There is a God that so many of us grew up with, who is like a policeman with a radar gun on the highway, always watching and waiting to doll out punishment if we break the law. We all know this God well. He wants us to avoid sin at all costs by following the rules, never failing, never breaking, or else wrath.

This picture of God, spoken of in so many churches, countless mosques and synagogues across all lands, this God is no longer needed. For it is a caricature, an unhelpful shadow of the real God. This Tyrant with his rules is no longer helpful because our task is not to be good, but to become good. And true becoming, true development is impossible without mistakes; to become good we need a god who can help us encounter our guilt, grow through sufferings, transform darkness into spirit maturity. But the god of rules knows nothing of this. For the tyrant with the radar gun has never transformed through pain, only condemns from afar.

What is most needed today is a relationship with a God who has in love entered the darkness with us, suffered and come through the power of sin. We need a god who knows how to become new because we must become new. We need a God who knows that there is light hidden in the darkness. A god who knows that…

Dear Friends, In our gospel today (Feeding of the Five-thousand), the real picture of the God of the Human heart is shown; not the harsh judge, but He who nourishes us with spirit-bread, feeds us communion on our way to becoming, who knows first hand that the human journey is not to remain innocent of the dark, but to learn the light of love, in and through the night.

This God, this Christ, is what is needed!

This contemplation by Rev. Evans is inspired by a sermon that was given at a local mosque and by Luke 9: 1-17

The great poet, William Blake once wrote,

‘He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.’

Mr. Blake wrote this because he knew that each and every one of us is meant to join in a great rising; our hearts destined to become light filled ascending suns. And to aid in this great destiny of ours we receive many joys and blessing. Summer vacations for example, getting away into nature, sharing a delicious meal with loved ones; these pleasures and others nourish and fuel our sun-hearts, buoy our inner-wings, rejuvenate our souls so that we can return to our work and serve others with joy. For this is what is most important – that our pleasures in life serve the aims of the rising Son.

And yet, so often we make pleasure itself the goal, not the rising. So often we are consumed by material life, making consumption our god, forgetting the Son. For as Blake says, he who binds himself, clings to a joy, ‘does the winged life destroy’. Because when our desires for sensual pleasures become our main focus, when we are obsessed or even feel we can’t live without certain thing or person, or when our need for security or a good reputation become the most important thing, then our warmth wanes, our inner suns begin to darken, eclipsed by the perishable world.

Therefore, dear friends, in this summer time of joys, let us make our central aim the winged rise of the sun-heart, which knows that pleasures are meant to renew us with their brief presence, but then must be let go of – never to become our reason for living. For the sun-heart must be free of what binds it in order to rise – free in order help others rise. Only what is risen can be useful for the heavens.

This contemplation by Rev. Evans was inspired by William Blake and the Prodigal Son.

A very wise man once said,

“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”

This wise man, Goethe, said this because he knew that each and every one of us is meant to become a seer of what is not yet; we are all called to awaken as warm suns to what wants blossom in the other. For like the sun that brings forth the potential from the seed, we are to develop the power of an inner sun that puts its warm focus, not on our shortcomings, but on a future self. For every one of us knows how life giving it is when someone believes in us, trusts in what is becoming.

And yet, so often we fall into condemnation. So often we judge human souls and ourselves so harshly, as always such a ____, pegging souls as a ______for ever more, or worst of all, constantly focusing on and emphasizing the sin and weakness in others as if this were something righteous. We forget that we are all in the darkness and it is only the sun-heart that can help.

And this is why Christ in our Gospel this week (Lk 6) reminds us to ‘judge not’. For condemning, judging and criticizing others and ourselves only adds to the depth of the dark- takes away our destined sun power – weakens our inner warmth that wants to co-create true humanity.

But, Dear friends, let us not be nieve in our striving. Let us continue to quietly discern destructive behaviors, harmful thoughts and feelings that stream out of our mouths and from the mouths of others, for the dark is meant to be named. But behaviors, thoughts and feelings are not souls themselves. Let us never judge a human soul itself. For everyone can blossom – everyone is meant to flame.

This contemplation by Rev. Evans is inspired by Luke 6 and J. W. Goethe.

‘Once I said to God, “How do you teach us?” And God replied, “If you were playing chess with someone who had infinite knowledge and wanted to make you a master of the game, where would all the chess pieces be at every moment?” Indeed, they would be not only where he wanted them, but where all were best for your development; and that is every situation in one’s life.”

St. John said this because he knew that each one of us is meant to become masters – masters of life, no matter how many lives it takes! However, God and John also know that mastery does not mean winning as we might think. For our obsession with winning, with results and outcomes – how I think my life should be – only distracts from the goal. Because mastering human destiny means learning to fully meet what is, what is here, what is now – mastery is deep trust that everything that comes to me in my life is exactly the way it should be – exactly the chess pieces I need. Truly surrendering to what our lives are asking of us is the only way to enter God’s classroom.

And yet, so often we resist meeting what is- so often we fight against surrender. We fight against this surrender by holding on to the comfort of a warn out persona, repeating to ourselves at every juncture ‘I am the way I am.’ Or, we fight against this surrender by not allowing the blessings in our lives to inwardly touch us, clouding over gratitude with unnecessary guilt and unworthiness. Or, we fight against surrender when we fall into the obsession of questioning ‘why me’ for the difficulties in our lives, forgetting that subtle expectations of a life I think I should have, subtle expectations of a reward I think I have earned, only distract from the chess board. For Christ is not interested in reward and punishment, His only hope is for those who can become new.

Dear friends, let us remind ourselves again and again, that our lives are exactly the way they need to be. The only question that remains is for our chess pieces themselves, ‘what are you trying to teach me?’

This contemplation by Rev. Evans is inspired by St. John of the Cross and Matthew 11.

St. Theresia of Avila once said,

‘No one can come near to God unless he has prepared a bed for you. A thousand souls hear his call every second, but most everyone then looks into their life’s mirror and says, “I am not worthy to leave this sadness.”’

This saint said this because she knew that each one of us is actually destined, not for sadness, but for Joy – our hearts are meant to become joy! But the journey to joy is not like climbing a ladder, where every rung is the same, where progress comes through pulling ourselves up. No. Our journey to His Joy is always a looking into our life’s mirror and letting go of some unworthiness; an intimate and unsettling decision to allow a unique sadness that we have come to identify ourselves with, perhaps even come to cherish, to fall away. We are called to let go of the sadness of our desperate loneliness, the sadness of our constant self-criticism beating ourselves down, or most of all, to let go of the sadness that our life isn’t the way we think it should be. We must die to all of these to be born anew in joy.

Dear friends, as a striving Community of Christians, may we all keep learning to die to our used-up sufferings that keep us locked into old selves, for there is no god that can do this for us. And then, the courage to receive Gods joy-filled-grace at every moment, makes us worthy.

This contemplation by Rev. Evans was inspired by John 3 and St. Theresia of Avila.

We all know that plants give us oxygen. They do this by taking in the poison of carbon dioxide that we breath out and then, with the power from the light of the sun, changes the poison into life-giving medicine. Plants transmute poison from others into the breath of life for the world.

Each one of us, every human heart, is also meant to breath new life into the world – we are actually meant to become plant-like. However, our destiny is to learn to convert the soul-poison of humanity into soul-medicine. But unlike the unconscious plant, our task is to freely, consciously, take on the poison that comes out of our mouths and the mouths of others.

But for this to happen, we must learn to receive The Spirit. For just as the plant can only do this by taking in the light of the sun through photosynthesis, we can only transform poison by learning to take in the healing power of the spiritual sun of Christ!

And yet, so often we forget how turn to His ray. Our minds get stuck on the problem, the issue, the poison. We search and search for the ‘why’, but forget that it is only The Light that transforms. Or, on the other hand, we fall to the temptation of affirming that the spirit-light should do it all for us, avoiding the painful responsibility of really taking up the poison.

In our gospel today, John is the first to bear witness to the Archetypal Ideal of our humanity, He ‘who takes the sin of the world upon Himself’.  For He is our future hope, that we too can become in the image of Him; taking up poison, the sin of the world, and like the plant, transmuting it with the rays of God, into new Life.

This contemplation by Rev. Evans was inspired by the life of the plant and John 1.

Just like feeling the suns rays breaking through the clouds, we all have tasted true humanity in our lives. We have glimpsed the rays love, hope, real selflessness, shining from ourselves; raying out from others. These glimpses of the guiding spiritual-sun of what is truly human gives us hope and show us the way.

But as everyone knows, the sun sets; darkness descends. The events of Fridays killings in France, Kuwait and Tunisia are a picture of the light of our humanity growing dark, the sun-guide of our true being disappears.

But when the sun sets, the stars are meant to shine. And this is our challenge, this is our calling at St. John’s tide; that we, like a star, learn to shine on our own! Can we take the Spirit that was given us at Whitsun and learn to shine even when it is dark? And this is why there are individual spirit-flame stars on the back of the chasuble at St. John’s tide. Our own hearts must become guiding lights.

This is because we are in a battle. There are beings in this world who do not believe in our humanity- beings who do not believe that we can evolve to become true human beings.

But lets be clear, our battle is not with flesh and blood, not with human souls, our battle is with spiritual beings of darkness enticing us to become beastly. These beings would tempt us to put out our star-light by deciding that these killers who acted on are truly evil and that true evil deserves to be wiped out. We are tempted to fight what is beastly by becoming beasts ourselves. For the beast wants to replicate itself in human souls by awakening in us the same mindset; if something is evil, God wants it exterminated.

But the spiritual sun of our humanity, Him who inspires our star-light said in our gospel, “There will come a time when those who kill you will think they are doing God a service…” (Jn 16). This battle is expected. The battle with the beast is meant to be here.

Therefore we must fight. We must fight not with the sword but with the Spirit, strengthening the light in us that can love our enemy and renounce the mindset that if something is evil it must be violently destroyed.

May human souls have the courage ever and again to shine-out what is truly human, die to what is of the beast in us, that human hearts glisten even in the darkness.

This contemplation by Rev. Jonah Evans was inspired by John 16 and how to battle the forces of evil in us.

The butterfly must break out of its cocoon in its own time. It is an amazing fact that if you rush the butterfly out of the cocoon, breaking its cocoon, it will not be strong enough to fly, it will die. Patience is needed until the time is right and the creature is ripe to break free from its shell- transformed into a being that lives in the heights.

Every human heart, every human being is also destined to become something heavenly, something that lives in Spirit. For we are not meant to just know about spiritual things, we are meant to live Spirit, and in time become Spirit. But like the butterfly in the cocoon, we too must have patience with our progress; we too must ripen before we are strong enough to break free, transformed.

And yet, so often what we find in our souls is anything but patience. We find the burning desire to be there already, to be perfectly enlightened and spiritualized today! Or on the other hand, we find a crippling self-pity that would deem us unworthy for Spirit.

But to to have patience with ourselves and others is to become strong. And the butterfly teaches us to value where we are at, to value the challenges that are right in front of us. For patience with our cocoons will allow us to be able to live our ideals, to become the truths we long for.

This contemplation by Rev. Jonah Evans was inspired by Mark 4 and how to make progress is Christ.

Hiking or climbing up to the top of a mountain on a clear day one is rewarded by a wonderful view. To the north and south, the east and west the landscape below presents itself.

Let us imagine for a moment that four people would climb the mountain, but each one of them would only look in one of the directions. What would they tell each other afterwards? Maybe the first one would say: “I saw a river flowing into the sea.” The second: “I saw the river, too, but you are quite wrong about the sea. You do not see it from the top of the mountain. There is a great city built on both banks of the river.”
Then the third one would speak up: “While you are both right about the river, otherwise you must be half-blind. The river runs through a vast plain. There is no sea nor city in sight. And finally the fourth one: “You are all either delusional or lying. All you can see from the top of the mountain are snow covered peaks, as far as the eye can see.” Every single one of these four people knows with absolute certainty what he saw, and that he is telling the truth, and yet, they will be unable to reconcile their differences.

This story says much about the state humanity is in nowadays. We are fighting endless wars about our opinions, our differences and about our varying perceptions of the world and the cosmos we are living in.

But just like there is only one landscape, there is also only one truth. Like the well-known experiment with the colour wheel, that, when spun fast enough, lets all colours appear as white, the one truth can appear in a thousand different shades of colour. We all see a different landscape. We all represent a different colour, but we can look beyond that to the representative of the white, of the one truth, Christ the great Unifier, who will bring us together in all our differences and in freedom. Who will help us to perceive the truth behind all opinions and appearances.

The 13th century poet Rumi expresses this with following words: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”

This contemplation by Rev. Contreras is inspired by Christ as the being of Truth

One of the most profound substances on earth is compost. Waste is gathered up and mixed together is a particular way. And then, forces of warmth and heat beyond our power break down and transform the waste into nourishing life giving substance; waste becomes medicine for the earth.

Each one of us, every human soul, like compost, is also destined to become life- giving medicine for humanity and the earth. And yet, much of what we find in our souls, if we are honest, is waste; judgmental thoughts, egotistical emotions; desires and impulses that we would rather not have; soul-waste that so often we would like to just throw away in the garbage!

But if we ignore the waste in our souls, if we don’t take responsibility for the poison in our hearts, it cannot transform into medicine.  We are called to build within ourselves an inner compost pile.

For it is precisely the waste that we transform in ourselves, precisely the waste that becomes soil in our souls that fulfills our destiny.

Therefore dear friends, let us take responsibility for our inner garbage; the blame, resentment and self-righteousness that comes out of our mouths, let us break it down and get to know it, and most importantly allow the spirit power of HIS warmth and heat to change it into medicine.

This contemplation by Rev. Evans was inspired by John 3 and being born of water and spirit.