Musings on a new year - February 6th 2011

He asked for strength that he might do greater things, but was given infirmity that he might do better things.

He asked for riches that he might be happy, but was given poverty that he might be wise.

He asked for power that he might have praise of men, but was given weakness that he might feel the need of God.

He asked for many things that he might enjoy life, but was given life that he might enjoy many things.

He had received nothing that he had asked for, but gained far more than he hoped for.

Listen to the exhortation of the Dawn! Look to this day, for it is life - the very life of life!

In it’s brief course lie all the verities and all the realities of your existence - the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendour of beauty:

                And tomorrow is only a vision.

But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

                Look well, therefore, to this day!

This great Sanskrit poem says all that needs to be said about life - whether we spend our days regretting what is past or dreaming about what may be coming. Jesus said, ‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.’

A new year, however, is the time for a little retrospection. If we can look back on the last year and see where we might have missed an opportunity to do some good for our fellow beings, we can at least resolve to do more in the future. I do not mean that we all should immediately sell our goods, give the money to the poor, and live in a cave. We did not return to this Earth plane to all be like Mother Teresa.

History is full of men and women who lived selfless lives - who dedicated themselves to helping others - and today there are millions of people in the world who are actively working for others; whether they work for the Salvation Army, Animal Welfare League, Red Cross, Red Crescent, R.S.P.C.A., Police, Fire Brigade, Meals on Wheels. I include the R.S.P.C.A. and Animal Welfare because the animals need our help, too.

People who Volunteer in all the service areas of our society - those ordinary people who do not belong to any organised group or religion who, day by day, seek to help those less fortunate. Often those helpers and volunteers have very little themselves, yet they gladly share what they do have. These are the people that “make every yesterday a dream of happiness”, and there are millions like these - people doing what they can, not great works of charity that are publicly acknowledged, but little things like cleaning churches, volunteering, standing on street corners taking collections, sometimes just filling envelopes - people doing what they can to help others, with no thought other than to just help.

Australia has great material blessings, and most of us do not have to worry about food or clothing; and we have homes, be they houses, units or flats; but there are many in our society who do not have these things. You may hear people say, ‘Well, that is their Karma and we should not interfere.’ What? We should ignore those among us who do not have enough to eat; have nowhere to sleep? No. If you believe that those unfortunates are suffering under their own Karma, than it could be your Karma to help those in need; and it could be their Karma to be helped by you.

A new year could also be the opportunity for  other changes:

Major corporations taking a active role in the welfare of consumers, rather than just looking at the profit margin.

Opposition political parties could start co-operating with Government parties rather than the “oppose everything” attitude that is so prevalent and so destructive.

Local Government Council Members could accept their responsibility in the care of the underprivileged and homeless.

Ethnic and religious groups could look for the similarities in their beliefs rather than concentrating on the differences.

Despite what we see in the news media, there are more people in the world doing good that there are doing evil - the bad ones get all the publicity.

So I repeat - ours is a beautiful world, and if you want to make it even more beautiful you only need to do just a little bit. Everything we do for others gives us, as Spirit has told us, another Spiritual Coin to collect when we return to Spirit. Everything: wish someone well, smile at a stranger, that’s all it takes to make every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Joan of Arc - Talk given on Sunday, 30th January 2011

St. Joan of Arc was born at Domrémy around January 6, 1412. When she was 13 years old, she heard what she called “celestial voices”.

Early in 1429, during the Hundred Years’ War, when the English were about to capture Orléans, the “voices” exhorted her to help the Dauphin, later King Charles VII of France.

Joan succeeded in convincing Charles that she had a divine mission to save France, and she was granted titular command of an army that quickly lifted the siege of Orléans on May 8, 1429. She defeated an English army at Patay on June 18; and after accepting the surrender of the city of Troyes and other towns, as a reward for her service, Charles VII granted her noble status along with her family on December 29, 1429.

Captured at Compiègne on May 23, 1430 and transferred to the English, she was placed on trial in Rouen by a selected group of pro-English clergy, many of whom nevertheless had to be coerced into voting for a guilty verdict. Convicted and burned at the stake on May 30, 1431, she was subsequently declared innocent by the Inquisition on July 7, 1456 after a lengthy re-trial.

The presiding Inquisitor, Jean Bréhal, ruled that the original trial had been tainted by fraud, illegal procedures, and intimidation of both the defendant and many of the clergy who had taken part in the trial, and she was therefore described as a martyr by the Inquisitor. Now let’s face it, for the Inquisitor to declare a trial a fraud, it must really have been bad! After the usual lengthy delay associated with the slow process of canonisation, she was beatified on April 11, 1909 and canonised as a saint on May 16, 1920.

Those are the bare facts as we know them, but what is it about St. Joan that keeps her memory and legend so alive, more than 580 years after her execution? Much has been made of Joan’s youth and her humble beginnings, but while we all know about her clairvoyant or clairaudient abilities, she was not convicted of witchcraft but of heresy in believing she was directly responsible to God and not the Church! This, I believe, is because of the Church’s somewhat ambivalent attitude to what we would call Joan’s psychic gifts: for while the Old Testament, in the Book of Exodus, states that, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” the Church was only too well aware of St. Paul’s letter stating that prophecy (or clairvoyance if you like) was a gift from God; and then, as now, the writings of St. Paul were considered by the Church to be unarguable holy writ, overriding much that was written in the Old Testament.

That one sentence in Exodus has been the driving force behind much of the world’s antipathy towards anyone with any sort of psychic ability and even those women and men who did nothing more than collect healing herbs.

The persecution of witches declined about 1700 banished by the Age of Enlightenment. One of the last outbreaks of witch-hunting took place in Massachusetts in 1692, when belief in diabolical witchcraft was already declining in Europe.

Recent research indicates that much of the hysteria at the time was caused by the ergot fungus in Rye. Consumption of ergot-infected rye results in both physical and mental harm, including convulsions, and hallucinations.

The attitude of the Orthodox Churches towards Spiritualism today remains undecided. First they tell us that we should not talk to Spirit, and then they ask us to pray to Jesus and the Holy Ghost. Indeed, one lady of my personal acquaintance was told by her parish priest not to talk to Spirit, and her reply was, ‘I don’t talk to them, they talk to me!’

Despite St. Paul’s letter, some still regard clairvoyance etc. as ‘the work of the devil’ and so do not hear the wonderful messages of love, reassurance, and survival that are regularly heard from demonstrators at Spiritualist services.

Modern law still has prohibitions against Clairvoyance, or Fortune Telling as it appears on the statutes, despite the valiant work done by Spiritualists in the mid to late 20^th century which was instrumental in taking away much of the intolerance and misinformation. However, comments such as - Are you sure it’s safe? Do you know what you’re getting into? and They’re Devil worshippers, aren’t they? are still heard even today.

We can all help bring Spiritualism into the 21^st Century by being open about our beliefs: for example, when we are asked to name our religion when filling out official documents, instead of putting down the generally accepted C of E or Catholic, we could write Spiritualist. If those in authority don’t like it, you can tell them that the Australian Constitution, Clause 116, guarantees us, in law, the right to freedom of religious beliefs, without any interference by anyone; and this freedom is one of the legacies of St. Joan. Joan’s other belief, that she was responsible to God and not the Church, was also the guiding force behind John Wycliffe who died in 1384, and was referred to as the ‘Morning Star’ of the Protestant Reformation; and Augustin Baker who died in 1641. Baker was a prominent Benedictine who insisted that each of us could approach God directly, without the aid of clergy, which is what St. Joan was doing – talking to God on a one-to-one basis, which we can all do!

Like St. Joan, we know we can approach God directly. We also have the Seven Principles to guide us, given to us by Spirit through Emma Hardinge Britten in 1871.

Like St. Joan, we can stand up for our beliefs and those Seven Principles; we can tell other people what those Principles are, and how they show us that Mankind is one brotherhood under the fatherhood of God, and that we are secure in the knowledge of the eternal existence of the Human Soul.