated the knowledge that we each of us is connected to all other life, human animals and non human animals; and we have taken our commitment to that Truth and translated it into the action of sharing what we have with others.  And if we don’t come to the realization of that essential Truth, no amount of money is going to save us, not even the millionaires and billionaires among us.

SECOND:  Figure out how to cut down on the amount of money you actually use by getting money out of the middle of your transactions with other people whenever you can.  It’s cleaner that way; and it de-energizes currency.  Obviously you are going to have to send your mortgage payments to some anonymous worker at a financial institution somewhere and meet certain other obligations in “cold, hard cash.”  Acting like that for all of your financial interactions, however, is like people who have a lot of casual sex and never experience the real human connection of intimacy.

Essentially, we need to be creating a peer-to-peer economy where all of us are both producers and consumers, with minimal use of intermediaries.  So get your produce from the farmer down the street or join a Community Supported Agricultural network if you are in an urban area.  Sell or give to your neighbors  the extra flowers or the raspberries you have grown at your place or the hats and scarves you have knit.   Or if what you have to give is time rather than money, pick the apples off the trees that your elderly neighbor owns but no longer has the mobility to harvest, bake fruit pies for yourself and your neighbor and the local food bank.  Bartering is how humans did financial transactions for centuries before money came into the picture and “dirtied up” the process.

THIRD:  Connect the dots.  Those of us with money have been telling each other for years to become informed consumers.  Mostly, however, what we have meant is that we want to learn how to get the best possible deal.  Our financial transactions have gotten lost in the power struggles.  So we think we’re really smart when we get a good deal from a store; rather than being really dumb and not noticing that who is really paying the extra money we think we are saving.  Are we profiting off the employees of the store that are paid less than a living wage, the prisoners, the children, or other slave labor that produced the goods we are buying;  the orangutans or tigers that were burned alive in their habitat for the palm oil that makes our baked items just a tad cheaper?

from the Ricardo Levin Morales Art School

We’re better than this.  We have to be.  We are being called to a higher level.   Connect the dots.  And yes, it’s a lot of time and attention to do something other than consume mindlessly, but our ignorance is destroying our world. Whenever you need to purchase either goods or services, make sure your transactions are based on fairness for every part of life touched by that transaction.  With your dollars and cents vote for the world you want to see; not the one that allows you a bigger share of the economic (power) pie.

AND FINALLY, here is the bonus round:  Every now and then give your money away in a manner that brings you nothing whatsoever.  Make donations anonymously and/or to groups that need money but cannot give you a tax write-off or aren’t in a position to thank you for your gift. We all need to be doing this not only because it is the right thing to do, but because each of us needs to practice giving unconditionally.

Each of us needs to be creating the energy of unconditional love, in atonement for our past sins, in anticipation of a future where we are more able to accept unconditional love ourselves; and in the joyful companionship with that part of us that is aligned with our Creator. 

In case you haven’t noticed, that’s the big picture.  That’s what the apocalypse is all about.  We are attempting to transition our world from conditional love of a few, to the unconditional love of all.  GO THERE NOW!  God bless the entire world, no exceptions.

 

Copyright 2017 by the Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

 

 

 

The Art and Majesty of Co-Creating with God

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Summer Solstice Worship Service  June 2017

Over the years in this meditation community we have had a number of worship services devoted to exploring the dichotomy of creation and destruction.  The vast majority of these sessions have been primarily about the latter, the destruction side of things.  For the longest time, it was important to help each other get over thinking that destruction is a bad thing.  Like every dichotomy that gets played out on Planet Earth, it is simply what it is.  Destruction, as well as creation, is not intrinsically bad or good.  We needed to get more comfortable with the idea of things coming to an end, things dying, if you will.  We needed to get more skilled at helping destruction happen with a minimal of suffering; and get ready for the times in which we now find ourselves.

And here we are.  You can call where we are in the U.S and the world right now the apocalypse if you want.  My preferred term for this time in our history is the Great Balancing. 

Whatever you call it, we are swimming in a sea of destruction of every aspect of our natural and human world, our environment and infrastructure, our way of life, played out in our political, social, economic and religious systems to name a few.

I was very happy after I realized the implications of being drawn to doing a sermon on co-creating with the divine.  Time for us to get on with reestablishing a new world order, so to speak.  This order is not the kind of order that humans build when we get lost to our need for domination and power over each other.  This world order has to do with the kind of order that naturally arises when we surrender ourselves to the indwelling God.  Or as the Christ would say, as quoted in John 14;27:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; I do not give it to you as the world does. Do not let your hearts be distressed or lacking in courage.

 

As Ghandi reminds us.

In the interest of some of those in this community making  and helping others to make this miraculous transition, I thought we would explore some of the nuts and bolts of what it actually means to go about co-creating with God.    Co-creation is a concept that resonates with many people but few really could put their finger on the message that those words actually contain or how to make it happen.  So let me give it a shot.

We know that God is an awesome, majestic unending Creative force.  Indeed, one of the most common synonyms used by various religious people for God is the Creator; or the Creator-of-Us-All.

God the Creative Spirit by Alex Grey

Most people also believe that humankind reflects the creativity of the divine, that we are made in God’s image and so we are intrinsically creative.  But what does that actually mean. . .and how do we go about creating in conjunction with, as opposed to opposition to the will of the divine?

As I have been preparing this sermon, I have been watching the news about our current rash of extreme weather.   In my opinion, climate change is one of the clearest reflections of how much we have gotten out of sync with the divine.  Sometimes I can find a slight bit of amusement about the irony of someone like fundamentalist Christian Tony Perkins, leader of the highly influential, hate-filled Family Research Council saying that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for homosexuality and then having his own home destroyed by a flood.  More often I am filled only with sorrow, anger and on my better days, compassion.

But here’s the rub.  Our extreme weather events these days are both a consequence of our inability to understand co-creation; and a call to action for us to start getting with the program.  We can no longer sit on the sidelines and blame God, or attribute to God everything that is happening in our world.   Humans have a LOT to do with what happens on Planet Earth. When you look closely at the political discourse around climate change, the question of who is responsible is what you see at the core.  Too many individuals are trying to pretend, increasingly unsuccessfully, that humans have little or nothing to do with climate change.  For decades, humans have mindlessly slaughtered animals, fouled the oceans and waterways, desecrated the Earth through drilling, mining and most recently fracking, et. al.

The North Pacific Gyre is an area of trash twice the size of Texas consisting of 30 feet deep of mostly plastics, floating in the Pacific Ocean. There are many similar human-generated “dead zones” in our waters, including the 2010 death of about 68,000 square miles in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill.

Many indigenous cultures acknowledge Nature as God, This is an image of Pachamama, the Inca Earth Mother Goddess by Jose Garcia Chibbaro.

Destroying the Earth was and is not a God-given mandate.  God is Nature and Nature is God.  God cannot destroy itself.

Humans?  That’s another matter.  You have to be really out of touch with God if you do not see that human animals have set the stage for our own annihilation through our treatment of our physical home.

 

 

It’s hard not to get lost in the fear in regards to our extreme weather events. In actuality, they can be seen from a spiritual perspective that the tornado is right on track, forcing us to wake up.

God/Nature is not punishing us through hurricanes, fires, floods, earthquakes, droughts, etc.  It is giving us our (final) warning(s).

We already have been co-creating with the divine from day one.  It’s our basic nature to do so. We have just not been doing so with any degree of awareness or finesse.   God creates the stars, the planets and the entire Heaven; and we decide how to invite them into our life.  We decide whether to base our health care decisions on the movement of Heavenly bodies through astrology or the science of the physical Earth through biology.

The divine’s awesome creativity is everywhere in nature. Anemone Stinkhorn, (aseroe rubra), a truly beautiful fungus.

God sets forth the rivers, and we decide whether to swim them, sail vessels or construct dams on them.  I’m being a bit simplistic in that all human behavior is based in part on spiritual forces so even the invention and application of technologies contain the hand print of the divine, but you get my drift.

 

 

 

We are in partnership with God one way or the other.  Whether we experience a loving and supportive relationship or some kind of toxic soup depends on our choices.

Over the centuries many people affiliated with many religions have lost their sense of God, lost their faith because they have accepted the lie that everything in our World is up to God.  In human history, loud are the periodic questions about why God allows so much suffering and the episodic conclusions that God has forsaken us.  Our Creator never leaves us.  The Creator loves us enough to allow us to create whatever hell or heaven on Earth we wish to experience.  It waits for us to wake up to the responsibility of free will; and participates joyfully in any partnership which we offer.

So, it’s 120 degrees in Phoenix.  Anyone here want to experience that?   Let’s talk about what we need to not make that a reality in Washington State and elsewhere.   This morning I want to talk about two aspects of co-creation and how to think about it, about which we all could stand to make some progress.

First and foremost, we need to figure out where God actually lives; or in the words often used in religious discussions, where God dwells.  This is one of the great mysteries, is it not?  For eons people have tried to make sense out of the idea that God is everything and everywhere.  And still we have evil and ugliness and things of that ilk that seem far from God-like.   People who do not understand dichotomies often try to resolve this confusion by assigning all the evil and ugliness to what I believe is a mythical creature called Satan or the devil.

Harrowing of Hell, image from England, circa 1240 CE

But then, how can you say that God is everything and everywhere?

We are not going to resolve this mystery today.  After all, mysteries are meant to be mysterious.  But  I want to give you a way to think about it and encourage you to start training your mind, if you haven’t already started this process.  Because it is a critical one.  There is a reason why Jesus of Nazareth talked more about the Kingdom of God than any other topic of his ministry.  He did so because this topic is at the center of human confusion.  Christ was VERY CLEAR.  The Kingdom of God is WITHIN.  Within each one of us, without exception.

God is everywhere and everything.  But God cannot be fully experienced unless we seek our Creator within us, unless we choose with our free will, to know the Father, the Mother, however you want to envision that Creative force, to acknowledge it living in our own God-given space.  The Living God, the indwelling God, can only be fully known within each individual.  Where does God dwell most intently?  Within you, waiting for your discovery of it, your communication, your adoration.  In the words of the 46th Psalm:

Be Still and Know that I Am

 

There is a second part to co-creating with the divine that is critical.  When people first learn to turn within, whether they do that through some form of meditation or prayer, religious practice, surrounding themselves with Nature, great works of art or music, or as my atheist Mother learned to do in the latter part of her life, sitting quietly with her own thoughts over a cup of coffee each morning—whatever the process, people generally have to contend with what in Buddhism is referred to as the “chattering monkeys.”

 

Buddhism emphasizes training the mind. The resulting serenity is reflected in its sacred art.

Encountering your inner world, you will probably find the chaos of the external world that you have fallen into the habit of letting have full access to your brain    You may find the voices of parents and teachers and others who have shaped your reality in the absence of you knowing how to shape your own.   You may even see images or run into stored emotion from periods of time long since gone, from your childhood and from other lifetimes.   For most people it is a process that takes a lot of time to find yourself in all that mess of repressed and out-of-date energies.

In this voyage of self-discovery, it is what comes after finding yourself that is so crucial to the art of co- creating with God.  Once you find yourself, you have to give yourself away.  Not to the world, not to another person, but to your creator.  You have to choose to lay down your resistance.  You have to surrender.

When you think about how many centuries of warfare we have created on Planet Earth, along with its perspective that surrendering is a bad thing, it is amazing that any of us want to or are capable of doing so at all.  But we need to.  We need to learn to give up our ego, which is what surrendering is all about.

Ego is a tricky thing.  Telling someone that they are dealing with their ego is considered an insult.  However, mental health professionals like to talk about “ego strength” as an important part of healthy personalities.  In psychology at least, we acknowledge that ego is not only common but also can come in handy at times.   So here we have another dichotomy.  Ego is neither bad nor good.  It depends on what we do with it.

Ego is the band aids we put over our owies to keep them from getting infected.   It allows us to put pain on hold, repress it until we are more ready to resolve it.  Hurts a little when you rip it off band aids but is really no big deal except for sissies.  Sometimes if the hurt has been huge, ego is like scar tissue, and then it’s a little bigger of a deal to recover from it.  You might even need the help of someone with surgical skills.  The point is, to move forward at some point you are going to need to get better and better at processing hurtful information, as well as resolving earlier repressed pain.

Since the universe is always moving forward, you can do the passive thing and let the universe decide when this point is and let it blindside you.  Or you can ask the universe aka God to set before you that which you need to heal at the time and in the manner that is most pleasing to it.  This is the essence of surrendering.  That is the essence of co-creating with the divine.  You find yourself and you give yourself freely into the hands of the Almighty

.

As I write this, I am aware that most of you are primarily focused on the finding-yourself part of spiritual development.  If you want to start practicing the surrendering part of spiritual development, my suggestion is that you make this a part of your daily meditations, however brief.

For several years I ended most of my meditations with a mantra of sorts.  I would maintain a strong focus inward after clearing my space using the techniques you all know how to do; and then I would say slowly and repeatedly, speaking  to the God of my heart, “Make Me an Instrument of Your Love.  Make Me an Instrument of Your Will.”  The first statement was an acknowledgement of my individual path in this life; and my need for help finding it.  The second statement was the surrendering part.   After a couple of years I noticed that much to my chagrin, I was still tripping over my ego on a regular basis.  But I could no longer base major decisions on my ego.  When I would try, I would hit what felt like an invisible brick wall.  As our Muslim brothers and sisters would say:  Allah Akbar, God is greater.   God was answering my prayers and protecting me from the worst of my stupidities.

We all have a lot of learn.

My Creator became a greater participant in creating my life when I, with all of my heart, invited it to play an active role.

If you want to use universal words, surrendering is also a part of the Lord’s Prayer.  Repeat that sacred prayer if it has meaning for you.  Thy Will be Done.  Not My Will or Our Will, Thy Will.

Find your own methodology.  Create your own words but give your energy to the indwelling divine.   The extent to which you do this will dictate the amount of the peace talked about by the Christ you will experience.  As the Tibetan meditation master Ajahn Chah says:  “If you let go a little you a will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace.”

So back to it being 120 degrees in Phoenix this week.  Can we really change our descent into global heating enough to take the human species off the endangered species list?  Possibly.  Probably.  I don’t know yet.  But what I do know is that not only is the endpoint at hand, but so is the beginning point.

This I also know as truth:  We can’t do it by ourselves.  We are going to need to use our collective will and enormous creativity to lay our fate in the hands of the divine.

Glory to our Creator for all of the Beauty around us. Now let us do our part!

The solutions are far beyond what human brains can envision on our own.  Join me in asking for the intercession of the universe, as we learn to harness our own God-given creativity in the service of us all.

 

 

Copyright 2017 by the Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven