Introduction To Holy Week

Seeing Is Believing

Raised by Atheists-Agnostics-and-Reformed-Calvinists-Rolled-Into -One, I have no faith to speak of. In fact, I grew up mistrusting faith as much as luck.

I am not religious, but to say I am spiritual sounds even worse to my parent's ears. What does that describe anyway? Everybody is spiritual by my scientific analysis!

I am not a church-goer, that is for sure, although I light candles in Cathedrals on my travels through France, Italy, and Spain and even make the sign of the cross (when nobody is looking); and I have attended Anglican, Catholic and Christian Community masses and Protestant sermons. It is tempting to consider me a New Age explorer with experience in rituals, ceremonies and meditations by North American Shamans, Indonesian Reiki masters, Rosicrucians, Sufis, Hari Krishna, Osho, Maharshi, Taoism, Stuart Wilde's Human Potential Movement. I have even considered, most recently and quite seriously, becoming a priest (with the Christian Community) and joining a Seminar in Hamburg (or Stuttgart - which I was told I would find too provincial, but I liked the idea of heading south). All this is good and well but I am not a believer….

Yet, the time has come to acknowledge - if not confess! - that I am a deeply religious person if that what it is to have a heart-felt love of the Christ. I would die commending myself into the hands of God. Ok, maybe not the latter. Who knows, by then, which side I will favour (the Rebels Without A Cause, perhaps, after all)? But I suspect I shall remain independent till well beyond the day I die.

For me the Scriptures make sense as Mystical Facts - not historical data. This is not to read them metaphorically or metapsychologically. It is to see the living picture in them. As an Etheric Imagination it comes out of the future.

At the same time, I am not denying that the Bible is also an account of human evolution, not that Jesus of Nazareth was a real personality (I only say - in good Anthroposophical vein - there were two).

My body of esoteric sources include the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, but also includes Buddhistic sutras and Vedic hymns. My library consists half of exegetical works, exploring the meaning of these texts. I like to read the Edda and the Popul Vuh, the Kalevala, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Odyssey and the Bhagavad Gita as accompanying spiritual sources. They all read pretty much the same to me. For that reason I have to declare myself back out of religion. I have a roving eye and like the thrill of creative problem solving.

Yet, I am tied to the Mystery of Golgotha specifically, as if I were a Christian.

One day, maybe only six or seven years ago, it suddenly came alive for me thanks to the studies of the Anthroposophical priests who had gathered themselves, in the first decade of the 20th Century, as a pack of young but modest Turks, in Dornach (CH), Theology graduates full of enthusiasm, with probing minds, open to pointers from Steiner on how to renew the Christ-impulse and inject a truer religious sentiment into society. They got how East would have to meet West for a scintillating new take on the Path of Love, which is at the heart of the Christian philosophy. They understood Christianity as a transformative, alchemical experience (not a doctrine). Steiner went far, farther than many an Anthroposophist cares to recall, in helping to set up the Christian Community. He helped to meld philosophy, visionary intuition, and conventional practice (consecration, communion) to design a respiritualised understanding of the role of religion as a tool for creating spiritual awareness as a hub of a community of a great diversity of people. (The Anthroposophical Society is officially unaffilliated with the Christian Community. I repeat I am not a member of either.)

It is unrealistic to expect modern readers to be patience with the religious language Steiner uses in much of (if not the actual bulk of) his work. Yet, I purport there is no other way to understand precisely where he stands in the midst of philosophy, society and art without it. The problem is obvious: there is too much bad blood in the name of Christ under the bridge, still stuck to the pillars.... Too much religious discrimination, and polemy over supposed right and wrong, truth or error. I have already deplored religion as warmonger through the ages many times in my posts. Today again, or still, it is a most touchy subject likely to rub somebody the wrong way.

I used to paint pictures for my father's office and would use only the colours he could see and enjoy (he is colourblind). But I won't do this anymore, and likewise I must dare to use the imagery that I find rich and incorruptible this coming week, even if it sounds religious or old, veering close to conviction rather than creative imagination. I promise you I only use fresh ingredients (i.e. sketching from life and my personal insights on the spot).

I will leave the aforementioned church to one side for the rest, for where I live there is nothing very highly spirited about this Community. Even the idea of it has gone limp, or as stooped as the old fogies who shuffle down to its church because it’s the closest community centre to them. Truth be told, I was hoping for a more devoted gathering dedicated to spiritual initiation. But also on that front, one must tread carefully: plenty of (male chauvenist) Mystical Orders out there full of black or glaringly bright practices around the altar. Take the opportunity here to note I am into the Mystery not Mysticism. I believe in the necessity of keeping things occult some of the time but scowl at the Gothic Occult as very poor taste. A load of semantics until the nuance starts to matter.

My critque of the Christian Community as it now stands may well only be saying something about myself! As an Einzelgänger and Individualist to a fault, I am a lousy community member. Telling me when and what flowers to arrange and cakes to bake rumbles my goat. Singing in a choir would be torture on my tinnitus-struck ears. Communal prayers sound like drab formalities to me. But I don’t mind a good show in Latin, with a dressed set, stage lighting and full costume! There is something I can get from a purist Catholic mass: the gestures speak tomes to me, now that I have studied Anthroposophy. Indeed the Christian Community mass is virtually identical in form - which is actually quite eerie to the outsider, and, sad to say, (in my humble experience) still quite as ineffective upon those attending: the congregation is hardly transformed by it, not even for an hour or two in its after-glow, judging from the nattering over tea and biscuits in the refectory following. (As a community it is pastoral - soul-caring - in nature, for a tiny select group, who also are not known to invite others into their midst....)

Up to here then my introduction from which you are to make out how religious I am or am not.

I shall procede with meditations on the Holy Week, without which Easter can make no sense (and will be delegated to a fertility celebration. Also fine, but let’s not mix the two up too casually. I believe we will miss out on the true renewing impulse of spirit if we do.)

Basically, in the following posts, I mean to examine some meditations of Christian Community priests or other Anthroposophical writers, drawing from Steiner’s indications or visions and prophesies (respectively, imaginative readings from the Akashic records and “downloads” streamed from the future = where the Etheric Potential lies). I shall give very short exerpts and present typically Anthroposophical illustrations to leave them as they come, often mind-boggling, I am well aware. (Been boggled!)

The greatest risk I always run is double-edged. The academics run a mile. The believers take offense. Bonkers or blasphemous, take your pick.

I find moral support in one or two intelligent, traditionally (theologically) trained, modern-day priests out there who seem to have found a vibrant line between traditional pastoral care and Anthroposophical initiation work (notably Tom Ravetz and Bastiaan Baan). The older generation of priests tends to use a language that fails to inspire young people. However, they are worth gleaning to make sure we are not picking and mixing to meet passing trends but continuously renewing upon the foundation stone. Once you find yourself moving away from that Steiner-stone, also fine, but don't call it Anthroposophically inspired, that's my only motive to be a stern watchdog when it comes to crediting or rejecting new skins for old wine.

Needless to say, thus examined and pulled out of their original contexts the materials presented are in turn interpreted by me! But the original sources will be cited for anyone who wants to embark on a tour of discovery for themselves.

Disclaimer

For me, it is never about preaching any truth or persuading anyone to take a specific route. (A little dull and an infringement of free will.) I mean only to give you a little peak into how some rather astonishing and often naïve notions have come alive for me.

Don’t worry, I often ask myself whether I have gone insane in the membrane, gradually brainwashed by my books, on my raft, softly swaddled in faith to cushion myself against a cruel, hard world. It doesn’t feel like that to me, but I am mindful of how it comes across. On the other hand: am I sitting on the fence as an irritating critic, doubter, dabbler, needlessly ironic if not cynical and thereby sceptical?

Am I scavenging for self-knowledge and trespassing on hallowed ground, recalcitrant, defiant and disrespectful? I won't barge in with a shovel in hand - but I may be keeping one in the boot...

I am ever tempted to dig deeper. But I am coming to a layer where I like what I have found and mean to examine this more deeply before moving on. Jabès two volume meditative masterpiece “The Book of Questions”, inspires me always to keep on questioning - as much as it returns me to a faith that goes deeper than anything words can describe (or for the author himself, with his holocaust past, atrocities can erase).

Palm Sunday

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Ninetta Sombart: Palm Sunday; Jesus Enters Jerusalem.