Passover Remembered

Recently Meg Grant from San Marcos sent me this excerpt which some of you may have received, but it is worth reading. A powerful re-telling of the Passover. -- LB

Pack nothing. Bring only your determination to serve and your willingness to be free. Don’t wait for the bread to rise. Take nourishment for the journey, but eat standing, be ready to move at a moment’s notice. Do not hesitate to leave your old ways behind – fear, silence, submission. Only surrender to the need of the time – to love justice and walk humbly with your God.

Begin quickly, before you have time to sink back into old slavery. Set out in the dark. I will send fire to warm and encourage you. I will be with you in the fire and I will be with you in the cloud. I will give you dreams in the desert to guide you safely home to that place you have not yet seen…I am sending you into the wilderness to make a new way and to learn my ways more deeply.

Some of you will be so changed by weathers and wanderings that even your closest friends will have to learn your features as though for the first time. Some of you will not change at all. Some will be abandoned by your dearest loves and misunderstood by those who have known you since birth and feel abandoned by you. Some will find new friendship in unlikely faces, and old friends as faithful and true as the pillar of God’s flame.

Sing songs as you go, and hold close together. you may at times grow confused and lose your way…Touch each other and keep telling the stories…Make maps as you go, remembering the way back from before you were born.

So you will be only the first of many waves of deliverance on these desert seas. It is the first of many beginnings – your Paschal-tide.
Remain true to this mystery. Pass on the whole story…Do not go back. I am with you now and I am waiting for you.

- Alla Renée Bozarth

Reality

"The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal."

Deepak Chopra

Fire and Light

I was meditating on Logion 10 of the Gospel of Thomas and working with one of its hermeneutical “twins.”

Yeshua says, “See, I have sown fire into the cosmos and I shall guard it carefully until it blazes."

One interpretation of this saying is that Yeshua is speaking of the fires of purification and burning, which is a legitimate understanding, it seems to me. But another “twin” that gets lost concerns the “Theology of Beauty and Glory.”

An ancient seeing is that fire is nothing less than the Glory of God, the divine Beauty blazing up and transforming the matter of earth into Light. The work of Yeshua as Cosmic Being (as the Logos of God), is to transform the creation until it blazes with “All Light.”

Notice the first word of the text, See. It could just as easily say Behold, or “Observe in wonder.” Only someone fully “in love” can see such a possibility. Perceiving such a thing is impossible without being caught up in love. Islamic iconography in the form of illuminated manuscripts and miniatures often depicts the heads of saints, sages, and prophets aflame with fire, instead of the Christian image of the nimbus of light. Logion 10 can therefore be seen as early verbal image of Semitic iconography that we can behold in wonder.

Brilliant Green Lizard of Being

Brilliant green, adventure spirit
moving, darting, twitching scarlet
round eye following, catching flys
whispering mysteries of darting purpose,
matching skins of brilliant green.

Tree your home and intent unknown,
brilliant instinct contained within
never knowing, thinking absent,
strains of fading purpose,
manifest as questions of being.

Sam Roberts

Summit

This great offering is submitted by Rosemary Shirley

To reach the summit, one must proceed from encampment to encampment. But before setting out for the next refuge, one must prepare those coming after to occupy the place one is leaving. Only after having prepared them, can one go up. That is why, before setting out for a new refuge, we had to go back down in order to pass knowledge to other seekers.

--Mount analogue Traces by Rene Daumal

Midnight Gift

This good poem from Mirabai is offered by Ed Clifford.

Listen, my friend, this road is the heart opening,
Kissing his feet, resistance broken, tears all night.

If we could reach the Lord through immersion in water,
I would have asked to be born a fish in this life.
If we could reach Him through nothing but berries and wild nuts,
Then surely the saints would have been monkeys when they came from the womb!
If we could reach him by munching lettuce and dry leaves,
Then the goats would surely go to the Holy One before us!

If the worship of stone statues could bring us all the way,
I would have adored a granite mountain years ago.

Mirabai says: The heat of midnight tears will bring you to God.

Praise for Being

Praise for the Atman, the sinner, the guru, and the prisoner of the ego.

Praise for the poet, the essayist, the artist, the web designer and those
who express themselves in public.

Praise to those who ignore the news, live simply, live well and die unknown
by those who would be known.

Praise to those who benefit mankind, the healer, the scientist, the farmer
and those who perform that essential service that our civilization would
collapse without, like the plumber.

Praise those who do not get swayed by the crowd, who trust their own heart
and perceive that living in a small and comfortable home where hospitality
reigns has meaning, where mansions and cars list only your accumulation of
false paper and things.

Praise for the sun and moon, trees and animals.

Praise for grass and rocks and mountains reaching, crumbling toward the sky.

Praise for my being manifest, broken open.


Sam Roberts

Thoughts on God-Talk

This morning an interesting article on the Opinion page of New York Times came across my screen. Its a terrific article by Stanley Fish on the whole issue of religion in the modern world which attempts to answer the question, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” After an exploration of answers from many perspective, the conclusion is that modern men and women are suddenly awakening from their blind-faith in modern liberalism and science as a form of superstition just as real as is believed to be a part of religion.