The Light in Every Thing
Deeper conversation on the mysteries of Christianity with Patrick Kennedy and Jonah Evans, directors of the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America.
In this podcast we engage the great questions of life and do this through a spiritual approach to Christianity made possible through contemplative inquiry and the science of the spirit known as Anthroposophy.
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The Light in Every Thing
“Putting on the New Human” - Episode 44 (Part II) in the series, “Letter to the Ephesians”
In this second part of Patrick and Jonah’s conversation, we are given insight into what “putting on the new human” might feel like. Christ Jesus is walking with and working in every single human being, continually offering the sense of another way. His way is not the dissolution of our trials and tribulations, but a new kind of peace that arises in and through them. There is much to be transformed in ourselves and our communities. He is with us and in us, offering Himself as the seed of our becoming.
The Light in Every Thing is a podcast of The Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. Learn more about the Seminary and its offerings at our website. This podcast is supported by our growing Patreon community. To learn more, go to www.patreon.com/ccseminary.
Thanks to Elliott Chamberlin who composed our theme music, “Seeking Together,” and the legacy of our original show-notes and patreon producer, Camilla Lake.
Hello everyone and welcome once again to the Light in Everything. This is part two of a conversation Jonah and I had on chapter four of Paul's letter to the Ephesians in our longer series on the letter. And our conversation picks up after taking in this incredible word from St Paul that is in chapter 4. And I'll read it again here so the listeners to this episode can connect with what we were talking about. We hear in this passage how St Paul describes that that connecting to Christ has meant an utter transformation of the early community's way of life. Indeed, who they are as people is being utterly transformed and it should express itself in their what he calls their walk, their way of being in the world. And he's describing how something has happened in the very center of our being, in our minds, that needs to go through a transformation and from there moving outward, a new kind of creation of who we are would take place. So I'll read these words that come in the chapter and then we'll transition to the conversation.
Speaker 2:So this is verse 17 in chapter 4. Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them. Due to their hardness of heart, they have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy, to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus. To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness. Yes, so welcome everyone again and enjoy the conversation.
Speaker 3:Welcome everyone again and enjoy the conversation, this bearing and not leaving, but also being filled with peace. He's not just suffering, no, not at all. Somehow he's bearing the suffering and, even deeper, he's at peace.
Speaker 2:It seems to me that he is working on an outcome, but it's different than we think, and maybe that's the trick that Paul's trying to initiate us into Exactly.
Speaker 3:It's not that there's no orientation to goal or telos, it's just that it's now shaped like Christ. It's imitating Christ, as opposed to a different spirit. Where it's accomplished and then so let's take an example.
Speaker 2:I'm sure you and your priesthood have experienced this a lot. Quite a few dear souls in congregations have approached me through the years carrying great concern for a loved one. They're seeing that they haven't found God. They are going down a path that is destructive to them and their spirit. They're living in the old human.
Speaker 3:The loved one, the loved one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they're desperate to help them and to try to, particularly very often, to bring them to God. Could, we somehow maybe pray them into being Christians or get them somehow to change their behavior that won't be so destructive. Can we stop the direction that things are going? And it's interesting because it's very often not quite thought to the end Like, what are we imagining then? The life would then look like They'll come home, get a normal job. Like it's often not thought that far.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:But really it's kind of coming out of this desire to stop a trajectory, Like there's this trajectory towards destruction. Yeah, Like there's this trajectory towards destruction.
Speaker 2:And we know that when we step outside of the body and can see with eyes of spirit, we see Christ walking with every single human being, every single human, including the junkies who are dying on the streets or in wherever they are in rural areas right now, heading into destruction. And he's there, walking with them, sitting with them, I think, weeping with them, loving them, but not necessarily in any way per se stopping that trajectory. He's not preventing all the junkies from dying.
Speaker 3:Right, Otherwise he would have just fixed everything right away at resurrection.
Speaker 2:And a lot of brothers and sisters, I think, who love God, are angry with God. Amen. Why aren't you stopping this? Yeah, and this is the thing I guess, and this is the thing I guess.
Speaker 2:Is he being inactive? Or is every way in which he's walking with them, building, actually working on the goal of the thing that will be here when everything else falls away, when there will be zero of these old paths left to take, because they will all have become ash at the end of time, is not the fact that he is honoring their path, but always giving them, again and again, a sense for the other way. Part of it Isn't it after they die, that he accompanies them in death and helps them to see what they couldn't maybe see on earth in the eyes of the Spirit, they couldn't maybe see on earth in the eyes of the spirit, and when they are reborn on earth and they meet and he leads them into another way of seeing what the, the meaning of what they chose and feeling it, so that they can make a new choice, and brings them servants and loved ones who will picture to them his love, on and on meaning like over lifetimes.
Speaker 2:Right, he's playing a much, much longer game towards a much, much greater outcome than what we are usually thinking is the right one, exactly. Well said, I'm trying to get at like it's not. Maybe it's also a false judgment on our part to see a passive compassion that's happening there Very much, but an incredibly powerful, building compassion within the middle of a challenge that you may not be able to solve this lifetime.
Speaker 3:Right and the solving of it ie making it simply better isn't actually what he's interested in anyway? Not only is his walk present with us, not only is that compassion, it is itself love in the world. He's suffering with us, isn't it?
Speaker 2:the better it is. The thing he's doing is the world he's suffering with us, isn't it?
Speaker 3:the better the thing he's doing is, the better it is already, and that he's doing that, feeling our pain, bearing us and at peace. This is the very thing that we're, that's the very telos that we're working for. This is it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not some kind, that's the thing. It isn't some kind of outer set of circumstances in which there are no problems. It is compassion. Exactly that is what we're headed for and trying to build is not stasis and outer peace, right, but love in the middle. Right Of terror, horror, exactly Right.
Speaker 3:Of terror, horror, exactly.
Speaker 3:Later today I'm going to talk with some of the Ukrainian brothers and sisters and I remember this beautiful letter that our colleague Tatiana wrote to the Christian community. It was spread around but she described a picture where all of these horrible things happening in the midst of war bombs just terror, and yet in the midst of it she witnessed incredible deeds of love and sacrifice of soldiers to both sides of the battle the Russians and the Ukrainians that in the midst of the darkness and the catastrophe, little stars of love deeds were shining in the darkness. That's the kind of gesture that Christ is working with, which is itself compassion.
Speaker 2:And if we bring that back to the picture, this imagination of the true priesthood that we see in Christ, then it is very clearly not going to be an outcome that is outwardly necessarily good for him, because he himself has offered himself up as a fragrant sacrifice. There's no self-protection in him at all, right.
Speaker 3:It's not good for him in the sense of the old person that I felt in myself of let me solve everything so that I'm comfortable and self-satisfied and not in pain. It turns out Christ's very offering has a different character and it's not mere pain, because he's in such deep peace and love and joy. This is as deep as joy. It's as deep as joy To give himself.
Speaker 2:yes, right, but he's not holding on to anything. He's not trying to keep the world at bay, so he doesn't have to suffer anything. He's not trying to keep the world at bay, so he doesn't have to suffer anything. He's not trying to keep himself at all.
Speaker 3:No Right, this is this mystery he's trying to give himself to us, but he's respecting our freedom 100%, because that's part of this true offering. It's this incredible mystery. He cannot trespass against our freedom, otherwise he'd ruin the whole gesture.
Speaker 2:The whole. Thing. How would it be?
Speaker 3:love. It wouldn't be love, it wouldn't be offering, it would be enforced, whatever Goodness, goodness, whatever that's supposed to be, but we still have it.
Speaker 2:It's like, would you just make everyone behave, get everyone in line, right, but we're not meant to be children anymore. That's a childish time. Yeah, if that's true, then he's got only one option, which is I can offer myself and accompany you in your becoming and make sure you have access to all you need over time.
Speaker 3:Right. So in my turning to the beauty of this kind of bearing, of this kind of walking, with the challenges I also recognized in myself yesterday, I don't have enough of that.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Okay, I love that, I want that. I see it in you, I see it in him. But I look in me and I don't really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually I love all that stuff.
Speaker 3:It's not there.
Speaker 2:Where I don't have to change, I don't have to suffer and the world can just behave and I would stop feeling bad, Right? Could everyone just figure it out.
Speaker 3:Like I do have in the old person. I do have this tenacious, assertive will to solve the problems the way I see them and get it done so that I can rest. Yes, I have that, but I'm putting that off. I'm saying that's not.
Speaker 2:I see no future there I don't see any future there.
Speaker 3:I know that old self and I see its fruits. No thanks. I turn to the one I love in his beauty. But the turning is not enough.
Speaker 2:But sorry, first you had that internal recognition that the other one has no future.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And the internal recognition and convince, like you're deeply in your innermost convinced that's the future. That's the way. That's innermost convinced that's the future, that's the way, that's a way of being that is the future.
Speaker 3:Right, because I've glimpsed it, I've been in it but I forgot. But you're not that person.
Speaker 2:I'm not that. You've been living in this old human. You're not that new human.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:Now you're asking to put him on.
Speaker 3:Right. So it's kind of like there has to be a reason for actually needing a new human. It's an actual inner reality. That's not just words, it's recognizing I need his being. It's not just imitating I need his being. It's not just imitating, it's receiving and ingesting his own being into myself, which is always you could say simply put that's a kind of prayer asking. Put that's a kind of prayer asking Lord. So yesterday, simply help me to bear this in your peace until the rightful pictures arise. Help me to bear as you do with the ground of deep peace. Give me your peace.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful. So the activity of getting dressed, activity of getting dressed, then, is this prayer of prayer reaching out to him and asking the garments of his goodness, which is his Anthropos, the new human generated on Easter, human generated on Easter, the resurrected new Adam, to actually pray for those realities, forces sheaths to get dressed in them.
Speaker 3:And the more I learn this way, the more I'm seeing that actually asking for his peace, his love, his patience is so much more powerful than just saying give me peace, give me patience, give me hope.
Speaker 2:It's actually interesting how I'm finding that my mind, my, nous, myself, the more specific I'm person, the unique resurrected one's patience.
Speaker 3:Because it aligns it with his beauty more and more, his telos, his walking, his way, his pictures. It's more and more imitating, then it can become a more and more imitation of him, then it can become a more and more imitation of him. So I felt blessed by it. It was like as soon as my mind named it, called out for it, it just came in like a draft of health.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful and I know both of us have been deeply moved by some of the spiritual, scientific research that Rudolf Steiner did into the effects of the incarnation. What did it mean that this creator, being the word, lived into an anthropos and permeated the garments of a human, His physical garment, his life garment, his soul garment, even his ego sheath that he describes so extraordinarily the human personality in which the Christ I lived, that you could say the incarnation. One way of describing it is what John says in chapter 13 when he describes the washing of the feet. He takes off his garments and puts on the garments of a slave wrapping a towel around his waist, beautiful.
Speaker 2:I love that, which is Philippians 2, the hymn of St Paul, where he contemplates that as well, he doesn't hold on to the likeness to God but puts on the likeness of Anthropos, even making himself subject to death, so participates in the human sheaths experience. But that this doesn't just, it wasn't just a compassionate participation, it was also creative and a preparation, because he's the creator, word Right. Something happened by him living into these she's that would make it possible to put on, for any other human to put on, garments, right.
Speaker 3:So if you can see Jonah's eyes are lighting up.
Speaker 2:Talk to me, brother, because he shares out of this research what happened.
Speaker 3:It's so beautiful because, in a way, that whole incarnation process as you just pictured also in the beautiful picture of the washing of the feet it prepared and completed at Easter a new creation, a new human, a new, fully realized medicine, so to speak, model and medicine, something to imitate and something to take in For what ails us, for what ails us, fully completed homeopathic dose, so to speak. That also is a preparation, it's preparing for us to do this exact process that I'm talking about. Yes, it's there always for every human. It's walking with us. It's a person. It's a person, it's a person and it's also he himself, in his being and in his activity, is itself the medicine to and be permeated with, so in a way, it also continues the pattern of incarnation, which is interesting.
Speaker 3:It continues the pattern of incarnation from a certain point of view because he is, in a way, he's waiting to be allowed, to be taken in to our sheaths, out of our freedom.
Speaker 2:So the human in the flesh who opens to the word of God, who gives himself completely, is repeating a kind of incarnational transformational process. That the word come in and heal me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's not the same.
Speaker 2:And remake me. Yeah, it's not the same.
Speaker 3:And remake me Exactly. It's not the same, because we're also taking in the human part, which is slightly different than the original incarnation depending on how you look at it, but it is the same dynamic of taking in the word and having the word become a new creation in us.
Speaker 2:And you've talked about the prayer activity from your innermost and turning to him. You've talked about the prayer activity from your innermost and turning to him and it seems, then, in the practice of communion, that we do, in our renewed mass, the act of consecration, and in the history of the church, you see, it seems very clearly to me. I wonder how you see this him give the four gifts of his humanness to us.
Speaker 3:Beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these four sheaths are given very separately, each one after the other. He gives us his body, he gives us his blood, he breathes on us his peace and he touches us and looks into our eyes the self as well. I think that's part of the sacramental understanding in the church that the body, blood and soul and spirit of Christ are given in communion. The new Anthropos the new Anthropos.
Speaker 3:The new Anthropos. In a way you could say that is the essence of Christianity. It's to be newly created by the offering of a full new human to the spirit. The free human turned spirit, creating a new human in us.
Speaker 2:And the imagination. It seems to be because you could say well, if, as we said at the beginning of our conversation, wonderful Jesus Christ. In Jesus, the union of the two of God and human, generated in a new creation act, the completed goal of humanity and of all earth, evolution in the resurrected one. But then you could say in the crudest form good for you, like what does that have to do with me like? I can't participate in that. That's way over there, right in its fullness and completion yeah but that's so distant from where I'm at.
Speaker 2:How does that relate to me? And the image that Paul and John and the disciples gave us is well, he's a wheat seed. He goes into the earth as one, but what grows out of that bears fruit. A hundredfold Seeds in the exact same form as the seed that went into the ground are multiplied through the mystery of his dying into the earth. So this multiplication mystery of the transformed sheaths of Jesus Christ Right, made available as gifts for his new people of God.
Speaker 3:It's like a spiritual economy. Yeah, exactly, it's like a. It's so beautiful the way you put that. What came into my mind is a dandelion Mm, yeah Right, grows up. It's one thing. One thing, it's so beautiful the way you put that. What came into my mind is a dandelion yeah Right, it grows up. It's one thing. It's golden, golden, and then it turns in one night or however. That mystery occurs to this puffball that has multiple, multiple seeds that just then Taken by the wind, taken by the wind go into and become that thing again.
Speaker 2:That thing. All of a sudden, the whole ground in your whole neighborhood is covered with golden.
Speaker 3:Right. So the mystery of the risen Christ is that he's full of seeds. His self, his soul, his life, body, his blood, his body, physical body. They're all being gifted as seeds so that we can become the dandelion.
Speaker 2:And so suddenly you're realizing, in this whole picture you've been painting for us and walking through, and the pattern of recognizing that there is an Anthropos I'm living in, a way of being I'm inhabiting that doesn't have life in it, and there is an Anthropos that's got all this future potential life in it. That's the way and I can shift and orient towards that and take him in. You're using an organ in you that's like a life sense and a moral sense. It's like a moral life sense. What is dying, what is growing, that's partly what you're picking up and what is truly moral, truly good. They're right next to each other. That stands out to me in our contemplation today.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, and I can remember the moment in my life when that moral conscience in me, that conscience in me, that life sense, that sense for what is good, itself transformed Itself, became awakened to this one and this way, whereas before my sense for good and life was still in the dark, it was still trying to do things that were leading to death. So he's also speaking to a process that has been for him, awakened for him, on the path to Damascus.
Speaker 2:St Paul absolutely. He went through the same thing. His moral life sense was guiding him against God.
Speaker 3:Exactly right, and yet he. So it's also our very mind, our very conscience, our very picture of what is good, right? Which you've been describing Needs is called to become different. Wow, and I would say, in a way, that's the very core of what seminary is all about. Right, yes, amen Is going through a transformation at the core of your inner mind.
Speaker 2:It's so beautifully described what you just said verse 18. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God. So we're actually having trouble with this life sense for God's life because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. Something in the heart of who we are actually has, here he says, become callous Right, the word for callous there is which basically means become numb, becoming numb. Yeah, you can't perceive rightly? Yeah, it's calloused over.
Speaker 3:And isn't there a sensuality piece to that? Like falling into sensuality.
Speaker 2:Yeah, having given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. So that's related, I guess.
Speaker 3:Right to practice every kind of impurity. So that's related, I guess, right. So for me, if I just relate it to the experience I had yesterday, my hardness of heart was more the experience of wanting to feel self-satisfied, of accomplishing everything, and kind of wanting to feel closed and done, and the sensuality bit was this kind of peace where I can feel, oh, I'm good and I can just relax now and I can lay on the couch and scroll YouTube and not think about anything. That's the sensuousness, right?
Speaker 2:That is the peace you're longing for is actually bound up with a certain sense, fact Right.
Speaker 3:And it doesn't lead to actual life, no life, it just leads to kind of A break. Yeah.
Speaker 2:An empty space.
Speaker 3:Exactly. It's not like I have to condemn that either. No, no, no. I just know that that's not life.
Speaker 2:It's not God's life. The future life, it's not God's life.
Speaker 3:The future life. It's an old life, yes. So one more thing with this is that I think it's also going to become clear or it is clear if we look closely at Paul that it's not necessarily a one-time thing either. Oh right, he'll say later don't let the sun go down on your anger. Yeah, be angry, but don't sin. So there's processes in which we're also called to bear this old human in us, because I guarantee you, in myself it will arise again.
Speaker 2:Well, it's a beautiful example, because all of the people he's writing to are people who went through a ritual, a sacred rite, where they enacted all of this. Very, very often, in that early church, they would take off their old clothing because your clothing was a representative of who you were, your identity. They would take off their old clothing because your clothing was a representative of who you were, your identity. They would take off their old clothing, submerge themselves in water, emerge, declare out of themselves the mysteries of Christ, who he was, and then put on a new garment.
Speaker 3:Get dressed in white.
Speaker 2:They would picture and go through, inwardly and outwardly, a rite which said you were this and you went through the death waters, joined yourself to Easter and are now a new person in Christ. So they've all done that. He's telling them put off the old self. You've got to keep doing this. Put off the old self, put on Christ.
Speaker 3:That's the daily garment work and I think I don't know how, how you think about that, patrick, but the more I kind of try to make clear for myself a kind of christian spiritual psychology, the more I see and I look out on our kind of quote unquote Christian culture, the more I see this is one of the biggest challenges for us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because so often I see Christians, denominations, movements, including ours, working with this mystery of how do I deal with sin as an ongoing reality. So often it's the case where I've put off sin and now I'm a Christian and now I don't sin anymore, but then that's not true and that doesn't actually reveal itself as a reality. But then what do I do and how do I deal with this burden of the old self that doesn't just go away magically because I say a few words, right, and how do I actually live with that like Christ is living with that old Adam old self in me? Yeah, and I feel like that's the next stage of our Christian evolution is to become more and more conscious and free in how we walk with sin and the old self, not letting the sun go down on it but also not just falling into it and forgetting the true life and the true love and the true telos.
Speaker 2:Amen. For me it's like falling in love with the actual work of this alchemy, of the transformation of lead into gold that we see through his work on Golgotha, of how bread becomes body, of how wine becomes blood, of how my word becomes his word, how earthly being becomes transfigured with heavenly being, as our epistle at Ascension says. But that means falling in love with the actual process of it. The process, and bearing the fact that that's going to take a long time Right, because there are all these garments to sanctify and consecrate and permeate with this being and consecrate and permeate with his being it's going to be a long, long work to make holy all parts of who we are, to realize Easter in us and therefore this orientation too of. I see that's the way.
Speaker 2:I can't yet do it. There's no future except that Fill me, give me the gifts of your garments so that you can walk and work through me, even while I'm under construction, and our community life as well, but that we should expect darkness, expect sin, look forward to it, because we're, as you said, called to shine not within light but within darkness. It is the project. I think that's the thing it's like to actually fall in love, wake up in the morning and go. It's going to be dark. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's going to be dark in me, around me, and I get to put on Christ, I think that's so good, patrick, thank you.
Speaker 3:To fall in love with a project yeah, thank you. To fall in love with a project yeah, and maybe also to be inspired by the one who is leading the project because he's in love with the project.
Speaker 2:That's how I even know about it, right.
Speaker 3:And I think for me what comes up when you say that is also, it also just speaks to the part of me that wants to be done, oh, yeah, right, like I want to be finished and I want to have written, I want to have done it, yes, yeah, and so to fall in love with the process.
Speaker 3:But for me it's like I also need to fall, because I struggle with this so much. I also need to. I find myself needing to know like, the more my sin is revealed, it's not just about putting it off, but the sin actually itself reveals if it's orientated too rightly, reveals more of the majesty of his grace and the beauty of the true human being. So it's like it's not just a patience exercise. I have to remind myself it's actually where the depth and beauty of more and more of the true human being and cross and God can reveal itself. You've said this before many times in different ways, but to me, then I can feel a deeper level of value in the process that I'm so impatient with Right, right, then you're not just gritting your teeth.
Speaker 2:Perseverance as a kind of the good is at the end of this thing. This is what we're trying. It's so hard to put in words. There's a layer of experience which is that the highest presence of the loving, healing grace of God, of the loving, healing grace of God, highest bliss, is accessible in our crucifixion experiences In the cross.
Speaker 2:Not just after and it's Good Friday and I know we get at this a lot in this podcast, but it's an orientation that you and I realize we're not going to make it if we don't get there. I think, let's just be honest we're not going to make it. I'm not going to make it. No.
Speaker 2:I don't think we're going to make it. We're not going to make it until we can find the beloved and his glory. While going through all we're going through, just to put it simply while we're going through all, we're going through In it.
Speaker 3:In it, not after it, not after it, right, that somehow in it. And that's, in a way, the core of the new priesthood If we look at the new priesthood born in 1922, that the core of the new priesthood actually is trying to meditate deeply, deeply, deeply, drawing its source of life from to be able to practice sacraments. From this picture that the light of God is coming in and through the cross, that I don't have it, that it's coming through the cross and not after it, not before it, but in it and through it. And I find that to be interesting, that you said it that way, that we're not gonna make it unless it's in what we're suffering right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so beautiful because suddenly, as you're talking, the imagination is there of being in the tomb of my old human being, called out of this one, and experiencing Christ shining upon me, perfect and that is what Benny will say in chapter five. Five, awake, o sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. I'm living in this dead human.
Speaker 3:I'm called out of it, and then I meet one who is shining upon me and receive into my heart, with my free will, the light of his being, and it's four garments, and it's four garments beautifully, yeah, as you beautifully spoke. Ah, what a beautiful morning. Thank you Patrick, thank you Lord, thank you Lord no-transcript.