The Nature of Sacrifice

Today, according to my calendar, is Good Friday. Having not been raised in a church or with any real historical religious sensibilities -- it wasn't until I was ten years old that I even knew what Easter was really about. And I was in my late teens I think or even later before I realized the significance of this particular Friday in the Lunar calendar... as well as the Christian one. Today is the day when the Christ is crucified. This is a day of death leading into resurrection. Following on the heels of mythologies galore, most notably, the end of Holy Week is the last few footsteps leading out of the darkness of Midwinter Solstice; we are officially coming into the season of the resurrection of the Light. Easter (later on Beltane) or Passover (which is still a few weeks away, isn't it? I don't know why Passover and Easter are on different time tables, really...odd.) celebrates the first fruits and blush of the Spring. The quickening of the spirit and the hearth fire and the warmth as the soil is washed from its cold darkness and roots, shoots and blossoms push forth.

Rudolf Steiner in a lecture about the esoteric Nature of Festivals writes on the Blood Relationship and the Christ Relationship indicative of this week's end:

"{...} It is impossible to make any progress by perpetuating old conditions and least of all is it possible by means of compromises — which are always dangerous because the new that is trying to come to expression is itself compromised. {...} When men looked out at nature in olden times, they perceived the divine and spiritual in everything. And this perception of the divine and spiritual passed over into the views that were held concerning the social order, the configuration of life that ought to prevail among the masses, from whom individuals came forth as rulers, and priestly leaders. We will not at the moment consider how this configuration of the social life was regulated by the Mysteries, but it was respected and was administered in accordance with something bestowed upon man without action on his part, as a gift proceeding from the unity of nature and spirit.

A man who through the circumstances and conditions obtaining at some place or another, became the leader, was recognised and acknowledged as such, because the people said: Divinity itself speaks through him. Just as the divine and spiritual was seen in stones, in mountains, in water, in trees, so too was it seen in an individual man. In those past times it was a matter of course to regard the ruler as a God, that is to say, as one in whom the Godhead was manifest. If people of the present day were a little humbler and did not drag in their own opinion about ancient usages, those usages would be far better understood. To-day, of course, there is no such concept as: a man is a God. But in ancient times there was reality behind it. Just as men saw not merely a flowing stream but the divine and spiritual astir in it, so did they perceive the sway of the divine in the social life, as immediate reality. As time went on, however, this vision of the direct presence of the divine and spiritual grew dimmer and dimmer.

Possessing this ancient vision, how did man conceive of his own being? He knew that his being was rooted in the world of the divine and spiritual; he knew that the divine and spiritual is present wherever sense-objects, wherever human beings themselves are, on the physical earth. He knew that he was born out of the divine and spiritual. Our of God I am born, out of God we are all born — this was a self-evident truth to man in those days, for he beheld its reality. It was the outcome of sensory vision."

And this got me thinking, and rightly so, about the ancient vision of divine being, of humanity, and what is the actual stuff of our substance... Light. I think.

And when I think about sacrifice, crucifixion, atonement -- I often wonder what our day to day, ignorant and material thoughts sever us from concerning the great gloriousness and beauty of the complex simplicity of divine presence. And what I'm talking about is not something you can just assume is recharged every Sunday. It is much closer, intimate, it takes precedent, it is immediate and hopeful.

I could speak about a lot of things, war, environment, politics, love, faith and all could embrace a theme of sacrifice on this day and on this hour of the Death of the Son. But instead I want to at least offer this too:

And I didn't even write it, it's by Pia Jane Bijkerk and was written on the 18th of March. I believe that it needs more than one read, for that, you may click here. I would say more, but I don't want to spoil it, but the Nature of Sacrifice is well present in the underlying truth and not just the pact, but why the pact was made, I think it beautiful and precious and pertinent.

And then, some more Steiner, because I can't help myself, I recommend reading the whole thing, from "The Spiritual Bells of Easter I".

" [the] Christian festival of Easter is only one of the forms of the Easter festival of humanity in general. What the wise men of old were able to say out of their strongest, deepest convictions, out of the very ground of wisdom, about life overcoming death — this was woven into the symbolism of the Easter festival. In the utterances of these wise men we shall everywhere find the foundation for an understanding of the Easter festival, the festival of the resurrection of the Spirit.

A beautiful and profound Eastern legend runs as follows: The great Teacher of the East, Shakyamuni, the Buddha, has endowed the regions of the East with his profound wisdom, which, drawn from the fountain-head of spiritual existence, glowed with infinite blessing through the hearts of men. Primal wisdom flowing from divine-spiritual worlds brought blessing to human hearts in times when men were still able to gaze into the spiritual world. This has been saved by Shakyamuni for a later humanity. Shakyamuni had a great pupil, and whereas the other pupils grasped to a greater or lesser extent the all-embracing wisdom taught by the Buddha, Kashiapa — such was the name of the pupil — grasped it fully. He was one of those most deeply initiated into these teachings, one of the most significant followers of the Buddha. The legend tells that when Kashiapa came to the point of death and on account of his mature wisdom was ready to pass into Nirvana, he made his way to a steep mountain and hid himself in a cave. After his death his body did not decay but remained intact. Only the Initiates know of this secret and of the hidden place where the incorruptible body of the great Initiate rests. But the Buddha foretold that one day in the future his great successor, the Maitreya Buddha, the new great Teacher and Leader of mankind, would come, and reaching the supreme height of existence to be attained during earthly life, would seek out the cave of Kashiapa and touch with his right hand the incorruptible body of the Enlightened One. Whereupon a miraculous fire would stream down from heaven and in this fire the incorruptible body of Kashiapa, the Enlightened One, would be lifted from earthly into spiritual existence.

Such is the great Eastern legend — unintelligible, perhaps, in some respects, to the West. This legend speaks, too, of a resurrection, of a transportation from earthly existence, an overcoming of death, achieved in such a way that the earth's forces of corruption have no effect upon the purified body of Kashiapa. Thus when the great Initiate comes and touches this body with his hand, it will be carried up by the miraculous fire into the heavenly spheres."

Some of you may say that I have gotten away from my original intention. So I will sum up; the question is this: what are you sacrificing? What are you giving up? I don't mean, in regards of the greater good -- but what are you choosing as your priority and does this sever you from Lightness from I AM-ness?

"In kind forgiveness will the world sparkle and shine, and everything you once thought sinful now will be reinterpreted as part of Heaven. How beautiful it is to walk, clean and redeemed and happy, through a world in bitter need of the redemption that your innocence bestows upon it! What can you value more than this? For here is your salvation and your freedom. And it must be complete if you would recognize it" (~ A Course in Miracles).

Again, what are you choosing to sacrifice ...? and I don't mean boiled potatoes so someone else can have them mashed, or a seat on the bus/subway/tube. I mean, are you sleepwalking? Are you aware of what you are intimate with in thought? Are you aware of what you are distancing yourselves from, on purpose, or on accident?