Category: Announcements

Tonight is Halloween, or to expand the name a little, All Hallows E’en (or Eve).

Tomorrow is the first of the days of the dead, All Hallows or All Saints, in which we remember the forebears of the tradition – all the members of the Communion of Saints. Those enlightened spiritual presences who continue in the eternal realm to provide guidance and assistance to those on the path.

On Monday, All Souls Day, we remember the spirits of our own ancestors and give thanks for them and to them for the choices they made that have enabled our own lives.

Tomorrow at St Uriel’s we’ll say a prayer to commemorate both All Saints and All Souls. If you can’t make it along, please consider remembering those dear to you – both spiritual guides whose books or teaching you’ve appreciated over your life and ancestors whose choices have had a big influence on your life. Bring them to mind, thank them for their help and offer a prayer for their continuing rest.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Grant them eternal rest, O Lord,and may light eternal shine upon them.

Readings for All Saints
Readings for All Souls

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

The theme for this week’s readings is “Serenity”, a word forever slightly tainted for every Australian by the 1990s movie, “The Castle”. Whenever I read the word, Michael Caton’s character Darryl appears unbidden in my mind, looking out over his backyard next to Melbourne airport, murmuring “The serenity!”.

It’s a commonplace to fret about our busy lives, the chatter of Facebook and Twitter, the unbalance of work and life, busy business folk faxing from the beach, texting from the marriage bed. Take time away – advise the vacation ads, Find inner peace – spruiks the local meditation school, Develop a calm mind.

We’re a little obsessed with serenity, to be honest. Entire industries seem to trade in it and offer to sell back to us what  modernity seems to have bought: peace, quiet, silence.

I had the great good fortune to attend a Centering Prayer retreat with Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault last week and she told a story of running a retreat above a school. She was leading a meditation session as school let out, fifty or so kids and parents talking, laughing and shouting just below the room where the retreatants were trying to surrender their thoughts and rest in the presence of the Divine Beloved. At some point, kids starting singing “Happy Birthday” to someone and the whole class took up the tune. The retreat room, possibly sensing this as the last straw started to collectively chuckle, it built up a little energy and, just as suddenly, died away as the participants surrendered even their laughter.

Darryl was on to something, I suspect, able to stare at a 747 taking off from the main runway at Tullamarine and still pronounce with no trace of irony, “the serenity”! Later in our retreat, Rev Bourgeault noted that she had seen Father Thomas Keating, one of the founders of the practice, take his meditation in a crowded airport several times.

This week’s readings appeal to an inner understanding of serenity. Rather than finding it in the outer places of solace: holidays, the couch, some fantasy locale embedded in peace and quiet; we look for a more real, more intimate and more authentic sense of serenity: within our hearts.

May the peace of God which passeth all understanding be with you this week and draw you into the arms of the Beloved and the serenity which is never truly departed.

Father Tim.

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

This Sunday we comemorate the destruction of the public form of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (better known as the Knights Templar) and the execution of hundreds of the brothers and then Grandmaster of the Order, Jacques de Molay.

There is lots said and alleged about the Templars. Arguably, Dan Brown might not have a career without them. Some find them Saints, others villains.

In the AJC and in many Gnostic churches, the Order is regarded as the guardian of the apostolic lineage of Saint John the Beloved and the baptismal initiation of Saint John the Baptist. For this reason, we recite the Litany of the Sovereign Pontiffs in abbreviated form at most public services.

On Templar Sunday, we recite the full litany – the name of every grandmaster of the order – as well as the Insititutional Narrative, the grand story of the lineage which we inherit from the Johannite Church of Primitive Christians found in the 19th Century as a part of the French Gnostic Restoration. We light memorial candles to recall their sacrifice and their witness to the truth of gnosis.

Please join us for this haunting, solemn service which illustrates a core aspect of our spiritual lineage.

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

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+