St Michael’s Day

Just a quick reminder, this Sunday is Michaelmas when we recall the presence of the archangel Michael in our lives. Michael is a presence we invoke in every Eucharist service “Lord of Fire and Prince of the Legions of Heaven”.

If talk of angels makes you squirmy, you might prefer to reflect on times in your own journey when you’ve noticed flashes of what you might call “fierce wisdom” – perhaps you’ve become terminally impatient with unfortunate habits, or with an inability to be disciplined, you may have experienced frustration at how little you know. Sometimes this kind of mental energy is turned outwards – fury at inane television or puerile pop music, frustration at habits in social groups or in society itself that seem to limit you, or that keep us all separate.

As gentle-hearted mystic folk, of course, we may imagine that we will never get angry (an illusion that some of us manage to sustain for years), but I think anger sometimes has a bad rap. If we reframe some of this anger as “fierceness” and note whether there is wisdom in our fierce reactions or whether we are simply reacting, I think we can develop a more refined understanding of Michael’s gifts.

St Michael represents, on one level, our spiritual capacity for fierce wisdom, our mental ability of discriminating intelligence and our emotional capacity for tough love.

So whether you are at church on Sunday or not, offer thanks for St Michael’s continuing presence in your life and take some time to marvel at his positive influence.

Readings for the week

Sisters and Brothers

Reminder: No service this Sunday.

Regular service restarts Sun 27 September.

My last newsletter had a calendar embedded in it showing when services and prayer groups were on in the next few weeks. If your mail reader doesn’t like embedded HTML, it may not have shown up. You can view the calendar by going here.

Now, to this week’s readings…

The spirit of humanity is the candle of the Lord: and the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

The readings this week clarify the spiritual sense of community that I feel “church” should mean. I don’t simply mean one parish community like St Uriel’s or a single denomination like the AJC – I mean the whole gathered community that the old Greek word “ekklesia” referred to.

Readings for the week

The wisdom teachings in the Christian and Gnostic traditions are quite explicit: each of us has the light of God within, though we may not see or admit it, we may be ignorant of the fact.

When we decide to remain in ignorance we are prone to acting in unskillful ways that create more delusion and ignorance for ourselves and others. On the other hand, when we seek out our true nature, the ever-present character of our one-ness with God, we become a light that “…lights the whole world”.

The teachings make it clear, and this is evident in direct experience for many of us, that when we start to experience the uncreated Light of the Divine and we allow that light to shine forth it’s a bit contagious. Others start to be inspired to seek out the light themselves – not necessarily by joining our community or even following a common tradition. In time, perhaps they begin to shine forth themselves.

The ekklesia, in my view, then is this whole, beautiful, noisy, ramshackle, global mob of people walking their own particular journey and refusing to hide the light they discover along the way.

I shall choose you, one out of a thousand, and two out of ten thousand, and they shall stand as a single one.

The history of Christianity is the history of its schisms. The first thing you get straight is who came up with which heresy and which ecumenical council ejected them from the body of the church like nasty virus. Perhaps that’s an inevitable result of getting organised.

The ekklesia in the sense I mean it is not an organisation. It has no Pope, no synod of Bishops and no creed. It is the untameable wildness of the Holy Spirit herself blowing where she will and the recognition in the eyes of each other of the uncreated Light within.

There are millions of us and we don’t dress the same, think the same, believe the same or talk the same language. But when we shine we shine together. When we meet, if we are open to it, we recognise each other, we see a fellow traveller on the path, a sister, a brother.

Love thy brother as thy soul, guard him as the apple of thine eye.

The demand of love, I feel, is to always stretch our boundaries – to learn to love more expansively. Love is destroyed as a revolutionary impulse when it’s restricted to those like ourselves.

To love your brothers and sisters then, is not to decide on a group who constitute your spiritual brothers and sisters and pour your love into that group – it’s to constantly open yourself to the possibility of encounter with each other person you meet. To gaze longingly into their eyes in search of the Beloved, to glimpse the Light, to recognise a sister or brother.

Let me leave that challenge with you this week – seek your light, let it shine, love your brothers and sisters. That, it seems to me, is a church worth building.

Yours in Love and Light,

Tim+

 

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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

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Marrickville, NSW 2204

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The Descent of the Holy Sophia

This week is the start of the Sophianic season, which extends around the year overlapping with the festivals of Christ’s life and culminating in the Assumption of Sophia (which we celebrated a couple of weeks ago).

You can find several accounts of Sophia’s descent into the manifest world from the divine realm of the One in the Nag Hammadi texts: in the Secret Book of John and in the Pistis Sophia, for instance. I don’t believe that these accounts tell us what gnostics believed I think they tell us what they noticed as they delved deeper into intense spiritual practice.

From that point of view, it’s not necessary to fret about how Sophia comes to be in the world, but simply to note that she very much is in the world. This is the perspective exemplified in this week’s reading from the Wisdom of Solomon (one of the books in the Apocrypha – books written in the last couple of centuries before the birth of Jesus and accepted by Roman Catholics, though not by Protestants).

Wisdom reacheth from one end of the world to the other; mightily and sweetly doth she order all things.
The word for Wisdom in both Hebrew (chokhmah) and Greek (sophia) is feminine in gender and in this book is a personified aspect of God. God is present in the world in this view as Wisdom, present in the phenomena and experiences of the world and constantly inviting us into communion with the deep things of God.
The implication, I think, is that one path toward the Divine is found, not in withdrawing from the world and from the senses and from experience, but in simply coming to notice the presence of Wisdom in the moments of everyday life. This still takes practice and work and attention, but it stands in distinction to the more ascetic paths for which the Christian tradition is famous.
This week is a time to celebrate love, the everyday and the willingness of the Divine to throw herself directly into our lives just as they are.

May your journey be joyful.

The Descent of Wisdom

A slightly fuller newsletter this week. As well as some thoughts for the week and a service announcement, I’m also including an events calendar for September and October. I will be out of town a few times over the next two months, so there are some Sundays with no services.

Contents

Thoughts for the week

This week is the start of the Sophianic season, which extends around the year overlapping with the festivals of Christ’s life and culminating in the Assumption of Sophia (which we celebrated a couple of weeks ago).

You can find several accounts of Sophia’s descent into the manifest world from the divine realm of the One in the Nag Hammadi texts: in the Secret Book of John and in the Pistis Sophia, for instance. I don’t believe that these accounts tell us what gnostics believed I think they tell us what they noticed as they delved deeper into intense spiritual practice.

From that point of view, it’s not necessary to fret about how Sophia comes to be in the world, but simply to note that she very much is in the world. This is the perspective exemplified in this week’s reading from the Wisdom of Solomon (one of the books in the Apocrypha – books written in the last couple of centuries before the birth of Jesus and accepted by Roman Catholics, though not by Protestants).

Wisdom reacheth from one end of the world to the other; mightily and sweetly doth she order all things.

The word for Wisdom in both Hebrew (chokhmah) and Greek (sophia) is feminine in gender and in this book is a personified aspect of God. God is present in the world in this view as Wisdom, present in the phenomena and experiences of the world and constantly inviting us into communion with the deep things of God.

The implication, I think, is that one path toward the Divine is found, not in withdrawing from the world and from the senses and from experience, but in simply coming to notice the presence of Wisdom in the moments of everyday life. This still takes practice and work and attention, but it stands in distinction to the more ascetic paths for which the Christian tradition is famous.

This week is a time to celebrate love, the everyday and the willingness of the Divine to throw herself directly into our lives just as they are.

May your journey be joyful.

Father Tim+

Services this week


Readings for the week

Service – 6pm
The service this Sunday will be a “Sophianic Eucharist”. The service praises Sophia or Holy Wisdom as the immanent, feminine face of the Divine and celebrates the sacred marriage between the immanent and transcendent aspects of Spirit. The service features prayer and chant and the sharing of the Body and the Blood in the form of bread and wine. 

Sophia Café – 7pm
Sophia Café follows the service – stay around for tea, snacks and conversation.

Parish Events Sep-Oct

A couple of notes. I’ll be away from Sydney a few times in the next few weeks, so there will be no services on:

  • 20 Sep
  • 4 Oct
  • 11 Oct

The other thing to note is that we’ve launched a new contemplative prayer group which is meeting twice a month – on a Tuesday evening and a Thursday evening.

All this is summarised on the calendar below.

 

Parish logo

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

You’re receiving emails from us because you signed up to receive announcements of services at the Parish of St Uriel in Sydney, Australia.

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Our mailing address is:

Parish of St Uriel the Archangel

5a Lilydale St

Marrickville, NSW 2204

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Services this week.

I’ve been out of town and I’m glad to be home.

I’m planning some more news about the contemplative prayer group over the next few days, but for the moment – join me this Sunday for our very gentle, contemplative service.

Father Tim.

Readings for the week

 

Service – 6pm
The service this Sunday will be the “Johannite Gnostic Divine Liturgy”. The service alternates engagement and stillness, provoking a meditative attitude and the cultivation of deeper perceptions. The service features prayer and chant and the sharing of the Body and the Blood in the form of bread and wine. 

Conversation, hot drinks and snacks follow the service. Please stay and mingle.

 

Parish logo

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

You’re receiving emails from us because you signed up to receive announcements of services at the Parish of St Uriel in Sydney, Australia.

Unsubscribe <<Email Address>> from this list.

Our mailing address is:

Parish of St Uriel the Archangel

5a Lilydale St

Marrickville, NSW 2204

Add us to your address book

Copyright (C) 2009 Parish of St Uriel the Archangel All rights reserved.

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Update your profile

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