Deeper currents of gift giving and feasting.

Dear Ones,

We are now in the third week of Advent, drawing closer to the celebration of Christmas. For many of us, this season is marked by familiar rituals with those we love, such as exchanging gifts and sharing a special meal or feast. On the horizontal plane of ordinary life—what Cynthia Bourgeault’s Christian Wisdom lineage names World 48—these rituals matter deeply. They help weave meaning, belonging, and continuity into our lives. When, for any reason, we are unable to participate in them, the absence can be keenly felt by our as loss, grief, or sorrow. This, too, is part of the season and deserves our tenderness and attention.

Yet embedded within these common practices of gift-giving and feasting are deeper metaphysical invitations carried by the Christian Wisdom Tradition. As dual citizens of both the visible world of World 48, and the subtler, inner and outer realm of World 24, often named the Kingdom of God, only visible through the eye of our heart, we carry within us selfhoods that participates in each realm. For those on this Wisdom path, the task is not to reject the visible world and it’s corresponding smaller sense of selfhood, but to stabilize our sense of identity and agency in the larger self that belongs to World 24.

From this deeper ground, Cynthia continues to show us that we are invited to “hold a post” within the cosmic exchange of energies along the Ray of Creation. This means becoming a living bridge receiving higher nourishment flowing downward from World 24 and above, so they may be offered where they are needed, and simultaneously allowing the energies of World 48 and below to be received, transformed, and offered back up the Ray. This task is a lived, embodied vocation that we are to take up in the context of our lives.

Advent, then, is a season of preparation for our capacity to bear the nourishment of the higher realms, namely those flowing from World 12, the Christic realm. As Cynthia Bourgeault teaches, World 12 is the level at which divine love is fully incarnated and embodied, taking on form, relationship, and presence within the world. Regardless of gender or role, each of us is invited to allow Christic consciousness—this fully personal, relational divine love that coheres human and divine realities—to be birthed through us.

In this light, the truest gift and feast we can offer to those we genuinely love is not something we purchase or produce, but divine love made tangible through our lives. Our deeper larger selfhood has a wish for nourishing energies whose source lies beyond us to become the “present” we bring forth and the "feast" we offer freely, without calculation or expectation of return. These cannot arise from our ordinary, reactive self of World 48. They can only flow through the deeper self of World 24—the self growing in the capacity to draw upon the Christic energies of World 12, receiving and feasting on them as well as sharing them generously.

Our preparation, therefore, involves learning to recognize what Bruno Barnhart names “the moments when you know within yourself the perfect stability of the universe and the absolute sufficiency, the intrinsic rectitude of light” (Second Simplicity, p. 20). This inner light of the Christic, arising from Origin itself, is the central wellspring of relational love—the force that gives coherence and existence to all that is. It is a fiery, substantial love, often more intense than our World 48 selfhood and nervous systems can easily tolerate.

To bear these nourishing energies, we are invited to “seek the substance beneath the weathers” of our World 48 selves, “the undying core” within (p. 20). This core is not something we manufacture through effort or control. Rather, as Barnhart writes, “it becomes conscious within you, and you can allow yourself to be gathered into it.” During the Christmas season especially, our smaller self can become frantic in managing schedules, expectations, and obligations. And yet, “There seems to be an undying ‘I’ beneath this frantic one” (p. 21).

As we come to recognize this deeper “I” and find our base of operation in it, we discover this taproot of our heart or our center, with its living flame of light burning and shining forth from within, is profoundly robust. Our many smaller selves, each seeking fulfillment at the level of World 48, may experience countless disappointments and “little deaths.” Yet each time we learn to die before we die at this level of selfhood, our little selves are gathered back into this undying center. From here, we are able to live more from that robust center with the innate capacities to function reliably over time, adapt to changing conditions, recover gracefully from disturbance, and maintain long-term stability rooted in our Greater I Am Self, rooted in Christ, rooted in the Great I Am.

In this way, the gift of the Christic does not flow only outward to others, it is also given inward, to our own fragmented and striving parts. The love we are learning to bear becomes the gift and the feast for the whole of who we are, and the Whole of all.

This tender and expectant season—with its call to wakefulness and watchfulness and the collective prayer of the many who have, are and will observe it—offers us a powerful support for staying aligned with these deeper currents. Advent reminds us again and again to return to the undying center, to the light, to the love that longs to take flesh through us.

Undying I, you are already and always steady within us

and our center is not where we think it is.

Call us back when we mistake our Self

as the smaller frantic one.Christ in us, embodiment of divine love fully realized,

strengthen our being to bear your love,

given freely to and through us.May it be so.

Advent Love,Heather

---

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, December 8th

Reading: “In the 14^th century, Meister Eckhart enjoyed waking people up in his sermons by expounding some uncomfortably new perspectives about their standardised faith. He must have stirred a few dozy parishioners when he asked: "What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, that it should take place within myself, is really what matters." 

“Actually, the great Augustine had asked the same question a thousand years before and added that if we are the children of God, we must become God’s mother as well. If, he said, this birth of the eternal word as Christ in the soul is to happen, our heart – the deepest centre of our being - must become the sacred manger. If we are filled with egocentric distraction there is ‘no room at the inn’ and so the heart must become that empty and open space where the birth takes place and through which he is welcomed into our world.” – Lawrence Freeman

Chant: Take o take me as I am, summon out what I shall be, set your seal upon my heart, and live in me – John Bell

Tuesday, December 9th

Reading: “The place which Jesus takes in our soul he will nevermore vacate, for in us is his home of homes, and it is the greatest delight for him to dwell there. . . . And the soul who contemplates this is made like [the one] who is contemplation.” – Julian of Norwich, Showings, The Fourteenth Revelation 

Chant: Inner Life of Being, bearing Christ within me, come – John Tavener, lyrics by Alan Krema and Darlene Franz

Wednesday, December 10th with Tom

Reading: No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.

Take heaven!

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.

Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow.

Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.

Take joy!

There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see.

And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

– Fra Giovanni, Christmas Eve, 1513

Chant: I am giving you, what no eye sees…I am giving you, what no ear hears…I am giving you, what no hand holds…I am giving you, what no mind knows… Beyond all sight, beyond all sound, beyond all gift, beyond all bounds, I am giving you....  – Darlene Franz

Thursday, December 11th with Tom

Reading: "Open Yourself to the Radiance"

"So, you wish to know God? Look deep within

for the little spark that ever burns in your soul;

refuse what is outside of you, and open yourself

to the radiance of that inner spark.

"Focus all your attention on that little spark,

which will be satisfied with nothing but God

and refuses simply to learn about God; if this

is startling to you, how much more astonishing

it is to realize that the radiant light within you

won't be satisfied with what God is toward you.

"That inner light insists on knowing where God

comes from. Where is that? Look into the depths,

all the way to the simple ground, the still desert,

where all you think about God counts as nothing

and where everything is finally nothing but God."

 – Sweeney and Burrows, Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light, p. 165 

Friday, December 12th with Faye

Reading: "A Blessing for After" by Jan Richardson

This blessing

is for the moment

after clarity has come,

after inspiration,

after you have agreed

to what seemed

impossible.

This blessing

is what follows

after illumination departs

and you realize

there is no map

for the path

you have chosen,

no one to serve

as guide,

nothing to do

but gather up

your gumption

and set out.

This blessing

will go with you.

It carries no answers,

no charts,

no plans.

It carries no source

of light

within itself.

But in its pocket

is tucked a mirror

that, from time to time,

it will hold up to you

to remind you

of the radiance

that came

when you gave

your awful and wondrous

yes.

Chant: You are shining radiance. Throw off the cloak of who you think you are. You are shining radiance. Let your light shine near and far. 

Saturday, December 13th with Joy

Reading: "Here I will hear their weeping and their sorrows... their necessities and misfortunes...

Listen, and let it penetrate your heart...

Do not be troubled and weighed down with grief.

Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain.

Am I not here who am your Mother?

Are you not under my shadow and protection?

Am I not your fountain of life?

Are you not in the folds of my mantle?

In the crossing of my arms?

Is there anything else you need?"

— The Blessed Virgin to Juan Diego, December 12, 1513, in The Wonder of Guadalupe, Francis Johnston

Chant: Nada Te Turbe words by Teresa of Avila 

Nada te turbe

nada te espante

Todo se pasa 

Dios no se muda. 

La paciencia todo alcanza. 

Quien a Dios tiene 

nada le falta 

Solo Dios basta.

Translation: 

Let nothing disturb you,

nothing frighten you,

All things are passing.

God never changes.

Patience obtains all things.

Whoever has God lacks nothing.

God is enough. 

Sunday, December 14th with Joy

Reading: "Blessed Are You Who Bear The Light" by Jan Richardson

Blessed are you who bear the light in unbearable times,

who testify to its endurance amid the unendurable,

who bear witness to its persistence when everything seems

in shadow and grief.

Blessed are you in whom the light lives,

in whom the brightness blazes --

your heart a chapel, an altar where in the deepest night

can be seen the fire that shines forth in you

in unaccountable faith,

in stubborn hope,

in love that illumines every broken thing

it finds.

Chant: In your light may we see light, in your light we offer light (by Joy Andrews Hayter) 

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