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August 15, 2020
The Sacramento Newsletter
The Christian Community

 

 Trinity

fith Sunday


                                                       
 “Jesus asked him, 'What do you want me
to do for you?' He said, 'Lord, let me 
receive my sight again.' And Jesus said to him,
'Receive your sight; your faith has healed you.'
                                                                                                                                 Luke 18: 40-42 
 
 

In this newsletter:
  1. News, notes, and needs. 
  2. Contributions from the Community: Cheryl Martine. 
  3. The Angel of the Congregation by Maarten Udo de Haes.
  4. Gospel Reading.
  5. Contemplation by Sanford Miller.

 
1. News, notes and needs
  • Parables of the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew’s Gospel II with Sanford Miller. Next sessions: 9/3; 9/10 at 10:30 A.M. (There is no session next week). We look at the second group of seven parables. This group of seven parables begins in the 18th Chapter with the “Parable of the Unforgiving Servant,” told shortly before Jesus enters Jerusalem for the final time, and ends with the “Parable of the Talents.”
  • The priests will continue to celebrate the Act of Consecration daily at 9 A.M. You might consider accompanying us during the 9:00 A.M. celebration of the sacrament from your home. We would be happy to bring communion to you in your homes. Please let us know.
  • Luis González will be absent for vacation from 8/17 to 8/26. Sanford Miller will be absent for a break from 
  • If you are enjoying this newsletter and would like to subscribe, send us an email requesting to be added. If you would like to receive earlier newsletters you only need to let us know.
  • Please, consider contributing to the Christian Community in this unprecedented time. The many ways of giving are described at the end of the newsletter. Remember, any amount, however small, will be greatly appreciated. 

****
   Open-air conversation originally scheduled for Saturday, August 22 has been POSTPONED due to poor air quality. Weather permitting, it will be rescheduled for Saturday, August 29 starting at 10:30 A.M.

    You are invited to an open-air conversation based on a selected excerpt from the work of James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time.  Written in 1963, the voice of this powerful African-American leader continues to speak to and challenge us today.
    This conversation will be held next Saturday, August 29 at 10:30.  We will meet at the Fair Oaks Library and find a shady place to sit.  BRING CHAIR.  It would be helpful to know if you plan to be there.  Please email: cmartine12@icloud.com.
 
   Please note: STILL MEETING, NOT POSTPONED:
Alice Stamm's sketching and eurythmy this Saturday, August 22.

If you would like to do something artistic as well, Alice Stamm will offer a sketching session this Saturday, August 22, at 9:00-10:00am and Eurythmy 10:00-10:20am; same place at the Fair Oaks Library, near diamond. If interested, be welcome and bring a board or similar to support paper, and a chair. Alice will provide pencils and paper. No previous experience necessary!!!!

Cheryl Martine and Luis González
 
                                    
 
2. Contributions from the Community
 
     ROSEMARY GLOVER – A glimpse into her story
 
   Rosemary began her life’s journey in a lovely, bucolic village in Irene (Peace), South Africa where she soaked in the beauty of the land, the sounds of the birds, the doves, walked on dirt roads and drank fresh milk from a local farm. Free to roam the village, her days were filled with play with her brother and her village friends. Today, one can see the colors and sensual richness of her beloved land in her gentle, evocative paintings.
   At the age of 4, her harmonious, stable family life was disrupted when she watched her father head off to war, not knowing she would not see him again for four years. She was nine when he returned, excited at his arrival but shy. The family then began a transition from a household well led by her mother and now reintegrating her father. “Most of my life growing up was centered on the Anglican Church next door. I have a clear memory of ringing the church bell with my grandmother daily at noon during the war. The bell was very large and heavy, so it took a lot of pulling for it to ring.” She remains close to her brother who married her best friend; speaking with them every Sunday.
   Her adolescent years found Rosemary in a private Anglican boarding school in Pretoria where she formed close bonds with classmates, played sports (especially tennis) and attended evening services in the chapel. She began living with the question: “What do I do after high school?” The question was resolved when a nun friend bequeathed her funds to attend a teacher training program. This turned out to be a best option as she discovered she could bring her love of arts and music (especially piano) into her work as a teacher. In a pivotal moment in her training, she attended a lecture by a guest speaker, Karl Koenig. Hearing Karl Koenig speak about child development was a turning point in her life.
   Leaving her boarding home, a young man walked up to her saying, “Hello, my name’s Bill. Have you ever heard of Waldorf education and Rudolf Steiner?” He was to be her first husband and companion on a journey through working in Camphill (where she was mentored by Renate Koenig), Cape Town Waldorf Schools where she was inspired by Zylemann and then became pregnant with David. He was the first of 3 children, each born in a different country – South Africa, England, and New Hampshire.
   Apartheid, explains Rosemary, needs a whole chapter to itself. In 1948 the Nationalist party won the election and apartheid became law. As a second generation South African, the country was also my home, but the changes were enormous. I had friends who were activists, one of whom was arrested and imprisoned for 7 years. We left the country in 1962 when things became worse and began a new life in England.
   In England, Bill taught at a technical school and Rosemary struggled with the challenge of getting diapers to dry. She found the village people reserved and was lonely. Two years later, Catherine was born and Bill was having strong asthma attacks. They left for Bermuda seeking sun and to find a Waldorf school and community for their family. In Bermuda they both taught in public schools.
   Discontent again settling in, they sought for sun in Sacramento and joined a small faculty at the Sacramento Waldorf School forming close working relationships. Rosemary’s love for community characterized much of her life.
   Major life shifts happened. Restlessness again set in for Bill, Rosemary met Richard Atkinson, there was a return to South Africa and then a move to New Hampshire where she and Richard joined families and taught at Pine Hill. They had property, sheep, chickens but “it was not easy.” Rosemary was depressed in New Hampshire, finding a land forested with trees and no horizon oppressive. They returned to Sacramento where Rosemary worked with handicapped children and taught Kindergarten. Brian was born in 1974.
   Another life shift. Rosemary went to England with a scholarship for a year to study at the Center for Social Development. Then she was offered a position at the Rudolf Steiner College as a receptionist for the administration which, she was so pleased to discover, again used all of her background. It was rigorous but wonderful. “I felt most myself.” For 23 years she held this position. Her colleagues and family were to find that soft spoken, gentle Rosemary with the lilting accent had steel on the inside. “She seems delicate, but she has tenacity and strength.”
   In 2000, Rosemary began to teach biography at RSC. She cherished the close connections she formed with the students. Her life was further enriched when Jim Anderson, who was playing a role in a South African play by Athol Fugard, asked her to help with his pronunciation. After that, James Wheatley, the director at Celebration Arts, invited her to continue working with his actors. She did so for 10 years and also became involved in making scenery.
   Rosemary’s warm-hearted, community minded qualities were further engaged in her work in the Social Science section. She values close friendships, particularly her special friendship with Johanna Frouws and Alice, with whom she was always supportive. It is said of her that “she is loyal; when she takes something on she gives her heart to it.”
   An essential part of Rosemary’s life has been the Christian Community. She experienced the Children's Service at Camphill and then in 1967 the Act of Consecration of Man at the Frouws' home. She was one of the two musicians along with Patrick Kennedy’s mother, Anne. When the church was established on Eisenhower Drive she continued to attend. Her children were confirmed there. She 1986 she became a server. Rosemary “loved the peaceful mood in her Episcopal church, the hymns and the words of the liturgy, and really missed it after becoming involved in anthroposophy. When I went to the Christian Community for the first time in 1968 and heard the liturgy, I felt I had come home.”
   Rosemary retired in 2006 at 70 years of age. In 2015 her son David became ill. She spent two years travelling back and forth to accompany him on his final journey. “In spite, or because of the ups and downs of our lives, my children have become strong and trustworthy people, brought even closer through the death of David in 2017, who remains a shining light to us.” She continues to participate in the CC, spends time with friends old and new and creates delightful paintings around Biblical themes that so move her.
   Rosemary’s earlier delight at discovering teaching as a place to engage all her interests and abilities thus reached a higher, fulfilling octave in her life in Sacramento. Fittingly she says, “South Africa is my home. Sacramento is my school.” She is a special part of our community.
 
Cheryl Martine
                                                                                                                                   
 
3. The Angel of the Congregation
 
   The first thing described in the Acts of the Apostles is the Ascension of Christ. “… He was lifted up before their eyes, a cloud received Him and they saw Him no longer.” Although Christ thus left a specific place on earth, this Ascension need not mean that He left the earth as a whole. In fact, this would contradict His own words, the last He spoke to his disciples: “And see, I am in your midst all the days until the completion of earthly time.” (Mt 28:20)
   Rather, He was able to connect with the earth as a whole because He left a specific place. In light of this picture we could say that ever since the event of the Ascension the spirit of Christ envelops the earth just as great, mighty clouds move around the earth and envelop it. 
    From this presence in the periphery, from this ubiquity, His spirit can enter everywhere a door is opened for Him. In a certain sense His presence can then condense and become perceptible, because it is concentrated in particular places. This then represents the opposite movement of the Ascension as had indeed been predicted: “This Jesus, who has been taken up before you into heaven, will come again, revealed in the same kind of way as you have now seen Him pass into the heavenly sphere.” (Acts 1:11) This condensing happens in innumerable places on earth, in countless churches, in many groups, and also in individual human beings, concentrated everywhere to a greater or lesser degree.

 
                                                                               Paul Klee 
 
  This means that the concept of the Christian Church encompasses much more than is usually presumed. The being, the spirit of the Church is universal….
    In the renewed Creed as it lives in the members of The Christian Community, Movement for Religious Renewal, the relative sentence is: “Communities whose members feel the Christ within themselves may feel united in a church to which all belong who are aware of the health-bringing power of the Christ.”
   Therefore it is my conviction that Christ is the spirit of the Church. His omnipresence differentiates, one could say, when it focuses and connects with one particular church, one particular congregation. This concentration of His revelation is only possible because spiritual beings in heaven pass the revelation on, as it were, and condense it and translate and interpret it. Those beings are called angels, a word derived from the Greek angelos that means messenger. 
   This “way” traveled by the revelation from the periphery to a concentrated focus on a place on earth can be recognized in the description at the beginning of the Book of Revelation (1:1):
This is the revelation of the Being of Jesus Christ which God has given Him to show those who would serve Him what is to come in the future and is approaching speedily. He formed this revelation in picture language and sent it to His servant John through His angel.
   This “condensation” of God’s spirit through Christ, and then through the angel to John, is in a certain sense continued with the addition in verse 3: ”Blessed is he who knows how to read the prophetic words, and blessed are those who know how to hear them…”
  This means that every church has its own spirit, every congregation its own angel. This is less abstract than it seems at first. In the Catholic Church “reigns a different spirit” than in the Anglican Church. The spirit of the Presbyterian Church is not the same as the spirit of the Baptist Church. And the latter differs again from that of The Christian Community. 
    … The spirit of each Christian Church is then condensed again by the angel of the congregation. 


 
                                                            Alfredo Volpi


     An eloquent, but very prosaic and oversimplified picture of this is a funnel. A funnel serves to catch in proper measure a substance that is present in a large quantity and to direct it into a suitably prepared vessel. The vessel may then represent the body of a congregation,…
    In this letter to the Ephesians, Paul expresses this theology of the Church as follows: ”He (God) has placed everything under His (Christ’s) feet and has made Him the head of all things in the great community which is his body, the divine fullness of Him who fulfills all in all.” (Eph 1:22) Paul then describes how God’s manifold wisdom can be known in the congregation by the intermediation, as it were, of the heavenly hierarchies, several of which he mentions. 
   In this way the spirit of Christ condenses itself through the heavenly spheres, descending through the heavenly hierarchies to the earth, to take on a particular form of revelation through the spirit of a particular time, through the spirit of a particular Church, through the angel of a particular congregation.
   … This spirit can only work on earth if there is body that can receive this spirit. The body then serves as the carrier of the spirit but is at the same time its instrument. Only when the physical nature of a congregation has been permeated by the spirit of Christ can the congregation gradually become a part of His body. This is the eventual destiny of the whole earth. The body is therefore of essential importance to make the working of the spirit on earth possible. 
Maarten Udo de Haes
        
 
               
   Poems about Angels 
                

When They Sleep
 
All people are children when they sleep.
there’s no war in them then.
They open their hands and breathe
in that quiet rhythm heaven has given them.

They pucker their lips like small children
and open their hands halfway,
soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.
The stars stand guard
and a haze veils the sky,
a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.

If only we could speak to one another then
when our hearts are half-open flowers.
Words like golden bees
would drift in.
—God, teach me the language of sleep.
 
                                          Rolf Jacobsen




                                                         Matthew Wong



Annunciation

Even if I don’t see it again—nor ever feel it
I know it is—and that if once it hailed me
it ever does—

And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as towards a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,

as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn’t—I was blinded like that—and swam
in what shone at me

only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.

                                       Mary Howe
 
 
4. Gospel Reading
 
    LUKE 18: 35-43
   As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging; and hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” And he cried, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent; but he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped, and commanded him to be brought to him; and when he came near, he asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me receive my sight.” And Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; through your awakened heart and your trust, the power of healing has been awakened in you.” And immediately he received his sight and followed him, glorifying God; and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.
   


5. Contemplation

   There is a longstanding philosophical conundrum: What is a river? Is it the flowing water, or is it the riverbed that channels the water? And the related question: does the water flow there where the riverbed is or is the riverbed there, because that’s where the water flows?  
   This is not unrelated to the social-psychological phenomenon of how “points of view,”opinions, perceptions and hypotheses through persistent repetition (flow), over time, are raised to the level of fact (riverbed), whether true or not. 
   Since the 15th Century, Natural Science has deeply ingrained itself in Western culture and is the unquestioned dominant worldview. The penetration and understanding of our physical world through the natural scientific method and the many resultant inventions and gifts, we owe to this worldview. However, at the same time, we recognize that the modern industrial world that it has given rise to is contributing to the degradation of the soil and air of our planet through different types of pollution, including the overuse of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, etc.
   This is not the fault of Natural Science, which is only a method of discovery. The fault lies with us and our intentions and attitudes about how we live on this earth. Natural science isn’t some crazy opinion or a false hypothesis. It is a method which rightly leads to a true apprehension of the sense perceptible world and has proven its value over time. But because Natural Science is the major paradigm which lies at the base of our educational institutions, it may also be the source of such earth degrading pernicious attitudes. 
   Perhaps, the longstanding opinion that only Natural Science is true, a science in which there is no room for the divine, for God, has allowed the widespread assumption that our world can be dealt with solely for human benefit, to serve human desires for consumption, without regard for the living, spiritual being of the earth. 
   Thus we can ask, is the scientific method since the 15th century like the persistent flowing of a point of view that has created the riverbed of Materialism, and established itself as the only reasonable, and true paradigm? Again, not a crazy opinion, but not the only true point of view, either.
   While we may not be struggling with the existential conflict between science and the existence of God, we can always seek to understand the genesis of our own points of view, our own opinions and assumptions, our riverbeds. For every “point of view,” every vantage point, means occupying a certain idea-space and not another. Every “point of view” is by definition a limitation, a kind of blindness. It is a limitation and blindness that can be born of habit: the unquestioned dominant worldview of the status quo, or the continual and persistent flow of certain opinions. We can all say with the blind beggar at Jericho in Luke 18, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  And were our hearts open, He could say to us, “Receive your sight.” What then would we see, how would our seeing be different if Christ opened our eyes?
Sanford Miller   
 
         *********************************
 
 
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