Author: Bishop Tim

The Practice of Christian Mysticism

This is part two of a workshop about spiritual practice – drawn chiefly from the teaching of Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault. The first part (not recorded) was a short workshop on the practice of Centering Prayer and this second part is a talk about the other key practices.

Building on the Centering Prayer session, this workshop explains three other classic practices in the Christian mystical tradition: psalm chant, lectio divina or sacred reading and the eucharist or holy communion. Christians all over the world sing, read the Bible and attend services – attending to the stillness within these everyday activities reveals a powerful system of transformation practice.

Christmas: Incarnation of the Divine Light

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

– John 3.16

Lots of us seem to get a little irritated about the “commercialisation of Christmas”, the sense that the festival has lost its real meaning and turned into just another excuse for consumption, for shopping, for mindlessness. Christian folk are inclined, usually, to adopt a “Jesus is the reason for the season” approach – to remind each other and whoever will listen that Christmas (as the name implies) is a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ – the great self-giving of God in the Second Person of the Trinity. That act of divine generosity naturally ought to inspire our own generosity, hence food, family, gifts.

Continue reading Christmas: Incarnation of the Divine Light

Trish Nowland ordained to the Diaconate

On 30 July, Rev Ms Trish Nowland was ordained a deacon by the presiding bishop of the Gnostic Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, the Most Reverend Christine Payne-Towler at Bishop Christine’s home in southern Washington state.

On her return to Sydney, Trish will take up dual affiliation with the AJC, allowing her to serve as a deacon in both churches.

The role of a deacon is to proclaim the gospel, to assist the priest or bishop at the altar, to visit and care for the community. Our prayers go with Deacon Trish in her new ministry.

Pentecost

He first formed her in his inner chambers in quiet and in silence; but when she was needed, then was she called and came forth from the father of greatness; she looked after all the aeons of the light.

– Kephalaia of the Paraclete

Paraclete (Latin. paracletus) means advocate and helper. At Pentecost, seven weeks, or fifty days after Easter, orthodox tradition holds that the reception of the holy breath of God, the paraclete, by the Apostles of the New Testament took place, with resultant blinding fire often depicted above the disciples’ heads, in images and icons.

With heads and hearts thus alight and aflame, the Christian tradition recounts that the disciples found they could do naught but share, each in their own way, the inner gnosis which was birthed within them, at this incredible meeting point, of spirit, soul and flesh.

Pentecost marks a half-way cycle point in the liturgical calendar, a vital descent of the feminine essence of Sophia, celebrated in the Feast of Mary Magdalene, the Assumption and the return of Bath Qol, the holy dove, in the next coming months.