Sunday May 23rd Observance
What are my gifts? What are my tools? How can I place them in right relationship within the social realm? How can I hone them to strengthen and enhance the world?
Through leading thoughts and conversation we are called to redeem the ether spheres to create an Ecclesia, a chalice for The Sophia. Then the spirit flame can spread out to become what Steiner called a World Whitsun which began in earnest at the Christmas Conference.
The Whitsun Festival highlights one of the greatest challenges of being human: placing our individual gifts in right relationship within the social realm. This challenge is especially strong now during this “pandemic.” Our groups, striving to know Spiritual Science, must work together as a community to create a new culture where a sacrament is possible in every encounter. Our individual strength is enhanced by weaving our gifts together, kindling our social world in conscious community.
Rudolf Steiner calls Whitsun variously: Festival of the Holy Spirit; Festival of Flowers; Festival of United Soul Endeavor and Spirit Community; Festival of the Higher Self and the Universal Human Being; Festival of the human unbound from materialism; Festival of the purified astral body; the lifting out of one’s egotism into universal caring; out of opinion into truth; out of opinion into wisdom.
The heart of the human being, as it opens to warmth and light, is like the flower aligning itself to the Sun. And what pours down from the Sun, giving the flower the potency it needs, is like the tongues of fire descending upon the heads of the disciples. Human hearts, once warmed, can rise up to meet the Sophia, the source of wisdom.
Spiritual Science is a Whitsun gift. But we must grow ripe to withstand the surging of the Spirit. Whitsun is the festival of our true higher self, which as yet only hovers above us like a dove. Prompting us to ask, What are my gifts? How can I place them in right relationship within the social realm? How can I hone them to strengthen and enhance the world?
Our work is to take our individual Inner Whitsun and expand it into what Steiner calls the World Festival of Knowledge a path leading from Sprit Recollection to Sprit Sensing to Sprit Beholding.
The Being of Anthroposophia lives within every striving individual who works in the world to continue this work of evolution. Our Sophia-inspired Michaelic community can be seen as a vessel in which the Christ Being can unite with humanity. Warming the I, opening the heart in support of healthy community, we will endeavor to strengthen our individual soul forces to collectively open the portal into the Spirit worlds to co-create a World Whitsun, where separate egos are united by a common truth. “Where the senses can know no more,” the higher group-soul can descend.
Schiller once said, “Take the divine into your will and it descends from its cosmic throne.”