Achieving Forgiveness

A version of this post first appeared in Light Reading, our weekly email newsletter. If you would like to receive messages like this every Sunday, please send an email to info@ChristInst.org.

One reason we watch professional athletes is because they give us an opportunity to observe peak human physical form. Whether they're playing baseball, basketball or competing in the Olympics, those performers are among the fastest, strongest, most precise people alive. Their competition is a delight to watch in part for what it implies about human potential and achievement. We might never encounter such struggle in our daily lives, which makes it all the more thrilling in the watching.

And yet, there are some things that seem much more mundane than those feats of physical prowess, but they can feel no less challenging in the doing. Forgiveness is something that can take tremendous effort. We know it's better to forgive than hold onto something negative, but it can be hard for many of us to actually do. Sometimes we just don't want to forgive.

There are different reason why forgiveness can be difficult. We might feel we're showing weakness if we forgive someone who did us wrong. We might feel they that whatever wrong they did us was too much, and they aren't worth our compassion. And when we hold grudges, we can get invested. We commit to our perceived correctness and the hurt we've felt, to the anger, resentment and bitterness. It's hard to let go of that kind of investment, especially if it lingers for a long time. When we're holding tightly to something so emotionally charged, it can become a part of who we are.

But there is another thing that happens when we hold onto grudges: They hold us back. When we fail to forgive, we fail to move on. We stew in the past where we were hurt or wronged, sticking our heels into the temporal dirt. The only problem is that reality doesn't stop moving. Creation moves; that is its nature. Planets spin. Plants stretch toward the sun. We can't stop that no matter how hard we entrench ourselves. So to forgive is not just to move on--it's to join the rest of creation.

To fail to forgive is to stagnate while the rest of reality evolves, matures and becomes. Forgiveness propels us forward in our lives. We can move on, and in doing so, we too can grow, progress and become what we were meant to be. In that way, forgiveness is directly related to assuming our destined selves. It is a consciousness expanding practice that causes us to leave our limited perspective—where our perception stops at our own pain—and commune with the rest of humanity and the Divine.

When we forgive another person, we recognize that that's what we'd want if we were in their place. When we do wrong, it's a pretty safe bet that we want forgiveness for it. We want understanding. We want compassion. Perhaps we want to make amends, but that's part of the process of being worthy of forgiveness. So when we forgive someone else, we are acknowledging our common humanity, our potential for both mistakes and for compassion.

Forgiveness also puts us in touch with divine understanding. Throughout the Pauline letters to the Colossians and the Ephesians, the point is repeatedly made that forgiveness is a spiritual virtue because it's what God does. So when we forgive, we are behaving like God. Accordingly, to forgive is to assume Christ identity and to align oneself with the natural motion of the universe, with the transcendent mind of God.

To forgive is not to excuse bad behavior, nor is it to forget something that happened. Rather, forgiving is the process of acknowledging our own flaws, permitting our own compassion, and moving forward with a renewed sense of strength, humility and maturity. No matter how difficult achieving forgiveness can feel, it is ultimately a positive process, one that helps us shed the negative, earthly weight that pins us down to our lower natures. Instead, it is a spiritually quickening practice that allows us to ascend to our higher, truer Christ natures, which is wisdom that has reappeared throughout the ages. The 18th century English poet Alexander Pope probably put it best: To err is human; to forgive, divine.

Let us pray:

Dear God,
“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
May we feel the weight of those words.
May we forgive because we are generous;
May we forgive because we are compassionate;
May we forgive because we are as one.
May we forgive and be like Christ,
Quickened in spirit and ascending in form,
Channels for your Mind and Presence and Peace.
Amen.

“Man was born rich in goodness, blessed with love, empowered with kindness and compassion. Through these qualities he appreciates life and all that is embodied within its scope. This appreciation is the source of inner sight, mental discernment, great inspiration, and realization of Divine Presence and the eternal value of humanity.” - Hanna Jacob Doumette, “Psalms For Today”

Things Unseen

A version of this post first appeared in Light Reading, our weekly email newsletter. If you would like to receive messages like this every Sunday, please send an email to info@ChristInst.org.

Familiarizing oneself with logical fallacies is a good way to construct and understand better arguments - not because it explains what to do, but because it illustrates what not to do. Logical fallacies are positions that have hasty or lazy logic, and they fall apart on closer examination. For example, “appeal to probability” is an argument that says something might happen, so we should behave like it will happen; “appeal to authority” says that because an authority says something, we can take it for granted that it's true. Those fallacies rest on speculation and assumption rather than examining conclusions ourselves. The most famous fallacy might be slippery slope, which posits that if X happens then Y will happen, and if Y happens then Z will happen, and since that will be bad we have to stop X. It seems logical because it flows, but it's based on compounding speculations and the conclusion that X and Z are basically the same thing.

By knowing logical fallacies, we not only better recognize when we're hearing bad arguments, we are also more clearly able to examine our own beliefs. Understanding the illogical and irrational can help us have a closer understanding of what is, and then help us construct a stronger defense of what we know to be true.

The problem is we don't always live in a logical and rational world. Sometimes things just happen that don't make sense: emergencies, disasters, unforeseen and unfair circumstances. Sometimes we do things that don't even make sense to ourselves, that leave us later wondering why we did anything at all. In those instances, the rational flow of A to B to C is not necessarily enough to get us through. We need something that is neither rational nor irrational, but exists wholly outside and above the realm of the rational. That is where the spiritual virtue of hope comes in.

Hope is defined as a desire, expectation or anticipation of something to be; it has also, notably, meant to trust. But regardless of its intensity - from merely wanting something to be true, to knowing it will be true - hope is also about something that is not obvious or immediate. That's why Paul, in his letter to the early church in Rome, described hope as necessarily about things unseen.

Hope in something you can see isn't really hope because it doesn't take the transcendent into account. In fact, by practicing hope, we are articulating with both the temporal and transcendent, the material and cosmic, the immediate and eternal. We articulate with the immediate when we hope for the best possible outcome in the short term - hoping for something to happen or improve today, tomorrow or by next week. It's still the unseen, but it's unseen that is nearly tangible. We articulate with the eternal when we hope for the future, when we hope that everything will work out in the end. That is when we enter the realm of destiny and divine planning.

We know the plan is true because we know that, regardless of whether an outcome now is the one we want, everything will be all right in the end. In the context of deep time, all things return and return to God. The sun will rise again. The convoluted will find equilibrium. Broken hearts become proving grounds for understanding, wisdom and an appreciation for what has been. Things don't have to make sense now for us to know that those things are ultimately true; our knowledge of that is what drives us forward, after our tears have dried, to step bravely into the new day.

Hope is an active thing. In his book “Mere Christianity,” author C. S. Lewis illustrated this by noting that some of the most significant things that happened in history - the abolition of the slave trade, the building projects of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the establishment of Christianity in the shadow of the Roman Empire - came about because the people who did them were occupied with heaven rather than earth. Their hope, which was pointed toward eternity, was not passive escapism, but rather something that helped them to act and endure. To hope in the immediate is what gives us the courage to continue another day, no matter how things look now. To hope in the eternal is what gives us the strength to drive toward our destinies: becoming, completion and perfection.

Let us pray:

Dear God, may we dwell forever in hope.
Hope in the plan that was sketched out before time;
Hope in our potential to learn and love and heal;
Hope in a peace, without and within, that passes understanding.
May our hope in things unseen hurry us toward destiny,
Toward the perfection found in Your ultimate Presence.
Amen.

“You are destined to victory. God's will was done in your life before you came to the world. Through His will you entered the world rich in intelligence and possibilities and charted to happiness, progress and peace. Through His will you live creatively. You find the light of truth and receive the power to live as you desire in the heart of your higher being.” - Hanna Jacob Doumette, “Psalms For Today”

Finding the Rhythm of Summer

A version of this post first appeared in Vol. 206 of Light Reading, our weekly email newsletter. If you would like to receive messages like this every Sunday, please send an email to info@christinst.org.

Today is Father's Day, and with its emphasis on things like barbecue, baseball and fishing, it can feel like the unofficial start of summer. Still, the beginning of summer probably doesn't mean as much to us now as it did when we were schoolkids; if you had that experience and expectation, summer was a special time, separate from the rest of the year. Perhaps you even looked forward to it all year, and it probably felt like it took forever to reach.

When did we stop thinking of summer as distinct? When did the seasons blend into “the year,” an amorphous blob of time punctuated by holidays? When did we start treating days like a straight line, barreling toward some eventual end? We know that is not true intellectually. We know it's not true instinctively. One only need pick up a calendar to be reminded of it. The months tumble into each other, of course, but altogether they form a pattern that we recognize in an instant: damp and growing, to hot and active, to dry and cooling, to cold and sleeping, before waking up again.

Time is neither a blob nor an unbroken line, but a rhythmic process of rising and falling and rising. The ancients knew that intimately, and they expressed it in their mythologies, the frameworks they used to comprehend and commune with the cosmos. Interestingly, they often tied the seasons to cardinal directions, spatial forces tied to temporal ones, holding the world in place across time and space, and mapping out the complex of its pattern.

For example, in ancient Greece and Rome, the personification of summer, Theros, was depicted as the wind, Notos, one of the four direction wind gods. In Chinese tradition—picked up in Daoist thought and translated to Japan—directions and seasons, among other things, were governed by mythical beasts that were arranged along cardinal points. Pueblo folklore perceived the changing of the seasons through an agreement between Miochin, the spirit of summer who brought corn from the south, and his nemesis Shakok, the spirit of winter who brought snow from the north. All these elements existed in tandem with each other, as steady as the seasons came and went, as surely as the arrows on the compass formed opposing points on a balanced beam.

In the Hebrew Bible, the language is more expansive. The book of Ecclesiastes ties the passing of seasons not just to planting and harvesting, or even to birth and death, but also to simple tasks like sewing and huge jobs like construction, moments of joy and bouts of sadness, even how to conduct oneself—when to speak up and when to stay silent.

We can ignore it or complain about it, but we can't stop summer or winter from coming, any more than we can stop them from returning again next year. In the same way, we all feel a little happiness sometimes, we all feel a little sting, and we will again and again as part of the human experience. Seasons and sentiments, things individual and cosmic, all travel forward in sequence, like the crests and troughs of a wave. And just like a wave, the more we fight against that pattern, the greater resistance and so more turbulence we feel. Those who combat nature and bully their way through life end up destroying their environments and shattering themselves. On the other hand, those who align themselves harmoniously with the patterns of life find within those moments of heights and depths inner peace.

Those of us with spiritual perspective recognize not just the rhythm of life but also the conductor behind it. The presence of God is in the pattern, driving it toward its final goal. What is that goal? It is to achieve the good—harmony, unity, peace, completion. It is the goodness that was in the beginning and is now and will be again; the goodness that Paul said we know exists for those who love God, even in the trials of life. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Paul's proclamation to the Roman church is that he states all thing work together for good for those called according to God's purpose, which means those God foreknew, those destined to be in the image of Christ. But if it refers to everyone God foreknew, who is not included in that number? Who lacks purpose in God's pattern? We are all invited to live in the image of Christ—to take on Christ mind, Christ behavior, Christ identity. We are all invited to experience the good that God, over seasons and years and lifetimes, ultimately brings.

Life is not always great, but it's not always an amorphous slog either. It's not any one thing but instead a complex pattern, like an engaging melody, which we are all invited to hear and learn and play. We can feel the presence and purpose of God within its pulse; we are free to realize the truth of ourselves within its rising and falling, its descent and ascent, a pattern from which our identity and destiny emerge, become clear to us, are realized to be good, and bring us back to the Godhead.

Let us pray:

Dear God,
Thank You that life goes on,
And that there is purpose in its step.
Thank You for the turning of the Earth,
The changing of the seasons,
The passing of time, both terrible and beautiful.
Thank You for Your comforting presence,
Written into its pattern,
There tomorrow and the next day and the next,
Waiting for us, whenever we are able to perceive it so.
Amen.

“Life follows the path of evolution and involution. It comes from the Godhead and returns to the Godhead. It is the spontaneous and inevitable universal exhaling and inhaling of the Spirit of Life.”
- Hanna Jacob Doumette, “The Sun of Higher Understanding”

Christmas Eve 2023

Thank you to everyone who donated to either our annual toy drive for children in need or our first coat drive for people in need this holiday season. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Below are the special reading and prayer given at our 2023 Christmas Eve service:

In The Light

You are in the light as He is in the light, for through the Christ Self that lives in you, you radiate the light of truth, love, and immortality. The spirit of divine sonship has blessed you before the beginning of the world.

You are in the light as He is in the light, for Divine Presence is everywhere and His holy effulgence floods your life, your world and your being.

You are in the light as He is in the light, for the truth and love of God have set you free. You are made the ever-radiant sun of righteousness.

You are in the light, and he who is in the light knows no darkness and does not subject himself to sin. God is your light, Christ is your love, and the Spirit of Truth is your power. Through this triple bliss your light shines forever.

You are in the light, and he who is in the light is righteous, free, pure, illumined, and mighty. These are the characteristics of your being and the celestial gems that mark your personality. You are a living fount of eternal radiance, a soul of perfect manifestation.

From you comes the light of life. You radiate the light on your path and enlighten the world. You shed the light of life through your spirituality, thoughts, words and deeds. You are the light that illumines everyone who comes to the world. The Christ Light is the effulgence of your being.

- Hanna Jacob Doumette, “Psalms For Today”

A Christmas Eve Prayer

God of stars and starlight,
Thank You for illuminating this dark night.
Thank You for Your presence in this room amongst those that are gathered here.
May we each be blessed with light,
And all the gifts it brings:
Enlightenment and awareness;
Generosity and joy;
Healing and wellness;
Creativity and wisdom;
Peace and purpose.
May that same blessing touch all those we hold in our hearts and minds;
Spreading from this room until it touches every soul on Earth this night.
Amen.

Good Friday 2023

The following is a transcription of the message from our April 8, 2023, Good Friday service; it has been edited and updated for clarity:

Nowhere on the Christian calendar does there seem to be a more cruel paradox than Good Friday. The name itself sounds like a paradox. How can something so grievous, how can a rushed judgment and an unfair execution, be called “good”? That is a common question to ask, but I want to consider a different apparent paradox today.

Good Friday clearly has Jesus at its center. It is his trial, crucifixion and burial. It is his passion. It is his suffering. But the day is also about us as the benefactors of that suffering and passion. Jesus's experience is our redemption, and we recognize that. We recount the story every year, and we try to make sense of it. For us, the crucifixion is historical, allegorical and instructional. It is something that really happened to Jesus of Nazareth, itinerant preacher and son of a carpenter, roughly 2,000 years ago. It's also something with a spiritual dimension, something that reminds us of the salvific relationship we hold with the Divine. And it's also something that models behavior for us: compassionate, aware and faithful.

And yet, even while Good Friday resonates with each of us today, we cannot forget that it is about Jesus. It is a time to expand beyond our own presence and personality, a time to consider someone and something beyond ourselves, something expansive and pervasive, which can and should still impact us thousands of years later. Good Friday is bigger than any of us, and the fact that we observe it each year should remind of us that.

So Good Friday is primarily about Jesus and it's primarily about us. How do we reconcile that? The way that we are meant to do that is to recognize ourselves in the person of Jesus and realize our identity as that of the Christ. In that identification, passion finds purpose and suffering finds comfort. Hanna Jacob Doumette, the founder of The Christian Institute, recognized the spiritual significance of that identification. In the booklet The Mystery of Golgotha, Mr. Doumette wrote:

In the language of the mysteries and in terms of Divine Science, to be crucified is to give your life for and to others, to will that life into their soul, consciousness, spiritual environment and being, and to live in them and be one with them in the Name and Spirit of God. It is not to live as a personal self, but as the light, mind and love of God, as His only begotten Son. This is the description of the cosmic duty and nature of the Son of God. To be crucified is to cross the border of division in the name, power and consciousness of the Absolute Spirit and to transfer the life and love of God through spiritual projection. There will remain no division between you and your fellowmen or between you and creation. There will be no I-ness or limitation, but God.

That echoes Paul, who, in his letter to the church at Galatia, wrote: “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

We know that when one of us suffers, all of us grieve; in the same way, when one of us is enlightened, expanded or transformed, we can all share in that transformation. The mystery of the crucifixion is that experience spread cosmically large and with all the weight of human history. When Christ is crucified, all those who follow him are crucified. When the old dies, the new is born. When the boundary between the physical and spiritual is torn away, reality is quickened and truth is revealed. And when Christ is made perfect, all of us are made perfect in a reflection of that attainment. That is the paradox of Good Friday, which is no paradox at all, merely the flow of things. And that is why it is good indeed.

Let us pray:

Wise God,
Thank You for this day
Even as we grapple with its dark gravity.
Expansive God,
Thank You for giving us the ability to see the difference between
Desire and love; animal aggression and human will.
Comforting God,
May we be consoled through all days
Into Easter and into Truth.
Illuminating God,
May we pierce the present darkness
And ultimately be bathed in spiritual light.
Amen.

The Better Angels of Our Nature

A version of this post first appeared in Vol. 145 of Light Reading, our weekly email newsletter. If you would like to receive messages like this every Sunday, please send an email to info@christinst.org.

Last Monday was the 214th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, a president who has long interested me. I was always fascinated by his era, the 19th century, particularly as it relates to frontier, innovations in technology and human thought, and conflicts like the American Civil War. As I've matured, I've come to recognize Lincoln as more than a statesman. He was a person of tremendous feeling and hidden strength, both of which were necessary during his turbulent presidency, as was his remarkable talent as a wordsmith. In fact, Lincoln was likely the most skilled writer who ever inhabited the White House.

That is far from an original concept. Lincoln's mastery of words was praised in his time, and his heartfelt letters revealed him to be a leader with a soul, which manifest as humility, kindly wisdom, and a great and terrible vision beyond himself. Further, Lincoln's skills as an orator were legendary then and now, and I imagine it's hard to find any student of speech writing in English who cannot recognize the opening to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

However, out of Lincoln's writing, my favorite piece is the conclusion to his first inaugural address, which reads:

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

With the drums of war already pounding on the continent, Lincoln's first official speech as Commander in Chief was as much a declaration of intent and a reminder of national identity, as it was a plea for peace and unity from an unquiet country. Just as the Gettysburg Address gave us “four score and seven years ago,” the first inaugural gave us “the better angels of our nature,” and that is the phrase I wish to examine today.

When Lincoln made that statement, he was not appealing to the country's history, to patriotic duty or to political logic. He had made those arguments before. This time, he was appealing to the higher identity of every member of his audience, to their better natures—to their ideal selves, the selves who recognized wisdom, compassion and peace, the selves who expressed those values, the selves who were sometimes forgotten or ignored in hotheaded moments. Lincoln clearly believed that such selves existed. He would not have bothered engaging those selves, nor would he have closed to the speech, if he thought otherwise.

Something you might have seen making the pop psychological rounds in the last few years is the phrase “living one's best life.” That can be a harmless, even healthy, concept, when it encourages fitness, wellness and self-actualization; but it can also lead to self-indulgence when used as an excuse for pursuing desire rather true betterment.

Lincoln's concept of a better nature is more spiritually mature than a best life because it is expansion, cohesive and holistic, concerned with others as well as the self, concerned with eternity as well as the present. It is not strictly of the material world, which is why Lincoln likened it to angels, placing it above pure physicality. Our better natures are lighter and loftier than dense material, but that does not mean they are out of reach.

In his letter to the churches of Galatia, Paul noted that through Christ identity we became closer to God. That was why Christ identity superseded the petty differences we saw on earth—Jew and Greek; slave and free; male and female. All were truly one in Christ. God is one. All are one. Lincoln recognized a similar unity through his earlier allusion to mystic chords of memory stretching across time and space, connecting us all to truth, to potential, to something greater than ourselves.

We might not have a responsibility to hold a country together the way that Lincoln had, but we have a similar responsibility to own identities and destinies. Because of its connection to Divinity, it is a sacred duty, and to shirk it is only to hurt ourselves. It is a responsibility to our complete identities, to our future, to our purpose. It is expressed through self-awareness, unfoldment, and a commitment to the Christ values of humility, wisdom, compassion, creativity, peace, infinity and unity. With a vision of its power and purpose, it is ours to attain.

Let us pray:

Dear God,
Thank You for our better selves.
Thank You for those who we see
Pointing the way forward
When we look back.
Thank You for our higher selves,
Transcendent but never beyond reach.
Thank You for the mystic chords that connect us:
One to all;
All to You.
Amen.

“Christ is the Spirit of God animating creation and enriching the soul of the world. We live in Him and He lives in us as our divine and all-pervading self. Through Him God vested in us the perfection and might of being. The kingdom of being is the throne of virtues, and human virtues are the spiritual powers that emanate from the impulse of Christ. God created our eternal virtues, and the Christ Spirit enables and empowers us to live them spontaneously as the glory and radiance of being human.” - Hanna Jacob Doumette, “Psalms For Today”