We are approaching the winter solstice here in the northern hemisphere, just as our friends in Cape Town and Australia approach the summer solstice. It is interesting to be feeling all those tugs of the heart that have to do with our circuit around the sun at the same time that we are celebrating the birth of Jesus 2,000 years ago, all of this reminding us that in the middle of what is broken, there is something beautiful and true that we are constantly being called to, that we are a part of. It is present despite the brokenness.
There have been two tragic shootings, you might have heard on the news, in Rhode Island, here in the United States, and on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. Tragic, reminding us of the broken nature of the city of consciousness that we are in as humankind.
Jane Anetrini and I had a chance to go to the Christmas concert next door with the Seventh-day Adventists at Eden Valley Institute. It was a remarkable evening. They have some pipes over there, I can tell you! They were singing with all their hearts. A friend of ours, Shanniel Fisher, sang himself. He has a beautiful voice. And Adner Abreu, a good friend to Sunrise Ranch, sang in the choir.
I had this funny thought: It is strange that we worship separately week by week. Why can’t we just worship together? That’s my wish for all of humankind. Why can’t we all worship together? Why can’t we know something together? Why can’t there be one city of consciousness—12 gates but one city?
For various reasons, I do not think it would work out if we tried to make it happen on a regular basis with our neighbors. So, I am happy to worship as we do, and yet feel the oneness that is the truth. And while living with the separateness of the world in which we inhabit, I do not accept that as the defining reality of who we are. Oneness is the truth.
In our Bible, there are various stories of how it got this way. The ancients tried to understand it for themselves and tell others what happened to humankind. What happened to us that we worship right down the road from our neighbors? One of those stories is the story of the Tower of Babel. It is almost comical when you read it. Let us make a name for ourselves. It is a picture of separate egoic identity, an attempt to create something grand by which the people who built it would be known. What actually happened was that the people could not understand each other’s speech, and instead of building the glorious city that they attempted to construct, they were scattered all over the face of the Earth. While the people down the road may be speaking English, still, there is a pattern of understanding that often does not flow between people.
One of my favorite verses in the Bible comes from the prophet Habakkuk from the 7th century B.C. It found its way into a choral piece that was written and has been sung at Sunrise Ranch, named “Thy Day Now Dawns.”
For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.
—Habakkuk 2:14
Encoded in those words that have been translated into English is some kind of ancient knowing, an ancient awareness. Humanity has gone through all kinds of survival states, with people fearing for their lives. And yet, buried deep within the human psyche is a knowing, encoded in these words. It is a picture of cosmic consciousness filling the world of form.
The ancients were not only telling us what happened to us; they were also telling us of the truth of who we are, and telling us the path back to that truth, when the Earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, the Lord being a way of naming the inmost dimension of who we are as a race. The Earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of that reality.
At Christmastime, sometimes people have a fleeting memory of that glory. With it, an awareness of our oneness returns to consciousness. We are not made to live in separate cells of consciousness.
The Angels of sight and openness bring a return of awareness that the glory of the Lord is in all people. It unites all people, East and West, North and South. There are, scattered throughout the cultures of the world, things like that verse from Habakkuk—ancient knowledge encoded into some kind of symbol, story, saying—bits of information, if you will. By themselves, none of them are the whole picture but a clue to follow to lead us back to the knowing of who we are.
Who we are is an individual matter, but not wholly an individual matter. It is impossible to know ourselves solely as an individual. We do not exist in isolation. Knowing ourselves is knowing us, who we are together. It is knowing our place in us, our place as a gate in the holy city.
Knowing ourselves is knowing the glory of the Lord, which is the glory of who we are together, and the glory of the way that our identity together is held in holiness. It is the wonder of Christmas that that glory came through a human being. You could ask, Could it be? Could it be that there was a human being who allowed that to happen?
If he did not perform that miracle, then something happened to create huge ripples through human consciousness. Something happened to so dramatically alter human awareness that it was changed forever. And as much as we, as humanity, attempted to cover it up and act like it did not happen and go back to the same old survival consciousness with all its misunderstanding, conflict, and war, we have been unable to make the cover-up stick.
There is a reverberation that is still in the air, a reverberation that says, I’m not done yet. There is an individual victory from that life, a knowledge of the glory of the Lord that shone through that one man. And that spirit of fulfillment and victory is still present, reverberating through human consciousness, unable to be done away with. What helps is that it is calling to who we are on the inside already. So even though the glory of the Lord has been forgotten, it is still there.
And so, the victory of this one man says, I’m not done and echoes through human consciousness despite shootings on Bondi Beach and in Rhode Island and all the rest of what is going on in our world today. It sounds through all the brokenness of human consciousness.
A woman at Eden Valley Institute performed Come All Ye Unfaithful on Friday. These lyrics are from the song. If you have an aversion to contemporary Christian culture, I hope you can get past it enough to feel the underlying meaning of the words.
O come, all you unfaithful,
Come, weak and unstable,
Come, know you are not alone.
O come, barren and waiting ones,
Weary of praying, come
See what your God has done.
Christ is born, Christ is born,
Christ is born for you.
O come, bitter and broken,
Come with fears unspoken,
Come, taste of His perfect love.
O come, guilty and hiding ones,
There is no need to run.
See what your God has done.
Christ is born, Christ is born,
Christ is born for you.
—Bob Kauflin and Lisa Clow
Come, all you broken. That would include pretty much everybody. We are all part of the body of humankind that is suffering from the experience of the Tower of Babel. Come, all you broken.
At the same time, I can own the God within me, the God that is the reality of who we are together. We are a living expression of the living God. I embrace that in myself, and I can also embrace the fact that I am a member of a body of humanity that is broken. I have that brokenness in me, as do all people.
It all depends on how you look at it, yes? From one perspective, the fact that we ended up being part of the brokenness of humanity is tragic. There is another way to look at it from the standpoint of the angelic reality of who we are. It is strategic to incarnate as an individual member of a broken body of humanity. It is strategic to have that brokenness right here in my own psyche, and in my own life experience, and then to speak from my divinity to my own humanity, I’m here for this. And I’ve got you just where I want you. I have you with my spirit, the wholeness that is the reality of who I am. I’ve got you just where I want you. And if I can be there in this way for this member of humanity, I can be there for my brother, and I can be there for my sister. I can be there for the body of humanity, not just from above, but from right here.
Our incarnation is strategic. It is so individually. That is the truth of it for each of us. And it is strategic that we are together if we are awake, if our Earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.
It is a remarkable situation in which we find ourselves as humankind, in this critical phase of our evolution. I do not know quite how it is all going to go, I don’t understand everything that is going on, or the timing of things. And yet something critical is happening.
As humankind, we have been bumping along for thousands of years, making gradual cultural change—some kind of gradual evolution—punctuated by leaps in culture and by bright lights incarnate and shining. Yet, it would seem that we are not in a time of gradual change now. We are not just bumping along. Something critical is coming to issue. And here we are, strategically located, incarnate as a gate in the holy city, lighting up that city, bringing knowledge into the whole world.
The Tower of Babel is toppling, leaving in its place a holy city of awareness, of knowledge.
I paraphrase the words from Habakkuk, not as a prophecy of a future event, but as my declaration and creative command for this human being and for this world.
This earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.