Blessed are the Poor in Spirit: Reflections on the Beatitudes and Inner Life Part II
By “Knowing Christ” student, Xuefen Mullins
“I feel the Spirit Child
Set free from spell in womb of soul;
The holy cosmic Word conceived
In clarity of heart
The heaven-fruit of hope,
Which joyous grows toward farthest worlds
Out of my being’s godly ground.”
Calendar of the Soul Week 38
Why do we need an inner life? This is the question that Reverend Evans posed to us.
Perhaps I am, like many others, often busy with actions but rarely deeply considering the meaning behind my actions. But Paul shows us in the “Letter to the Romans” that we must wake up to our actions so that we can be conscious of the universal sickness of sin that we all carry, and how our individual sin also lives in us. We were severed from God when our egos turned away from his Light; when we chose to follow the guidance of the False Light of the Serpent in Eden. As a result our hearts darkened, and our wills twisted. Now our human ego is always intermingled with our Double, the one who reveals to us the darkness which lives within our inner nature. Our ego is now in a sick dwelling. But through the medicine of the communion with Christ, our souls may become whole.
To begin to work with this reality, Reverend Evans led us into a three step meditation:
1) Finding inner stillness.
2) Looking into our feelings, we ask ourselves, “What ails us? What is our Double trying to teach us? How does it teach us? Does it teach us through our envy, hatred, fear, pain, selfishness, arrogance or pride?”
3) After noticing our inner brokenness, we turn our attention to Christ’s Light, praying for his moral substance as a counterbalance to our sickness. What is the unique medicine we need for this unique sickness within us? How can a prayer take shape that I may ask for this unique medicine?
In the Gospel of Matthew we hear “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’” 16:24 (ESV).* This three step inner life practice is one of taking up our Cross and following him. It is a practice of receiving his guidance through his teachings of the Beatitudes and allowing them to educate our hearts. We may pray his moral substances can strengthen us when we have the Communion at the Consecration of the Human Being: “May they penetrate me that the sickness of sin be healed, by the medicine that makes whole, the Sacrament.”
This path that Christ calls us to follow is full of temptations and tribulations. And yet, this is the only path. But we are not treading the path alone. He is with us. He is in us. He is bearing us and transforming us to “a Become.”**
*English Standard Version
**In the North American translation of the Epistle for the Advent Season, we hear this phrase “a Become.” In keeping the “a” which is present in the original German, the translation emphasizes that those who would follow Jesus Christ would look toward not any becoming but his specific becoming, as he opens the door for us to be remade through in his image and likeness.
Xuefen Mullins, 55, is an onsite Knowing Christ student at the Christian Community Seminary in North America. She was born in China. She resides in Chicago, Illinois, USA, where she enjoys working with soil.
This is a blog entry by The Seminary of the Christian Community in North America. These are posted weekly by the student blog team of Athena Masilungan, Nicole Reinhart, and Lincoln Earle-Centers. For more information about our seminary, see the website: www.christiancommunityseminary.ca and for more video/audio content check out the Seminary’s Patreon page: www.patreon.com/ccseminary/posts.
The views expressed in this blog entry are the views of its author, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Seminary, its directors, or the Christian Community.