Waiting for the Apocalypse

Regeneration by Noell Grace

On May 22, 2011, the Associated Press published an essay by Ted Anthony called “Apocalypse Not Now and How We Saw It.” The essay is a response to the highly publicized prediction made by one Rev. Harold Camping that May 21, 2011, would be Judgment Day. Anthony allows that Camping and his followers had good reason to suspect that the Apocalypse is near, considering the current state of the world. Anthony points out: “Less than five months old, 2011 has already brought us a cataclysmic earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan, another tremor in New Zealand, major tornadoes in the American heartland and, on Saturday, a volcano eruption in Iceland. Manmade events, from the uprisings in the Mideast to the killing of Osama bin Laden to the ongoing struggle of the global economy, also contribute to the sense that things are moving at a dizzying pace.”

Yes, changes are occurring at a dizzying pace. Those who are familiar with biblical prophecy can’t help but remember Jesus’ warning that wars, earthquakes, and famine will herald the beginning of the end. As Anthony says in his essay, Camping’s prophecy got many people to think about the possible end of the world and whether or not they are ready to face it. As to what is going to happen when, we will just have to wait and wonder.

Those who believe that an angry God is going to punish humanity by destroying the earth will wait as they focus on worldwide violence and disasters. Those who believe the world will just keep on without any divine interference will also continue to dwell on these horrors. Jesus foretold that these events “are just the beginning of the birth pangs” (Mark 13:8). So some are waiting, not just for the end of the old world, but the birth of a new one.  Some realize that they must do more than wait; that they are to be active participants in the transition to a new and better world. They recognize that the increasing number of natural disasters is the earth’s way of cleansing herself of the toxins humanity has defiled her with. These people act as midwives to the new world’s birth by treating the earth and its citizens with care and goodwill. 

Violence and disasters can fill us with horror, or they can move us to compassionate action and prayer. The midwives of the new world see the same violence, oppression, and self-centeredness that others see. But instead of helplessly waiting for a vengeful God to rid the earth of all wrong-doers, they cooperate with a loving Creator to help bring about peaceful changes. There are many ways to participate in the transformation of the world from an ego-centered hell to a heart-centered paradise. When we focus ourselves in love, we know what to do. And when we live from our hearts, we have no reason to fear “Judgment Day.” 

One columnist’s tongue-in-cheek response to Camping’s failed prophecy was to say, “just in case” Judgment Day is coming: “I do believe, I do believe, I do believe . . . in whatever it is I have to believe to be saved!” His words echo the sentiments of those fear-centered people who choose what they hope is the "right" religion in order to ensure their salvation. I would like to comfort these people by telling them: It is not so much what we believe that is important, but the way we believe and the way we lead our lives. I would point out this Bible verse: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18). The coming new world will be made perfect in love. As we follow the way of love, we begin to taste the joy-filled life that we will know every day when the new world is born.

Leaving Ego Behind

Jeshua by Noell Grace

What inner strength enabled Mohandas Gandhi to stand firm and quiet while the British soldiers beat him mercilessly? How was Jesus able to stand silent before Pontius Pilate when asked to defend his claims? How have any of the great martyrs and saints performed their passive acts of courage? By leaving their egos behind, these men and women have shown us how to cross the bridge to heaven, carrying only the burden of love – the lightest burden in the world!

Most of us live with our ego intact all of the time. It is such a constant companion, we don’t even realize it is not a part of our true, higher selves. We don't realize that we can't find inner peace until we let go of our ego. When Christians pray: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” they tend to think that it is up to God to bring heaven to earth, and the only thing people can do is pray. They forget that God gave us free will, and it is up to us to decide to live according to divine will. When we live from ego, we choose our own will, which is the way of the world. When we live from our heart center, we choose divine will – we choose heaven. It’s as simple as that. 

How do we learn to live as love-centered people? We can look at the lives of Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and anyone else whose loving life we admire. Then we take them off the pedestal where we have been worshipping them, and realize that we, too, can live as they did. They are the way-showers for humanity, not stone gods requiring obeisance. Next we recognize that centering ourselves in love and letting divine will guide us, leads to a joyful life, full of blessings.

To see what it feels like to be in your heart-center, sit quietly and try to re-capture the feelings you’ve had when in the embrace of a loved one, or holding a precious baby; or breathing in the beauty of a flowering tree, a sunset, or an ocean beach. Whatever it is that fills your heart with joy and wonder. Another way to connect with divine will is to sit quietly and visualize a beautiful light glowing in your heart, becoming brighter and brighter. Let the light of love take over your whole body and radiate outward into the room, out to your loved ones and your neighborhood, out to the world. The more often you do this the easier it will become to center yourself in your heart anytime, no matter what is going on in your life.

When you focus on love, you will know how to react when an ego-centered person puts you in a situation you don’t want to be in. If you are in traffic and the other drivers are honking rudely and speeding past you, realize that they are being driven by their egos. Stay centered in love, forgive them, and enjoy the ride. If you go to work and your boss yells at you for a mistake that was not even your fault, you have a choice. Ego says to yell back and trade insult for insult. Love tells you your boss is having a bad day. Don’t let her bad day ruin yours! Ask if there’s anything you can do to make her work easier today. 

Suppose you’re sitting at the breakfast table reading the newspaper. Your wife sets a cup of coffee on the paper you’re reading. Do you chastise her for putting it on your paper, or do you thank her for the coffee, take a sip, and place the cup where you want it? Which reaction keeps peace and harmony in your home? Instructing others how to do something RIGHT makes your ego feel better. But treating them respectfully blesses your heart and theirs. 

Many of us have a friend who is always right - about everything. The ego feels especially threatened when such a person tells us we are wrong about something we happen to know to be true. We feel we must stand up for the truth - even if it's about something trivial such as the proper name of a flower in our garden, or the exact date that a particular event occurred. Is it important to correct Ms. Know-It-All's mistake? Our ego thinks it is! But the heart knows when the correction will offend the friend's fragile ego, and the heart-centered person would rather maintain a friendship than be right.

Learning to leave the ego behind and live in your heart-center is not easy. Jesus said: “For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it” (Matt. 7:14). When we aren’t getting what we think we deserve in life, our egos scream and stomp their feet, and our heart centers close up. Since most of us believe that life is unfair much of the time, we find it extremely difficult to ignore our egos and stay on the straight path of love. Leading an ego-centered life may be satisfying at moments, but it will never fill your life with the peace and joy that comes with heart-centeredness. This is the Buddha’s Way of Compassion. Bhakti Yoga’s Path to God through Love. The kingdom of heaven that Jesus said is in each one of us. It is there, in your heart, and once you leave your ego behind you’ll discover that the narrow way opens up to a full, abundant, and joyful life. 

Kwan Yin by Noell Grace

 

Rebuilding Bridges of Friendship

Two Girls Reading in a Garden by Pierre-August Renoir

Forty-six years ago three 11-year-old girls in a group of four ostracized the fourth because she was the prettiest. While this had not posed a problem during their younger years, it was quite apparent that the boys in their sixth grade class had their eyes on the prettiest one, and so the other three were jealous. The three girls teased Cheryl during recess, mimicking her mannerisms and speech. I was one of the three. I don’t remember behaving this way, but than we tend not to remember our own misdeeds. I'm sure it never occurred to me that my behavior would result in the end of a friendship I cherished. But Cheryl was badly hurt, and so she abandoned us and found other friends.

I never took responsibility for the loss of that friendship, always blaming Cheryl for dropping me in favor of the “cool” pretty girls, not realizing they just happened to be the girls who treated her kindly and welcomed her into their circle. We didn’t speak to each other all through junior high and high school, but I never forgot her, and she continued to visit me in my dreams throughout our adulthood. At our twentieth high school reunion Cheryl – now Cheri – and I finally spoke to each other. Cheri smiled at me and exclaimed warmly: “Emily! You look exactly the way I remembered you!” 

“I was hoping to see you here!” I responded, overwhelmed with emotion. 

“Look, she’s twinkling!” Cheri said to our husbands. Then the tears that had been sparkling in my eyes spilled over, and sobbing, I confided to her about the dreams that had haunted me for so many years, and the sadness I felt about our broken friendship.

“But I have only fond memories of you,” she said. “Our friendship was very precious to me and I’ve always remembered it that way.” She handed me a tissue for my tears. “We used to share a lot of things, didn’t we?” 

As I wiped away my tears I felt myself cleansed and forgiven. After the reunion I returned home to central New York and Cheri to Florida, but we exchanged Christmas cards and friendly notes every year for another twenty years. However, it wasn’t until this year, just a month ago, that we started to e-mail each other and open up about the misunderstanding of our past. I learned why it was that Cheri walked out of my life so long ago, and I understood. We realized what a mistake we had both made by coming to wrong conclusions about each other and not communicating. But then we were only eleven years old! Many adults make the same mistake, and so end relationships that could have been saved by an honest heart-to-heart talk. 

When we were children, Cheri and I enjoyed reading the same books, spending time in nature, and working on school projects together. Now we are discovering that we still share many of the same interests, and we’re making up for the lost years. This experience has taught me not to give up on an estranged friend before extending an offer to rebuild the crumbling bridge between us. I can only hope that as people build and rebuild stronger bridges between themselves, the bridges of oneness with all of humanity will become stronger as well!

Multi-faith Seder: Building Bridges with Ceremony

On Tuesday, April 19, I traveled to Stony Point Center with my pastor, Cynthia, and two other church friends, to take part in a Passover Freedom Seder. Stony Point is a retreat center owned by the United Presybyterian Church, but is also home to a growing interfaith community. At the Seder, Christians, Jews, and Muslims shared symbolic foods, prayers, song and dance. While the food was traditional, the message was not.

The focus of the Freedom Seder was on peace and non-violence. The traditional Seder includes a recitation of the plagues that were perpetrated on the Egyptians to force the Pharaoh to free the people of Israel. In this interfaith Seder, one participant read: “I love reciting the plagues! Blood, frogs, lice, boils, wild beasts...”

But another reader interrupted: “STOP! We’re not reciting the traditional plaques anymore.” The reason given was: “…we do not want to perpetuate cycles of violence, nor be the cause of feelings of remorse, grief, or revenge. The only list of plagues we recite, are the ones that we, around this table, have a hand in causing.” Then a moving poem was read that laments the Palestinian experience of being removed from their homeland and forced to live under occupation. A prayer followed, asking for an end to military occupations around the world. This can happen when enough people of goodwill want it to happen. When people lay down their weapons and celebrate the joy of peace between all sectors of humanity, no matter what their nationality, race, or religious background may be.

As the Seder continued, there was much feasting and joyful celebration among the participants who represented all generations as well as several religious faiths. The traditional Passover meal celebrates the time that the hand of God passed over the homes of the Israelites, sparing them from the plagues that were sent to destroy many of the Egyptians who enslaved them. In metaphysics, the Israelites symbolize "our spiritual thoughts; the thoughts that pertain to the real and enduring ideas upon which humanity and the universe are founded" (Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, p. 305). Metaphyscially, the Egyptians represent "thoughts that pertain to the subjective consciousness in its unawakened state" (MBD, p. 184). We celebrate when our spiritual thoughts lift us to a harmonious existence with our brothers and sisters of the world. And we celebrate when our divine-consciousness destroys those negative and fearful thoughts that plague us and create disharmony in the world.

The true Passover will then bring peace and goodwill to all people on earth. Shalom. Salam. Pax.

Easter: Bridge to Heaven on Earth

God's Light by Chris Lissandrello

It's Eastertide again, and every year at this time, I reassess what Easter means to me, since I've never been able to accept the traditional interpretation of the crucifixion and resurrection. Rather than reiterate the old explanation, that God sacrificed his only begotten son so that someone else could be punished for our sins, I have to reinterpret the events of Easter so that they make sense according to my faith in the God of Love and Eternal Forgiveness that Jesus introduced to the world.

I believe that as spiritual beings, we are all begotten children of God; that we were all One with divine consciousness from the very beginning. As co-creators with God we participated in the creation of biological life. Eventually we took on material form in the physical world, and as we fell further from divine consciousness into the depths of self-conscious materialsm, we forgot our true nature. This was our Fall and our separation from God. Thus began the ills of physical existence -- the conflicts between people who should have loved each other; the diseases, and painful deaths -- all stemming from the fear that is so much a part of this physical life.

Jesus was (one of?) the first to remember and reclaim his spiritual nature. He showed us the way to salvation from the pain and suffering of non-spiritual life: by loving ourselves, our neighbors, and our enemies; by having faith in the divine consciousness that creates the food and water our physical bodies need, and heals every sickness; and knowing that a return to faith will give us power over the elements of the earth, so that we might calm storms, walk on water, and move mountains. He was constantly rebuking his disciples for their lack of faith in their own ability to heal and perform the actions that appear as miracles to those who lack divine consciousness.

I believe that Jesus accepted death on the cross as the ultimate demonstration that we humans must let go of our attachment to physical life (and all of its horrors and fears) before we can enjoy eternal life in a spiritual body, such as the one he modeled three days later. Jesus told his followers: "You must be born again." His rebirth occurred when he returned in his resurrected body. As we learn to follow the way of Jesus, which is also the way of divine consciousness, we will "die" in the physical body that separates us from God, and be reborn, or transformed, into the spiritual beings that we truly are, as creatures made in God's image.

Paul speaks of this transformation in 1 Corinthians 15, where he writes:

51Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."
55"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"
1 Corinthians 15:51-55 (New International Version)

Now we are all asleep, dreaming that the world we live in is the only world that exists. When we awake from the long sleep of ages, we will find that the knowledge of this life is imperfect; that we now "see in a mirror dimly." Now we know the truth Jesus taught in part -- when we awake we shall understand fully. Then we will understand that the greatest gift of all -- the one that will transform the old world into the new - is LOVE. (1 Corinthians 13)