MEDITATION

This morning's period of meditation will be longer than usual - about 10 minutes in length. I'll begin with a reading of T.S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi." This will be followed by a recording of a lovely Ave Maria. I invite you to allow your imagination to follow the words and the music wherever they may lead - perhaps into an inner space of sanctuary, perhaps to the open outdoors, perhaps into the grandeur of Saint Paul's Cathedral in London, perhaps into a dirty livestock stable in a little desert town of the ancient Roman Empire. If you do not feel comfortable with meditation, perhaps you could simply rest in the words and the music.

(T.S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi") 
 A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, 
Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
*
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for 
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was 
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.


We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

SERMON

I'll begin with a reading from one of Meister Eckhart's most notable sermons. Remember that the language is that of 13th and 14th Century Christianity. Eckhart's radical thought led to his being charged with heresy in the late 1320's, but, even then, he got in a good final tug of the Church's beard - he died. As you listen to these words, listen to them, if you will, from two perspectives. First, listen to them literally, as Eckhart's Germanic congregation of literal believers would have heard them. Second, listen to these wonderful words for the psychological images and metaphors. Listen to them for how they speak to evolving human consciousness. Listen to them for guidance on our individual searches for our deepest selves.

The sermon begins with Eckhart's interpretation of verse 38 of the 10th chapter of Luke: "Our Lord Jesus Christ went up into a little town, and was received by a virgin who was a wife." For several weeks after I first read this, because of my lack of familiarity with the Book of Luke, I thought that Eckhart was writing about Mary, the pregnant virgin, and it was in this sense that I decided to use this material. It wasn't until I later read this passage that I realized my mistake. I nonetheless decided to use it because I think that it fits well with my interpretation, a psychological and mythological interpretation, of the image of the pregnant virgin. I'll come back to this later, but now to continue with Eckhart:

"Now notice carefully what this says. It must necessarily be that the person by whom Jesus was received was a virgin. 'Virgin' is as much to say a person who is free of all alien images, as free as he was when he was not. Observe that people may ask how a man who has been born and has advanced to the age of reason could be as free of all images as when he was nothing; he who know so many things that are all images: How then can he be free? Keep in mind this distinction, which I want to make clear for you. If I were so rational that there were present in my reason all the images that all men had ever received, and those that are present in God himself, and if I could be without possessiveness in their regard, so that I had not seized possessively upon any one of them, not in what I did or what I left undone, not looking to past or to future, but I stood in this present moment free and empty according to God's dearest will, performing it without ceasing, then truly I should be a virgin, as truly unimpeded by any images as when I was not." I am reminded here of the Zen koan regarding the appearance of one's face before one is. Perhaps Eckhart is describing here, in medieval Christian imagery, the Zen empty mind, beginner's mind. Or perhaps he is touching on the deepest meaning of having "no other gods before me" or making no "graven image, or any likeness above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth," but having as a focus of worship or contemplation only that which is without image, that which is beyond imaging.

"But I say that because a man is a virgin, that does not deprive him at all of any of the works he has ever done; but all this permits him to remain, maidenly and free, without any obstacles between him and supreme truth, just as Jesus is empty and free and maidenly in himself. As the authorities say that only between equals can unity be produced, so must a man be a maid and a virgin who is to receive the maidenly Jesus.

"Now mark what I say and pay careful attention! For if a man were to be a virgin forever, no fruit would come of him. If he is to become fruitful, he must of necessity be a wife. 'Wife' is the noblest word one can apply to the soul, much nobler than 'virgin.' That a man conceives God in himself is good, and in his conceiving he is a maiden. But that God should become fruitful in him is better; for the only gratitude for a gift is to be fruitful with the gift, and then the spirit is a wife, in its gratitude giving birth in return, when he for God gives birth again to Jesus into the heart of the Father.

"Many good gifts are received in virginity and are not born again in wifely fruitfulness with grateful praise to God. The gifts all spoil and turn to nothing, so that the man is no better or more blessed because of them. So his virginity is no profit to him, because he is not, in addition to his virginity, a wife with all her fruitfulness. That is where the trouble is. That is why I have said: 'Jesus went up into a little town, and was received by a virgin who was a wife.' This must necessarily be so, as I have shown."

The Meister continues later in his text: "A virgin who is a wife is free and unpledged, without attachment; she is always equally close to God and to herself. She produces much fruit, and it is great, neither less nor more than is God himself. This virgin who is a wife brings this fruit and this birth about, and every day she produces fruit, a hundred or a thousand times, yes, more than can be counted, giving birth and becoming fruitful from the noblest ground of all - or, to put it better, from that same ground where the Father is bearing his eternal Word, from that ground is she fruitfully bearing with him."

In other words, from that psychological or spiritual aspect or sense which is the common ground of, in the terms of Carl Jung's depth psychology, the ego self and the greater Self, where ego consciousness is open always to the creativity of the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious, or perhaps to a transcendent Other.

Eckhart understood as equal the ground of the detached, or virginal, soul with the divine ground. He thought that such detachment compelled God's activity, the activity of the greater Self, in one's ego life. Thus, one became the virginal wife, the fruitful manifesting of the Divine. By BEING, without attachment, the ego-self is more open to the birth of the Word, the birth of the Divine Child.

I mentioned earlier my mistake regarding Eckhart's interpretation of a verse in Luke. To me, this is the most interesting and amazing part of his sermon: "Jesus went up into a little town, and was received by a virgin who was a wife." I like this as an interpretation of Mary's conception. Compare this to the story of Buddha's birth. Buddha's mother, Maha Maya, had a dream. In the course of the dream, the wives of four guardian angels bathed her, to remove every human stain - just as Anna, the mother of Mary by immaculate conception, was free of the stain of original sin into which the rest of humankind, except Jesus, had been and would be born. The future Buddha had become a superb white elephant, and was wandering about at no great distance, on Gold Hill. Descending thence, he ascended Silver Hill, and approaching from the north, he plucked a white lotus with his silvery trunk, and trumpeting loudly, went into the golden mansion. Three times he walked around his mother's couch, with his right side toward it, and striking her on her right side, he seemed to enter her womb. Thus the conception took place.

Or consider the story of Mithra. Tradition says that he was pre-existent and born on December 25th in a cave to a 15-year-old virgin in 660 BCE. A different story holds that Mithra had sprung full-grown from a rock. Or consider the story of Confucius, whose birth was attended by five wise men, with angels also in attendance and music in the air. The hero-savior, in order to lead us into new beginnings, the realm of the Divine, must be born of the void, of the unattached, of the miraculous.

In the story of Buddha, and in my mistaken interpretation of Eckhart, it appears that a pre-existent individual, a soul, if you will, in non-manifest consciousness, seeks out the mother through whom the soul consciousness will assume fleshly form. This is a dominant motif in Eastern, especially Buddhist, thought and mythology. And it is also true, in one sense, in the story of Jesus. Jesus is identified as the Word. The book of John begins with "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; …."

The very essence of Eckhart's teaching was the idea of the birth of the Word, this Word as Jesus, in the soul of each individual. The church authorities were of the opinion that Eckhart took this idea to the point of the divination of humankind. People were burned at the stake for adherence to this thought, and Eckhart may have joined their number but for the mercy of fate. During his hearings, Eckhart tried to spin his way out of these accusations, but he was so emphatic on this point in his writing and preaching that his accusers were able to pin him down with his own words.

With all this talk of wifely virginity and birth, it is apparent that the human soul was thought of as feminine. Such imagery is widespread in our mythology. I'm going to briefly detour from Eckhart to take a look at the Kabbalah, the Tree of Life of the Jewish mystical tradition, and other mythology. The Kabbalah consists, primarily, of 10 sefirot, 10 aspects of divine emanation. The 10th sefirah, the one at the bottom of this inverted tree of emanation, is known as the Kingdom, the world of manifestation. Its Hebrew name is Malkut. It is also sometimes known as Shekinah - Presence or divine immanence. With manifestation of the physical universe came a splitting of the Oneness of the Unknowable All. The manifest is seen as the feminine aspect of that unknowable All, God. Thus, we and our material world are mythologized as feminine. Mythology is full of stories and imagery of this splitting of the androgynous One into the duality of male and female aspects. Myths of the powerful, life-generating sun god and the birthing cycles of the mystical goddess of the moon go back into deep antiquity. This is, in fact, written into our very bodies - for instance, in the menstrual cycles of women. One of the most amazing things I saw last summer, in Salzburg, Austria, was a statue of Mary atop a large, beautiful church. She was standing on a crescent moon. I had never before seen that connection. Mary may be the mother of Jesus, but long before that, she, in other form, was a moon goddess of fertility. And before that - in the form of wisdom, known to the Greeks as Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom - she was present from the beginning; she was the Immaculate Mother of the Universe. The 8th and 9th chapters of Proverbs go on at some length on the virtues of wisdom. The book of Genesis tells the Hebrew story of creation, but hear this of wisdom: "The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth." And further: "When he established the heavens, I was there, …, then I was beside him, like a master workman." Chapter 8 ends with, "For he who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord; but he who misses me injures himself; all who hate me love death." Mary, in her variety of mythic forms, has a very long, very distinguished history.

Now back to the meister. The Word as image has to do with the principle of creation. In the beginning was the Word. In the beginning was the principle of creation. Christian theology has been very dependent upon the thinking of Plato - that it is the Idea of a thing that is the real reality. For example, behind each book lies the Idea of Book. Behind creation lies the Idea of Creation. Thus, in Christian theology, the Word, the Idea of Jesus, was co-existent with God the Father-creator from the beginning.

Eckhart wrote, "Whatever God the Father gave to his Only-Begotten Son in human nature, he gave all this to me." So … was the Idea which became manifest in and through each of us existent in potentia from the beginning? Was consciousness, which gave birth to each of us, and to which each of us gives continual birth, existent in potentia, in Idea, in Energy, in God the Big-Bang Father?

Eckhart thought that the Word is brought forth to birth in each of us here. Shekinah is "the secret of the possible." Shekinah is the opening to the divine, the gate through which we must go, the gate of ourselves in our bodily forms. Jungian analyst James Hillman wrote, "... the image by which the flesh lives is the ultimate ruling necessity." The psyche is enacted through the medium of the body. Each of us is constantly pregnant with Idea, with creation, with the potency and possibility of emanation, of manifestation. Each of us can ask, "What is my role in this on-going process of creation opening itself to consciousness?" This is, I think, what incarnation is about, from a symbolic perspective. "What is my role in creation opening itself to consciousness?"

In Christian terms, the reason for the miraculous birth - God entering history in flesh - was to ensure humanity's return to God. In my understanding, in psychological terms, this is all part of the evolution of consciousness, with the ego-self reaching for unity with the greater Self, for grace, for knowing, for individuation. Dr. Stephen Hoeller, a Jungian Gnostic, wrote, "It is not from sin, personal and original, that the redeeming Logos frees humankind, but rather from the confusion and illusion brought about by unconsciousness."

"And he (referring here to the angel Gabriel) came to her and said, 'Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you.' But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be." And well might she have been troubled, as is often the case with each of us, in the face of the numinous, the unknown intuitive voice or feeling or event. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote some words of advice which, perhaps, would have been helpful to Mary and which may be helpful to us. "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and … try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

What is the Creator, the Redeemer, the Savior within each of us which lies gestating, growing toward its birth? That which lies within us, developing in our process of individuation, is an impending birth of our new selves, a new Divine Child, the on-going manifestation of the Word - and … the crucifixion, the tortured death by suspension, of who we are now. As we move through continual cycles of birth and death, we are faced with continually moving from "Let this cup pass from me" to "Thy Will be done."

… this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Closing words:

When the song of angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
      to find the lost,
      to heal the broken,
      to feed the hungry,
      to release the prisoner,
      to rebuild the nations,
      to bring peace among all,
      to make music in the heart.