Gaga's latest clip mixes the sacred with the profane and includes a nod to Marlon Brandon too — here are all the references!
By James Montgomery

Lady Gaga
Photo: George Pimentel/ Getty Images

Love her or hate her, you've got to admit that Lady Gaga knows how to make a music video. Her clips always have been a mixture of high-art posturing and knowing nods to pop-culture ephemera, and "Judas" is no different. While it's not filled with blink-and-you'll-miss-it references like "Telephone" or odes to German Expressionism like "Alejandro," there's still plenty to wrap your eyes around in "Judas," offering a mixture of the sacred and the profane. Gaga merges mentions to religious iconography and cult biker flicks (and pretty much everything in between) in the video, and so, we decided to take notes. Here's our "Judas" pop-culture cheat sheet, alphabetized for your perusing pleasure ... you can't tell your Botticellis from your Brandos without it.

"The Birth of Venus": Iconic 15th century painting by Sandro Botticelli depicting the Roman goddess Venus emerging from the sea. Art historians have interpreted the work in many ways — a contemplation on physical and spiritual beauty, a celebration of the divine, a "wedding painting" meant to, uh, inspire the bride and groom — but in "Judas," when Gaga strikes a pose similar to the painting, she seems to be paying tribute to all three.

"Electric Chapel": Gaga has said that she created her Monster Ball Tour so that her fans "would have a place to go ... a safe place ... an 'Electric Chapel.' " It's also the name of a song on her upcoming Born This Way album. In "Judas," the Chapel is reimagined as a biker bar, where LG attempts to warn Jesus about Judas' impending betrayal.

Eye of Horus: An ancient Egyptian symbol of protection, closely associated with the goddess Wadjet. In "Judas," Gaga wears eye makeup that recalls the symbol, which makes sense, since, as Mary Magdalene, she attempts to protect Christ from Judas' backstabbing.

Foot Washing: A religious rite observed by several Christian denominations. In the Bible, Christ washed the feet of his apostles before the Last Supper, the final meal he shared before his crucifixion. Gaga washes Christ's feet in "Judas," perhaps symbolizing his forthcoming demise, something that Judas certainly had a hand in.

Golden Gun: Fictional weapon from the 1974 James Bond film "The Man With the Golden Gun," and a totally kick-ass sidearm in the "GoldenEye" video game. Gaga wields a similar piece in "Judas," though hers doesn't contain bullets; instead, it's a rather grandiose tube of lipstick, which she smears on Judas' face.

The Kiss of Judas: In the Bible, it is Judas' final act of betrayal — he kisses Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane after the Last Supper as a way of identifying him to the soldiers who have come to arrest him. The same scene is played out in "Judas," as the betrayer plants a pair of kisses on Christ's cheeks.

Mary Magdalene: A disciple of Jesus and one of the most controversial characters in the Bible, early scholars painted her as a repentant prostitute, while in the 20th and 21st century, she has come to be celebrated as a patron saint of women's preaching and ministry. Not surprisingly, Gaga takes on the role of Magdalene, reimagining her as a badass chick with a penchant for chola fashion.

Norman Reedus: American actor/model known for his roles in "The Boondock Saints" and, more recently, AMC's "The Walking Dead." In "Judas," he plays the titular apostle with gleefully evil aplomb.

Rick Gonzalez: American character actor who has appeared in dozens of films, most notably "Coach Carter" and, uh, "Old School," where he played "Spanish." In "Judas," he's given a gangster makeover as Jesus Christ.

Sacred Heart: Religious icon that symbolizes Christ's divine love for humanity. Often depicted as bleeding and wrapped in thorns, in "Judas," Gaga can be seen wearing a Sacred Heart on her wardrobe.

Simon Peter: One of Christ's 12 apostles, also known as Saint Peter, he is regarded by the Catholic Church as the first pope. Before the Last Supper, when Christ washed his apostles' feet, Peter originally refused, claiming he was not worthy. During Christ's arrest, Peter sliced the ear of a servant of the High Priest who had come to seize him. In "Judas," Gaga singles out Peter at the "Electric Chapel," patting him on the back.

"The Wild One": 1953 biker film starring a young Marlon Brando as the leader of the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club. That leather-clad gang of ne'er-do-wells seems to be the direct inspiration for Christ's biker-apostles in "Judas."

Can you spot any other literary, historic or pop-culture references in Lady Gaga's "Judas" video? Tell us in the comments.

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The clip, set to premiere tonight on E!, leaked early ... and, as Gaga put it, it's 'a celebration of faith.'
By James Montgomery

Lady Gaga
Photo: Kevin Winter/ Getty Images

Well, it's here ... eight hours ahead of schedule. On Thursday morning (May 5), Lady Gaga's hotly anticipated "Judas" video premiered, though probably not in the way that Mother Monster (and the folks at E!) had hoped it would: It leaked.

Originally set to be unveiled on the network during prime time on Thursday (and then again at 11:30 p.m.), "Judas" got a bit of an advance screening, quickly making the rounds on the Internet while the Little Monsters squealed with delight (or, alternately, expressed their outrage at its leaking). And despite pretty much everything Gaga had said about the video — that it was "a motorcycle Fellini film," that it portrayed "a betrayal of a prophecy fulfilled" — it is very much a pure pop clip, albeit one that looks great and is sure to earn the ire of a few folks on the religious right.

An arty reimagining of the betrayal of Jesus Christ by Judas Iscariot, the video sees Gaga as Mary Magdalene, riding along with Christ and his apostles, who are decked out in studded leathers and set atop roaring motorcycles. They cruise through — as Gaga put it — "a modern-day Jerusalem," with Judas tellingly racing ahead of the pack. At one point, they stop at an "Electric Chapel," where Gaga attempts to warn Christ — who, with his cornrows and golden crown of thorns, is far from traditional — of his apostle's impending betrayal. Whether or not he chooses to listen is largely up to the viewer, as the clip then segues into an extended sequence rife with religious iconography ... and, of course, dance.

And though it remains to be seen if the highly touted "uncut" version of "Judas" — which will still premiere tonight on E! at 7 p.m. ET — contains more controversial material, it's difficult to see why some people would have a problem with the video: Sure, Jesus looks different, and Gaga is playing Magdalene (certainly one of the most controversial figures in the Bible), but its imagery isn't nearly as sacred/profane as that of the "Alejandro" clip (Gaga does not, to the best of our knowledge, ingest rosary beads here), and in fact, with its artistic interpretations of foot washing and Boticelli's "The Birth of Venus," it's almost more of a tribute to the pop sensation's Catholic upbringing ... a fact she hit on when she said the video "[is] meant more to celebrate faith than it is to challenge it."

Leave it to Gaga to push the boundaries while remaining faithful to the source material. "Judas" is, at its sacred heart, an artistic explosion contained within the confines of a traditional pop clip. And if it's meant to be a celebration, well, you should probably start celebrating ... before the clip gets pulled, of course.

Have you seen Gaga's leaked "Judas" video and, if so, what do you think? Share your opinions in the comments.

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This post originally appeared on White Horse Inn.

 

“The Gospel is the message, the salvation-bringing proclamation concerning Christ that he was sent by God the Father...to procure eternal life. The Law is contained in precepts, it threatens, it burdens, it promises no goodwill. The Gospel acts without threats, it does not drive one on by precepts, but rather teaches us about the supreme goodwill of God towards us.”  –John Calvin

Law & Gospel: the “two words” of Scripture

In order to recover the sufficiency of Scripture we must once again learn to distinguish the Law and the Gospel as the “two words” of Scripture. For the Reformers, it was not enough to believe in inerrancy. Since Rome also had a high view of Scripture in theory, the Reformers were not criticizing the church for denying its divine character. Rather, they argued that Rome subverted its high view of Scripture by the addition of other words and by failing to read and proclaim Scripture according to its most obvious sense.

 

At the heart of the reformation’s hermeneutics was the distinction between “Law” and “Gospel.” For the Reformers, this was not equivalent to “Old Testament” and “New Testament;” rather, it meant, in the words of Theodore Beza, “We divide this Word into two principal parts or kinds: the one is called the ‘Law,’ the other the ‘Gospel.’ For all the rest can be gathered under the one or other of these two headings.” The Law “is written by nature in our hearts,” while “What we call the Gospel (Good News) is a doctrine which is not at all in us by nature, but which is revealed from Heaven (Mt. 16:17; John 1:13).” The Law leads us to Christ in the Gospel by condemning us and causing us to despair of our own “righteousness.” “Ignorance of this distinction between Law and Gospel,” Beza wrote, “is one of the principal sources of the abuses which corrupted and still corrupt Christianity.”¹

The Gospel is not an easier Law

Luther made this hermeneutic central, but both traditions of the Protestant Reformation jointly affirm this key distinction. In much of medieval preaching, the Law and Gospel were so confused that the “Good News” seemed to be that Jesus was a “kinder, gentler Moses,” who softened the Law into easier exhortations, such as loving God and neighbor from the heart. The Reformers saw Rome as teaching that the Gospel was simply an easier “law” than that of the Old Testament; that instead of following a lot of rules, God expects only love and heartfelt surrender.

 

Calvin replied, “As if we could think of anything more difficult than to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength! Compared with this law, everything could be considered easy... [For] the law cannot do anything else than to accuse and blame all to a man, to convict, and, as it were, apprehend them; in fine, to condemn them in God’s judgment: that God alone may justify, that all flesh may keep silence before him.”² Thus, Calvin observes, Rome could only see the Gospel as that which enables believers to become righteous by obedience and that which is “a compensation for their lack,” not realizing that the Law requires perfection, not approximation.³

Only the terror of the Law can shake us of this self-confidence. Thus, the Law condemns and drives us to Christ, so that the Gospel can comfort without any threats or exhortations that might lead to doubt.

Of course, no one claims to have arrived at perfection, and yet, Calvin says many do claim “to have yielded completely to God, [claiming that] they have kept the law in part and are, in respect to this part, righteous.”⁴ Only the terror of the Law can shake us of this self-confidence. Thus, the Law condemns and drives us to Christ, so that the Gospel can comfort without any threats or exhortations that might lead to doubt. In one of his earliest writings, Calvin defended this evangelical distinction between Law and Gospel:

 

The Law guides, but the Gospel is always needed

While the Law continues to guide the believer in the Christian life, Calvin insists that it can never be confused with the Good News. Even after conversion, the believer is in desperate need of the Gospel because he reads the commands, exhortations, threats, and warnings of the Law and often wavers in his certain confidence because he does not see in himself this righteousness that is required. Am I really surrendered? Have I truly yielded in every area of my life? What if I have not experienced the same things that other Christians regard as normative? Do I really possess the Holy Spirit? What if I fall into serious sin? These are questions that we all face in our own lives. What will restore our peace and hope in the face of such questions? The Reformers, with the prophets and apostles, were convinced that only the Gospel could bring such comfort to the struggling Christian.

 

Without this constant emphasis in preaching, one can never truly worship or serve God in liberty, for your gaze will always be fastened on yourself—either in despair or self-righteousness—rather than on Christ. Law and Gospel must both ever be preached, both for conviction and instruction, but the conscience will never rest, Calvin says, so long as Gospel is mixed with Law. “Consequently, this Gospel does not impose any commands, but rather reveals God’s goodness, his mercy and his benefits.”⁶ This distinction, Calvin says with Luther and the other Reformers, marks the difference between Christianity and paganism: “All who deny this turn the whole of the Gospel upside down; they utterly bury Christ, and destroy all true worship of God.”⁷

 

Ursinus, primary author of the Heidelberg Catechism, said that the Law-Gospel distinction has “comprehended the sum and substance of the sacred Scriptures,” are “the chief and general divisions of the holy scriptures, and comprise the entire doctrine comprehended therein.”⁸ To confuse them is to corrupt the Faith at its core.⁹ While the Law must be preached as divine instruction for the Christian life, it must never be used to shake believers from the confidence that Christ is their “righteousness, holiness and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30). The believer goes to the Law and loves that Law for its divine wisdom, for it reveals the will of the One to whom we are now reconciled by the Gospel. But the believer cannot find pardon, mercy, victory, or even the power to obey it, by going to the Law itself any more after his conversion than before. It is still always the Law that commands and the Gospel that gives. This is why every sermon must be carefully crafted on this foundational distinction.

We are told to believe the Gospel and obey the Law, receiving God's favor from the one and God's guidance from the other.

The need to preach both Gospel and Law rightly

As he watched the Baptist Church in England give way to moralism in the so-called “Down-grade Controversy,” Charles Spurgeon declared, “There is no point on which men make greater mistakes than on the relation which exists between the law and the gospel. Some men put the law instead of the gospel; others put gospel instead of the law. A certain class maintains that the law and the gospel are mixed...These men understand not the truth and are false teachers.”¹⁰

 

In our day, these categories are once again confused in even the most conservative churches. Even where the categories of psychology, marketing and politics do not replace those of Law and Gospel, much of evangelical preaching today softens the Law and confuses the Gospel with exhortations, often leaving people with the impression that God does not expect the perfect righteousness prescribed in the Law, but a generally good heart and attitude and avoidance of major sins.

 

A gentle moralism prevails in much of evangelical preaching today, and one rarely hears the Law preached as God’s condemnation and wrath, but as helpful suggestions for a more fulfilled life. In the place of God’s Law, helpful tips for practical living are often offered. (In one large conservative church in which I preached recently, the sermon was identified in the program as “Lifestyle Perspectives.” Only occasionally was one reminded that it was a church service and not a Rotary meeting.) The piety and faith of the biblical characters are often preached as examples to imitate, along with Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. As in Protestant liberalism, such preaching often fails to hold Christ forth as the divine savior of sinners, but instead as the coach whose playbook will show us how to achieve victory.

 

Sometimes it is due less to conviction than to a lack of precision. For instance, we often hear calls to “live the Gospel,” and yet, nowhere in Scripture are we called to “live the Gospel.” Instead, we are told to believe the Gospel and obey the Law, receiving God’s favor from the one and God’s guidance from the other. The Gospel—or Good News—is not that God will help us achieve his favor with his help, but that someone else lived the Law in our place and fulfilled all righteousness.

As Calvin said, “We are all partly unbelievers throughout our lives.”

Others confuse the Law and Gospel by replacing the demands of the Law with the simple command to “surrender all” or “make Jesus Lord and Savior,” as if this one little work secured eternal life. Earlier this century, J. Gresham Machen declared, “According to modern liberalism, faith is essentially the same as ‘making Christ master’ of one’s life...But that simply means that salvation is thought to be obtained by our obedience to the commands of Christ. Such teaching is just a sublimated form of legalism.”¹¹ 

 

In another work, Machen added, “What good does it do to me to tell me that the type of religion presented in the Bible is a very fine type of religion and that the thing for me to do is just to start practicing that type of religion now?...I will tell you, my friend. It does me not one tiniest little bit of good...What I need first of all is not exhortation, but a gospel, not directions for saving myself but knowledge of how God has saved me. Have you any good news? That is the question that I ask of you. I know your exhortations will not help me. But if anything has been done to save me, will you not tell me the facts?”¹²

Obedience must not be confused with the Gospel

Does that mean that the Word of God does not command our obedience or that such obedience is optional? Certainly not! But it does mean that obedience must not be confused with the Gospel. Our best obedience is corrupted, so how could that be good news? The Gospel is that Christ was crucified for our sins and was raised for our justification. The Gospel produces new life, new experiences, and a new obedience, but too often we confuse the fruit or effects with the Gospel itself. Nothing that happens within us is, properly speaking, “Gospel,” but it is the Gospel’s effect. Paul instructs us, “Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ...” (Phil. 1:27). While the Gospel contains no commands or threats, the Law indeed does and the Christian is still obligated to both “words” he hears from the mouth of God. Like the Godhead or the two natures of Christ, we must neither divorce nor confuse Law and Gospel.

 

When the Law is softened into gentle promises and the Gospel is hardened into conditions and exhortations, the believer often finds himself in a deplorable state. For those who know their own hearts, preaching that tries to tone down the Law by assuring them that God looks on the heart comes as bad news, not good news: “The heart is deceitful above all things...” (Jer. 17:9).

 

Many Christians have experienced the confusion of Law and Gospel in their diet, where the Gospel was free and unconditional when they became believers, but is now pushed into the background to make room for an almost exclusive emphasis on exhortations. Again, it is not that exhortations do not have their place, but they must never be confused with the Gospel and that Gospel of divine forgiveness is as important for sinful believers to hear as it is for unbelievers. Nor can we assume that believers ever progress beyond the stage where they need to hear the Gospel, as if the Good News ended at conversion. For, as Calvin said, “We are all partly unbelievers throughout our lives.” We must constantly hear God’s promise in order to counter the doubts and fears that are natural to us.

The dangers of not knowing the place of the Law

But there are many, especially in our narcissistic age, whose ignorance of the Law leads them into a carnal security. Thus, people often conclude that they are “safe and secure from all alarm” because they walked an aisle, prayed a prayer, or signed a card, even though they have never had to give up their own fig leaves in order to be clothed with the righteousness of the Lamb of God. Or perhaps, although they have not perfectly loved God and neighbor, they conclude that they are at least “yielded,” “surrendered,” or “letting the Spirit have his way”; that they are “living in victory over all known sin” and enjoying the “higher life.” Deluding themselves and others, they need to be stripped of their fig leaves in order to be clothed with the skins of the Lamb of God. Thus, Machen writes,

 

Conclusion

We must, therefore, recover Law and Gospel, and with such preaching, the Christocentric message of Scripture, or no good will come of our work, regardless of how committed we are to inerrancy. We cannot say that we are preaching the Word of God unless we are distinctly and clearly proclaiming both God’s judgment and his justification as the regular diet in our congregations. To recover Scripture’s sufficiency we must therefore, like the Reformers, recover the distinctions between Law and Gospel.

NOTES:
¹ Theodore Beza, The Christian Faith, trans. by James Clark (Focus Christian Ministries Trust, 1992), 40-1. Published first at Geneva in 1558 as the Confession de foi du chretien.
² Calvin, 2.7.5 -1536 Institutes, trans. by F. L. Battles (Eerdmans, 1975), 30-1; cf. 1559 Institutes2.11.10.
³ Calvin, 1559 Institutes, 3.14.13.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Battles edition of 1536 edition, op. cit., 365. Delivered by Nicolas Cop on his assumption of the rectorship of the University of Paris; there is a wide consensus among Calvin scholars that Calvin was the author.
⁶ Ibid., p. 366.
⁷ Ibid., p. 369.
⁸ Ursinus, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism (Presbyterian and Reformed, from Second American Edition, 1852), p. 2.
⁹ Ibid, p. 2.
¹⁰ Charles Spurgeon, New Park Street Pulpit, vol.1 (Pilgrim Publications, 1975), p. 285.
¹¹ J. Gresham Machen, Christianity & Liberalism (Eerdmans, 1923), p. 143. 
¹² J. Gresham Machen, Christian Faith in the Modern World (Macmillan, 1936), p. 57. 
¹³ J. Gresham Machen, What is Faith? (Macmillan, 1925), pp. 137, 139, 152.

 

One of my favorite Christian authors, writing about the Christianity of his day, said that popular faith is “like a farmer who needs a horse for his fields; he leaves the fiery stallion on one side, and buys the tame, broken-in horse. This is just the way men have tamed for themselves a usable Christianity, and it is only a matter of time and honest thought before they lose interest in their creation and get rid of it.”

The man who wrote those words was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German Lutheran theologian. For Bonhoeffer, Scripture was not an academic discipline, or a personal hobby, or a collection of useful wisdom. It was the living Word of God, the furnace that powered his life. And it had a cost. It led him to oppose National Socialism, then to work against Adolf Hitler, then to his arrest, and finally to his execution.

There’s nothing tepid or routine about a real encounter with Sacred Scripture. In his Narnia tales, C.S. Lewis warned that Aslan is a good lion, but he is not a “tame” lion. Likewise, God’s Word is profoundly good, but it is never “tame.” Augustine thought Christian Scripture was vulgar, inelegant, and shallow—until he heard it preached by St. Ambrose; then it grabbed him by the soul, and turned his world and his life inside out. When Jesus said “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled” (Lk 12:49) he spoke not as an interesting moral counselor, but as the restless, incarnate Word of God, the Scriptures in flesh and blood, on fire with his Father’s mission of salvation.

Scripture is passionate; it’s a love story, and it can only be absorbed by giving it everything we have: our mind, our heart and our will. It’s the one story that really matters; the story of God’s love for humanity. And like every great story, it has a structure. Talking about that structure and its meaning is my purpose here today.

A simple way of understanding God’s Word is to see that the beginning, middle and end of Scripture correspond to man’s creation, fall, and redemption. Creation opens Scripture, followed by the sin of Adam and the infidelity of Israel. This drama takes up the bulk of the biblical story until we reach a climax in the birth of Jesus and the redemption he brings. Thus, creation, fall, and redemption make up the three key acts of Scripture’s story, and they embody God’s plan for each of us.

Creation

Modern Christians often seem uneasy with the Bible’s account of creation. As a result, we miss the important truths embedded there. At the heart of the Christian story of creation is the fact that God is good, and the Maker of all things. Therefore, all of his creation has an inherent goodness. At the center of the creation account stand man and woman, made in God’s own image and likeness. In Genesis, humanity crowns the created world as a final, perfected expression of God’s love. In a sense, our love for each other, which is most obviously shown in the covenant of marriage, is a reflection of God’s own identity. God himself is a communion of love in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and this is the divine joy that God created us to share in.

Fall

At least that was the plan. Unfortunately, we know what happens next. Scripture moves pretty quickly from creation, to man’s temptation and Fall in Adam’s original sin.

Here we need to understand the Book of Genesis for what it is: a poetic account, not a newspaper report—but nonetheless a reliable expression of the truth about the history of humanity. God’s Word tells us that at some very early point in our past, our first parents freely chose to violate their original innocence. They turned away from God’s will. In doing so, they imprinted a wound and a weakness on all human generations that followed them, including our own. This is what the Church means by original sin. Every one of us is born a victim and carrier of that original wound. It separates us from God. It inclines us toward selfishness, weakness and evil. And we cannot heal that wound by ourselves. We cannot save ourselves. Only God can do that.

We live in a time that treats science not simply with the respect we should feel for a useful tool, but with a kind of idolatry for the power it seems to promise us. Sin is an “unscientific” idea, an embarrassment to human pride. Therefore it’s out of fashion. But unfashionable does not mean untrue. The proof of original sin is written on every page of the record of the last 100 years: the bloodiest in human history, with the worst sort of barbarism done in the name of the highest sounding political idealism. Sin is real. And more to our point today, the fact of original sin is a foundation stone of the biblical narrative. The cross of Jesus Christ means nothing at all if original sin is unreal. A Gospel of “redemption” makes no sense if we have nothing—no captivity to sin and death—that we need to be redeemed from.

Sin makes us, as St. Paul says, “fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). It defaces who God intended us to be. Sin quite literally “de-humanizes” us. This is its tragedy; but it’s also the context for understanding the mission of Jesus Christ.

Redemption

To claim that Jesus “saves us from sin” is certainly true. But it also understates the grandeur of God’s plan for us, achieved through the blood of his Son. Jesus does more than erase our sins, like a debt canceled or a blot washed away. He goes far beyond that. Jesus does indeed free us from sin, but he also elevates us for sonship (Gal 4:3-7).

In his death and resurrection, Jesus restores each of us, to use the biblical language, to the glory of God. This is why the Church sings at the Easter Vigil the Exsultet, “O felix Culpa,” O happy fault of Adam. Adam’s sin is reversed and transformed in the redemption won by Jesus Christ. It’s a “happy fault,” a beautiful and Godly irony, because our freedom purchased with the blood of Jesus Christ has not only restored the dignity of humanity, but lifted all of us beyond our imagining.

Grace heals, perfects, and elevates nature. And therefore Jesus seeks more than just our healing or even our perfection, which would simply take us back to the original innocence of Adam and Eve. Jesus goes even farther, seeking to “elevate” us, desiring nothing less than to give men and women a share in God’s own nature. As St. Peter says in his second epistle, God has granted us his power so that we may become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pt 1:4).

New Creation

At this point in Scripture, the biblical theme of a new creation begins to make sense. The New Testament tells us that the victory won in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not simply a new exodus from sin, but even more grandly, a new creation.

At the start of Jesus’ passion, we find him praying in agony in a garden (Jn 18:1). The early Church Fathers saw Gethsemane as an echo of Adam in the Garden of Eden, and St. John’s Gospel goes out of its way to stress that Jesus’ tomb is likewise in a garden (Jn 19:41). St. Luke may also be referring to Eden when he recounts the words of Jesus to the good thief, that he will be with him in paradise, using the same word in Greek that Scripture uses for the Garden of Eden (Lk 23:43). Luke’s Gospel also takes Jesus’ genealogy all the way back to Adam, implying that Jesus is the new Adam (Lk 3:23-38).

The “new creation” images found throughout the work of St. John climax with the resurrected Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit upon the apostles (Jn 20:22), just as God breathed his Spirit into Adam in the first creation (Gen 2:7). And of course, the picture of a new Eden closes out Scripture’s story in the Apocalypse. The Heavenly Jerusalem that comes down to earth is described as having a river running through its midst with the tree of life beside it, bearing 12 kinds of fruit, and leaves for the healing of the nations (compare Gen 2:10 with Rev 22:1-2).

The resurrection of Jesus itself, however, is the central and most powerful scriptural image of a new reality. St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 says that Jesus is the “first fruits” of God’s new creation. He goes on to contrast Adam with Jesus, referring to the latter as the “last Adam” saying that “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor 15:49). In Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians he stresses that Jesus’ resurrection ushers in a new creation, saying, “Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17).

Matthew, Luke and John all name the day of Jesus’ resurrection as the first day of the week. The early Christians saw this as signifying the first day of the new creation. The old creation came about through the symbolic six days of creation. Now, the new creation has only one day, what the Gospel narratives refer to as the “first day of the week.” This single day for the new creation, in contrast to the six days for the old, hints that the new creation has only just begun. God has begun the work of the new creation with the resurrection of his Son. And this Godly work, begun on the first day of the week, teaches us that a new age has begun. Those who believe in Jesus Christ, and conform their lives to him, take part in this new creation.

Early Christian converts studied the faith in the catechumenate for up to three years to prepare for baptism. This time of study focused on the story of God’s plan as recorded in Sacred Scripture. They immersed themselves in the Bible’s story so that they could see God’s story as their own story. After their time of study, which intensified during the weeks of Lent, they would then come to the Easter Vigil where they would be baptized.

Many ruins of ancient Christian churches have a baptistery, often with three steps that lead into a small pool, and three more steps going out on the opposite side. Catechumens would strip off their old clothes before descending into the water. Then, after being baptized, they would robe in a white linen garment. The disrobing signified the putting off of Adam, and the enrobing the putting on of Christ. In another tradition mentioned by St. Augustine, the persons seeking baptism would stand on animal skins and furs, a symbol of discarding the robes that Adam and Eve made for themselves when they hid from God. And after they were baptized, they would put on cloth sandals so that their feet wouldn’t touch the earth, indicating they were no longer of this world but of the new creation.

The baptismal rite showed that not only do we die to Adam and our old sinful nature, but also that we’re now clothed in Jesus Christ; partakers in his resurrection and in the life of this new man. In baptism we become, to use Paul’s words, a “new creation in Christ.” But equally important for Paul is whether or not we’re now actually living as a “new creation” and being true to our new identity; at least that is what he says in his closing words to the Galatians (Gal 6:15). Paul even goes on to give a blessing to “those who walk by this rule” (Gal 6:16).

Sharing in God’s blessed life Now if this is God’s plan for us—to walk by this new rule, living as a new creation; or as the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, sharing in God’s own blessed life (CCC, 1)—just how are we supposed to do that?

In his Letter to the Galatians, Paul spells out how Christians are to “walk,” which is a Hebrew metaphor for the moral life: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Gal 5:16). The Holy Spirit is the key to the new creation. In baptism the Christian is healed, her sins are washed away, and in receiving the Holy Spirit she has divine life imparted to her. And just as God’s Spirit hovered over the waters at the creation of the world in Genesis, so too since Pentecost, the Holy Spirit has poured out upon Christians, pointing to the truth that God is once again pursuing his creative ways, bringing about a regeneration and renewal—in effect, a new creation (Titus 3:5-6).

The Holy Spirit is the engine of the new creation, but we need to freely choose to cooperate with God’s work. We need to “walk” by the Spirit and be “led by the Spirit” (Gal 5:18; Rom 8:14). Paul contrasts the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:22-24). For St. Paul, we must choose between two roads, the way of the flesh that surrenders to the disordered passions we inherit in our wounded human nature; or the way of obedience to the Holy Spirit, which allows God to take root in us and bear the fruits of love, joy and peace.

Paul uses that metaphor of “fruit” as a characteristic of God’s new creation. And this is very deliberate. Fruit must be carefully cultivated. We can’t just plant seeds and sit back expecting a big harvest. Likewise, in baptism the Holy Spirit is planted in our souls, but we can’t be passive or tepid about our faith. The farmer labors over his fields. The gardener cultivates her garden. This takes time. So too, the extent to which God’s new creation takes root in us depends upon our efforts, sustained over time, to help it grow.

On our own, of course, we’re unable to achieve anything—much less live the life of God; the life of heroic love and goodness implied in Jesus’ new creation. We succeed as Christians only in the degree to which we allow God to graft us into the life of his Son. Each of us has a unique and unrepeatable role in the drama of salvation history. But God is author of the story, and its main actor. Therefore we succeed as disciples and as genuinely “human” beings only if we live in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ works through us for our own salvation and the salvation of others.

We do that by creating in our daily lives a time for prayer, silence, and for reading and studying the Word of God. We do it by worshipping together in the community of God’s people. And we do it by submitting our pride and our lives to our mater et magistra—the Church who is our “mother and teacher,” precisely because she is also ecclesiam suam, “his Church,” the Church Jesus Christ founded, guides and loves for the salvation of his people.

More than 15 centuries ago, St. Leo the Great said, “Christian, recognize your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return to your former base condition by sinning.” His words are equally true today. The story of Scripture is the greatest story ever told—a story of God’s creative power, man’s betrayal, God’s redemptive love; and a new destiny for humanity greater and more beautiful than anything any of us can imagine. What man has violated—including himself—God makes new and better.

A friend of mine recently took the train from Chicago to Denver, and during the journey he met about a dozen Amish families with children and young adults of all ages. They were traveling together, all of them in their distinctive clothing, to a vacation Bible camp in the Rockies. The Amish live a radical version of New Testament Christianity shaped by family, community, humility and separation from the world. Many avoid the use of electricity. Many will not ride in automobiles. But what struck my friend in his conversations with these families wasn’t their strangeness, but their joy, their lack of fear and their trust in each other.

Here’s the lesson. The Amish have plenty of problems, just like everyone else. Life without an SUV doesn’t keep the devil away. But the Amish do, radically and communally, what Bonhoeffer did in the difficult circumstances of his time, and what God calls each of us to do in our own daily actions: to order our lives wholly and zealously to the Word of God, trusting that his Word is the source of all justice, peace and truth. It’s also the source of an extraordinary joy (see Rom 5:2, Phil 4:4-7, and Jn 14:27).

God created us because he loves us with a tenderness and a passion written across the stars and woven into the beauty of the world around us; and his mercy, his loving kindness, endures forever. Our destiny is joy and glory in God’s new creation. That’s God’s plan for each of us. So be agents of that new creation. “Put on Christ” and “walk in the newness of life,” steeped in God’s Word and eager for God’s grace in the Liturgy. Live the life God calls you to right now, this weekend, in this conference—and in your witness, God will renew the face of the earth.

Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., is archbishop of Denver.

In "Into The Heart Of Darkness, Part 1", I examined the Black liberation theology of Jeremiah Wright and how the leftist radicalism at the heart of this worldview serves as the foundation of the belief system of President Barack Obama and forms the basis of many of his policies.  And even though Obama claims to have renounced his connections to his former pastor Jeremiah Wright, since Obama sat under this pastor for nearly 20 years and continues to advocate these kinds of policies, it is obvious Obama has not distanced himself from sociopolitical radicalism to the extent he claims he has.

Even if Obama is successful in tossing under the rug the insinuations of having embraced Afrosupremacist theology, he has gone out of his way repeatedly to let the world know he spent the early years of his career as a community organizer.  Obama supporters would have average Americans believe that this position involved little more than getting the plumbing fixed in rundown apartments or organizing senior citizens outings to the local supermarket for the elderly without their own transportation.

While these are laudable undertakings, these tasks do not encapsulate the true purposes and intents of community organizing.  These are just the bait to lure the needy yet unsuspecting into deeper levels of manipulation.

Though Barack Obama looked to Jeremiah Wright to provide a theological foundation for his ambitions and life's work, the danger the President represents goes beyond even the vile message propagated by his religious mentor.  For despite his egregious faults, one has to hand it to Jeremiah Wright that at least he is upfront about what he believes and speaks his mind.

Obama's apostles have tried to place their liege's hallowed past beyond the realm of critical scrutiny by insinuating it is now racist to look into what exactly community organizing is and that Jesus Himself was one.  However, it is anything but holy and nothing whatsoever to do with race.

At its heart, community organizing is about Communist agitation.  In a National Review article titled "What Did Obama Do As A Community Organizer", Byron York defines community organizing as "the practice of identifying a specific aggrieved population...and agitating them until they become so upset about their condition that they take collective action to put pressure on local, state, or federal officials to fix the problem often by giving the affected group money."

It sounds like such an approach is morally neutral as it doesn't differ on the surface all that much from the tactics employed by any group along the political spectrum.  However, in the case of Barack Obama, this strategy would be used to implement the kinds of things he learned from Jeremiah Wright and the other acolytes of perdictious revolution.

The school of activism with which Obama aligned himself employed such tactics in pursuits of obviously radical leftist ends.  Obama's employer the Calumet Community Religious Conference embraced the doctrines of Saul Alinsky.

Alinsky's magnum opus Rules For Radicals is dedicated to none other than Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness.  Thus, if Obama was mentored by those who in turn took their inspiration from the devil, by definition, doesn't that make Obama none other than Satan's intellectual grandchild?

The original purpose of the Church was to use its resources to assist the individual to get their lives straightened out in the name and power of the Lord Jesus Christ.  However, under the rubric of social organizing, we are to no longer view ourselves as responsible for ourselves but instead as part of a COMMUNITY and with docility take commands and instructions from those that have set themselves up as the vanguard of the proletariat who are not bound by the restrictions placed upon we lower breeds of humanity.

This is seen in terms of the denigration of American icon John Wayne.  In most of his films, John Wayne portrayed characters that looked to their own moral wherewithal or their families to solve their own problems.  Such thinking that is nowadays mocked used to be admired as self-reliance.  In the worldview of Barack Obama, we are to have both our guns and our God wrest from us and are instead to look to the state for purpose and to solve our problems as epitomized by his remark that he wanted to “make government cool again”.

Though he may not say it directly, but by examining what Obama says and in analyzing it in light of its implications and how he himself lives, one can legitimately conclude that this would-be messiah thinks that you exist for the benefit of the state and those like himself better than you.  For example, at the cornerstone of Obama’s social philosophy is the plan to reduce the standard and quality of life for the vast majority of Americans.  In May 2008 in a speech in Oregon, Obama said, “We can’t drive our SUV’s and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times.”

Does the average American really comprehend the level of control being proposed here?  Why in the name of perdition does anyone want a president that thinks it is his place to tell you what to drive, what you can eat, and how warm you can keep your house?  For any government that can tell you what you can and cannot do in your own home to that extent will eventually no longer permit you to live in your own home for reasons of national security, environmental sustainability, or whatever other bogus excuse will be bandied about the day the mass roundups start.

Even worse, Obama does not live by the standard he thinks out to be imposed upon you.  For while you are not to eat anything not on a government approved menu or go anywhere beyond the radius one can travel by unicycle or pogostick, Obama does not sit home in the dark, shivering with a blanket draped over his shoulders, munching on saltines.

The environment is no where near the point of collapse that he wants you to be duped into believing.  One of the places Obama vacations is the U.S. Virgin Islands.  Though some esteem Obama with an almost messianic aura and he has come close to applying such rhetoric to himself in prattle about turning back the seas and such, I some how doubt he walked to that particular destination.

Yet it is not enough for Obama that your life comes to a screeching halt to assuage the environmental consciences of big shot liberals such as himself and Al Gore (who has obviously been eating whatever he wants since leaving the Vice Presidency).  Obama also wants your life regimented and under close government scrutiny.

According to the sacred Barack, it is not enough for the average citizen to mind their own business and take care of one’s own family.  Rather, one must surrender oneself to the will of the group or the COMMUNITY.

As the next stage of the liberation theology he sat under for nearly 20 years in the church overseen by Jeremiah Wright, Obama postulated in a commencement address at Wesleyan University in June 2008 that “our individual salvation depends on collective salvation.”  This is quite revealing as to the underlying religious orientation of this particular president.

In traditional Biblical theology, salvation is a state of grace or unmerited favor imputed to the INDIVIDUAL pardoning one from the penalty for sin because it the individual that must believe in Jesus as the only begotten Son of God who lived the perfect life we could not, died, and shed His blood as the penalty for our sins and rose from the dead that we have eternal life.  However, to Barack Obama, salvation is not about an eternal reward for loving Jesus with one’s mind, body, and soul; rather salvation to Barack Obama is about conformity to the group.  You, as a distinct consciousness, do not matter all that much.

This is evident in both Obama's policy proposals as well as in his disdain for the behavioral principles underlying the moral code based in Scripture that prevents some of man's tendencies from degenerating into tyrannical anarchy or collectivism if these desires become unshackled from the realist perspective that man is a sinner and still hears sin’s siren call even when forgiven and redeemed through the shed blood of Christ.

To prevent the masses of the Biblically illiterate from being swept away by Obama’s rhetorical manipulations, Dr. James Dobson spoke out against some of the secular messiah’s misinterpretations of the Good Book.  Falling for some of the hype that he’s the best thing since Jesus Christ and actually the Lord’s replacement in the hearts of many, Obama has proceeded to inform the rest of us which parts of his “predecessor’s” Word may apply in the new “AB” era, as some have suggested all of history now be divided between before and after Obama.

Without a more careful exegesis into and research of the Biblical text, the holy Obama concluded that, if one thinks that prohibitions against homosexuality still apply today, than those against the consumption of shellfish still apply as well.  In response, according to a 6/24/08 Associated Press article titled “Obama: Dobson Is Making Stuff Up With Bible Criticism”, Dobson dared to say of Obama’s assertion, “I think he’s [Obama] deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology.”

Dobson’s opinion is actually closer to the historic Christian position.  Most denominations and theologians claim that the majority of Israelite dietary guidelines do not apply to the Church composed of both Jews and Gentiles because these restrictions were not reiterated in the New Testament and in fact were set aside in various passages.

For example, in Matthew 15:11, Jesus Himself assures that that one is not defiled by what goes into one’s mouth but rather by what comes out of it.  And in Acts 10, the Apostle Peter is told in a vision to deliberately eat of an animal said to be ceremonially unclean.  If the act of eating a particular kind of animal was in and of itself immoral and sinful, would the God of the universe have given instructions to have done so?

The same cannot be said of homosexuality.  Nowhere are the Old Testament injunctions labeling the practice as wrong rescinded in the New and in fact they are reemphasized in passages such as Romans 1 and included in a list of offences barring their perpetrators from entering Heaven if one does not seek forgiveness for them through the shed blood of Christ.

And contrary to all the sissies in a hissy over Rick Warren offering the inauguration prayer because Warren did not endorse the notion of gay marriage, insisting that this lifestyle is wrong does not mean that those falling into this temptation will be rounded up and sent to prison (though a percentage would probably enjoy that) or be put to death.  It could be argued that Jesus softened the penalty for the transgressions of the lustful flesh.

Though Jesus was merciful He nevertheless retained the position that what the women at the well did was sin by telling her to sin no more.  Today, those wanting to air their dirty laundry with pride rather than keeping it between only God and themselves as those with a tender conscience would prefer, vociferously insist that what they have done isn’t even sin.

And in the eyes of mystical humanists such as Obama and his ministerial supporters in the Order of the Scarlet Woman, this is the area in which Dobson has done something unforgivable.  Dobson has held on to the notion that sin, in its most basic form, is an individual act.

According to Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, who basically endorsed Obama for no other reason than that Obama is Black as before Caldwell supported George W. Bush, said Dobson was “a bit over the top”, and “crossed the line”.  More importantly, Caldwell admonished, “There has been a call for a higher level of politics and politicking.  So to attack at this level is inappropriate and I think unacceptable and we at least want to hold everybody accountable.”

Ladies and gentlemen, what is being called for here is an abridgement  of the fundamental constitutional liberties of anyone daring to disagree with or even question the new messiah.  For while Dr. Dobson has been told to essentially sit down and shut up, a cabal of leftwing clerics of which Cadwell has been numbered established a website called JamesDobsonDoesntSpeakForMe.com.  Examining the groups fundamental principles is quite instructive regarding the new social gospel that elevates the group above the individual.

For example, the website proclaimed regarding Dobson, “He doesn’t speak for me when he uses religion as a wedge to divide.”  Let’s look at this for a moment.

Aren’t Obama, his false prophet Jeremiah Wight, and lesser luminaries such as Rev. Caldwell each riding the coattails of each using religion to divide?  For crying out loud, the Black liberation theology expounded by Jeremiah Wright thinks God doesn’t even love you if you are White.

Furthermore, who says religion is not meant to divide?  While Scripture tells us that God is not willing that any should perish, there are just as many other passages informing us that Christ came to separate the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the chaff.

Also, interesting, isn’t it, how in the coming together in unity that it is those holding to a traditional understanding of Biblical morality that are to compromise their standards rather than those who fall short of these principles and from then on strive to elevate their conduct?

As the declaration points out, “What does speak for me is David’s Psalm celebrating how good and pleasant it is when we come together in unity.”  That is true, but in order to unite, there must be considerable agreement as to what principles one is going to unite around.  Of those with whom one disagrees considerably, the Bible commands, “Come from out among them and be ye separate.”

The declaration continues, “James Dobson doesn’t speak for me when he uses the beliefs of others as a line of attack; He doesn’t speak for me when he denigrates his neighbors’ views when they don’t line up with his.”

As noted earlier, by criticizing Dobson’s criticizing, aren’t they themselves guilty of criticizing?  Did not the holy Barack partake of the same act?

What if Dobson's neighbor was a vile skinhead that plucked the eyes out of newborn kittens?  Is Dobson just suppose to sit their and not say anything about this ethical transgression as well if we are to take the mutated uncontextualized version of judge not to its ultimate conclusion?

Contrary to the Obamaist declaration, Dobson does not confine the values of faith to two or three issues.  First off, Focus on the Family is not a church. 

Thus, the organization does not necessarily have the same spiritual mandate to address to the same extent the totality of existence of life that God's sacred assembly has been called to.  Yet that said, Focus on the Family addresses a wider array of issues and concerns than these liberal Black churches that have for the most part confined their message to propagating the blame Whitey mentality of whom Republicans and Conservatives rank their primary targets.

From the tone of the declaration, Dobson stands accused of not seeking justice, encouraging the oppressed, or defending the cause of the vulnerable.  Yet when Dobson rises to do so, these collared hypocrites accuse him of reducing the faith to two or three issues and not working to restore what is broken in our communities.  If the efforts of Focus on the Family have been reduced to two or three issues, it is only because that apostates like Obama and his supporters  have focused their war against Christ and the Bible towards a few central cultural pillars in the hopes of causing the entire edifice of our heritage of liberty to implode in upon itself.

Unable to speak or act on their own behalf, who is more than the unborn that the babykillers can’t wait to hack apart with their meat cleavers?  What institution is more vulnerable than the contemporary family with the assorted threats out to achieve its abolition through easy divorce, its dilution through its alleged recognized extension to homosexuals, and through the proliferation of government programs that make parents of both sexes feel either redundant in the case of men as providers or obsolete in the case of work at home mothers.

Leftist clergy drone on and on about the beauty of religious unity and cooperation.  However, if they are going to embrace practices such as infanticide and sodomite nuptials as good and positive things, one might as well toss the Bible in the paper shredder and sleep in Sunday morning.  Under such a worldview, nothing is wrong anymore and you might as well do whatever the Sheol you please.

Under the Obama regime, while your obligation to God might be diminished, don’t think you are going to slide by on easy street in terms of guilt being toned down.  Rather a whole new litany of demands will be placed upon an otherwise productive citizen.

In commencement addresses given in both 2008 and 2009, Obama repeatedly called for a renewed spirit of national service.  To most Americans accustomed to working for what they have, on the surface this may sound like little more than what they are already doing.  However, the plans go much shockingly further.

In the free market economy of the United States, the individual offers some kind of commodity --- be it labor, a tangible good produced, brainpower, or time --- in exchange for monetary compensation.  And though the system is not perfect, the higher the participant rises in the system, the greater the rewarding compensation one is able to accrue.

However, that may come to a screeching halt if our Seigneur and Chief gets to have his way.  For in his worldview, no longer will it be enough to strive within the rules to get the things one wants.  Rather in a manner not unlike a medieval manor, if the New World Order advocated by a succession of presidents each in their own way with distinctive emphases comes to pass, you will be bound to the same occupational station and residential area not until you as a free person decides to change it but rather until those higher up the system decide to amend such biographical characteristics.

In his 2008 commencement address, Obama said, “There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one is forcing you to care.  You can take your diploma, walk off stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things our money, culture says, you should buy.  You can choose to narrow your concerns and live your life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America’s.”

Obama cites as precedent his own case where he took a position as a community organizer making $12,000 per year while driving a $2,000 car.  But whereas you are suppose to remain content at a life of minimal toil, since Obama has always been in his own mind the man who would be king, he was always entitled to possess so much more.

According to an Investor’s Business Daily article posted at Yahoo News on 6/2/2008 titled “Living On Obama’s Collective Farm", Obama made over $4 million that year.  But I guess that’s what it takes to keep a ball-and-chain like Michelle in $500 athletic shoes far uglier than my $20 K-Mart ones and $5000 handbags (a good used automobile doesn’t cost much more than that).

From comparing these dichotomies, one can conclude that Obama does not really care so much about the poor.  Rather, in true Alinskyite fashion, he sees those in such circumstances as pawns to agitate into a froth through which to seize power and advance his own status.  If it had meant a life of toil and anonymity as it does for most dedicating their lives to uplifting the poverty-stricken, would Obama have even pursued this path in his early career?

As to whether or not Obama will allow participation in national service to remain an individual choice is open to interpretation.  In the 2008 address, Obama went on to say, “On the big issues that our nation faces, difficult choices await.  We’ll have to face some hard truths, and some sacrifice will be required --- not only from you individually, but from the nation as a whole.”  But in light of $5000 handbags, weekend jaunts onboard Air Force I to Broadway plays, and pizza chefs flown in from the Midwest to appease a gastronomical hankering, that call does not apply to his highness of course.

Often, those without an inclination towards politics shrug their shoulders at these grandiose pronouncements and go about their business thinking that those in authority won't go much beyond the stage of public elocution.  However, this time around such disengaged citizens might not be so insightful.

The President's ball-and-chain Michelle said in a campaign speech, "Barack Obama will require you to work.  He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism.  That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone...Barack Obama will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

Listen up, you battle ax, I'll be as cynical as I want to be.  Your hubby might have been a Professor of Constitutional Law, but apparently he was as dedicated to that occupational station as he was to his seat in the Illinois State House, where he regularly and decisively voted “present, and to the U.S. Senate, where his attendance was shoddy at best as he merely used that office to campaign for the presidency and to pull down a hefty paycheck while doing it.

The First Amendment protects the rights of the individual to believe whatever they want and to enunciate their opinion as to the actions and motivations of the nation’s leaders. This includes saying that these politicians are little more than frauds.  Any legislation or executive order to the contrary is an infringement of this Constitutional protection.

And as to being isolated and in one’s “comfort zone”, so long as one pays their bills and stays to themselves, they have the right to be every bit of a hermit as they want to be.  Until any President can lock down the border and prevent illegal aliens from violating the territorial integrity of the United States, the Chief Executive has so failed in his fundamental responsibility that he ant those that work beneath him should have no spare time whatsoever to be concerned with how I spend my own time.

Though the discerning might have to weave the disparate fragments together into a complete tapestry, the minions of despotism and iniquity are so full of themselves that they cannot resist scattering crumbs and often wholesale cognitive meals detailing their intentions to destroy liberty and reduce the population to the level of modern day serfs.  Shame is, the election of Barack Obama is proof how a significant percentage of the American people would rather ignore the harsh realties staring them right in the face.

by Frederick Meekins

At the start of the first millennium, a couple of thousand years ago, the book of Revelation had bad things to say about Rome.  "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of her impure passion." 7 angels in golden girdles and linen robes were on their way down with 7 plagues -- foul sores, bloody seas, bloody rivers, scorching heat, darkness, drought, and an earthquake with great balls of hail -- that would split the city in 3 parts. "And God remembered great Babylon, to make her drain the cup of the fury of his wrath" (Revelation 16:19, 18:2).

John wrote the book of Revelation on an island in the Aegean, possibly as an exile under the Roman emperor, Domitian, a generation after Jesus of Nazareth was hung on a cross. He expected better ends for his friends. One day, no less than 144,000 chaste and spotless men, who had never "defiled themselves" with women, would stand together on Mt Zion, singing a new song to the sound of harps in heaven.

Over the last decade, as the third millennium turns, a number of Darwinians have tried to explain all that. What accounts for religious faith? Pascal Boyer, Michael Shermer, Scott Atran, Daniel Dennett, Robert Hinde and Paul Bloom think our brains are hardwired in ways that make credibility in a creator likely. David Sloan Wilson says religions help some groups spread faster than others. Richard Dawkins supposes that religions are complexes of catchy cultural ideas, or memes. And Robert Wright believes that religion itself might evolve, with a more inclusive moral compass as we move toward globalization.

To me, personally, nothing is so important as faith. Faith that my heart won't stop beating. Faith that the bridge won't collapse. Faith that my many lapses will be forgiven, in time. Faith that the patient and consistent efforts I make will, in the long run, pay off.

But to me as a Darwinian historian, religion is about politics and sex. Sometimes -- say, around the time Jesus of Nazareth was being crucified near Jerusalem, and John was being sent into exile by the Roman emperor Domitian -- men in power tell the people to worship them as gods. And they ask them to make sacrifices to their genius, or fertility, or generative power. Other times -- say, in Israel around a thousand years before Jesus of Nazareth, or for more than a thousand years after John's revelation in Rome -- the people tell men in power that god is greater than they are. And they ask them to stop having so much sex.

Just a few months before members of the Roman senate put an end to Julius Caesar, on the Ides of March, they set up his statues in the city, with legends that called him an "unconquerable god" or a "demigod" -- which he may have erased, finding them "insufficient." Caesar's heir started off calling himself divi filius, or "son of god;" and soon after, his senate gave him a new name, Augustus -- since "all sacred things" are August. Then they started to offer him sacrifices. Augustus' friend, the poet Horace, thought they ought to slaughter bulls on his behalf, and say prayers: "we build altars on which to swear by your divinity, declaring your like has never been and never will be;" and, in another poem, Augustus' friend Virgil agreed: "a god will I deem ever, and from my folds a tender lamb often with its lifeblood shall his altar stain." All trends that went back to the third millennium before Augustus, when empires began. In Egypt, Djedefre, who was a son of the pyramid builder, Khufu, liked to call himself sA ra: a son of the sun god, Ra. In Mesopotamia, Naram-Sin, who was a grandson of the empire builder, Sargon, had his scribes use the divinity sign next to his name. And in China, emperors were otherwise known as Sons of Heaven.

When, more than 2000 years after the first emperors, John wrote his book about the Apocalypse as an exile on the island of Patmos, he may have been reluctant to make sacrifices to the genius, or generative power, of the divine emperor in Rome. By then, coins covered with cornucopia were being issued in honor of genio augusti, or the emperors' genius; and emperors were being worshipped for their genius, in order to ensure the harvests. And religious noncompliants were being punished. Roman subjects were mutilated, scourged, suffocated, burned, or thrown to the leopards, bears and wild boars for failing to "swear by the genius of Caesar," for 300 years.

Roughly a millennium before Augustus and the Revelation of John, the ancestors of Jesus of Nazareth ruled over a kingdom from Jerusalem. But they were warned, again and again, by their prophets, that the lord was greater than they were. And that if the lord, or his prophets, were disobeyed, their fertility would be taken away.

King David, who was his lord's "beloved," was warned by his prophet, Nathan, in no uncertain terms. "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul; and I gave you your master's house, and your master's wives into your bosom." And if David didn't keep faith, his lord could take it all away. "Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun" (2 Samuel 12:7-11). For generations after that, prophets told other kings the same thing. And in the end, the lord took their kingdom -- and their families -- from them. When Nebuchadnezzar II first sent an army to Jerusalem, he captured king Jehoiachin, and brought "the king's mother, the king's wives, his officials, and the chief men of the land," back to Babylon -- because, as the prophet Ezekiel knew, they were "a nation of rebels." And years later, when Nebuchadnezzar's men came again, they slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and "dragged" his women away -- because, the prophet Jeremiah cried, they'd done "evil in the sight of the Lord" (2 Kings 24:15, 25,7; Jeremiah 52:2-11; Lamentations 1:4; Ezekiel 2:3).

And for more than a millennium after John's Apocalypse and the emperor Augustus, Jesus' apostles put kings all over Europe in their place. Clovis was baptised as rex by his bishops at Christmas of 496 in Paris.  But Remigius, the bishop who stood at the font, wrote: "you should defer to your bishops, and always have recourse to their advice." Charlemagne, who presided over another kingdom at Aachen, was crowned imperator on the steps of St Peter's at Christmas of 800 by pope Leo III.  But his grandson, Charles the Bald, was warned by his churchman, Hincmar of Rheims, that it was a bishop's job to watch over the morals of kings, and to correct them: "and if he cannot, he ought to drive away, according to the evangelical rule, the perpetrators of iniquities." Then Otto the Great, whose descendants became Holy Roman Emperors east of the Rhine, was made rex by an archbishop in 936, and imperator a quarter of a century later by pope John XII at Rome. But one of Otto's successors, Henry IV, would be warned on the eve of the crusades, that it was an emperor's job to kiss the pope's feet -- and he'd be thrown out of office if he didn't stop having so much sex. Pope Gregory VII had heard the "most shameful tidings" about Henry's bad behavior as a boy; and he was sure that "his wickedness had increased" with his years. This emperor was a pederast; he'd pimped his wife; he'd fathered bastards by the "swarm" of concubines he slept with; and he was inclined toward incestuous lust. Like more than a few other emperors before and since, he'd surrounded himself with a string of castles, forced free men to do his labor, and "made sport" of their wives and daughters. It was about time for that to stop.

To me as a Darwinian historian, it's obvious that religions can be enforced from the top down, or from the bottom up. And to me personally, it's probably a good thing to keep kings and emperors in line.

 

References:

http://laurabetzig.org/pdf/SJOT.pdf

http://laurabetzig.org/pdf/EndofRepbulic.pdf

http://laurabetzig.org/pdf/JFH95.pdf

 

Photo credit:

http://www.pbase.com/spepple

 

 

Lead me from dreaming to waking.
Lead me from opacity to clarity.
Lead me from the complicated to the simple.
Lead me from the obscure to the obvious.
Lead me from intention to attention.
Lead me from what I'm told I am to what I see I am.
Lead me from confrontation to wide openness.
Lead me to the place I never left,
Where there is peace, and peace
- The Upanishads

*note* lovely secrets of life from brother Elias(a former christian monk)
What he means (or he discovered) is very important.
He discovered there were no negativities,no devils,other then his OWN not-resolved soul experiences.
In other words..the devil is in you,not out there.
In truth(or absolute truth) there is no devil other then your NOT resolved(integrated sub-personalities..and remember that even those are NOT the real you..but those make up your personality,as it splits,and becomes many...your job is not to reject those,but KNOW that was necessary..for otherwise you could not become an individual)
YOU MUST accept your individuality,and the collectivity,and the ONE.(3 in one)
The ONE knows..but if you stop blaming the devil,and start looking within..the ONE will readjust your reality,and miracles will happen.
quote from Elias,,"
May I recognize whatever appears as being my own mind-forms. May I fear not the bands of the Peaceful and the Wrathful, who are my own mind-forms. ~ from The Tibetan Book of the Dead
"
Thus spokenth the mahayogi,to the bewildered grasshoppers.
-added by danny-
................
VISION. One afternoon I was taking a nap after dinner, dreams and jazz music were sluicing through my brain. Suddenly a voice spoke very loudly next to my ear: “NOW THE SECRET OF LIFE WILL BE REVEALED.”


A hole opened up under me and I fell into it. It was a square dark hole, which got progressively lighter the deeper I fell.


I fell quickly at first, then more slowly as the light thickened. Soon I was floating in the loving embrace of the Light, an intense rapture flooding my senses. The words “I need you!” echoed in me and around me.


There was progressive dissolution of form and quality as the light thickened. Images dissolved into light, dream dissolved into light, I dissolved into light, and this light was Consciousness itself.


That is the secret of life.



Such experiences would “dissolve” me, and for a few days I would walk around transported. The other brothers would notice and I would receive lots of smiles and nods.



Then my mind would resolidify, new crystalline structures would form, and new dreams of conflict would emerge.
_________________________


VISION. I am walking on a road that leads into the forest. Suddenly a circular chasm opens next to the road.


Cautiously I approach the edge of the pit and peer over. I am gazing into a fathomless dark deep, and I am thinking of all my ecstatic falling dreams.


At that moment I hear the clatter of hoofbeats coming along the road out of the forest. I raise my eyes and see a spectral being on a black horse galloping toward me. He is moving with the speed of the wind, and his aura is of stupendous and irresistible power. I know at once that nothing in the universe can impede or resist this onrushing power. As the horse thunders by, its flank brushes me lightly, and I am knocked head over heels into the abyss. I wake up quaking with fright.


What’s so different about this descensus from my other glorified tumbles? Why was there no hint of luminous supporting depths waiting to receive me? For a long time I thought this dream meant that I was going to undergo physical death at an early age. I took this horseman to be the Lord of Death himself, on his daily journey around the world.
_________________________


When you take a breath of air, are you possessed by the air? When you take a drink of water, are you possessed by the water? When you eat a meal…and so forth.


You cannot live without air, water, and food. All of these material dependencies are metaphors for your dependency on the Spirit. (Actually, they are metaphysical manifestations of your dependency on the Spirit, but that’s a discussion for another day.)


In order to consciously awaken to Spirit, you will have to fall into that aspect of consciousness we call “subtle awareness". Subtle awareness is the intuitive faculty which allows us to know things directly, without the intermediary of the verbal mind. Some of you have that already, so you know what I am talking about. Others may think I am telling a fairy tale or a myth. More’s the pity.


But the fact is you do have this subtle awareness. You already have it. You are born with it. In your case it may be sleeping in a dark cave, or atrophied or suppressed, but it is a living part of your totality. Unless you revive it, you will never walk out of your current imprisonment in the mind. No amount of money will liberate you from your half-alive state, this condition of atrophied subtle awareness.


Know though, that subtle awareness is a vast expanse of experience that, like an ocean, can be either shallow or profound. Hopefully you will make your way from the shallow shores towards the unspeakable depths.


The subtle realm is nurture. It is education. It is also danger, a universe in which archetypes roam like carnivorous fish, making a meal of the weak and the naive. (These “dangerous entities” in the deep psyche include people who developed subtle awareness only to use it as a tool for possessing others and placing them in bondage.)


I am saying you don’t need to fear such intelligences as long as you keep faith with your own heart, and with the underlying truth of subtle experience:


May I recognize whatever appears as being my own mindforms. May I fear not the bands of the Peaceful and the Wrathful, who are my own mindforms. ~ from The Tibetan Book of the Dead

______________________


The important thing to remember is that the realm of subtle experience responds instantly to how it is seen. Yes, it contains everything that is unknown to you, but it is also instantaneously responsive to the act of perception itself. (Or should I say the art of perception?)


How can that be? Please remember, it is not an other that is awakening but your very “I” – the Self that is the root of your being. That’s why we say, “May I recognize whatever appears as being my own mindforms.”


This Self is looking for you, and will, if you allow it, educate and awaken you. It will test your “art of perception". When it knocks at your door, and when you open to it, it begins at once to transform your perspective – your way of seeing. It is the Liberator of your seeing – not all at once, but bit by bit.


Yes, in the realm of subtle awareness there will be moments of vision and great revelation, private glimpses of the “beyond-beyond” state of the Self. But the essence of the Self’s initiation is work – a new kind of work in which the soul collaborates with the Spirit in the real tasks of real liberation.


The work has been succinctly described as “self-inquiry". Sadly, this simple phrase has been wildly misunderstood to mean a kind of rote practice in which one asks the question, over and over, “who am I?".


Presumably this mantra-like recitation will help one to peel away the layers of illusion, false-self, and ego-persona to arrive at direct realization of the “I” of the Self. I say presumably, because no one has been shown to have achieved Self-realization using this formulaic practice.


Even Maharshi, who is supposed to have simplified his own awakening into this formula that he could hand out, like prasad, to the thousands who came to see him, did not achieve Self-realization by asking “who am I?” Rather, he allowed his i-sense to confront the inescapable reality of death. And that’s what you should do as well. When death becomes so real to you that you see the futility of the hopes and dreams of the little “i", then the great “I” will come to you and shake you awake.


And that’s important to know: the Self comes to you, and takes an active role in your education and awakening. It is another terrible mistake that seekers make, to believe they can do this “practice” in isolation from the tremendum of God. Again, as I have suggested before, they have made “non-dualism” into a ritualized form of Spirit-denial. The ego actually believes it can do the whole job of “becoming enlightened” by reciting a simple prescription handed-down by an authentic sage. And they sit for hours and hours in their “communion halls", repeating the phrase inwardly, waiting for sudden and total illumination. Good luck with that, boys.


Personally I have preferred to take the dynamic and inter-active route, of responding to the spontaneous intrusion of God into my life. I know I am not alone in this, having known others of similar disposition.


And in taking this path, I have allowed myself to be educated by that Tremendum which was Unconscious to me. I have accepted the tasks the Spirit set for me, of unraveling and inspecting the knots and complexes of the psyche.


This is true self-inquiry, you know. This is the self-inquiry that the Spirit wants you to practice: to know the personal psyche inside and out, and to explore those deep parts of the mind which Jung called “the archetypal".


Don’t worry about this legendary “God Realization” you seek. To turn around Jack Kornfield’s famous phrase, forget the ecstasy – first do the laundry.


Elias
*note* I will post his ,,monk experience,, 
-added by danny-
.............
~  posted by Elias  ~



During the summer months of 1965 I wrestled with my "religious problem" while hiking in the mountains of Pennsylvania and spending long days holed up in a cabin I'd been permitted to use. I saw almost no one.
It was obvious to me I had to make a clean break with the world. My visions were pulling me toward greater intimacy with God. For some reason I saw my artistic career as being opposed to that movement. I decided my writing was "egotistical" and "non-sacrificial" -- in spite of everything I'd learned about how the power of Grace opens creativity.
So one August afternoon I burned all my manuscripts -- a three-foot pile of material I had accumulated since 1961. The same day I made the decision to return to Vermont and enter a monastery.
My parents were happy to see me -- it had been almost two years since I'd been home -- and they were suitably impressed when I told them my decision to return to the Catholic Church and enter a religious order. There were at least three monasteries in our vicinity -- Carthusian, Benedictine, and Camaldolese. I planned to approach them all, one by one, and offer my life into the service of God.
After a few weeks of hanging around the house, helping my father catch up on repairs and yardwork, I steeled my nerves for a visit to the Carthusian hermits of Mt. Equinox, in Manchester, Vermont. I didn't write or call ahead, I simply showed up at the gatehouse.
The two old monks who saw me were the most spiritual men I'd met up to that time. They radiated an immense peace and great depth of intuition. I thought they'd probably see at once that I was favored with holy visions --something about my face would tell them. Then they would joyfully welcome me into the sacred precinct, and that would be the end of it -- goodbye cruel world. Instead they gave me the once-over, asked a few skillful questions, and sent me away. "You ought to get married and open a grocery store," one of them told me, munching a carrot, like Bugs Bunny in his cosmic trickster mode.
I fared better with the Benedictines. Their youthful prior listened attentively to my tale of re-conversion (I instinctively left out the visionary part). He agreed that I might be admitted to postulancy in their order after a suitable period of testing --probably about a year. A year! I didn't want to wait a year! I wanted to put on those holy robes right now! Well, it might take less than a year, but in any case I'd have to get a job and work off some debts I owed. That in itself would take about six months.
As it turned out it only took three months. I found work on a rock-drilling crew, as a bit changer. This was the most physically demanding work I'd ever done. Day after day, as the air compressors roared in my head, I thought how fortunate I was to find such uncomfortable work. Surely my sins were vanishing like dirty snow on an April afternoon!
While waiting to be admitted to the Benedictines, I went through the formalities of rejoining the Church. I began attending mass as often as possible, and I made my first confession in about six years. One happy Sunday I took the Lord on my tongue and felt again that meditative satisfaction that most Catholics feel when they realize that God Himself has entered their body as spiritual food.
I had several auspicious dreams at this time. In one, old St. Benedict himself placed the cowl of profession over my shoulders, while thousands of monks looked on. On Christmas Eve, 1965, I dreamt I was sleeping in the palm of a giant hand. As the hand lifted me slowly and dreamily into the sky, power flowed into my body, and I dissolved in bliss and exaltation. As I awoke, a Biblical phrase passed through my mind: "No harm can come to those you protect with your hand."
Was this the same hand that crushed me mercilessly a few months before? Undoubtedly!
In early January, 1966, taking the name "Brother Robert," I was admitted to the company of the holy monks of St. Benedict. The monastery was a small farm in the hills of Vermont, with a chapel and dormitory and about fifteen men in residence. They were a cloistered, meditational group, with vows of silence -- a return to the ways of earlier centuries. Our chief physical occupations were farming and craft work. Our only exposure to the public was on Sunday, when large numbers of people would come for mass and afterwards mingle briefly with "the brothers."

LIFE IN THE CLOISTER
A bell wakened us every morning at 4 A.M. A few minutes later we congregated in the chapel (which was breezy and cold in winter) and began chanting the psalms of matins. This was the longest "office" of the day, sometimes lasting an hour or more. When I first arrived it was sung in Latin, with the ancient Gregorian melodies. Later we changed to English, and our choir-master improvised new melodies from the old forms. The effect was less beautiful -- Gregorian chant is amongst the most inspired music on earth --but at least we could understand what we were singing!
After another hour or so of meditation and lectio -- meditative reading --we returned to the chapel for more chanting, and then went to breakfast. Breakfast consisted of coffee, last week's donuts (compliments of a local bakery), toast with peanut butter, and fruit. During cold weather there would be hot cereal and sometimes eggs or french toast -- which we would bathe in syrup from our own maple trees.
Breakfast was followed by more lectio and personal duties such as shaving, making beds, and so forth. A few of us used this time to catch up on our sleep, although this was strictly forbidden. During my entire two years as a Benedictine I never adapted to the official seven hour nights. Many people would consider seven hours a generous vacation from the toils of day. A few of the brothers never slept more than four. But I had always been a nine-hour man. In a pinch I could get by on eight, but seven was impossible. I seemed to need a lot of time for dreaming.
The mornings consisted of an hour or two of instruction -- mostly theology -- followed by an hour or two of work. Then came daily mass, at around 11:30. This was definitely the high point of the day for everybody. All a monk's suppressed libido is channeled into his participation in "the sacrifice of the mass." With heartfelt attention he relives the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and when he turns to embrace his brother during "the kiss of peace," the room is humming with charitable feeling. The cup is passed around, and large chunks of consecrated bread. (We used loaves of homemade bread, a practice which at that time was frowned upon by Rome, which still preferred "wafers".) God is imbibed and chewed and swallowed, and in the ensuing silence the affirmation of divine love is very strong, and almost childlike.
In spite of this ritual of love, some of the brothers still managed to dislike each other. Petty differences can loom very large in a human incubator. Unconscious complexes and neuroses -- even latent psychoses --take on an eerie intensity that is like physical sickness. If one or two men are going through a crisis, everybody goes through it with them.
By the same token, if one man makes a breakthrough in consciousness, it sends waves through the entire group. Everyone picks up on it, and even the animals seem to feel it. Fortunately, this positive "participation mystique" (a Jungian term, derived from anthropology, for collective identification) tends to predominate over the negative kind. Except in a few "difficult" cases, the neurotic complexes seemed to burn off as "heat."
After lunch there was a short "siesta." This was my favorite time of day, but not for the reason you might think. The fact was I tended to have some of my strongest visionary experiences during these midday naps. Just below the edge of sleep, when the ears could still hear the sounds in the room, the flux of images would often burst into that dimension of pure healing which is always present alongside the shape of our thoughts. Night dreams tended to be more informational, more structured. Nap dreams were like swimming in the blue Caribbean.
Siesta was followed by another interlude of chant, and then the major work period of the day began -- about five hours of uninterrupted physical labor. This could encompass a great variety of tasks, anything from baling hay and weeding vegetables to fixing the roof or going into town for supplies. Some of the older brothers worked at pottery and woodworking, but most of us did "chores." Since I was an experienced mechanic, I spent a good part of the time nursing the large number of machines that shared our reclusive existence. That and carpentry, at which I became fairly proficient.
During these silent work periods I became aware of a most extraordinary kind of cause and effect. Every time that I entertained a vindictive or angry thought, without exception, I would bang my head against something! On a few occasions it was as if an invisible hand grabbed me by the hair and pulled me off balance, so that my head struck an object as much as two feet away!
At 5:30 P.M. we showered, dressed, and gathered in the chapel for another lengthy session of chanting the songs of David. Then came dinner, dishwashing, and a half hour of "recreation" which consisted of sitting around talking and laughing in very boisterous fashion. After a few more psalms and a hymn to Mary, we were ready for bed.
And that's the way it went, with very little variation, every day for two years of my life. That was my gift to the Blessed Virgin for giving me a glimpse of her ecstatic majesty.

BIG DREAMS IN THE MONASTERY
The first dream that I can recall from my monastic period seemed to be a comment on religion. I include it here in full:
I am at home with my family. It is night. Suddenly the sky lights up. We run up to the roof to see a glowing cross stretching from horizon to horizon, and the words THE END OF THE WORLD written in blazing letters across the stars. The image of the crucified Christ appears on the cross, and the cross comes zooming down toward the earth. The stars begin to wink out, meteors flame across the heavens, and an amazing display of celestial phenomena sends the populations of earth into hysteria. My father goes back into the house to save his possessions. I recall the words of the gospel: "When that time comes the man on his housetop must not go down into his house to fetch anything." (Matt. 24:17)
Then mobs of people are roaming the streets, lost and afraid. "Where's Jesus?" they cry. "Has he come to take us with him? We saw him in the sky!" "He's in here!" others answer. "He's holding a meeting in town!" So my mother and brothers and I go to the meeting hall where Jesus and his apostles are speaking to the crowds. Jesus walks in and begins shaking hands. But something is amiss --when my turn comes to shake his hand I look directly into his eyes and realize at once that this is an imposter! I shout, "Hey, you're not Jesus!" Hissing and obscenities erupt from the mouths of Jesus and the apostles, their masks fall off, and they are revealed as Satan and his fallen angels! I wake up realizing the whole "end of the world" display was a satanic trick. Everyone was fooled because they knew only the religious cliches and literary images, but not the spirit.
("If anyone tells you at the time, 'Look, here is Christ,' or 'Look, there he is,' don't believe it! For false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to deceive, if possible, even God's chosen men!" -- Matthew 24:23)
For me, the message of the dream was this: The historical symbols and the written record of what was made manifest -- even the ceremonies and sacraments handed down by tradition -- all lend themselves to fraudulent use. None of the images are Christ, (who is only truly known in the Spirit). Nor can you be excused from real work in consciousness by performing the religious ceremonies and daily obeisances of a holy monk. That's a nice movie, and it can serve your transformation, but it's still a movie.
Looking back from today, I see that this dream which came at the beginning of my monastic career was already pointing to that time when I would again sever my relationship with formal religion. But on another level the dream was a scenario generated by a central dichotomy in my psyche -- the archetypal opposition between Christ and Satan, Light and Shadow. In 1966 the traditional Christian soul epic was still moving powerfully in me:
DREAM.  A stairway winds up to heaven. The stone steps are worn as if by a great many feet. On either side is an abyss from which smoke and sulphurous fumes issue. The cries of the damned can be heard below us, as we climb the long stair. "Many have slipped who tried to pass this way," says a voice. In the dream I know that I too might easily slip into the abyss and never reach the Eternal Kingdom. What a dream -- many have ascended to heaven, but many more have descended into the sulphurous darkness! Christianity divides the human race into the "saved" and the "damned," and this mythology is imprinted in us right down to the place where dreams emerge. Why this eternal opposition? Why this cosmic conflict between good and evil? Why this roaring black fire of hell that snuffs out the light of God's infinite love?
It was going to take me many years to realize that the answer to these questions lay in myself, for these dreams were a dramatic reflection of a war that existed entirely within my body and my psyche...but not in my innermost Spirit. However, to find (and become) that inmost Self, one had to pass directly through the mythology of the opposites:
DREAM.  I am standing in the choir singing with the other monks. There is a flash of light to my right. I turn and see a huge cross planted in the floor of the chapel. Jesus himself is nailed to this cross, bleeding and suffering incredibly, looking at me with eyes of greatest sorrow. My mind says, in the dream: do you see how it is, even now the Lord of Eternity suffers at the hands of man. The crucifixion is a reality which will continue to the end of time! The crucifixion is a symbol whose meaning is not exhausted by the shame that Christians feel for the murder of the Godman. Psychologically, crucifixion means coming to wholeness by taking the war of opposites (the four directions of the cross) upon oneself. As a symbol of conscious transformation through conscious death (sacrifice), crucifixion is surely a reality that must continue to the end of time.
But each of us resists our own crucifixion...and our real awakening beyond the opposites. A few nights later I had a dream that God was pushing into my heart, and I was resisting. I heard myself say, over and over, "I hate you! I hate you!"
By being made aware I still harbored deep reluctance, I began to surrender:
VISION.  A surge of light and music above me and to the left. I am dragged up out of my body into the divine effulgence so familiar from previous visions. Then the vision arcs in intensity until it bursts out of "vision" into unearthly reality. I am lying in a pool of light, and all around me invisible presences are laughing and talking to me -- "Elias! Hi, Elias! We're with you, Elias! See you soon, Elias!" Then another voice: "Have you ever seen an angel, Elias?!" An angel starts to appear, I feel greater energy and light surging into my body, too much for me to contain without dying, I snap completely awake, unable to breathe. About this time I read a book about Padre Pio, the Italian stigmatic. Padre Pio used to see the devil as a red-eyed dog who would snarl at him from outside his window! The good Padre was part of a venerable tradition of saints and martyrs who have lived the mythology of good vs. evil through concrete projections. The book provoked a dream:
DREAM.  My little female cat is being attacked by an enormous red-eyed wolf. As I approach, the cat leaps safely into my arms, and the wolf backs off snarling. I wake up with a feeling of power. The dark aspects of the psyche need to be handled carefully. As long as we identify with the unconscious mythology of light and darkness, there is real danger. It wasn't until years later, after exhaustively sifting the mindforms that surfaced in dreams, that I could truly know this vision of a red-eyed wolf as an "unconscious complex"...a psychic structure that with proper distillation would release its energy to consciousness.
As the Hindus say, "the snake becomes a rope...was it ever anything but a rope?" Over time powerful scenarios of light and darkness must inevitably transmute into direct cognition of a spiritual wholeness beyond the opposites.
"Was it ever anything but a rope?" Even then, while immersed in religious mythology, the great underlying Truth would, from time to time present itself -- (usually during the mid-day "siesta"):
VISION.  One afternoon I was taking a nap after dinner, dreams and jazz music were sluicing through my brain.  Suddenly a voice spoke very loudly next to my ear: "NOW THE SECRET OF LIFE WILL BE REVEALED." A hole opened up under me and I fell into it. It was a square dark hole, which got progressively lighter the deeper I fell. I fell quickly at first, then more slowly as the light thickened. Soon I was floating in the loving embrace of the Light, an intense rapture flooding my senses. The words "I need you!" echoed in me and around me.
There was progressive dissolution of form and quality as the light thickened. Images dissolved into light, dream dissolved into light, I dissolved into light, and this light was Consciousness itself. That is the secret of life.
We dwell in sketchy modulations of form and color. We live in the rind of being. And all of this is permeable to the Light, because it is solidified out of the Light, and all of this is fated to be dissolved in the Light. In the beginning and in the end we are nothing but Light, and that Light is Consciousness, the Light of Life Itself. That Light is being and life, and the fullness of Life Itself. That Light is our eternal samadhi (a Hindu word for divine absorption, or ecstatic communion with God).
All images and all dramas of the opposites, both in dreams and daily living, express a single unconditional "substance" which is consciousness itself. Thus Consciousness, as Light, transcends the mind of "light and darkness".
Such experiences would "dissolve" me, and for a few days I would walk around transported. The other brothers would notice and I would receive lots of smiles and nods.
Then my mind would resolidify, and new crystalline structures would form, new dreams of conflict would emerge:
DREAM.  New York is destroyed by atomic bombs. Standing on our hilltop we can see the mushroom cloud rising above the southern horizon. The light becomes very intense. The other monks and I hide behind pillars, and the pink light blasts by us, vaporizing everything it touches (except the pillars, fortunately).
VISION.  I am walking on a road that leads into the forest. Suddenly a circular chasm opens next to the road. Cautiously I approach the edge of the pit and peer over. I am gazing into a fathomless dark deep, and I am thinking of all my ecstatic falling dreams. I recall Rilke's words: "to love is not to rise but to fall!" At that moment I hear the clatter of hoofbeats coming along the road out of the forest. I raise my eyes and see a spectral being on a black horse galloping toward me. He is moving with the speed of the wind, and his aura is of stupendous and irresistible power. I know at once that nothing in the universe can impede or resist this onrushing power. As the horse thunders by, its flank brushes me lightly, and I fall head over heels into the abyss.  I wake up quaking with fright. What's so different about this descensus from all my other glorified tumbles? Why was there no hint of luminous supporting depths waiting to receive me? For a long time I thought this dream meant that I was going to undergo physical death at a young age. I took this horseman to be the Lord of Death himself, on his daily journey around the world.

MY SECOND GREAT TEACHER
A monastery is a utopian community that works because it is founded on the law of sacrifice, selflessness, and surrender to God. Furthermore, all hope is invested in an elsewhere, a dream of another world, a heaven beyond the wall of death where Christ is king and where beatitude and exaltation are the soul's eternal state.
Repelled by the Shadow of man -- his lust, greed, murderousness and lying --the monk joins a social agreement which makes a great nothingness of the world and focuses all attention on prayerful and meditative communion the perfection of Christ.
Unfortunately this act of abnegation doesn't really free the monk from sharing in the darkness of humanity. His blood and flesh are still woven into the psycho-physical being of the whole human race. He may dissociate his mind from the complexes and compulsions that rule the world, but all of these shadowy and regressive forces are still at play in him.
I know -- for two years I lived in the company of saints, and in those two years I saw a group of basically ordinary men behave much as ordinary men do everywhere. There was ego, there was jealousy, there was deception, at times there was even hatred. There was power-tripping, arrogance, and once in a great while there was violence. In short, all of the benign qualities which monks put on like a uniform were fully complemented in their behavior by devilish opposites.
The worst of it was that no one knew quite how to deal with this situation. One could suppress a moment of rage or repress a lustful thought, but sure as hell it would rear its head again later with renewed strength. One could confess one's sins to a father-priest and then, heart filled with forgiveness, take the body and blood of the Lord into one's entrails. These symbolic activities seemed to keep everything under control, but by no means did they resolve the war between Christ and the devil. If anything, they accentuated it.
The whole monastic enterprise, as I now see it, was based on a misconception, a faulty view of reality. For one thing, the Church and her ministers have never had a handle on consciousness itself as the primary reality. Churchmen have, over the centuries, taken the various dramatic manifestations of psychic energy as real in themselves -- and therefore opposable, destructible, and subject to legislation.
Christians have, for instance, never fully understood that Christ and the devil are two aspects of a unified field, "two sons of one Father," the right hand and left hand of God. Christian saints, therefore, have seldom acknowledged the fact that the devil is an unconscious aspect of themselves, a free body of psychic energy whose autonomy is granted and perpetuated by our false idea of what we are. Empirically, we remain victims of the mythology of opposites because our narrowly circumscribed ego puts 98% of reality into the "unconscious."
The situation in the Christian churches and monasteries is aggravated at present by an undercurrent of suspicion of all things mystical. It is more or less explicitly denied that the spirit of God can, in these days, fill man with revelation and Divine Light. The prophets and saints are legendary (therefore unreal). Our communication with the Spirit must be indirect, mediated by the body politic, the sacraments, and the priesthood.
When men who try to describe holy dreams and visions are dismissed as deluded, one can only suppose that the institutional church has a deep doubt about its own relationship to God, and a profound absence of the knowledge available for millennia in the East. In spite of all the fashionable talk about "Pentecostal Catholicism," the embarrassed laugh and the impolite dismissal were the only acknowledgements I ever received when I dared to tell my superiors of my visions.
Early on in my monastic career I ventured to tell a spiritual dream I had had the night before to the prior of the monastery (who was also my confessor). He laughed and said straight out, "What do you think, that you have a direct pipeline to God?" After that, I kept my experiences to myself.
Fortunately there was one other monk who shared my encounters with "private revelation." He was Hugh McKiernan, an older man, a former Trappist Abbot who had learned, even as a Trappist, to keep his mouth shut about his inner life.
I am not sure how we discovered our mutuality, but soon after he arrived as the monastery, Hugh and I opened our hearts to each other. He was a powerful influence on me, reinforcing my faith in spiritual intuition, and reinforcing my disrespect for ecclesiastical authority. After Jung, this man was my second true teacher. He taught me that mystical knowledge is free and sufficient unto itself. It has no need to prove itself to the ignorant. It has no need to seek rapprochement with its mockers or presumed "authorities".
My friendship with Hugh transformed the dullness of monastic life into an experience of a very high order. If circumstances had not conspired to draw both of us back into the world, we would probably still be there today, sharing our secret love and knowledge of God. I remember many occasions when we would walk together to lonely places in the forest, and sit on rocks or fallen logs and share our most recent visions.
At these times Hugh would be overcome with waves of Divine Love as he recounted his most precious secrets to me...and then we would sit in silence, enveloped by a peace that was like the descent of Heaven.
Hugh seemed to look forward to death...even long for it. He was fifty-seven when I first met him, in 1965. After we both left monastic life we stayed in touch for a number of years. I haven't seen him since 1976, although from time to time we still meet in dreams. Surely he rests with God today, for if he were still alive he would be over ninety-years-old.
[Hugh McKiernan did pass away, in the 1990s. There used to be a tribute site to him on the internet, but now the only references I find are to his correspondence with his fellow Trappist Thomas Merton, whom he knew as a friend.]

SAN FRANCISCO
In the summer of 1967 one of my uncles who lived in New York fell ill. My father was planning to visit him, and in an extraordinary gesture from my superiors, I was allowed to go along.
This uncle was a World War II veteran who had lived on a disability pension ever since the war. Life for him consisted of sitting in front of a television eating junk food and drinking endless bottles of Coca Cola. After twenty years of this he collapsed and began to die.
We stayed in New York for a week, speaking sadly with the other relatives. And I managed to do a turn around the Lower East Side, dropping in on my friends who were still madly tapping their typewriters and storming the walls of success.
I met my old girlfriend there too, the one who had lived with the guitar maker who had killed somebody in a bar fight. By chance she was in town for a few days, visiting from San Francisco, where she was now going to school. A meeting between us in Tompkins Square Park was a deciding factor in my decision to abandon the Rule of Saint Benedict.
I remember the incident clearly, we were sitting on a bench on the east side of the park, facing west. I kept looking in her eyes and wondering how they could be so lifeless, so dull and pinched. She told me she had been taking a lot of LSD, and it had left her feeling confused, although she had enjoyed the "trips." That seemed to explain the dark eyes. There was nothing at all of the communion we had shared two years before.
I felt terribly sorry for her, wondering if there was any way I could help her. She behaved as if I was a priest-confessor, and told me some of her experiences with men since last we'd met. They sounded mindless and degrading. I thought to myself, well, it's good enough that I left all this behind, the world is going straight to hell. LSD and sexual promiscuity are not the way to God.
We stood up and walked through the park. It was time for her to catch a bus to the airport and the flight back to San Francisco. As we were about to part, we turned and embraced and then kissed. I looked into her eyes one last time. At that moment the top of my head dissolved and I was the whole spiritual realm peering down through the body and eyes of Elias into the soul of this lost young woman. Every ounce of samadhi I'd ever felt was right there, I was it, I was boundless consciousness stretching out in all directions and focused through the body of a twenty-six year old man.
She must have felt it too, in her own way, for when I returned to the monastery, we began corresponding, and they were the kind of letters that draw two people into a love relationship. My mind had returned to "normal," but now the promise of the dream I'd had years before, in which our marriage had released an influx of divine power, dangled before me as a very real possibility. That among numerous other signs and portents (including strongly directive dreams) made me quickly opt for a return to the world.
One very interesting experience I recall: It was our custom to have one of the brothers read aloud to the others during meals. On this day it was my turn, and as I recall, I was reading from a book of stories and sayings of the "Desert Fathers", the early Christian hermits. As I read I raised my eyes, and off to the side I got a momentary glimpse of an old man standing watching me. He was dark skinned, long-haired, and wore the white garments of an Indian holy man. I looked back at the book and read the next sentence of the story: "You must leave this place, my son, for I have other work for you to do."
If I had any remaining doubts about whether to leave the monastery, in that moment my destiny was sealed.
So at the end of 1967, like a lonely migratory bird, I left my holy brothers in the wilds of Vermont and returned to my poet brothers in the jungles of New York City. There I found work in a restaurant and began to accumulate money for my journey to San Francisco. There I unpacked my typewriter and laid the foundations of a new three-foot pile of manuscripts.
During my two years of silence and reflection, the world had become a giddy place. LSD and marijuana were now the staple recreation of youth, and a wild new culture had burst into bloom. I let my hair grow, bought a 1958 Dodge, overhauled its transmission, and headed West.

?WHERE IS GOD?S CORRECTION IN THE CHURCH??

?? ?Written by: Evangelist Denise M. Richardson

And he gave some, apostles, and some prophets, and some, evangelists, and some, pastors and teachers. For perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the statue of the fullness of Christ. (Eph. 4:11-13)
It is the job of God?s chosen leaders to bring correction within the church through teaching the word of God. God has given all leaders as well as all followers of Christ instructions on how to live holy lives unto Him, but it is the job of the pastor and his appointed clergy, council to help bring the people into the truth and knowledge of God?s holiness. The word of the Lord tells us in (1Peter 1:16) Be ye holy for I am holy. Also Paul writes in Romans 12:1-2 saying to present your bodies a living sacrifice holy, acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds, that ye may prove, what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.
For everyone called of God to lead all people into the truth and knowledge of Christ are to be on one accord in teaching God?s word to the people bringing correction. 2 Timothy 4:2 tells us to preach the word: be instant in season, out of season; reprove, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. If we are teaching anything that is not edifying Christ something is wrong and the people are not growing in the Lord. It is our duty as church leaders to bring correction into God?s house, remembering God is holding us accountable for not following his order and instructions. Again my mind goes back to the verse in (James 1:22-25) But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
We have to choose whether we will follow God completely. Following God alone means that we have to leave the world system behind. This is a choice we have to make. It also means that we may have to leave behind those loved ones and friends who are not trying to live for Christ or those who ridicule you for serving a God you can?t see. It matters not what others may think or say about you because of your decision to walk with God. What matters is your obedience to the Lord and Savior. He shall give you your reward for allowing him into your life and being obedient to His word.
Many churches throughout Christian history have learned the hard way that Paul?s practical wisdom and godly direction for choosing leaders should not be ignored. This relatively new movement of churches would need to be careful in selecting leaders to be sure they were men whose practice was godly. The standard for church leaders is very high; 1Timothy 3:2-13 has revealed what God expects in the lives of those who would lead His people. The list of qualifications may be intimidating. If God expects leaders to lead in the areas discussed, He certainly also expects members of the congregation to follow that kind of exemplary leadership. What happened to the sacredness of the alter the pulpit? Now a day the pulpit is being used as a showcase for foolishness.
Pastor?s ?allowing anything and anyone into their pulpit and there is no anointing in what they are bringing to the people where is God?s correction in the messages being brought before the people of God? Women getting up before the people of God with too much skin revealed, tight clothing, looking like a night club entertainer and some looking like women of the night. Everyone is talking of riches and entrepreneurship, but what about teaching the principles of God first in order to get there? The move of God?s Holy Spirit cannot dwell on unholy ground. What happened to bringing in praise and worship before the word of God goes forth? Many music ministries within some churches are just making noise and not giving heavenly pleasure unto God?s ears. Where are the spiritual mother?s, ?the prayer warriors and other parishioner?s in the sanctuary ushering in the presents of the Lord via way of prayer and worship?
?Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil.? (Prov.3:7)

?Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy path.? (Prov. 3:5-5) It is very important as well as crucial that all leaders follow Gods order and instruction, and not go their own way within the church. So many have fallen away from God?s teachings and doctrine and have come up with their own way of teaching their flock, and God is not pleased. They are not teaching about holiness within the body of Christ. What it means to be holy as in the Word of God. Remembering that they are new creatures in Christ and that the old man MUST die and not to go on continuing in their old sins. Church leaders need not continue to accept the excuses of their parishioners.
It is our job as leaders to bring correction, rebuke and discipline within God?s house. ?Where in the word of God does God allow his follower?s ?to continue to walk in sin after they have confessed him into their lives and he keep allowing them to be lovers of their old man? Don?t get it twisted God will turn a deaf ear after a time of continued disobedience, but that is not something he wants to do.
He is a second and third chance kind of God. ?Why is it ok for some followers of Christ to come into the house of the Lord intoxicated, dressed like Jezebel, walking around with a proud homosexual spirit, smoking in and on church grounds, deacon?s dealing with pornography, and the pastors knowing it but nothing is being done, pastors dibble dabbing in politics, male/female members sleeping with the pastor, members going to casinos, playing the lottery, and other games of change that the bible speaks against etc?? God is NOT in this mess and the leaders of any church with such activities need to deal with this accordingly and speedily. Again where is God?s correction in the churches today? Aren?t we commissioned by God to do all things decently and in order?
Some say the church is liken to a hospital where the afflicted come to get healed and delivered, well they can be healed as well as delivered by the word of God and by the renewing of their minds and accepting Christ and totally surrendering their will to His. We must grow in our faith, but if we are not teaching faith in God to the people how can they grow? If we are not bringing correction to the people how will they know what they are doing is wrong and unacceptable in the eyes of God? If we as leaders are not living this lifestyle for the people to follow how will they know wrong from right?
The leaders of today need to stop playing church and get it right before God and lead the people of God into holiness in Christ the way God intend for them to do. God has a word for such leaders: (Jer.23:1-2) Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! Saith the Lord. Therefore thus saith the Lord God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the Lord. So as leaders called by God we MUST do as the Lord has said and feed his flock and equip them with the spiritual nourishment they need to be effective in their walk with Christ or God will surely hold us accountable for disobeying.
Now true enough it is up to the hearers of the word to apply what they hear to their lives and water the seeds sowed into their lives. God will only hold us accountable for the things we know and not for the things we don?t know, but once the word of the Lord has went forth and penetrated through the hearts and ears of the listeners it?s their job to make the conscience decision to apply it to their lives. God has given every one of us a free will to accept him or not, it?s up to the individual to receive Christ, when the opportunity is at hand, but whether people will seize the moment, there will come a day that every knee will bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord no doubt!
So to all church leaders, pastors, evangelist, elders, prophets, teachers, mothers, ministers, apostles, bishops, deacons, and so forth let us all evaluate and examine ourselves, ?Wherefore the rather, brethren give diligence to make your call and election sure: for if ?ye do these things, ye shall never fail?? ?(2Peter 1:10 )we have a work to do God is calling for all leaders to begin bringing correction in His temple, telling all that it is time to confess our sins, repent and turn towards God in holiness. Seeking Him for all that he has for them to do within the kingdom. Time is drawing nigh and Jesus is soon to come and there are still many who are lost within the church because there is no correction being brought before them. Let us get it right before the Lord and begin teaching ourselves as well as God?s people how to live holy before him. ?In Christ Jesus be blessed.