Towards the Heights

May 1st 2016 – Orthodox Easter

Good Friday Arid RosenArid Rosenkratz

880 – The Nea Ekklesia is inaugurated in Constantinople, setting the model for all later cross-in-square Orthodox churches.

1707 – The Act of Union joins the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.

1785 – Kamehameha I, the king of Hawaiʻi, defeats Kalanikūpule and establishes the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi.

786 – In Vienna, Austria, Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro is performed for the first time

1851 – Queen Victoria opens The Great Exhibition in London.

1884 – May day proclamation of the demand for eight-hour workday in the United States

~   ~   ~

veil easter sunRuby Lun

Calendar of the Soul  Sixth Week [May 01, 2016 – May 07, 2016]

There has arisen from its narrow limits

  My self and finds itself

  As revelation of all worlds

  Within the sway of time and space;

  The world, as archetype divine,

  Displays to me at every turn

  The truth of my own likeness.

~   ~   ~

jacobs-ladderChagall_Marc Chagall

Climbing Jacob’s Ladder – A Festival of Ascension, part 1 of a Lecture by ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

Ascension comes when the season of blossoming is reaching fullness. Trees & plants, stirring upwards in growth, have been touched by the warmth & light from above, & show forth the blessing of the heavens in color & scent. The whole of nature reaches upwards towards the heights.

The longing of the human soul strives upward also, in unison with nature, seeking the touch of world-warmth from the sun. This mood of ascension attunes all of life to the cosmic expanses.

However closely heaven & earth are aligned, their relationship is not always the same. In this we see the miracle of the seasons –the breathing-in, & the breathing-out, of the earth soul.

At the time of the Ascension of Christ, nature celebrates the ascension of the soul of the earth. – It is not by chance that the 40 days between Easter & Ascension coincide with this season.

Every year, when the earth breathes out in the springtime, the mystery of the Ascension of Christ, Who is the Spirit of the Earth, is renewed.

The stars in their constellations are shifting into their Summer places now, & the planets tread the ordered measure of their courses around them. These dots of light in the distance, point us to the spiritual beings who direct the life of the universe.

From this point of view, Ascension is a festival of the hierarchies.

Remember, that when Christ descended thru the heavens, & came into human form, the hierarchies lost His presence. They could only find Him by looking into the depths – bearing witness to  the God Who entered physical existence to remind earthly humanity of its cosmic citizenship.

At the Ascension, the mystery of the resurrection was brought back to the company of heaven – Signaling the return of the lost world of earth into the community of the stars. Since that time, the life of this planet is renewed with the cosmic forces that stream earthward.

The sacrifice of Christ initiated on earth, was the antidote to the consequences of death brought on by the Fall – the redemptive deed that turns death into life.

The Concentrated seed of Christ’s deed continues to grow in the earth thru this connection to the stars.

This reconnection was prefigured in the story of Jacob from the Old Testament. Thru his dream of the stairway to heaven, Jacob gave us the prophecy of the Ascension – A golden ladder set between heaven & earth, on which choirs of angels & our beloved dead can ascend & descend.

When the Risen Christ returned ‘to sit at the right hand of the Father’, at the Ascension, He became the bridge between the above & below.

The Christ impulse dwells in the earth, & extends into the Divine Presence, to fulfill the prophecy of Jacobs ladder, so that thru this deed, mankind is brought near again to cosmic beings.

As the Christ has ascended, so too, in the fullness of time will humanity be transfigured. The company of the hierarchies wait, for us, their younger siblings to ascend in our thinking to meet them in fellowship, as they work all the while at our sides.

Tomorrow we will continue this theme

until soon

~hag = ~Hazel Archer Ginsberg

(to read the whole lecture on Ascension click: Ascension 2014 Climbing Jacobs Ladder)

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