Monday Meditation

God of all Space and Time,
we celebrate the explosion of your consciousness
that formed the stars, the planets,
the skies and oceans,
the plants and animals,
and every single human
on this precious, fragile planet.
 
The birth of the Christ child
reminds us that we are very physically
One with your consciousness,
formed from you.
The Christ reminds us that
we are more than physical.
We are metaphysical,
experiencing a briefly glorious moment of time
in an eternal lightness of being.
We praise you
and give thanks
for the opportunity to serve.
 
We pray that we don’t squander this gift of life.
Guide us through all our days, Lord.
Help us make decisions that reflect
your compassion,
your beauty,
and your love for all living things.
 
We confess that this physical existence distracts us.
We look around and see limited resources
rather than unlimited love.
We hoard,
rather than share.
We make decisions about people’s worth
based on the color of their skin,
the perceived and subjective beauty of their features,
and the amount of money in their checking accounts.
We judge,
all the time,
and we judge harshly,
even when we judge ourselves.
Forgive us, Tender One,
for our judgmental,
temperamental,
high-strung,
neurotic ways.
 
Change our hearts, dear God.
We give up and give in.
We give ourselves to your power.
Remind us from where we came.
Reminds us from whom we came.
Remind us we are all brothers and sisters.
Show us that the truth of this physical reality
is that it all began as a dream—
a thought,
an imperceptible moment
of conscious self-realization
as you exploded
in a life-giving bang of reality.
 
We pray that remembering and rediscovering this truth
will help us love each other more deeply,
respect each other more honestly,
and support each other more completely.
As our global economies collapse,
as the world reinvents itself,
as we once again find ourselves thrown into global wars
fought over false perceptions of difference,
lack, and limitation,
lead us out of the darkness.
Show us we are One,
through you,
with each other.
 
As the Christ child lit the way so many years ago,
ignite the Christ within us,
all your children,
so we too may light the way forward
out of this long night’s journey into day.
 
We pray for everyone around the world
suffering at the hands of evil people.
We pray for the loved ones in our families,
our congregations,
our mosques,
and our synagogues.
We pray for family members and friends
who are suffering from the effects of disease,
which torments us and our loved ones,
physically and spiritually.
 
Be with us now and forever,
God, who never deserts us,
God who cannot desert us,
for you are us,
and we are you,
infinite being created and recreated,
cleansed and nourished,
born from and ever returning to
the stuff of the stars.
 
We pray to you in the manner Jesus taught his disciples:
 
Our Creator,
who is everything,
honored be your name.
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done,
throughout our being,
as it is throughout the universe.
 
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For you are the truth, the way and the light,
forever.
Amen.

There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.
—Herman Hesse

Thought for the Day: We live in a world that leads us to believe we must fight, claw and scratch our way to the top of the heap (Just ask Frank Sinatra). The problem is the heap has no top. As soon as we think we’re king of the hill, we look down and all we see is a pile of hurt feelings, dishonest dealings, half-truths, and lies—mostly to ourselves. Such is the nature of materialism. Such is the affect of this false reality we have created.

The stories about Jesus’ birth are very much parables designed to awaken us all to a greater reality. They are meant to break the spell of the material world and help us transcend materialism by letting God burst forth from within us. Like Jesus, we too are destined to become agents of change, acting from God’s space rather than running around between spaces at the shopping mall.

There is deep meaning in the Christmas story about an explosion of spiritual consciousness into the world. The Christ child is a symbol of that awakening within every human being and the transformative power spiritual awareness has on our concept of reality.

The greatest present I can imagine this year is a Christmas where humans all over the world begin to transcend this reality that burdens us with material dissatisfaction. I hope we all receive the present of open minds and realization of Oneness.

Prayer: Transcendent God, unwrap the ties that trap my mind and reveal your gracious presence within my soul. Awaken the world to a greater sense of purpose and unity. Amen.

Scripture: 2 Chronicles 24:13
So those who were engaged in the work labored, and the repairing went forward at their hands, and they restored the house of God to its proper condition and strengthened it.
 
Thought for the Day: Around 200 BCE, Judea became a province of the Seleucid (Syrian) Empire. King Antiochus III treated the Jewish kingdom with respect and allowed the people living there to practice their traditions. As long as Judea paid taxes, everything was fine.
 
One of the problems with empires though is they tend to have hereditary lines of succession. While historical accounts from the era portray Antiochus III as a wise and fairly even-handed ruler, the same cannot be said for his son, Antiochus IV. Shortly after inheriting the empire, Antiochus invaded Jerusalem, slaughtered thousands, and looted the Temple. He outlawed Judaism and banned circumcision. In 167 BCE he erected an altar to Zeus and began sacrificing pigs in the Temple. This caused a large-scale revolt led by Mattathias the Hasmonean. His son, Judah Maccabee (Judah the Hammer), would eventually drive the Seleucids out of Judah.
 
The Maccabees undertook a massive effort to clean and purify the Temple. After the Temple had been rededicated to God, the priests discovered there was only enough “unadulterated and undefiled pure olive oil” to light the Temple menorah for one night. The Talmud stated that the Temple Menorah was to be lit and burn throughout the night every evening as a symbol of God always lighting the way in the darkness. Miraculously, the oil lasted eight nights, giving the priests enough time to prepare a new supply of holy oil. Hanukkah is the celebration of this miracle. It is a time to remember the sacrifices our Jewish ancestors made to preserve their religion, their way of life, and their deep and abiding faith in God’s ultimate deliverance from the evils of the world.
 
Had the Seleucids succeeded in eliminating Judaism from history, there would be no Christmas today. In fact, there would be no Christianity, no Islam. Hanukkah is an important holiday for all three Abrahamic religions. It’s no coincidence that the Christian season preceding Christmas is Advent, when we light candles in anticipation of the birth of Jesus—the light of the world. Advent, like all Christian holidays (and Christianity itself) is deeply entwined with Jewish holidays and Judaism. After all, Christians follow a Jewish teacher, a revolutionary in his own right. Like the Maccabees before him, Jesus stood up to the imperial presence of his time as the ultimate act of faith to God. He too would rededicate and cleanse the temple, kicking out the bankers and lawyers who fed on the blood of their people.
 
In Christian churches around the world this week, we continue to light the Advent candles. It's an opportunity to remember our Jewish roots, which remind us that our faith must always be in God and that it must be as deep and hopeful as that of our Jewish ancestors--including Jesus.
 
Prayer: Remind me, God of Abraham, Israel, and Jesus, that by calling myself a Christian, I claim to be part of the long history of Christianity, which begins and ends with a poor rabbinical Jew named Jesus. Amen.

Monday Meditation

Monday Meditation: 
Holy God of Love,
we lift our voices in song and praise to your glory.
We give thanks for the presence of the Christ,
God with us,
now and forever.
 
We are grateful for your unconditional love,
which transforms our lives
and energizes us
with the passion of Jesus.
 
We pray to know you more deeply, dearest Lord.
We pray to feel you in our lives,
lighting our way,
leading us to lives of faithful service, t
he way Jesus served,
and the way the Christ continues to serve
all humankind.
 
Help us to be a people who make a difference—
not only through our prayers,
our votes
and our hopes,
but also by our witness to the world.
Teach us to
treat others as we would be treated.
 
Keep us from depersonalizing those we
don't know
and treating them as statistics.
Help us to remember that
each
person has feeling and hope
and no one is so foreign
that he or she deserves
to be forgotten.

 
We know we often fail
to live up to our human potential,
the potential Jesus exemplified
throughout his human life.
We are sometimes petty,
sometimes fearful;
sometimes greedy,
 too often intolerant.
 
We pray
from the depths of our souls
to find within us
all the compassion that Jesus so freely shared
with everyone he ever met.
We pray you also grant us
the ability to share our compassion with others.
 
You are with us,
now and forever,
Holiest of all.
We pray that
your healing presence
will be with all those we love,
and with those we will never meet,
who suffer at the hands
of global injustice and oppression.
 
With all praise and adoration,
we ask these things in the name of the One
whose birth and rebirth
we celebrate and always
impatiently await,
Jesus Christ.
Amen.

The Cave, Part 4
 
Once ascended into the light, returning to people still living in darkness and convincing them their reality is but a shadow of reality, becomes a difficult, perhaps impossible sell. We have lived in darkness for so long that we refuse to believe there is anything else. Even when we accept there is a deeper reality, it takes a long time for us to adjust to the world beyond the shadows.
 
Jesus showed us that the power and capacity of knowing the truth exists within us already, and the process of becoming is not simply like turning over of a clamshell to reveal a pearl, but is rather the complete and utter turning around of a soul passing from a day which is little better than night, into the true day of being and always becoming the light itself.
 
The ascent into the light is difficult, and it’s easy to lose hope that we’re making any progress in a world that seems to relish darkness. Our world has a way of snuffing out the light of change. But hope is always in the advent of things to come. Hope is in the realization that God is quietly and persistently turning every single one of us into a beacon, and that one by one, we are leading each other out of the dark night of our soul, into God’s new, loving, peaceful, wise society.
 
The event horizon is coming, and once upon us, a united human race will begin to explore the heavens in earnest. We will develop technologies that feed, clothe, and house every man, woman and child. We will, finally, claim our birthright as children of light.
 
The End

The Cave, Part 3
 
We will then proceed to argue that the person who rescued us is the one who gives the seasons and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which we and our brothers and sisters have been accustomed to behold. We reason that our savior is the cause of everything, for he has shown us a new reality, and when we first perceive this reality, we’re like newborns again, still blinded by the greatness of our savior and unable to imagine that same greatness lies within us all, now freed of the baggage and illusion of the shadows.
 
And when we remember our old habitation, and the wisdom of the cave and our fellow-prisoners, we begin to congratulate ourselves on our change, and pity those still stuck in the cave.
 
So some of us who have now seen the light return to the cave, and our eyes are once more filled with darkness. We return to bring the light to our brothers and sisters still imprisoned in the cave, to become saviors ourselves.
 
But you know what happens? Once back in the cave it takes time for our eyes to adjust again. Compared to those who had never moved out of the cave, our sight is weak and has to become steady. We appear ridiculous. People say of us that up we went and down we came without our eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending. And if any one tried to free another and lead him or her up to the light, the offender should be caught and immediately put to death.
 
Darkness does not appreciate insurrection.
 
To be concluded…

The Cave, Part 2
 
Now, let’s imagine that we the prisoners are released and our error is revealed—someone sets us free and shows us we’ve been seeing only a shadow world. At first, when any of us is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn our neck and walk and look towards the light, we suffer sharp pains. Our eyes ache. Our bodies ache. Our heads feel like nails are being pounded into our skulls, for the light is intense.
 
The glare will distress us, and we will be unable to see the realities of which in our former state we had seen only the shadows. We’ve been in the dark so long, we can’t even conceive of a different reality. It takes time to adjust.
 
As we’re adjusting, perhaps after some considerable amount of time has passed, the person releasing us says, “Friend, what you saw before was an illusion, but now, you are free.” And our savior begins pointing to the real objects that had been casting shadows, the shadows we thought were real. For a time, we are completely confused, insisting that the shadows we formerly saw are more real than the objects which are now shown to us. Far more real, in fact.
 
Yet our rescuer doesn’t give up. We are compelled to look straight at the light, which gives us a pain in our eyes that makes us turn away from it.
 
Perhaps a little reluctantly at first, we make a steep and rugged ascent, into the presence of the sun itself. This dazzling light irritates us both physically and mentally. When we approach the light our eyes are dazzled, and we are not able to see anything at all of what are now told is reality.
 
We are blinded by the true light of reality.
 
Over time though, we grow accustomed to the sight of the world outside the cave. At first we see the shadows best, next the reflections of people and other objects in water, and then the objects themselves. Eventually we gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heavens, and we see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day.
 
Finally, we be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of it in the water, but we see it in its own proper place, and we contemplate it as it is.
 
Now that we have seen the light, we can begin to adjust to the new reality it reveals.
 
To be continued…