Christmas Readings

For the last couple of years (I'm not sure how many) the pastors of the Glenview New Church have put together daily readings to help people get ready for Christmas.

Each year there is a theme to the readings. Here's an excerpt of the description of the theme for this year:

It is said that the Word of the Lord holds within it countless truths of heaven. Each time we read, we can see something new. The "something new" this year is gathered around the theme of the Lord as Savior, and also the process of salvation that He lays before us. (Read the full description.)

This year, in addition to being able to download all the readings in PDF form you can also sign up to receive the readings as daily emails, like the popular Daily Inspiration program.

The readings start December 1st.

Pray that the Lord's Kingdom May Come

And the Spirit and the bride say, "Come!" And let him who hears say, "Come!" And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely. (Revelation 22:17)

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"And let him who hears say, 'Come!' And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely" signifies that he who knows anything of the Lord's coming, and of the New Heaven and New Church, thus of the Lord's kingdom, should pray that it may come, and that he who desires truths, should pray that the Lord may come with light, and that he who loves truths, will then receive them from the Lord without his own work. ...

The things in this verse have the same signification as these in the Lord's Prayer: "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done as in heaven so also upon the earth." (Apocalypse Revealed 956)

The Spirits Who Are With Us

I was researching what Swedenborg's Writings say about the spirits that are with us and was glad to find a great New Church Life article about it from 1906 (by searching on NewSearch4). In "Our Attendant Spirits" (PDF) Rev. C. Th. Odhner covers a lot of different topics. He talks about ancient ideas of attendant spirits; he makes sense of some seemingly contradictory statements in the Writings about how many spirits are with us and whether or not the spirits with us are angels and devils. He also talks about Deja Vu (or second memory) and guardian angels.

It's not a short article (19 pages at 1.5 spacing as I've formatted it) but it's definitely worth reading and I'm sure you'll learn something new if you do.

Dave Lindrooth: "We need to love the hell out of people."

I highly recommend that you check out Rev. Dave Lindrooth's blog, Dave Lindrooth's Church Growth Blog: A gathering place for support and mentorship in New Church Evangelism (www.newchurchweblog.org). I haven't had a chance to explore everything on his blog so I can't give you lots of recommendations of what to look at but I recommend that you start by watching the 4 minute video on his most recent post, "Let's Ramp Up the Love in this Church".

Perspective on the Proprium

Just recently I was celebrating the fact that I'm not the only New Church blogger who updates regularly and now it's been almost a month since my last post. Sigh...

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that Rev. Clark Echols has recently posted a bunch of new stuff to his blog, Clark Echols' Swedenborgian Opinions (glendalenewchurch.blogspot.com). I've only had the chance to read one his new posts so far so that's the one I'm going to tell you about.

"Gold and Shadow" is a post about making sense of and dealing with what we have from the Lord and our selfish stuff. "Gold" and "shadow" are both terms from men's work and Clark relates them to the New Church concept of the proprium. (Incidentally, in the passage he quotes, he uses a new translation that uses the word autonomy for proprium; what do you think?)

I really appreciated Clark's perspective on how to deal with our darker, proprial stuff. Here's a teaser:

I realized the emptiness produced by a dilemma. On the one hand, if I label my shadow as a worthless piece of "refuse" (trash) I will have to lie to you in order to hide this part of myself because, of course, I want to look good and and I want you to like me (which you wouldn't if you saw what I was REALLY like). On the other, if I don't lie and show you that I am a worthless piece of refuse, again, I have come to believe, you will see me for what I am and will reject me and not like me.

The way out of the dilemma is to....