Fish on Friday ; is it the cross or Jesus with outstretched arms? You decide!

Good day to you my brothers and sisters:

Date for your diary; International Day of Prayer (IDOP) for persecuted Christians.

Ask your church leaders now to take part on Sunday November 6th ( or any other day of your choice).

This came to me from www.releaseinternational.org

voice of persecuted christians

......................................................................................

The following is by Martin Buber

Twentieth-century

Aystrian theologian. Mystic. Psychotherapist.

If any one wishes to be

created afresh, then he

must do everything in

his power to enter the

condition of nothingness,

and then God will make

out of him a new

creation, and he will

become as a spring which

does not dry up and as a

stream which does not

cease to flow.

*********************

from World Mysticism Timothy Frede & Peter Gandy

CHRISTIAN MYSTICAL

WISDOM

The teaching of the Christian religion has generally been that Jesus was God made flesh, who suffered and died for the sins of the world, and that believing in this a Christian is freed from sin and will go to heaven when he dies. Up until the Reformation in the sixteenth century, ordinary Christians were expected to accept such dogmas and the Inquisition even forbade them to read the Bible for themselves. For the mystics , however, Jesus`s message was one of personal salvation through the direct experience of God. In the words of Angelus Silesius, a seventeenth-century Protestant poet who in four days of ecstatic illumination wrote the 302 verses of the mystic masterpiece the Cherubinic Wanderer:

Christ could be born a thousand times in Galilee -

but all in vain, until he is born in me.

For the mystics, Jesus was a living embodiment of the possibility of union with God, who could lead them to the same spiritual realization. In the Gnostic scripture called the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus tells his disciples: `I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become drunk from the bubbling stream which I have measured out. He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am; I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.`

( the following paragraph I am copying is writing that many physicists I believe would go along with today! you can decide, or just have an open mind.)

In the wonder of mystical experiences, when the hidden truth is revealed, the mystic knows that he is not just a body and personality that will live and then die. He is one with Christ and with God. Marsilio Ficino, a fifteenth century Catholic priest who translated many of the great pagan philosopers for the first time and was thus instrumental in in initiating the Renaissance, wrote: `Revere yourself as an eternal ray of the Divine Sun.` Jan Ruysbroed, one of the fourteenth-century Friends of God, wrote: `The image of God is found essentially and personally in all mankind. Each possesses it whole, this way we are all one.` Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he urged, `Love others as your self.` Not that we should love our neighbour to the same degree that we love ourselves, but rather that we should love others as a part of our own identity - for in truth we are all one.

To experience the oneness of God the mystic must, as the thirteenth -century German Christian seer and poetess Mechtild of Magdeburg wrote, `Love the nothing and flee the self.` The mystic empties himself of his sense of self, and so becomes the nothing that can contain everything. As long as he experiences himself as a `something`, God is always `other`. ( yep I am getting this, how about you?) When he finally relinquishes the illusion of his self, there can be no `other`, and he is one with God. Jacob Boehme exclaimed: `The Soul then says I have nothing, for I am utterly stripped and naked; I can do nothing, for I have no manner of power, but am as water poured out; I am nothing, for all that I am is no more than an image of Being, and only God is my I AM '.`

I apologize, brothers and sisters to those of you who are not interested in following the path of spiritual mysticism. I only ask that you realize the artist in my is also trying to be a mystic. Getting this all out, helps inversely to get it within.

Blessings and peace to all spiritual beings. Your bro Peter