Be Content?
by Rev. Cory Coberforward
John 6:53-59
Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
Responsive Reading: Psalm 23:1-4
The Lord is my shepherd,
I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Read the written message below with music videos
The great scientist turned mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, had in his rules of life, “To be content under the dispensation of God’s Providence,” but how do we do that with the state the world is in today? Indeed, many sages, from Krishna to Christ, have offered similar wisdom. And yet, today we face mounting crises, and coming out of Canada’s National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People (Red Dress Day), we can’t help but see some of the stark, horrendous things that people put others through. This day marks a much-needed reminder and reflection on missing and killed Indigenous women and people, and it serves as a stark highlight of how much our society needs change and healing. How do we become content under these dispensations of God’s, or perhaps the Universe’s, Providence in the light of these dreadful things that impact all of us in one way or another?
Even our own predicaments can feel heavy at times, perhaps we suffer depression, suicidal ideation, or many other difficult mindsets that appear to us – many of which are the repercussions of some type of trauma, sometimes going back generations. And it’s typical for humanity to feel some level of discontent about the way our lives are going, let alone how the world around us is going. That’s why it can feel strange at first when we’re told by prophets, even God incarnate, to accept the current moment with contentment and not to fear.
“Easy for God to say,” may be our response, but that’s exactly God’s point! It is easy for the God in us to say, but often not for the thinking that stems from the idea we have of ourselves – for our minds. Our minds have the capacity for great evil as well great fear, for great wisdom as well as great love. So, where is the God within? Within the wisdom and love, yes, but also shining on the aspects of being that we don’t always like to feel. Interestingly enough, however, our sages and our scriptures encourage us to see our oneness with this inner light of openness and awareness to both transcend our more dominating and destructive impulses, as well as our more fearful ones.
Look for yourself. The issues and the feelings that arise to you, are you in them or are they in you? Do they have a life outside of your attention and investment? And are your worries more a part of you than the earth you’re on, or do they both arise within the open light of consciousness?
The very Indigenous teachings that we have so often dismissed with their peoples are actually the key to healing our current issues of harming the Indigenous and destroying the very earth we stand on. Many of these teachings say that we are one with the Great Spirit, the Creator, and that we are little creators ourselves, not separate from the flow of all life. In this way, we are all responsible for everything that happens, along with God. Similar to Swedenborg’s idea about Providence, they often teach that all things will eventually work for the good of humanity, the earth, and in fact, the whole of the universe and beyond. However, the ignorant aspect of creation (the part of us that knows least that it is one with God and all things) is more directly responsible for suffering and evil – something that can be spread between people like “the yeast of the Pharisees.”
But God is the only power. We cannot lose track of this truth, even when it seems to fly in the face of the reality around us and the idea that God is only goodness and love. The Creator is only goodness, truth, and love, and that is the birthright God has planned for us. But in God’s requirement that we have a sense of freewill we can’t but help to explore the shadows that God casts against our sense of separate forms; we sometimes exercise our freedom to turn away from God’s light toward our false and fleeting casting of darkness. Once we truly accept our true pastime as little creators, turning to the light of God, we will allow our hearts to shine their light as well and we will no longer find our shadows.
Christ spoke about how we must eat of his blood and flesh to have eternal life (John 6:53-59), and later, at the last supper he says that the bread is his flesh, and the wine his blood. In these moments he highlights the true life (eternal life) that we discover when we knowingly imbibe on God’s flesh and blood, as Jesus says he does nothing of himself but what he sees the Father doing. This can occur in any moment that we are breathing and living, and should occur in every moment if we are to find true solace from our problems. Indeed, having this type of mindset, the same as the Indigenous spiritual view that we are all one in the web of life, can help us to start to truly tackle the cause of abductions, murder, and human trafficking. All the seeds of which start in the minds of human beings.
As Paul and Swedenborg both wrote, the followers of God are all part of the body of Christ, and in fact, all life is part of this body or ecosystem in one way or another. The Hindus believe this as well, noting that every aspect of creation is part of a larger “body of God” and smaller bodies of God that at some level make up a whole. They often say that they are not polytheist nor monotheist because the fullness of God encompasses all things and so there isn’t one or many, just God’s being, beyond words or descriptions. For the Swedenborgians among us, this may strike us as quite similar to Swedenborg’s idea that every community of heaven makes a larger angel (a human in heaven), with heaven itself appearing as one angel in the eyes of God, with all its attributes from God’s Self. You could say that God is the light of the body and mind of heaven, and those things just reflect God’s light back to itself in infinite expressions.
This means that God is also our very light. As Swedenborg might say: God is the light of love and understanding. All things are a manifestation of this light, this energy, in one way or another. In Hell, there appears the temporary misuse of God’s energy. In Heaven, there appears the eternal pastimes of God’s power, love, and joy. In us, we get a little of both, and sometimes a lot. And occasionally, it really is too much, and that’s when we are most likely to feel the internal call to see that our true self stems from the light that shines on both – what we call awareness, what we should call the presence of love – and that this light is beyond turmoil and even an earthly idea of peace. It is beyond the words we use for it because these are of mind, opinion, and social construct. It is the thing that shines a light on the workings of our minds, but it is also the very energy that allows for these workings and, indeed, allows for the workings of all energetic things (from spirit to material).
Even our science corresponds to this, which we can see when we think about it. All matter is technically forms of energy, which all share the same fundamental “particles,” which are themselves energetic fields. The light around us, our bodies, neurons, are all made of the same stuff, all are forms of energy. In this same way, we are all made of God: infinite energy and thus non-spatial, beyond time, but lending aspects of itself to create forms and functions. Jesus pointed to this truth when he pointed to food and said this is my body and water, my blood. It was made even clearer when he said this more generally without pointing to material food, saying that we must eat of his flesh and blood to have eternal life. In a way, we already do this even without knowing it, but the fullness of eternal life is only truly found in our hearts when we come to see it in our hearts, when we imbibe and embody Christ’s and others’ teachings and also give our lives over to God’s presence within, expressing these truths in the way that we interact with our minds and the world.
Consuming Christ must ultimately mean that we come to see the world in the way that Christ did, in fact, he tells us to do this over and over. We are already one with the web of life, but to truly enter the body of God we have to live in Creator consciousness consciously. This often means some level of inner stillness and a seeking for the Creator’s input within, what some call prayer and some call meditation, and it involves accepting what is. This can be tough with the amount of pain in the world today, but we have to ask ourselves, what is the power, the light, that empowers life to overcome, to endure, even these hardships? What kind of inner power could ever help us to truly overcome these horrors and obstacles? What is that light in the eyes of a little girl in the face of all odds? What is the strength that empowers those willing to speak truth and love amidst threat, hardship, and suffering? What within our every moment could possibly behold all of this, and then, in the end, still say, “It is very good”?
Peace,
Cory