Month: May 2009

Pentecost Sunday recalls the story of the disciples gathered and the Holy Spirit descending, not in the form of a dove as we see at the baptism of Jesus, but as tongues of fire. This flame alights on the heads of the disciples and they begin to proclaim the good news of liberation in a way that every person there understands. 

The Holy Spirit is the outrush of breath from the Divine heralding the coming of the Kingdom. All of us have access to this divine connection as part of our natural condition. If we allow ourselves to be moved by the sacred breath and to become, in our own flesh, the utterance of the Name – great things are possible. We see the fire of God in the eyes of everyone around us, we are lifted into the Kingdom and liberated into its radical state of freedom.

Which all sounds very grand, but this journey begins very simply by making time each day to sit in stillness, and practice drawing attention to your breath. Allow your awareness to sit like a feather on the breath and for a few minutes, lighten your load. When you arise, you may find yourself looking at a different, bright, freer world, peopled by your brothers and sisters and lit from within by joy.

Readings for the week

Last week, the plan was to celebrate the Eastern Rite Eucharist, but a perfect storm of things went wrong and so we kept the service simple. So, this week it’s all systems go. Come and see the AJC’s most mysterious and ceremonial service.

 

The congregation at St Uriel’s meets every Sunday at 6pm at:
The Unitarian Centre
15 Francis St
Darlinghurst, NSW
Map

Rector: Father Tim Mansfield
email blog

Apostolic Johannite Church

This week we’re asked to meditate on the results of the process of reunion – the return to the Light. To mark the day I will be offering the new Eastern Rite liturgy – which brings some of the beauty and mystery of the Syrian tradition to our rather Roman-looking church.

Two altars, secret prayers and a deeply contemplative mood. Come, try!

Readings for the week

Just a quick message this week. This is the final Sunday before Ascension Sunday. This sequence of weeks between Easter and Ascension involve recognising the nature of what you might call our “fortunate condition”. I find it very easy to get wrapped up in how difficult ordinary life seems to be and sometimes the life of Spirit seems almost unattainable, spiritual practice seems all too hard, attending a service seems a chore. 

This sequence of meditations:

• the wealth of spirit
• divine grace
• divine protection
• divine aid toward liberation
• recognition of the human potential for liberation

… is intended to bring mind and heart into a space in which are able to recognise the level of assistance which we are provided. Liberation is not only possible, it is feasible and we have help, we need only to accept it.

You may find that contemplating and meditating on that sequence of five themes at any time in your life opens your heart into the possibility of freedom. What had seemed just too hard, can afterward seem effortless, pleasurable and essential. Try it!

Readings for the week

Poimandres
This week’s Sophia Cafe moves on to study and contemplation some of the source texts of our tradition. First, “Poimandres” from the Corpus Hermeticum. A luminous mystery text, Poimandres is beguiling and frustrating. Should be fun.

Eastern Rite Eucharist Next Week
Next week for Ascension Sunday, I plan to celebrate our Eastern Rite liturgy for the first time. So please consider planning ahead to attend. A deeply mysterious Eucharist, drawing more from the Byzantine and Syrian traditions than from the Roman liturgy with which most of us are familiar.

 

The congregation at St Uriel’s meets on the fourth Sunday of the month at 6pm at:
The Unitarian Centre
15 Francis St
Darlinghurst, NSW
Map

Rector: Father Tim Mansfield
email blog

Apostolic Johannite Church

There are two trees in paradise. The one produces beasts; the other produces man. Adam ate from the tree which produced beasts, and becoming a beast he begat beasts. God created man and man created god. So it is in the world. Men make gods and they worship their creations. It would be fitting for the gods to worship men. 

– Gospel of Philip

The theme in this fourth week of Eastertide suggests that we focus on how we are assisted in our quest for liberation by the Divine.

At Sophia Café a few weeks ago we discussed the idea that Yeshua, the Hebrew name the we transliterate as “Jesus”, means “liberation”. The name is more commonly translated as “salvation” or perhaps “deliverance”, but in the 1st century Jewish context the ideas of deliverance or salvation would have been understood in the context of the plight of the people. Salvation from domination by the Romans, or before them the Hellenistic Empire. Deliverance from captivity in Babylon or Egypt.

Salvation – such a commonly used concept in Christianity, so common there is a whole area of theology called “soteriology” devoted to it – would have primarily meant “liberation” to both Yeshua and his disciples. Salvation has come to refer to something like “forgiveness from sin” to many traditional Christians. Given the doctrine of Original Sin and the huge role guilt seems to play in many people’s understanding, this meaning seems to be more about bondage than liberation.

This week’s reading from Philip gives us a way to understand something of what’s going on. To me, the reading implies that much of what we call religion, rather than genuine devotion to the transcendent, involves instead the worship of our own projections: feared images of a judgemental parent eager to be obeyed without question.

The Gnostic view of the Divine, by contrast, is of the radical face of Spirit both utterly ineffable and transcendent as well as utterly intimate and immanent – not separate, close as your own breath, the Unspeakable Name unspoken in Silence. The Divine waits, entices, demands that we turn from our egoic fantasies – the small view of the jailer on whom we blame our own cruelties. “Step into freedom”, comes the whisper. “Face your True Nature, stand up in truth, acknowledge your responsibility and embrace Me and your neighbour. One, one, one.”

Readings for the week

 

The congregation at St Uriel’s meets every Sunday at 6pm at:
The Unitarian Centre
15 Francis St
Darlinghurst, NSW
Map

Rector: Father Tim Mansfield
email blog

Apostolic Johannite Church