The Light in Every Thing
Deeper conversation on the mysteries of Christianity with Patrick Kennedy and Jonah Evans, directors of the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America.
In this podcast we engage the great questions of life and do this through a spiritual approach to Christianity made possible through contemplative inquiry and the science of the spirit known as Anthroposophy.
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The Light in Every Thing
Re-Post: Purity's Place in Shadow Work — Episode 7 in the series, “Christian Shadow Work”
Re-post: In the seventh episode of our series, Jonah and Patrick explore the new role of purity in shadow work, transformed through what took place on Golgotha, the place where Christ’s Mystery is revealed. With Christ’s death, resurrection and revelation, God is now with us in this world. The old pre-Christian paths of purification are no longer appropriate. Our shadows belong to us and call for integration. There is a new path to a new kind of purity that unlocks the power contained in the shadow and unites us with Christ in the process.
The Light in Every Thing is a podcast of The Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. Learn more about the Seminary and its offerings at our website. This podcast is supported by our growing Patreon community. To learn more, go to www.patreon.com/ccseminary.
Thanks to Elliott Chamberlin who composed our theme music, “Seeking Together,” and the legacy of our original show-notes and patreon producer, Camilla Lake.
Hello everyone. This is Patrick Kennedy from the Light in Everything. We're going to be heading into the summer up here in the Northern Hemisphere and, after a very big and full year of work and an incredible path through the letter of Ephesians, together and Jonah and I just want to send you a warm greeting and let you know that we are going to be reposting episodes from our five years of podcasts that we think will be enjoyed by you all over these weeks until we pick our work back up again in September or the end of August. In September or the end of August, if you'd like to find out more of what's happening at the Seminary of the Christian Community in North America, be sure to check out our website at christiancommunityseminaryca or go over to our Patreon site at patreoncom. Forward slash cc seminary to become a part of an incredible community of support of listeners who interact and engage with the podcast.
Speaker 2:okay, enjoy © transcript Emily Beynon.
Speaker 3:Good morning Patrick.
Speaker 1:Greetings, Jonah.
Speaker 3:And welcome, dear friends, to another episode of the Light in Everything. Everything it's conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, conversation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, conversation converse in exploring the mysteries of Christianity for our time, in our time, and we'll begin, as we always do, with the Gospel of John in chapter 8. And Jesus spoke to them saying I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're coming to the last steps that we can take in this phase of our work with um, exploring the work with the shadow in a christed spirit, christ-centered path. And last time, jonah, you launched us into an exploration of how it is that this work is taken up in the worship service that we have at the center of our heart of Christ's community and has been at the center of the heart of Christianity since the very beginning, which is this agape meal, this Eucharist, the Mass, or as we call it. It's a service that consecrates the human being. The consecration of the human being makes sacred and in many ways you could say, we're struggling to try to articulate. Well, how does my, do our weaknesses, do the things in me that are not yet of God, that are not beautiful or true or good, do those things have some part to play in the story of the sacred? And we've kind of been weaving between these two extremes, where there's this one gesture, that's in spiritual life, which is to say, embrace it all, it's all sacred, it's all good.
Speaker 1:Blessing the untransformed state that we are in A kind of pendulum gesture away from the other side, which is to condemn any sign of something that is not of God, to try to cast it off, to try to separate ourselves from it. And only those things which have nothing of those darknesses in them may approach God. Only once you are holy, light and pure may you approach God. And we've been trying to see a different story in loving a God that actually put on all of the garments of fallenness, who entered the world of shadows and who participated in the thorns and thistles, the blood and the sweat, the wounds, the darknesses of humanity. That, the incarnational God, that that somehow is a new story. How exactly it's a new story? I feel like we really it's like Christians, we're like still still trying to figure that out. So we, we walked through this practice of the offerings portion of the service right. So let's just say for our listeners you get the structure of the sacred right has these four parts, all of this moving towards a culminating event of communion In a worship service.
Speaker 1:It's not shocking to say we are seeking union with the divine. But you don't just walk into the chapel and go okay, unified, we go this journey. That happens. The union portion where people get up from their seats and come forward if they're called and the priest comes down from the three steps of the altar bringing these consecrated gifts bread, consecrated grape juice and water that is inside the golden chalice and a blessing of peace, bringing these communion powers and substances to human beings who come forward seeking them. And that communion process in our service that we were given renewed, the renewed mass in 1922 at the founding of our movement, it's called a medicine. It's called a medicine, it's a communion, that's a medicine. That's also already like hmm, what's going on? It's not just pure union. There's already, in the very high light, high point of this unity, experience. If you're mentioning the word medicine, sickness is in the room and we also mentioned that.
Speaker 3:Right, that's very striking. It's pretty striking Because it says sickness is necessary. If you're going to have medicine as your way of being with God, you've got to have sickness.
Speaker 1:You're bringing that into the relationship. It's not not included. Because, all stripped off and then, at the moment of union, well, now that you're separated from all your, the things that are, you could say, tearing you away from your true divine humanity, now that you've separated from that, now we can unify.
Speaker 3:Now we can unify, and that was very much how we tried to work with the original forms of the Mass. You could say, in a way, the Catholic Confession was a way to take sin away from you so you could then be pure, to have communion Absolve you of all sin, so that when you go to communion you're now not sick, you're pure, and then you have, but now it's different.
Speaker 1:Or is it? This is what I'm excited. You just set it up perfectly. This is where I want to take us today this theme of purity, of purity. It's a massively essential and powerful and important theme, and these things remain and go through some kind of metamorphosis in the Christian mystery. It's not like, and now the question of purity is no longer an issue, right, and so I want to bring a couple things towards you. Great, great.
Speaker 1:And just see how you find your way through them, because we've really, yeah, been leaning in towards this, you could say the inclusion of the work with the shadow as essential to the mysteries of our transformation. The shadow belongs to us. It needs to be integrated in our maturation as human beings who are filled with the Spirit of God. Just as Christ integrated the cross and the sins of humanity as revelation of His being, so too we are to integrate our shadows for the revelation of God in us. That's, like you could say, almost like the essence of what we've been talking about.
Speaker 2:That's my summary attempt this morning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that. I want to give you a moment to amend.
Speaker 3:No, no, yeah, it's totally. I can totally see that. Yeah, well said.
Speaker 1:Well, we skipped a part last time, which is the very first part. So, if it culminates in communion, the very first part of the Mass is we call the Gospel, where we read the Gospel, where a sermon is often preached and where the whole Creed, which is like the entire Gospel, is read, this proclamatory portion, and then we begin on the right side of the altar with what is called the offering, which we walked through last time, the offering from human beings in and with Christ towards the ground of the world, what Christians call the Father. And then the third part is then what is known as the transformation or, in the Old Mass, the transubstantiation. There's a change taking place in that third part, in which we also remember and reenact the Last Supper and turn our attention intensively towards the great transformation that took place in Palestine, the Easter transformation, from the crucified one to the risen one. And then in the fourth section, as I mentioned, the communion.
Speaker 1:So back in that first section, in the gospel, when the priest is going to proclaim the gospel, the priest goes through a set of prayers which is pretty much all about purity. How can I let the words of the life of Christ pass my lips? How could I even begin to do that. And a whole theme of worthiness is there and prayers come that speak about. If Christ's life pours into me and cleanse my lips and my heart, if Christ's life pours into me, purifying me, that grace-filled gift will make me worthy and pure.
Speaker 2:Beautiful.
Speaker 1:So there's a kind of first clear bell ringing of the theme of purity right at the very beginning, right there, yeah. So I'm just going to hold that, I'm going to add a couple things, I'm going to build this up a little bit Right there, yeah, dwells this garden world from Genesis, the imagery that the ancient Hebrew sages use, that there is a gate into that garden and the gate of that garden is fire and sword.
Speaker 3:Fire and sword.
Speaker 1:Like you don't, and it's like moving. You can't pass through without the slicing experience. The sl chopped. Pass through without the slicing experience the slaying experience and the burning experience very interesting.
Speaker 3:By the way, those are two images that come up very strongly in the book of revelation as karmic images that we have to pass through fire and sword.
Speaker 1:But anyway, they come up in most mystery traditions from the ancient world.
Speaker 1:to get to god, you have to go through those two. There is a fire and a sword, yeah, and we go to the beginning of the, the gospels, the, the Synoptic Gospels, and John the Baptist appears in the desert and he's like the fire is coming, people, exactly, and there's going to be a moment where the chaff is separated from the wheat. The things that are not of God are going to be burned off and burned away, and the part that has God in it will be kept.
Speaker 3:Right. That's why Paul says God is a consuming fire. God is a consuming fire. Which is a direct quotation from the Torah Exactly and I'll bring fire. I've come to bring fire to the earth, says Paul.
Speaker 1:Oh, I wish it were already burning in the Gospel of Luke, exactly, yeah. So this is good. I just want to keep bringing this in. So then there's also also the knowledge we can have about the path of the soul after death. Yeah, totally Good point and this is confirmed in many, many traditions, but also in the recent research of Rudolf Steiner that you don't just walk into the depths of God as you are no, god as you are no, to show up Joe Schmo and kick it.
Speaker 1:In this realm of the pearly gates, these horrible materialistic images, there's most definitely fire. There is a process of going through a purification path, laying aside everything that is not of God in me, on my journey through the spirit realms until I come into the heart of the universe, exactly In that moment, I've been stripped of everything that is not of God. All the shadows are gone and I'm in only that part which has light inside it. That's that journey to that. Now, of course, we live with the revelation of Christ in our time, which includes rebirth, and in that moment, at that depth point of of, of reaching the center of the universe and being breathed in by the divinity, a new desire comes up in the path, of the path through from death to new birth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to go back to the earth and put on all these things and we talk about that, but there's this clear picture at least St John's is going to be tomorrow.
Speaker 3:Right. Can I just say one thing before we go on? Just to put the reincarnation bit in a Christian context. It's not to ever reincarnate into an animal, oh yes, it's only human, and it always since Christ. It always has to do with getting closer to the cross, to Golgotha, to his being. That can only be honored. I want to get there.
Speaker 1:That's what I want you to get into I didn't know that I'm building up these pictures still, I just wanted our listeners not to go into the Buddhist conceptions.
Speaker 3:This is the thing.
Speaker 1:This is the thing I'm trying to bring in. You could say new problems.
Speaker 1:Nice that need new solutions. Right, because all of these pictures, when they stand on their own, you could say they seem to point in a certain direction. That's, that's, I guess, the the thing. And so this last one feels really key to still bring we've mentioned that the beauty of our St John's liturgy, which also is connected to St John. The fire is coming, repent we.
Speaker 1:We did this deep meditation on repent, change your ways. You need to awaken guilt consciousness because that's going to bring you health, health bearing guilt conscious word of flame. This flame has to do with the fire that starts to burn when you're aware of the fact that you have generated shadows. Okay, then, we hear all of that in this liturgy that is unique to the saint John's Festival season in the Christian community, which lasts four weeks starting tomorrow, june 24th.
Speaker 1:We hear all of that fire process is there so that we can actually live in these weaving fields of spirit that are totally pure, that are totally pure, this glancing waves of spirit that is pure ether world and contains nothing of the dust world. So, brother Jonah, when we cross over the last word, that is the ending word of the offering, prayer is about fire, the fire of love. We're at the gate of Eden, I would submit at that moment. And the offering process is a way to pass through the sword and the fire to enter a deeper realm of heaven where the transformation processes take place. And when we do that, once we've crossed through that fire, we again hear described the soul of the community, which is pure thinking, loving heart, willing, devotion. It's a pure soul, absolutely pure, but it's a community soul. So what is going on? How does all of this emphasis on purification, on purity and approaching God, how do you see that in the story of integrating the shadow that we're working on?
Speaker 3:Yeah, wonderful question, incredible build-up. It's gosh. It's so profound this whole question. I mean, in a way, you could say the question. I could rephrase the question as how can we imagine, holiness?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. That's the ancient way to describe it.
Speaker 3:Right, god is holy God is holy, god is holy, yeah. And if we want to be pure, quote, unquote, how does it look? Or, in other words, if we want to be holy, if we want to be in communion with God, in with God. So I mean, it's interesting just to look, because those pictures are still living in me from this week where we've been with our distance learning students. If we look at before the Incarnation even though there were pictures of an integration like, for example, the temple in the desert that we find in the Old Testament that that's a picture of God's presence, starting to become familiar with the fallen, sinful world. As you mentioned, it's not yet the incarnation where the Word becomes flesh, in the temple of Jesus, in the temple of Jesus, the true temple, where he's really uniting himself with the broken, shadow, unholy, impure realm. And the only reason why we try to I would submit this the only reason why we're trying to get a right relationship to the unholy, impure, shadow realm, is because God did it. That's already a huge radical statement.
Speaker 1:So we're being reoriented because God reoriented.
Speaker 3:That's it. So before Christ incarnated into this broken prison, as the Buddhists would call it samsara, or the Hindus also samsara, yeah, moksha is the liberation from the prison's shadow world.
Speaker 1:I mean, like a hundred years ago, all of the Christian hymns, the good white gospel, which is just beautiful music it's all about. When can I die?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I can get out. So those are all recapitulations of old mysteries, I would submit pre-Christian mysteries that are trying to find their way and integrate into the new mystery, which is God, with us God integrating into the shadow world. So I find this extremely helpful to say okay, holiness, purity is God Right.
Speaker 1:Maybe you have to start there.
Speaker 3:Start there, God up until Golgotha, up until the Incarnation, put simply, was separate from unholiness, was separate from shadow and darkness. So if you wanted to be holy, you had to be set apart, you had to purify all impurities out and get to him.
Speaker 1:So all the images of the holy people is people who've done that Right Become monks, left this world. They're the holiest people. They live on the mountain in prayer and meditation, exactly.
Speaker 3:So now, if there's this interesting problem, if you want to talk about holiness, you have to talk about its relationship to shadow and sin and sickness, because he is with us now in that.
Speaker 1:So, that's what we've been doing he forces the conversation, so that's what we've been doing. He forces the conversation, so that's what we've been doing right.
Speaker 3:We've been trying to talk about what does holiness start to look like? Purity, holiness as a expressed, as a healthy, integrated relationship with, with sin, darkness, shadow. But it can't just be that because of your question. It's also a transforming process that will lead to something like on the glancing waves of spirit, a new purity of spirit and new purity. So there's a kind of rightful relationship to shadow on our journey, what we've been describing in the process of the sacrament.
Speaker 3:I need to become aware and be witness, in a healthy way, to the truth of my shadow. I need to then turn and learn to offer. I can't just be obsessed with my shadow. I need to learn to turn and offer the best of me to God. And then somehow that offering isn't itself either the thing, but it's a receptacle, a chalice for the fire of love. But then that fire of love starts to work, beginning to purify me more and more, introducing me to a real true self, introducing me to a real true self.
Speaker 3:But that real true self is described in our sacrament as Jesus' death, resurrection, revelation. So the purity is not a state of being, in that sense, the first step of the new purity. It's got a process in it and that process is called the Golgotha process. I would call it, but it already in our time where sin and shadow is still here with us, working, calling it's needing to be transmuted in that fire of death resurrection revelation. Death, resurrection revelation, but orientating to shadow that way is already a real, powerful stage of purity, orientating to shadow as an opportunity for participating in Christ's suffering and death and glory is already a purity, a holiness.
Speaker 1:So the new path to a new kind of purity includes the power that's contained in the shadow.
Speaker 3:Exactly it's like. It's like the light that's in the wood that is waiting to be become light, Right Like when you're burning it, because in the wood it's like trapped light.
Speaker 1:The cross is made of wood and the wood is actually light turned into hard substance and when it is ignited, the light inside it is actually released, the sun power in it yeah.
Speaker 3:So if my self is already orientated to that burning, light-releasing wood, that this is God, that this is the new holiness, Then I'm purified in relationship to just acting out of my wood self and or blessing my wood self as is and or leaving the wood self denying the wood self.
Speaker 1:Yeah, trying to get around it.
Speaker 3:So there's a new stage of holiness, and Paul in his letter to the Romans, as well as his second letter to the Corinthians, describes this as the gospel of life, and it has an aroma. He also describes it in this way that, as we're becoming heirs in the image and likeness of Jesus Christ, heirs, sons of God, h-e-i-r-s not heirs, inheritors sons sons of God in the image and likeness of the Son of God.
Speaker 3:Sons of God in the image and likeness of the Son of God we are. The requirement to be in that image and likeness is to be suffering with Christ and being glorified with Christ, meaning death and resurrection and revelation in relationship to the wood of my being.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the call and all the path has been not only to come near to God, but to become like God, to be divinized, to be spiritualized, to go through theosis. That's it. To live in God's realm, I must become God-like. To be near God, I must participate in the eternal. This is the story.
Speaker 3:This has always been the story.
Speaker 1:And so when God says, well, let me reveal my being in earth, reality, that's what it looks like, and he includes the passion, suffering and death, Then that's not something you have to suffer to get to God. That's actually part of who he is.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's so good, right. So now God is not separate from all that. I don't have to escape all that to get to him. He is in that and how he looks in it is Golgotha form, cruciform, suffering, death, resurrection, revelation. So if I want to get with God, which is purity and holiness, I've got to get in that thinking, yeah, and that's why it's conscribed to us. Thinks in us, yeah.
Speaker 1:In the service In the service, when we get into the transformation portion and where our attention is on Easter, the mystery of transformation. We're doing so so that that same power of the Logos, of his being that expressed itself in suffering, death, resurrection and revelation, also is active and thinking in us. But you said something this week that I think is really important. Yeah, yeah, you also said, said, but there's also a suffering that isn't this. There's also a a bearing bearing your destiny, which is not revealing god, and I think this is, I think this is really essential to expand and deepen a little bit, because I mean even I think, even if you look at how the gospel writers are trying to reveal his being, they're taking up these things right away. When they show how he heals who he has dinner with, like this image of him going near a diseased one whose disease is on the surface Leprosy, it's on the skin. If you think of somebody with sores and they're broken open, their skin, there's just a very natural revulsion that comes up in in the human being and they really understood. Also, if there's such things infection, if you go near disease, the disease will come into you and change you and you will be sick. So your work in relationship to purity will come into you and change you and you will be sick. So your work in relationship to purity is to stay clear.
Speaker 1:Don't go near, and if you do get near, then there's a whole purification process. You've got to cleanse yourself before you can even enter the temple and be near God again. So to watch Jesus go towards lepers was like what's going on? What's he doing? He's going the wrong direction. He is choosing the opposite direction. When he sat and shared if you shared a meal you're getting infected again by the sinners. When he lets, in Luke 7, a sinful woman from the city touch his body and cry and wipe her hair on his feet, the Pharisees are like he's clearly not a prophet. This is a sign for me that he's far from God.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it flips it upside down Right, because that's how it was before. Upside down Right, because that's how it was before. If you were sick or lame or had massive misfortune, that was a sign you were not close to the divine. Now, because God has come into that reality and is bearing in his being all misfortune, all sickness, all sin, behold, as John says, the Lamb of God who takes the sin of the world upon himself. Now that's not a sign anymore that you're necessarily separate from God.
Speaker 1:In fact, in the stories given and in our lives we see it seems to be exactly those people who are really struggling, who are feeling broken, who are feeling broken, who themselves are particularly strongly experiencing the effects of their cross and shadow that he draws near to Right.
Speaker 3:So it's like they have the best setup, you could say, for experiencing his drawing near. If you're wealthy and have no problems, and of course, money one of its main qualities helps you be independent from every consequence you don't have the best setup, but there's a very important distinction Suffering itself doesn't equal God's presence.
Speaker 1:No right, that's what I wanted to say.
Speaker 3:Right. So just because I'm suffering, I could be suffering massively as Jeff Bezos I don't know him, but he could be in torment, him, but he could be in torment or I could be the lowest rung in the world in terms of material wealth and be suffering massively. Those things don't equal this holiness by themselves. It has to do with how I relate to the suffering, isn't it?
Speaker 1:We were just talking about it actually, as we were arriving this morning, yeah, where you can experience some different people in your lives who've experienced a blow of destiny. That is a deep and painful blow, and in the one person it's becoming a source of life and in another person it's still oppressing them. It's not actually becoming a part of the God life. Tormenting it's torment. What's going on there, jonah?
Speaker 3:Well, this is the mystery, then, of the new kind of purity that is possible in Christ. Now to the purity that is promised, where we see pictures of the New Jerusalem where there's no more suffering, no more pain. That's still possible, and that's what the St John's Liturgy points to, but it's like a tree. If the New Jerusalem, if the goal was the full growth of the tree, we're at the seed growing point, trying to find a relationship to how that fire doesn't just scorch us but begins to release the light in our wood. If I put it in our wood, yeah, so there we need.
Speaker 1:And this is where the reincarnation idea is so important, right? Because it's like, oh, we're not trying to finish this work by the end of this lifetime. Forget it, good point, there's no way. Yeah, we're going to still have a shadow by the end of this lifetime. So, because the earth is not going to be transformed, one of the secrets to understanding Christ's work from this point forward is now to include the idea of reincarnation.
Speaker 1:This is going to take many lifetimes, yeah, and the human being you're saying is in a great growth process. It's going to take thousands and thousands and thousands of years. That's right. Many, many lifetimes and the process to this end point where we come to a new heaven and a new earth in which there is no, the old order has passed away and there is a goal to have. It's not like we're going to just hold on to having a pain world forever. No, it will have finished. We will have finished our relationship with it. There will be no more darkness, no more suffering, pain and suffering, every tear wiped from our eyes. It's such a beautiful passage, right, there's a moment where every tear is wiped from our eyes.
Speaker 3:And yet. So here's the thing. The picture in the book of Revelation is that those who are in that new, fully fulfilled creation that you just described are wearing white garments. It's an imagination, yeah, purity. But you could say that was the old imagination too. You had to be totally clean, right? So you could say, a temptation would be to think that I just have to leave. I have to get away from all that darkness to make myself pure in the imagination. But there's a difference in the book of revelation. It's very important, I think it touches right into it, which is the purity doesn't just express itself as white. It says those who have come through, those who have overcome, who get to live in this fulfilled existence that's pointed to in our John liturgy by the glancing waves of spirit, they have washed their garments in the blood of the Lamb. That's a weird picture.
Speaker 1:It's so powerful. No, I really want to zero in on this. They have come through something you said on this. They have come through something you said, so they haven't skipped or or not participated in all the darkness and therefore remained pure. So because I I feel like in our time, right like purity culture is actually a kind of evil? Oh for sure, because god. It's different for God, and this is why people react to a version of Christianity 100%.
Speaker 3:It's like it's old mysteries come into a place where they're not appropriate anymore.
Speaker 1:I mean one of the. So let's just say the realm of sexuality in our time has become a place with a lot of pain, suffering and darkness involved in it, for in all kinds of spheres, and a lot of people are suffering there. Yeah, and there was again a recent push, a huge push in the nineties, by a fervent and idealistic generation of young evangelical christians. They were really inspired to try to have a god life, a god-centered life, and they're having these awesome youth conferences and they're having these big events and they're singing songs to god. And this massive purity culture starts like abstinence you don't. You either don't have sex or you you don't do it until it's inside of marriage. And it was like they were just like they went all in on these ideals of purity.
Speaker 1:And there's like a person who was like the poster boy for this and he wrote a book. By the time he was like I don't know, 18 or 19 years old and I'll have to go find his name, I'm not remembering it right now. He's like and he became a pastor and he worked in a church. He's like lost his life with God now Because what he was holding onto was not a life with God, that is, to this picture of actually pre-incarnational purity, like wanting to be in white garments, not soiled Right by not participating in earth reality. Yeah, and actually condemning all processes which lead to pain and suffering. That's right, in which God has said I'm now involved, so it becomes a kind of evil.
Speaker 3:It is an evil. It's the gospel of condemnation which Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians puts in contrast, says we are separate from the gospel of condemnation.
Speaker 1:I think he uses the ministry, the ministry right and the ministry of death. Those are the two things. He calls it ministry of death and ministry of condemnation Right.
Speaker 3:That's in contradistinction to the ministry of life. So this ministry of life, though, has a dynamic it's constantly on fire, and the sin and the difficulties and the suffering and the affliction, and our life with the adversaries and our life with the adversaries, that's all the wood that's being gradually burnt in this fire and the light that's released from that wood. So if I cut off the wood and say I don't want any more wood, I'm not in that purity, I'm not in that actual, god-like flame which is the Holy Spirit. So that's just another kind of pictorial way to say the new holiness is that the wood of our being be burnt and go through a process of transmutation, that new light can be revealed, that the self starts to recognize as Christ's death, resurrection, revelation, shining that new light, yeah, the glory. But it's been through the cross, yeah.
Speaker 3:So that's a way to describe what it means to be washed in the blood of the Lamb. I mean, it's a weird picture, right Again, if you're washed in blood, you're like all bloody, you're not white anymore. So you would think, well, maybe that's not purity, but it's not the old purity, it's the new purity that is of God, and what takes the place of the old purity is a God, but it's an adversarial God now, but it's an adversarial God now. Amazing, it's called the light being that is adverse to pain, suffering and any kind of non-transcendent problem.
Speaker 1:Yes, so that we have a name for that. It's a God.
Speaker 3:It's a God. It's called Lucifer, the light, being that does not know the cross.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you just think about a person who is spirit-oriented, who is spirit-oriented maybe yourself you knew that person in yourself through the course of your life who is oriented towards spirit, seeing the darkness at work in the world and full of anger and hatred that there is darkness at that world and proclaiming a bunch of ideals and zealous for this truth, the person's just not even pleasant to be around.
Speaker 3:No we know, because we've struggled with that in ourselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Holy, Holy spirit oriented, but that that kind of purity is not Christ purity. And there's something about the maturation of our humanity that our spirituality actually, by passing through these things, is ripening. And so I think this picture that comes also in St John's is so helpful Because, like if the trees are growing, these human trees are growing and it's like it's all about the fruit and that the first sign of fruit, you pluck them and try to eat them. They're hard and bitter and not good. They need to actually sit on the trees for months and months, soaking in the heat and light of the summer. That's what matures them. So it seems to me you're saying the heat and light that matures humans is in the wood of our crosses. What matures humans? Going through hardship, Going through and facing the things, the shadows they've cast, taking them up, taking responsibility for them and in doing so also feeling the mercy and love of God.
Speaker 3:Right, very key, very key, very key. So it's not just going through hardships. And that's where I want to point to what you mentioned, the purity. Because in the first section of the consecration it says the word of the gospel wipes out that which lives impure in our word. Apparently there's stuff in there. So there's a purity that's connected to a ministry, a gospel, a word, a way of orientating ourselves.
Speaker 3:If I'm orientated without that gospel to my sufferings and hardships, it's going to be mere torment. But if I start to see them as this holy path connected to Christ's suffering and death and that way, I'm already being dunked in a purity realm. So it can be very confusing because you can say well, everyone is suffering and this is what the book of Revelation in 14 reveals. Everyone is going through the wrath of God, so to speak, going through the suffering, the hardship, the tribulations, those who drink from the cup. This is a picture of the hardships, the difficulties which Christ is drinking from.
Speaker 3:Christ is drinking from Unmixed. This is just a picture. They're tormented those who drink it. Those who are drinking it mixed, are still suffering, but they're suffering in this light, that it's this holy process of death, resurrection, revelation, or releasing the light from the wood, and the mixed part is this in the sacramental images, that which it's mixed with is this holy water, which is a picture of our communion with Christ, of our communion with Christ. So if I know the word and it's wiped out that which is impure in me, it means I'm starting to realize that my tribulation sufferings hardships are how I can commune with God.
Speaker 1:So it's almost like we're maybe another picture. It's like we're an ore inside the fires of the kiln of destiny and life. They're just burning. They're burning, we're all in them, but something each. Whether that ore will be transformed into its gold form has to do with how each one of us orients to the fire.
Speaker 3:To the fire and to the grace of God, in that, if I can receive that love into my heart, receive that gospel into my heart. And then, finally, because that was a question we had asked, or maybe I had asked from the last time and maybe our listeners would have to go and remind themselves of that, because we asked well, in the offering we say our sins flow to God, flow to the Father. Where do they go? Well, we discover in the Transubstantiate that they come back to us as the ordering of space and time. Our life, our karmic life, comes back to us. Our sins come back to us in the form of this holy fire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it would seem that the Lord of life would be extremely interested in keeping us in relationship to our shadows because of their capacity, the power inside them to mature us, to mature us, to ripen us into our true goal.
Speaker 3:And to be the place where the death resurrection revelation is.
Speaker 1:Meaning the deepest intimacy with God.
Speaker 3:Intimacy with God. So maturation and intimacy with God is how God brings us our sins, our life.
Speaker 1:So the theosis, the new divinization process, is a going through and walking with the shadow and the darkness. Amen.
Speaker 3:Amen Powerful. So yeah, I mean we have to end, but that's, we just have to, Right.
Speaker 1:But that's a new, just have to.
Speaker 3:Right, but that's a new way to look at okay. What's the holiness process? What's the purity process that we can join, we can participate in, that builds up this future realm that will have no more suffering, no more pain? It's transmuting through our life, our sins, into cruciformity, and resurrection To be made in His image completely. And that image includes cross and resurrection and glory, glory, revelation, shining that Washing our garments in the blood of the Lamb.
Speaker 1:Thank you, jonah, thank you Patrick, wonderful, until next time © transcript Emily Beynon, for all of you.