Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Dragon Ships




This month, during the time of Passiontide, I want to touch on the theme of exploration. You see, I have a confession to make: I have EDD. Have you ever heard of this acronym? Probably not, because I just invented it. It stands for Explore, Discover and Develop. If you think back to the middle ages, this was a time of great exploration, the earliest and most wide-ranging being the Vikings. Being Scottish, Irish and Swedish (Canadian), I figure that makes me pure Viking! The Vikings were famous for their dragon ships. Not only did they sail south and west, but they also travelled by land as far east as Sicily and Constantinople. There are now theories that they reached not just the east coast of Canada, but also the west coast. I wanted to present the image of a dragon ship, as it ties back into my earlier blogs on the Chinese year of the Dragon.



EDD can hit you at any age. Adolescents are encouraged to explore, discover and develop their skills and talents. It's unbelievably difficult for teenagers today to do that. All sorts of things get in the way: television, computers, video games, ipods, cell phones. This age of electronics conspires to create a cacaphony of noise and artificial images, striving to prevent them from doing any real inner work.


In going through a time of change, as I am now, I have to do the same thing. What marketable skills do I possess or could I develop? That's a very hard thing at my age. It's a very interesting thing that 5 or 6 years ago, when I was on the brink of a major change spiritually, the first volume of Esoteric Lessons came into my hands. Now, the second volume has arrived and I have the time and opportunity to discover and explore each lesson.


EDD can apply not just to individuals, but to groups as well. Our congregations are also going through a time of change. The impulse that led to the founding of our little communities is fading. Something new must be "discovered" and "developed". It is a time of "dying" and "rebirth". We are called upon every evening as individuals, and every Sunday as a community, to once again "die into Christ".


This year we mark the 90th birthday of the founding of The Church of The Christian Community, or TCC. (Privately, I like to refer to it as TLC). It's an interesting thing that it falls in the year 2012. We are being called, both as individuals, and as communities, to prepare for something new. Do you know this motto, "Be Prepared"? It's the motto for the Girl Guides. It is also the motto for my alma mater - Nous sommes prets - we are prepared. Simon Fraser University, named after another famous explorer (Scottish), sits atop a mountain in the heart of Vancouver, almost at the foot of which, is our church. For 4 years, I bussed, drove, and traipsed in heavy snow, up and down this mountain. What I could do in my 20's physically, I must now find a way to do inwardly. It means creating a space for movement - a movement of spiritual renewal.




Skol


Sparky






Saturday, March 3, 2012

God's mighty creation

In the early 1980's I lived in Europe for three years, to be exact in southern Germany in the state of Bavaria, southwest of Munich, in an area known as Vierseenland (four seas or lakes land), in a town called Wessling beside a small lake (Wesslinger See). I was learning the trade of cabinetmaking and early on I did not know too many people there except the friends of my parents I was living with. I would not say it was a rough time in my life but there were days when I was a little lonely. Anyway, one day, around this time of year, I decided to go for walk after having studied my cabinetmaking theory for several hours. Wessling lies just on the northern edge of a huge but shallow valley which extends pretty much all the way south to the Alps. At the very time I came upon this scene there was a moment of twilight magic. About seven or eight years later, when I was living in the Lower Mainland, I woke up suddenly with all the ideas for a poem fresh in my mind. I had to get pencil and paper right away or my flash of insight would have been gone forever, or at least in the way I had "heard" it. I am not joking when I say this: I literally woke up and each and every word of this poem came crysal clear into my mind in one contious stream before I got up to write it all down.
Here it is:

  Distant Spires

   The evening light warm did fall
slanting slow through beechwood 'halls'.
Ancient images I beheld
as I did see a slaten spire shining fair
miles off, standing high of dusk befallen air
creasting high on a distant darkened hill
proud upon it's Alpen sill.
  There, further past a dimmer, orange, snowy range
it seemed to me
that I could look  upon a far-off
warm blue sea.

   Felix Hayo Scharnberg

It is a short poem but it is also an explanation of the singular beauty of God's creation in nature.
The beechwood trees I was walking through were so dense I could think of them like an outdoor hallway.
The ancient images were connected to all the activities of people living in this part of the world for the centuries gone by. Slaten spire refers to a fairly well known church known as Kloster Andechs, by the way they make very good beer in this tiny hamlet if you are into that sort of thing. To explain the whole scene some more: from near where I was standing all the way to the Alps over 100 km away the valley was in evening shadow. The exceptions were this Kloster Andechs with its slate tower still in sunlight and then the entire north wall of the Alps with colours of yellow to oranges on it's snowbanks to blues and darker purple on the rocky parts. Then, with this side of the Alps still being  in a sort of wintery state and having been in California and Mexico a couple of times I could imagine the warm Mediterranean Sea south of this impressive mountain range. Of course, the darking night sky leads into outer space and the vastness of all the rest of God's mighty creation! Here also is a photo of this Kloster Andechs that was taken at a different time during my stay. It is a very idyllic place, of which there are many in Europe.