We are happy to enjoy a close relationship with our sister church, the Glendale New Church. We share their message here today, courtesy of Pastor Clark Echols via YouTube.
Please leave your reflections in the comment section.
39. 3. Because God is love itself and wisdom itself, he is life itself, or life in itself. The Gospel of John says, The Word was with God, and the Word was God. In it there was life, and that life was the light for humankind (John 1:1, 4). “God” in this case means divine love, and “the Word” means divine wisdom. Divine wisdom is actually life, and life is actually the light that radiates from the sun in the spiritual world – the sun that surrounds Jehovah God.
Divine love produces life the way fire produces light. Fire has two qualities: burning and shining. Its burning radiates heat and its shining radiates light. Likewise love has two qualities. The burning quality of fire corresponds to one of them; it is something that affects our will at the deepest level. The shining quality of fire corresponds to the other; it is something that affects our intellect at the deepest level. This is where our love and intelligence come from, because, as I have said several times now, the heat that radiates from the sun in the spiritual world is essentially love, and its light is essentially wisdom. That love and that wisdom flow into each and every thing in the universe and affect them at the deepest level. In us, they flow into our will and intellect; both were created as vessels to receive what flows in, the will as a vessel for love and the intellect as a vessel for wisdom.
From all this three points emerge: that our life finds its home in our intellect; that that life is only as good as our wisdom; and that that life is modified by the love in our will.~~True Christian Religion, Emanuel Swedenborg (trans. Jonathan Rose), n. 39
What If
What if our religion was each other
If our practice was our life
If prayer, our words
What if the temple was the Earth
If the forests were our church
If holy water – the rivers, lakes and oceans
What if meditation was our relationships
If the teacher was life
If wisdom was self-knowledge
If love was the center of our being
from Yoga Beyond Belief
(c) Ganga White
White Lotus Yoga Foundation
www.whitelotus.org
New Church of Montgomery, in Glendale 