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
Immerse them in True Being, in Creating and in Light: The Great Commission renewed — Mission Series Part II
What if baptism isn't just an ancient ritual but a transformative medicine for the wounded human soul? This conversation explores the profound mysteries hidden in Christ's Great Commission to "baptize all nations in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."
The traditional words of baptism have become formulaic for many modern ears. But when we penetrate beyond the formula to the living experience, we discover something revolutionary: an invitation to die to our isolated selfhood and open to the intelligence of the risen Christ. This baptismal death isn't a one-time event but an ongoing process where our thinking, creating, and feeling are gradually transformed through participation in divine life.
Through a fascinating exploration of the cross as gateway rather than mere symbol, we discover how making three crosses upon ourselves - at head, mouth and heart - can be understood as an active collaboration with the Trinity. The Father brings the ground of being to our anxious, isolated consciousness. The Son infuses our creative will with his purposes of love. The Spirit enlightens our heart-thinking with divine wisdom.
These insights address a fundamental crisis in modern consciousness. Many spiritual paths today either emphasize total self-empowerment ("manifest your reality") or complete self-abandonment ("just let go"). The baptismal understanding offers a third way - maintaining our individual agency while allowing it to be transformed through divine collaboration. The result isn't loss of self but discovery of our true purpose within the meaning of Earth itself.
Have you felt the existential insecurity that characterizes our age? Perhaps this isn't a flaw to overcome but an honest recognition of our incompleteness without connection to the gournd only the divine can provide. Perhaps the medicine we need isn't more self-optimization but immersion in the healing waters of baptism - dying to what we have been so we can live in what we are becoming.
This whole conversation uncovers one of the core missions of Christianity — baptism — as a living medicine for our humanity and how this understanding is regained in the movement for religious renewal.
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.
Good morning Patrick. Hi Jonah, well, it's the last day of seminary. It is. Yeah, it's been a wonderful year. Looking forward to also the summertime. Big things are happening.
Speaker 3:It's been a wonderful six years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, yeah, this is big. You're also taking the long journey with your family down to atlanta.
Speaker 3:Yeah, to start a new congregation indeed yeah, beautiful, not going to be walking these halls on the regular anymore. No, oh, you know that that's. You know. When I say halls, people might have the impression of a great seminary building with many halls. I really need to be saying walking this hall. We've got one hall. It's short. It's short, a sweet little building here in Vaughan, ontario. Yeah, in the back rooms where we have our offices and record this podcast. Yeah, and the back rooms where we have our offices and record this podcast. And right this morning, our 15 students from different places around the world are going to start bustling in the kitchen getting ready for a day at seminary their last day as well. That's right this year. And wherever you are, dear listener, and wherever you are, dear listener, all of our incredible patrons, listeners who are so dedicated and support the conversation we do here, and anyone else who have found their way to this conversation on the mysteries of Christianity, welcome, welcome.
Speaker 2:And even though we just mentioned Patrick moving, make no mistake, this podcast is continuing. It's not going anywhere. It just won't be so often in person, that's right. Yeah, and we'll begin, as we usually do, friends, with the Gospel of John in Chapter 8. Again, Jesus spoke to them saying I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've got a short series of podcast conversations on a theme right now, a small but mighty theme on the mission question, the purpose question of everything that we do and care about what we believe the mission of Christianity is, but also as it's coming to expression in the unique development that has come about in our movement for religious renewal that has the name of the Universal Church, the Christian community, and a subtitle that reveals that something new has come into being through our founding back in 1922.
Speaker 3:It's the Movement for Religious Renewal. Something was in deep need of renewal and this massive event happened then and has been growing and spreading out into the world, gently, slowly, powerfully. And you used as a springboard for our conversation into these mysteries last time, jonah, wondering about the universal elements of the mission, of Christ's work through his ecclesia. What are the unique? The second question what is the unique? Newly appearing, strongly appearing, developed elements in our movement and we had a bit of a. We developed a little bit of a core picture for us of imagining that what was planted by Christ in the disciples and that which grew from them was something that can grow.
Speaker 3:It's a development, a being in development and that everything is there in the seed, but you don't see all that's in there until it unfolds in time it's a very important picture, so this idea everything that is truly of the, of the mystery of the church, not as a an outer institution, but as the, the physical expression of Christ's continued work on earth, his body, his embodiment on earth after the death and resurrection mysteries in Jesus that those have somehow. All of it should be present, at the beginning in seed-like form, but then, over the millennia, this seed is going to be unfolding, all of what's hidden inside of it as well, and then when that new organ comes, that new development comes. You could say all of us kind of go well, can we see its origins back there in the beginning, or is this some kind of strange new thing? Is God doing something new or they've added something? What is this? Is this really a part of Christ? And that's a rightful question, always the only question, I think.
Speaker 3:And you brought in these powerful words that are spoken in the Easter liturgy in our movement for religious renewal.
Speaker 3:Very new words have not existed in any Easter liturgy that I know of anywhere in the world, not just saying that Christ is risen on Easter, but is risen in such a way that part of what you learn in beholding his rising is that he has become the meaning and purpose of the earth, a planetary purpose, planetary wisdom and meaning.
Speaker 3:It's in him, it's revealed in him. When we meet him, we meet the purpose of earth life. What's the meaning of life? The answer in our Easter services it's this person, and he shows us something that imbues our own life with its purpose and meaning. And we looked a little bit then as to how this new planetary meaning, mind intelligence, the Easter intelligence of life, death and resurrection, the thinking intelligence of life, death and resurrection, the thinking intelligence of Christ Jesus, the operation logos of him, as an Easter mystery that the earth is operating in earth right now that that is possible now in a new way in our age, for human minds to connect to his mind, to the mind of Easter, so that that mind can start to think in us.
Speaker 3:That was one beginning step we took, so I can see that's called up some memories. I don't know if you wanted to remember with me before we take a next step today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I love that element though, that this whole picture of that there's something to take into our thinking of the intelligence of this being that is being called for today, that our liturgy begins to emphasize, which is, in the history of liturgies, simply new. It doesn't need to be exaggerated or like, oh my gosh, but it's just factually new. But it's just factually new. It's different, that something can this being, christ Jesus, is thinking and has an intelligence and is working right now, and that that intelligence can start to enter into our minds and our hearts. Paul describes it our spirit witnesses, with his spirit, the Holy Spirit working in us, beginning to school our own mind, our own intelligence. So that's just to emphasize what you were saying.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that this dichotomy and split that had really reached a crisis point in the modern era, where the mind was often being told you cannot participate in the mysteries of faith, right, you can only access God mysteries of faith Right. You can only access God through the faith organ.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and that's a huge, huge theme and picture that is so important for our movement. That also changes the nature of how we work with faith as well. That's it, yeah, that it's not something that has to remain blind and separate from knowledge.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so that you could say a crisis that was splitting the human soul, like so my mind can only work in the world of things and physical operations, while my heart has to just believe in something. I can't understand this terrible kind of break in the human being, that christ, jesus the healer, would do something right in our age to reconcile the mind and the heart and make it possible for the mind that has felt cut off from God to begin to live in God's mind, to live in God's life, our worship service. May my thinking live in the life of the Holy Mind, the Holy Spirit, in all future cycles of time to come.
Speaker 2:So we're praying our thinking into the thinking of God. That's an amazing thing. That's also radically new. It doesn't exist in any other liturgy just doesn't.
Speaker 3:It's not again. It's not meant to be like, yeah, we're blowing our own horn or something like that. It's just to try to recognize what is it that's coming about right as an answer to a devastating need in the human soul in our age. I think if any of the people, our listeners, love our podcast, I think that's partly what they feel it's like. Oh there's, I can track something here where my thinking is thinking along with them in such a way that my heart is also perceiving and my will is touched, like it's all included, my whole person.
Speaker 3:I can be a thinking person and a faithful person. This is possible, in fact. It can be a totally new place. It can really be the place of the skull, which is where Jesus was crucified in the physical world in history. That place can be where God dies in us. It is where God dies in us. And that's one of the reasons and where he can resurrect.
Speaker 2:And where he can resurrect. Yeah, and that's one of the reasons, I think, that in a way and Rudolf Steiner also talks about this in a way why the thinking needed to be separated from faith. Yeah, that there was a real, honest concern that the intellectual, killing, analyzing, dry way of thinking would destroy the revelations of faith. It did. It did so it needed to be separated.
Speaker 2:Faith and knowledge needed to be separated, dogma needed to be protected, so that it was being protected from the death forces of the intellect. But now… For a time yeah, for a time, yeah, for a time. But now there's a new way of thinking that's evolving in the human soul that doesn't have to kill or can also receive resurrection forces in the place of the school.
Speaker 3:Yes, his blood can flow into the ground of our mind. So everything we see and pictured in the in, in the story of golgotha in the gospels, as a single event on the plane of history now can happen in the consciousness of every human being that it's an Easter age. As one of our students just said on Monday, it's not an Easter event in a single point and place on the earth, but these Easter events can now happen all over the earth, in the human beings who are experiencing now. Flowing into my consciousness is not just the intelligence that operates in the intellect, but this earth intelligence, which is the mystery of Golgotha, the life, death and resurrection mystery which imbues me with purpose. The other intellect, the other intelligence, imbues me with despair, imbues me with emptiness and meaninglessness, which is a key, essential experience of our age. We get to know the empty, meaningless place first. First, yeah.
Speaker 3:And we go seeking is there some blood here, life, yeah. So that was a little bit of a recap, I think, touching into that mystery, and I'm inspired to go to a different place to launch to stir it because I want to ask you, just using it as a jumping off point, Because I know right now your own heart is burning with the question of our movement's mission.
Speaker 3:And what is it that we're bringing? Can we get really clear about that? Know our identity within the story of Christ's work through Christian community? So I'd love to take us back to a very important passage in the Gospels that has our mission in it, the mission given by Jesus himself to his servants who take up the work, and this is at the end of the Gospel of Matthew. So we're in the season of ascension and this is an ascension moment. He goes up the mountain After the resurrection is completed. He's shown himself to them, he's walked with them and they meet with him at the end of matthew's gospel on a mountaintop. This is chapter 28, verse 16, and there's amazing things in here.
Speaker 3:Of course we oh, yeah, but you know, I just want to let, I just want to let you pick up the elements that feel essential as a launch pad for what what you'd love to get into. So verse 16 in chapter 28 now, the 11 disciples went to galilee, to the mountain which jesus had directed them. So it's already extraordinary. So, like he, he's telling I want you to meet me at a high place. So he's they know where to go. Because he's they don't want you to meet me at a high place. So they know where to go. Because he doesn't walk with them. He tells them. You're going to have to go there to meet me.
Speaker 3:So he goes to a mountain to which Jesus. They go, to a mountain which Jesus had directed them, and when they saw him, they worshipped him. But some doubted. What an extraordinary line, verse 18,. And Jesus came and said to them All authority, all exousia in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and behold, I am with you, always to the end of the eon, the so-called Great Commission, very specific tasks. Jesus has entered into his sonship as heir of the Father and has inherited the role and work of the Father. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations and now I'll do a little bit of a translation Immerse them in the activity and power and presence of the Trinity. Immerse them in the Trinity, in the threefold Godhead, teach them to observe all that.
Speaker 3:I have commanded you and remember, I will be with you the whole way, yeah, yeah. So in hearing that expression, what, for you, stands out as this universal element that the church has always sought to follow and the unique connection to it that you see as a part of our movement for religious renewal? Yeah, yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting that that is so central and I love your translation there, this immersion, using that word instead of the baptizing word, this immersion using that word instead of the baptizing word, but it really is an immersion into a certain reality, that that's this great commission Baptize people. And it's interesting in the heart, you could say at the heart of the priesthood, priest circle is the ordination of priests and we have that very strongly in right in the beginning or or a little bit after the beginning. But a very prominent first part is the priest is told to gather, baptizing all who stream towards this altar.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's the verb baptize, just baptize everyone.
Speaker 2:Baptize everyone. And then the celebrant points to the true celebrant sitting at the altar in his super sensible form Christ Jesus gather, baptizing all who stream to this being so, it begs the question yeah, what is that? What is baptism? Yeah, what is that? What is baptism? And it's becoming more and more strange for me. It's developed in our circles, I think, because we have a specific sacrament of baptism for children.
Speaker 3:Also a total first, which is also totally unique, exactly.
Speaker 2:But it's simply just untrue that we don't have baptism, because everything is orientated if we follow the scripture and we follow our ordination towards baptism.
Speaker 2:Which is very connected to our movement is that we practice this baptism integrated into our Eucharist service. All who come to the Eucharist service are invited to, for example, make three crosses over themselves one at the forehead, one at the chin and one at the heart and do that in the name of the Trinity. So you could say, in a way, we are co-participates in a baptismal process. We don't do it on our own, which is sometimes what we think too, but the priest is doing it with us. The priest is doing a big cross and the priest is always at the altar representing Jesus Christ. So in a way, we're our thinking connected to our forehead, our willing, our activity connected to our chin and our feeling heart connected to our chest, to our chest. So I think it's also interesting that the baptism one of the qualities of baptism that we work with we're not just baptized, we join with a baptismal process, we collaborate through the gesture of crossing ourselves with the one at the altar who is celebrating.
Speaker 3:This with element seems. Also, if I'm following you, just because I'm doing the gesture, you can have the impression. Well, that's the part that I can ascribe to me. But what is it that I am inscribing upon me is not mine. He has made that full of his power, which is a cross, so I'm inscribing myself with his name three crosses. That's his name, Right. It's not my name, Right.
Speaker 2:And we're following also exactly. It's not our name. We're following exactly the celebrant. We're joining the celebrant in an activity and the celebrant is Jesus Christ, and so we're joining him with his name and we're joining him in the cross.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and in the Trinity, and in the Trinity right the. And in the Trinity, and in the Trinity Right the forces of the Trinity.
Speaker 2:And this evolves then in the service into an immersion, into a kind of communion experience of God, which is described also in a cruciform way that I'm filled with peace in a broken world, that I'm a whole soul or a healthy soul in a sick dwelling, that I'm knowing Christ, confessing to Christ in the presence of the adversary, passing to Christ in the presence of the adversary.
Speaker 3:These are all actually cruciform realities that I'm immersing myself in. So the worship service that culminates in the communion with God is communion with a God who communed with us in a place where he was crucified, where he had enemies who sought to destroy him, enemies who sought to destroy him, where he had disciples who betrayed and denied him, and in the middle of that he says peace, be with you. It emanates from his being. So that's the God we're communing with.
Speaker 2:Right. So if we're going to commune with that God, we've got to become united with his image and likeness, yeah, which is also when he first appears to them. He shows them his wounds, yeah, and yet he gives peace at the same time.
Speaker 3:Now the Christian tradition, in the Orthodox and Catholic tradition, as they go way back in time, of course, also have the practice both of a baptismal rite where the forces of the Trinity are called upon the being of God, father, god, the Son, god, the Spirit, are called to be present and imbuing the candidate, the initiate, in baptism. But it's also in this formula of in the name of the father, son and Holy spirit, and it's so interesting how, how that changes that that phrasing isn't present in our liturgy, in the name of such a such a long standing formula in the history, of such a long-standing formula in the history of Christianity, that that also, when we do those crosses, that's not what we say. How do you see or interpret or feel? Maybe we first have to say what we do say, but how do you see and interpret and feel something of? How does that connect to what is new and coming new in our movement?
Speaker 2:So let me just try to understand your question there. So how does the change from the scriptural words that were basically for millennia used as they are in scripture in liturgy, and that we have changed those words and kind of reformulated it?
Speaker 3:We received them renewed and changed Right. That's another thing.
Speaker 2:We didn't just willy-nilly alter them. We received them anew from the spirit, and your question is why, or how is that, or how do I live with that?
Speaker 3:see that as an expression of part of a new well, this is.
Speaker 2:This is really. That's really an interesting question, because what comes to mind in this moment is first, to just emphasize, for example, in those scriptural words baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and what's different is we still speak the Father God be in us, for example, but it's different words and we're using a cross three times. Right.
Speaker 2:So the word, so to speak, has also become a gesture Right, a change in the gesture and in the wording and in the wording. So what awakens in me is, first and foremost, that the cross is the actual gesture of the cross, is the gateway. The actual gesture of the cross is the gateway. So, in essence, we're placing death on our soul forces, our thinking, our willing and our feeling. We're first and foremost saying this cross is a gateway through which the Father and the Son and the Spirit can enter us, and that's something quite profound, that baptism is related to death. Baptism is related to death. And what inspires me about that right now is because you could say already, even after those words were said to the disciple, already that formulation was transmuted and transformed and reformulated in one of our forerunners, paul the Apostle. He already, for example, in Romans, and I think, because I've been living with Romans, so much.
Speaker 2:That's why this is coming up. He says don't you know that we have been baptized in Christ, but we have been baptized or immersed in his death. So Paul already starts to proclaim very early that to be baptized means to enter into his death. To enter into his death, which I don't necessarily immediately get with the words baptize, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, I know.
Speaker 2:Right, it can be and it was for our students shocking to start to think about baptism as being immersed in the cruciform reality of the cross or Golgotha. That's what baptism is, and yet our new form actually emphasizes that, if we're awake to it, that these crosses that we do are actually representing entering into his death. So what I see there is actually a new formulation that's really connected to what Paul was starting to perceive, in a way, I would say our movement takes. Paul is a forerunner for the qualities that are coming out in our liturgy, qualities that are coming out in our liturgy or being brought down in our liturgy.
Speaker 3:That takes this mystery of. What does it mean to die in Christ? Have a little bit of exposure, certainly, because you know I grew up in the Christian community. I have a little bit of exposure both to the Catholic tradition and the Orthodox tradition. You also would cross yourself, but you do one cross. I believe in the name of the and it would just be one large cross. I did hear at some point and I apologize to our listeners, um, there was a three cross practice too, or is? I have to look into it again.
Speaker 3:And right in the early church, as you see it, it was understood baptism was a dying to your old self oh yeah taking off even your outer garments, immersing your whole body and then really experiencing an imbuing of the godhead into you and coming out as a new person right through that experience right, an initiation an initiation, and this is how, then, paul talks about in his incredible letter in the romans.
Speaker 2:This is how he then talks about the mystery. He goes into detail about the mystery of baptism and how ourself, this, this core of our being, which is so named in our Easter liturgy, for example how this self goes about dying and being made new in an incredible process which is actually baptism. And he doesn't talk about this dying as some sort of ending process, which is normally what we think about.
Speaker 3:Or once and for all, even Right.
Speaker 2:Or like sometimes we think about being in relationship to Christ, is I have this belief, I have this experience and then I'm done. Yeah, but actually, paul, this baptismal death process. He talks about it as a kind of evolutionary process of the self, where first the self is like a seed that is innocent but doesn't know its darkness yet, so to speak, and then, through trying to fulfill the rules of the law, discovers it can't and has to die to an innocence or not be identified with just innocence, but let go of just being an innocent being and awaken to the fact that I can't fulfill the things that I wish I could, that I'm broken, and that, for him, is a baptismal part of a baptismal process of beginning to die into Christ.
Speaker 3:Right. I think it's like you become aware that if I only live in who I am, as I currently am made, I will truly die. I will have no part of what is life. That is the true sources of life. So now I sign up to willingly die so I can start living in something else and that, over and over dying to what I have existed in that is not able to express the good, the true and the beautiful and live in that which is the true, the good and the beautiful, or the Trinity.
Speaker 2:Right, but Paul, he does this Trinity journey.
Speaker 2:It becomes a journey in this letter which is so interesting.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like the journey that we take the Father, the Son, holy Spirit, except his is, in a way, in a different sequence.
Speaker 2:We first feel, through this death of the innocent self and awakening to our sinner self or broken self, that we then need something that we actually long and delight in the grace of God and we long to connect ourselves to that and that the grace of God is there, is for him, thanks to the sun. So, awakening to this brokenness, then we can start to feel that there's this sun power available and that part of me that connected. So the first kind of detailed journey of the baptismal into his death is to connect to the sun. And then it goes on. Then we awaken to a part of ourselves that can actually choose to turn our mind and set our mind on what we choose, and that's his dying to just the one that delights when the sun's out, like if I'm outside and I can actually do something. I can actually learn to open my windows and take back the curtains and actively set my mind ready for and he calls that placing, setting our mind on the spirit, learning to activate something in me that can orientate and actively enter the spirit.
Speaker 2:That that's a new identity that I can grow into. But only finally, after I begin to feel the Spirit working in me, does the Spirit then teach me to say Abba? This is in chapter 8 of Romans, and that's a baptism into the Father.
Speaker 3:People need to know what Abba is. Abba means Father.
Speaker 2:Abba means. Father from Sweden.
Speaker 2:Right, he's using that Aramaic word for Father, but it's interesting to me that Paul's description of dying in Christ in baptism is a process. It's a process of the self, from innocence to brokenness, to feeling the grace of the Son, learning to enter the Spirit, that finally the Spirit teaches me in me to relate to the Father, and that that journey of the self in knowing is a kind of new form of baptism that doesn't use the formula of in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but still is it similar to, or it's still related to its core, similar to how we've changed, or how the Spirit has guided us to change our liturgy well, it's really so.
Speaker 3:it's it. It would sound like you're describing how, how this easter intelligence becomes a, a process in a person's self-formation, a formative creative force in shaping my person, and the technical term for that is baptism in Christian language. So this baptismal process, this being immersed in this, being born out of something in that innocence, of something in that innocence, recognizing that what I actually am as a person only is leading into death, willingly dying with Christ to my old self and experiencing a rebirth through the forces of the Spirit, and that's just one of the, you know, another way of saying that the intelligence expresses itself is Trinity. It seems Born of the Father. Oh, I see Dying in.
Speaker 3:Christ being reborn through the power of the Spirit, the Spirit yeah, but how do you see that in the expression of this new wording In the expression? Of this new wording.
Speaker 3:So this liturgical newness that we don't say in the name but that we give new verbs to the activity that we, that we say as we do the first cross. The father, god be in us. The son, god create in us sun. God create in us the spirit, god, enlighten us. This is totally new, that the trinity is given that we pray for a very specific kind of activity from each of the elements of the Godhead on these specific places upon us in connection with the cross. So there is a as I am bringing willingly dying to myself through crossing myself. I'm asking for very specific verbs, god becoming not a fixed title name but the verbing of God.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that emphasis Because you could say in the original scripture it emphasizes the label.
Speaker 3:Well, because name has become label. I don't think they felt name was a label back then, but that's what it sounds like to us, like in the name. Good point.
Speaker 2:Because for them, a name was much more of a verb, yes, a living power. The son of described what your father did or your ancestor did as a work, as a verb.
Speaker 3:Something of their spiritual essence is expressed in the term name. That's a really good point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so in a way you could say the fact that we talk about in our sequencing a verb tries to re-enliven the interactivity of what that means. And I would say, if we just take the first, father God be in us. If I'm honest about my being without the Father God being in me, again and again I've experienced throughout my life my consciousness alone is actually pretty empty and full of anxiety. I would actually join Soren Kierkegaard in his diagnosis of the self on its own is pretty anxious and pretty empty, and I think that mirrors also our Passion Tide, liturgy, empty is the place of our heart. So if I just look at what that means to me today the Father God be in us and I'm crossing my forehead I can go into a kind of place of the mind as well. But what's striking me today is this being quality, presence, quality that if I'm on my own I feel I'm pretty. Yeah, yeah, I don't feel whole. And a story comes to mind that I think illustrates this.
Speaker 2:One of our dear colleagues shout out to Paul, reverend Paul Newton.
Speaker 2:He told me once a beautiful story where he was actually really sick. He got sick with COVID and he was in the hospital and one of the more profound experiences of his life was as he began to sink down into a kind of powerlessness and helpless state. He described his state of being his self somehow opened up and he felt an influx of a greater being holding him, a kind of ground of being that he felt immersed in, that felt so secure like he had never felt before. Yeah, that he was, that nothing could death, nothing could take him out of that embrace and ground. And, as you asked, that's a way to understand, if I go, the Father God be in us, in me that I die to merely my own sense of being, which is actually pretty empty and anxious, and allow this ground of the world's being to allow myself to feel that, carrying that influx of his almighty presence in which nothing can assail me. So it's a kind of dying to my just mere Jonah self and allowing myself to be broken open into this deep ground.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so beautiful and then it's just such a different, it's such an accessible doorway to then meditate on being and to feel that I'm here, I'm present with you, but I'm in the way in which I am here and present, I can feel that it is it's missing. I can feel that it is it's missing the eternity, to put it really simply. Like it has, it's talking back to me, like there isn't peace in it, there isn't and and I feel insecure. Yeah, there is a, there is a ground of insecurity in me, yeah, and so the invitation to access a presence that is secure, that is, it being presence itself, that can never fall away. And so the taking the gate, as he said, making the gate, the cross from my sense of being into the being of the universe, that's such a again. It's like maybe we felt that in previous eras of Christianity when we said, in the name of the Father, certainly, yeah.
Speaker 3:But that becomes an abstraction in our age. It's so interesting. I don't know what that means. Yeah, but asking this being to be, his being, to be and be present In our being yeah, in us Gives me something I can really connect to in my soul and consciousness. I can come along and feel it in a new way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't know. I just I don't know what you think about that, patrick, but I feel like, because you mentioned this kind of insecurity also, I feel like that's such an important medicine for our time.
Speaker 3:Oh my.
Speaker 2:Lord, because if I look around and I also see that in myself such a journey with the modern kind of psychology and just inner development, there's so many souls on this planet are trying to be secure, not insecure, like insecurity is kind of an insult.
Speaker 3:Oh, is it like saying to someone you're so insecure?
Speaker 2:Yeah, or just feeling that I'll just speak about myself. I spent a long time sensing this insecurity in myself and thinking that shouldn't be there. I should be secure, right, confident and secure. I should be confident, I should be secure, right, confident and secure. It's not and I'm not trying to glorify insecurity, but it's like that's kind of meant to be, that we're not meant to be whole in and of ourselves and that when I sense this insecurity, as opposed to saying this is a fundamental problem, flaw, that I have to, that I shouldn't be, instead of that, I can say oh yes, my soul without God is insecure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a fundamental lack. It's a fundamental lack. I am incomplete. I am fully secure.
Speaker 2:And it's not me.
Speaker 3:So now we're already and this is so beautiful because now we're like, oh, why does Jesus give them this commission? Who is he like? Who asked for the Trinity? You know what I mean? Why is it on his heart and mind to bring people and immerse them in these experiences? And when you have just taken this, on this road, to discover, oh, there's a fundamental wound in our selfhood, that we feel insecurity, then the gifting of the experience of the father is a medicine. So then his instruction is telling them to be medicinal in the world, not to say a formula, and get converts.
Speaker 3:It's such a very different picture of the mission. Discover the fact that people are in fundamental insecurity in an existential way. Please bring them the being and presence of the Father, make them my disciples, meaning lead them into the cross, which will open them up to my source of security, even while I'm crucified. They're going to need this, they're going to need this, they're going to need this source. So as a medicine and verb, the father. That may my anxious mind so I'm doing this cross upon my mind, which is actually Third eye sense of self. Yeah, yeah, very often the source of that my mind.
Speaker 3:I over thinking just trying to find my way to security through my nervous system yeah yeah, this your nervous system is in the root ball of your brain, but you are not going to find true ground until you root yourself in the being, the activity of the Father, god's presence and being. Medicine, yeah, so awesome, so awesome. Medicine, yeah, so awesome, so awesome. The sun, god, create in me the spirit, god, enlighten me. It seems like that framework sets the stage for a whole new approach. What are we, why, in fulfilling this commission, what are doing and how has the reforming of, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Spirit to activities of these beings and the prayer that that activity happened in us, renewing and refreshing actually the mission?
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly, and I think, like you just said, it sets up this well then, there's a creating that's only being done out of my small self. I've got a will. I've got a will.
Speaker 3:I have a word.
Speaker 2:I try to create things on my own, quote, unquote, and mostly they. I can do a lot. They're not. It doesn't. It leads to death. It leads to. It's often just concerned about my own glory. It's often concerned about lower needs. When I'm creating, yeah, and the picture there is. I die to my mere alone creating. I can do everything on my own. I make my life the way it should be To collaboratively creating that myself open up to the creative activity of the sun and that I start to orientate my aims, which is something that he says if I live in you, you're going to take up my aims my spiritual aims and orientate my creating toward his aims, which is essentially love.
Speaker 2:And then I start to see, oh, the things I'm creating are actually with him, loving, fruitful and generous.
Speaker 3:It's so, so new because again, baptizing them in the name, you can feel everybody kind of falls asleep. They don't actually know what it means but if you would, back up and say well, if the name of god is in you and active in you, then you will be creating because he's a creator. But we even lose access to that because we fall asleep in a formula.
Speaker 2:That's it.
Speaker 3:And so in the rephrasing again, we can wake up. Oh, I am called to create, but my creating will be like Cain's creating. I will cut into the earth and plant seeds. I will shape and make cities. I will do these things, but they will be founded on something murderous, Right Without that Without it, yeah.
Speaker 3:I won't be my brother's keeper in my creating. I'll be doing it for my own name. My name and his creating always leads to blessing yeah, multiplying, unfolding, abundance, wholeness, life. So I need his creating and my creator. I'm called to be a creator, but my creating will be in a curse.
Speaker 2:It will be in a curse, right it's cursed if I create only out of my own self place, and that's so important to, to hear today that we're actually it's not like, and it's also not, as you know, just like god is creating me and I'm just a kind of medium for something and I just go to sleep and I'm not there. It's really an emphasis. I'm crossing myself and I'm saying the Son God create in me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and Jonah's making this gesture around the place of the word.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the place of the word, the place of the word. Yeah, the place of the word, the place of the will. The jaw is the kind of limb of the countenance, so I'm asking that another, being the sun, god, start to collaborate with my creating. Yeah, start to inspire and permeate what I'm wanting to do. Yeah, collaboration. Whereas Cain is just on his own.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And in a way Abel doesn't yet have that self-will.
Speaker 3:No, no, he's not generating and creating, he's just kind of reflecting.
Speaker 2:So it's a kind of combo of that and that's a signature of our age that the unfolding of the seed is now at the point where it's really important that this human being be a self, not lose that. Yeah, I go back to the able stage, but not just be a cane where you're doing it all on your own or manifesting your reality with what you wish yeah, and you can see it.
Speaker 3:I mean like that, just those are the, those are the spiritual movements that are popping and like just blowing up, like you can manifest your vision right. You can be the person you think yourself can be. You are a creator being, you can massively, you can generate realities. And I mean I was just talking with somebody recently who was mentioning, uh, neuro linguistic questioning, neuro-linguistic programming, nlp. This is something that Tony Robbins has gone through in that school. People are awakening to the fact that I can change my personality in this world through self-willed practices, motivational speaking to myself, visualization practices, a whole spirituality oriented towards the reshaping of my person, based on visions of my own glory, to bend the universe to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that I can finally become the successful, rich, fully empowered, secure individual that everyone admires and loves. That I know is possible. Yes and right. That has a massive danger. But the solution is not to become a limp towel, exactly the solution is not to just let go of this and let God, which we also have, massively right. Just let go of the ego, just go with the flow, don't have any attachments.
Speaker 3:Right, just think about Jonah. We could have, if you, if you, if you and I were just thinking up again these, these were these. These liturgical words came to a person in Rudolf Steiner, who was a servant of God at the beginning of the 20th century, who had developed an intensive practice to die to himself so that he could hear the spirit. To put it simply, Well said.
Speaker 3:Meaning he was a true scientist. But yeah, a good scientist should do this as well. You're not interested in your personal opinions about things what is the world actually made of? How does it function? And you take that same selflessness into the higher realms of existence. He did that and when he went up to the place where liturgy comes from in spirit and brought down a new form, he brought down this father, God be, son God, create spirit, God, enlighten us. But if you and I were just thinking of like what would we want Christ's verb to be right? The son, God comfort us. The son, God comfort us. The sun, god love us.
Speaker 2:The sun, god, empower us.
Speaker 3:We might come up with all kinds of other things that would be really good and that Christ does do for us. Lead us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these are the things he does Teach us.
Speaker 3:So this, this revealing that his nature is creative, he is the creative word and to ask for that element to become active in our will, because we are creative in our will, so this will work creative energy. That is a part of if we are the image of God. We would be doing as well, because God is a working, creative being. We would be working and creating, but our working and creating would lead to cities of murder, would lead to Babylon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it does, it does.
Speaker 3:Or it leads to a new city, the new Jerusalem, but it's definitely making a city. We're making a city, we make cities. What city? So we pray for him to create in us so that it's the bridal city. Love it. So I know we're into our hour. I don't know if you want to give us a word on the spirit. God enlightened us in this cross over the heart.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, it's just such a beautiful picture of the thinking of the heart too, that the heart has a mind, heart even, as many people know, has neurons and that the heart thinking is where the spirit God is orientated.
Speaker 2:And again, I mean it has the same principle that the gateway is death, that the detail there is, that I start to learn to die to my preferred thoughts.
Speaker 2:Let me put it that way, that I die to my preferred way of thinking but still maintain my openness in thinking to receive the thoughts of the Holy Spirit. And I can do that through just really focusing on the thoughts of the liturgy, for example, or the gospel, the scripture, what you do so well, you lead the students to really let go of my own thoughts that I think should be there, which can be a kind of projection of what I think should be there onto the text, and your gift of helping them to let that go by focusing on what is actually there in the text as an other, as a revelation of the mind of God. And then, once that mind starts to enter and reveal itself, it starts to become experiential medicine for my own thinking that I can actually receive thoughts of God through different windows, liturgy, scripture, conversation, and then I can start to live in this, constantly learning to die to my merely self-generated thoughts and be a vessel for the enlightening of the spirit into my heartfelt mind.
Speaker 3:Beautiful, yeah, what a beautiful framing. Beautiful, yeah, what a beautiful framing. Of course the heart does have neurons. There are neurons going to all of our organs, but I think you were referring also to that. It has its own neurological system, separate from the brain. What is the mind-heart mystery? Why is the prayer for the holy mind of God to bring light to the heart sphere, heart realm of who I am?
Speaker 2:I mean, I just had an experience the other day of a couple of new revelations that changed my heart and mind and literally I can feel it in my actual heart that my heart feels more open, more healthy, more in flow with the blood that's weaving in it. So I just want to say that, because it's not just a spiritual event, it comes into the actual physicality of our organism and our actual physical health is affected by this baptism yes, the living and this death and resurrection of the baptismal processes of the Trinity.
Speaker 3:Yes. So this picture then of a descent, of a cross at the forehead and the area of the chin and the larynx and the mouth, and then in the heart, it also has this incarnational picture from above sinking into us. And to pray that the Trinity would become active in its verbing in its character and activity.
Speaker 3:Of course, why would it be anything other than that would start to actually permeate all of who we are, right down to our body. Because that's the finishing phrasing of Paul in his letter to the Romans that you led us into today I am baptized into his death so that I may participate in his resurrection life, yes, and the Spirit will imbue us with eternity in our mortal bodies.
Speaker 2:Right. I think that's so important that you mention that Not only is the baptism into the death, but it's also into his life and that evolutionary self-progression that I described in the very beginning, where finally, we start to feel Christ in us, teaching us to pray, living in us. The final effect is that it starts to change our mortal bodies. Amen.
Speaker 3:It's an embodied, fully embodied, knowing-oriented death and resurrection medicine for the human being yo, I feel like the new, the great commission was reborn through that description, this medicinal immersion. Bath in the threefold Godhead for the sake of our humanity. Thank you, jonah.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Patrick ©. Bf-watch TV 2021. © transcript Emily Beynon.