Hope to Uncover Your Infinite Light
by Rev. Cory Coberforward
Matthew 12:18-23
“Here is my servant whom I have chosen,
the one I love, in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will proclaim
m justice to the nations.
He will not quarrel or cry out;
no one will hear his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out,
till he has brought justice through to victory.
In his name the nations will put their hope.”
Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. All the people were astonished and said, “Could this be the Son of David?”
Isaiah 9:2-7a (responsive reading for live service)
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.
You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy;
they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest,
as warriors rejoice when dividing the plunder.
For as in the day of Midian’s defeat you have shattered the yoke that burdens them,
the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor.
Every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood
will be destined for burning,
will be fuel for the fire.
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.
Read the written message below with music videos
When I think of hope I think of my big white dog, Ghost. Always hopeful that we’re about to go outside. Hopeful for food, a good rub, and sometimes for play. She’s always hoping for greater joy, what some sages call peace in action, which she gets from the things that she loves with the beings she loves. She’s not concerned (at all) about differences in opinion, or a multitude of other concerns that plague us “more advanced” humans. And yet, it seems pretty clear that hope is there. Hope is natural because as living creatures we are all seeking happiness and joy within and embodied around us in some way. And whatever we call God, be it Christ, Allah, or Krishna, God’s further advent into our lives often starts with hope for just that.
When I start writing I tend to have quite the set of hopes. I hope that I can make something cohesive and understandable for most people. Something that draws out my experience and learning as effectively as I can in the moment while holding your attention. And above all, something that reminds you and me of our intrinsic nature, our oneness and Divinity. I hope that this reminder of our light helps us to advent Christ, Krishna, Goddess, further into the world. And I also start by remembering that God is peace itself, love itself, joy itself, and that our hope for these things doesn’t always take the form of a specific hope “for God.” God is in everything and especially expressed in these feelings and positive aspects of being, we need not turn to words or belief to celebrate God.
Like Ghost, we often hope for things that we believe will bring some semblance of peace and joy. But sometimes what's best for us and what will bring the greatest joy into our lives isn't what we hope for. Our specific hopes tend to tie back into our conditioning and the attachments and mechanical ways of thinking that we've developed, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can be quite stifling and miss the greatest source of joy within: our inner light and its creativity. Call it what you may, but the light of love and awareness within is one of the most under understood and explored aspects of life, and yet what could be more fundamental to every moment, everything we learn, every “thing” we experience? Awareness itself is no thing, and yet all things appear in its lights as one with its light.
Jesus Christ himself was less about us celebrating his literal name (which most of us mispronounce, me included), and more about us following his guidance and pointings back to God within, back to our inner light. Indeed, he called us “the light of the world” and expressed in many ways that we should seek unity with others within our light, a light that we all share. This light is also called love because just as the light from the sun is synonymous with the heat of the sun (ask any physics professor!) our inner light of understanding and awareness is also the light that carries our source of love. Jesus shared the heart of these teachings with many of history’s sages, from Krishna, as we read in the Bhagavad Gita, to the Buddha and other subsequent Buddhist masters. And these very insights are also shared by newly awakening beings, sometimes thanks to deep meditative inquiry or profound psychedelic experiences.
It is in our growing awareness of the light of life itself that we find heaven in every moment, as Jesus said, “Heaven is within you,” also saying that heaven does not come with signs to be seen. In other words, it is the very seat of seeing itself, it is life itself beyond our conceptual divisions of things. But often, finding this light (which is staring us in the face) starts with our hope. We hope to escape depression, to find more heaven in our lives. We hope for peace, gratitude, love, and especially joy or happiness. These hopes can serve to draw us back home into Spirit, back into our own being, which is the source of these things. And as we turn to God and the light within, realizing that the greatest joy isn’t something we have to reach for, we realize that our only issue has been buying too much into “the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” our tendency to judge and divide, centering our lives from a sense of “separate” (read: fallen) self, which is always reaching away from present moment being – which is why it seems distant from the Garden of Eden. In reality, we are unified in the Creator, in the Great Spirit, and we all share the open light of consciousness – which never changes from one moment to the next.
Within us is the very Advent of God, only just beginning to be expressed in our lives. Christ seems to become Advent in our hearts and slowly seems to grow, but, in fact, God is always fully and entirely present to us and within us. As we start to realize this our hope grows that the Lord’s will is done in our lives in every aspect, emulating Christ’s words that he only does as the Father commands him. The reason our hope grows for this seeming servitude is because we can start to tell that God is our very sense of truest self, of freedom, and of love. God is not some separate being to be put on but is our very light itself. God would never deem to choose to erode our originality and creativity because God is best expressed through these natural aspects of all being. The light of life and its source cannot be separated, indeed, even a sense of distance is only a passing illusion. There is only one reality, and it is God. And whether we live it, believe it, or not, God is always expressed all around us and as us and is always seeming to advent into our lives in innumerable ways.
Ghost is an apt name for our pooch, and not just because she looks like one. The Holy Ghost is often expressed in our hopes at first, which are just expressions of our desire for happiness. What we don’t know initially is that these hopes are subtly pointing us back toward our very being, the God that is always with us and that is the source of all gifts, all life, all joy, the only reality. Our misconceptions and fears can keep us from truly embracing that reality, which is why God seems to Advent a little at a time in our lives, taking down one wall at a time. Christ offered us a shortcut, you could say, a direct method back to our hearts, by telling us to turn around (“repent,” as its often translated) back toward our love for others as ourselves. We must drop our sense of separate selves, noticing our false idea of ourselves as it arises, our positioning from our perch in the tree of knowledge of division, and love others AS ourselves. Love occurs on planes of senses of unity, and we all share the light of life itself. Christ sheds light on this, on our very light, embodying the root of who and what each of us are. Let’s let hope guide us to let our light of love shine.
Happy Advent,
Cory