The Aftermath

A dear friend of mine from Russia told me there was a joke circulating about an old rivalry between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He said that they were always in friendly competition, and when the Stones released an album entitled “Aftermath,” the Beatles threatened to release a collection entitled “After Geography.” Apologies to all who do not find this as hilarious as I do, but I simply had to share this story as we all delve into the aftermath of this (as the pundits and experts keep telling us) the first inning of the pandemic of 2020.

As I have been writing and musing about what the deeper meanings behind this truly novel experience we are all having, a recurrent theme for me comes clear. There are more people on the earth right now than have ever been on earth before. Some scientists and historians theorize there are actually more people on the planet than if previous populations were combined. I do not understand the math or statistics on this theory, but either way one looks at it, there are quite a lot of people on earth right now. It is also true that this virus and the reaction to it is essentially a global phenomena. The majority of the global population is sequestered in homes, rooms and so on. Yes, there are those who are health care workers and staff who are making sure utilities are consistent and some form of food is available, but for about two months, people all over the planet have been staying inside and watching TV or the Internet. What does this mean, how will this affect civilization and human evolution, particularly the evolution of consciousness.

What is striking about this event is that it is a slow motion complete turn around of everything in modern technological society. This pandemic differs say from a massive earthquake, a superstorm, tsunami or volcano. Such events are quick processes compared to the pandemic response. The widespread experience of the Black Plague of the 14^th Century took a while to spread and transform culture, but it was mainly focused in Europe and Asia, the current plague now has reached everywhere except Antartica.

Now that Spring in the Northern Hemisphere has burst forth and the peaks of COVID19 deaths seem to be coming to certain regions, people are becoming restless, protests are erupting throughout the globe, on everything from resistance to public health measures to government responses and workers demands for safer conditions. The running theme is that people are wanting normalcy back, they are suffering economically and they are also getting quite annoyed by being cooped up with no where to go for so long during such lovely weather.

Throughout my writings, I focus on the Middle Ages, particularly the age of the Crusades. Whatever one thinks of these years, what Rudolf Steiner says about them resonates with me quite deeply. He states that the era of the Crusades was the preparation for the Age of Consciousness Soul. The other perceptions he has of this era, and The Knights Templar in particular (who were formed because of the Crusades and essentially lasted until the Crusades had finished) was that the Templars wanted to create a culture that could contain the Christ, and a civilization where the Apostle Paul’s Damascus experience was a reality. The Damascus Experience of Paul was that he perceived Christ in the realm of the Etheric. Steiner goes on to outline that the current era, our age of the Consciousness Soul is one where we are to develop the spiritual capabilities of our souls, we are to develop discernment, and that the great mystery to be encountered in our age is that of evil.

I am an ardent student of history, I adore history. Once while staying with a dear friend who had a dizzying option of cable channels on her dish network, she asked me after noticing my watching habits (Tolkien fantasies, Medieval period dramas and endless documentaries on the Middle Ages) if I was aware we were living in the 21^st century. Alas, yes, as I long to sit in a great hall with a banquet featuring stuffed peacock, rose infused jellies, and entertainment from jugglers and harpists, I will have to just keep watching all the food scenes (sans group murders) of Game of Thrones, The Tudors and Lord of the Rings to ease my broken aware heart that we were not living in the idealized past.

History has much to teach us, mainly on what does and does not work. Obviously we can build on past learnings, while I appreciate the romance part of the Middle Ages, I am ever so grateful that we have evolved from the privy holes that dumped raw human waste through a hole in the outskirts of the castle, as well as tooth brushes and tooth paste instead of scrapers and chewing mint leaves. But the idealism of ages past, that I do think in many ways is missing from our cynical times, there is so little mystery to anything anymore on a certain level, which may be a reason conspiracy theories are so abundant and murder television shows so popular. 

A casual or maybe not so casual observation , is that humanity has had quite a few upheavals since the age of the Crusades. We seem to be on an ever quickening pace of change, with not much time to actually digest anything properly. (Fast food may be more symbolic of our age than we give it credit) I used to joke that I would tell my grandchildren “I used to have to get up and walk across the room to change the channel on the television.” The era of the 14^th century if we actually observe it carefully, provides what Barbara Tuchman so eloquently presented in her landmark book of the same title, “ a distant mirror.” Disease, political and religious upheaval, changing gender relations, climate change of a mini ice age, technological innovations and increased globalism through international trade. In Tuchman’s book, she examines how the Black Death, the plague that wiped out essentially half of the population of Europe in the mid 1300’s,  planted the seeds for the Reformation, the Renaissance and challenges to the economic and political structures of the day. Something she wrote about which I am thinking of now, is in the aftermath of the Black Death, how after half the population perished, there were fewer skilled laborers to plant crops and provide crafts and services specifically for the noble class who were used to being waited upon through the work of their underlings. These laborers and crafts people joined forces to create guilds, and set prices for their labor because they were actually in high demand after the great mortality of their age. After a bit, the clergy and noble class got together with the monarchs to pass legislation that workers would only be paid “pre-plague” wages, not wanting the costs of their stuff to go up, ensuring that the class divide would continue. Persecutions of Jews, Gypsies, Witches, Lepers and other undesirables commenced, because obviously THEY were the origin of the pestilence, not the failures of either the organized church or monarchies who were supposed to be in charge (specifically of public sanitation works and the like.) When there were no more people to burn as distractions from the failures of institutions, people started to question all sorts of things, even the existence of God, in the aftermath of the plague.

If we follow history from the Black Death until today, there have been quite a few political and economic upheavals, which in many ways have never quite been resolved. The Reformation of the 1500’s had as much to do with political and economic infighting between royal families as it did with maturing understanding of the human/divine relationship or religion. Ongoing religious wars, counter reformations, peasant revolts and such would rear their heads with regular periodicity in the years afterwards. Excellent ideas would spring forth, but they never seemed to catch on in anything but philosophical circles. With the expansion in the “Age of Discovery” the solution to the human condition seemed to be based on expanding territory, the institutions and cultures of certain places were too entrenched, so lets try something new. This was one of the many impulses for the Crusades, that the church and monarchies were so corrupt, lets take Jerusalem from the Muslims that have ruled it for about 500 years and set up a perfect kingdom where Christ walked. Aside from the wholesale slaughter of various populations on the way there, and of a large portion of the community within Jerusalem’s walls, the ideals and initial attempt at governance of Jerusalem had good intentions. One would simply question some of the methods to get there, obviously, which set up the experiment to fail bitterly, and humans are still fighting over this patch of land to this day.

The Americas were also supposed to be a utopian culture, again the presence of an indigenous population posed a problem that the explorers solved through murder, displacement and the purposeful introduction of diseases to make room for those seeking to create the perfect society, free from the oppression of institutional religion and monarchies. The result of this adventure is widely known, and in spite of obvious advances in self governance, we can argue there are numerous failures in the establishment of colonies that again, humans are still fighting over to this day.

In the early 1800’s a new trend emerged regarding technology, industrialization and the move towards democracy and away from monarchies. With the advent of the steam engine and the beginnings of automation resulting in factories resulted in large segments of populations leaving rural lands and moving into cities. The concept of employment, and unemployment became the norm, the latter causing much political and cultural unrest. When we read of the issues of the day occupying the press and regional governments, one can hardly believe they are 175 years old. The requests which later turned to bloody demands of the mobs were for affordable housing, food, fair wages and employment. In the Spring of 1848 across Europe the dam broke, and a chaotic violent uprising ensued. Entire cities became war zones where citizens dismantled streets and buildings creating barricades to keep out the military. After months of the upheaval which included soldiers mowing down women and children in the streets, the population retreated and essentially begged the monarchies to take charge of the situation. If this was democracy and freedom, the population did not want any part of it as crops were not being planted and people were being killed by the thousands in the streets and alleys of their neighborhoods. The deep injustices of the day, particularly in the economic realm were not addressed. The population was exhausted, if the kings wanted control, then they could have it, just stop the slaughter and let us “get back to work.” 

The injustice was not dealt with and essentially was the fodder for the tinderbox that erupted into World War I, which was not solved either, and fed into World War II, which divided the world again, and led to the Korean Conflict (still an issue as this conflict is technically still a war between two Koreas being propped up by the great axis of world powers.) The non ending of the Korean Conflict fed into the Vietnam War, which also really did not end, and on and on and on until the most recent follies in Iraq and Afghanistan, Central and South America and large swaths of Africa. What all of these wars and social upheaval have in common is the desire to control natural resources, particularly petroleum, and they are justified by phrases and ideology of “freedom and democracy” or the age old attempt at creating a utopian society by first murdering the ingenious peoples on the lands desired by those who feel they can not make a difference in their own communities and they want to go somewhere new and set up shop with the goal of creating the perfect society. 

We are out of places to move to on the planet, so there are big efforts to colonize the moon and mars, again mainly because well, maybe just maybe, on these outer planets we can get things right this time.

Which brings me back to the Crusades. The so called preparation for the Age of Consciousness Soul. 

I believe in reincarnation, for me this is really the only way the human condition within the cosmos make any sense whatsoever. What if we have been making the wrong conclusions and keep ignoring our responsibilities in all of the many many upheavals humanity has endured during and since the time of the Crusades? If we are reincarnating, as well as witnessing what is occurring on the planet as we sojourn between lifetimes, what if we are all present now in numbers never before experienced on the earth to finally set things right?  What if this is the upheaval where we are given the opportunity to do what is needed to transform the earth as a key player in creating a cosmos of love?

The virus behind the 2020 Pandemic has collapsed the global economy. It has collapsed the petroleum industry. We are told that the economy will have contracted nearly 30% in the quarter when the virus had it’s first peak. We live in an economy, a global economy that is dependent on producing more than it needs in terms of meeting basic living requirements of food, shelter and clothing. We have an economy based on people buying too much of everything. When we do not continue to buy too much of things we essentially do not need, then the vulnerable of us fall off a cliff in terms of livelihood. 

Industrial agriculture has enabled the world to produce so much food that a large segment of the human population is obese, while another large segment of the human population is starving. Humanity throws away nearly half of the food it produces from farm to table, and this is everywhere if the UN Agriculture statistics are to be believed. We see pictures of farmers dumping milk into ditches, and trucks filled with potatoes with no where to sell them, while miles and miles of cars line up to get food assistance in major cities and workers are being forced to go to infected meat packing plants if they want to feed their families making products they can not afford on their miserly wages. The virus has highlighted for all to see in the endless 24/7 coverage of the pandemic the inherent injustices and insanity of the modern global technological economy. 

For the last 50 years, human beings within a civilization are now called “consumers.” In Medieval culture, the human being was seen as a miniature reflection of the cosmos, as a reflection of divinity. Now humans are creatures that consume products, buy things.  Brian Swimme in his landmark Canticle to the Cosmos lecture series and his book The Universe is a Green Dragon, highlights one of the reasons for this phenomena. Swimme states that ancient cultures used to gather together round the fireplace during evenings to tell stories. These people watched the stars in the evening and made correlations between the events happening in the heavens with events on the earth. Winter time was especially rich because the nights were longer, demanding more stories of how the human related to the cosmos through legends, fairy tales and scripture. With the advent of artificial light and ultimately television and movies, the communal story time was replaced by advertisements and shows articulating human worth and relationship with the divine in terms of the consumption of stuff, be it food or appliances, drugs or cosmetics. It is profound that we call the actors from television and film “celebrities” and “stars.” It is profound and tragic that we seek these individuals out for their opinions on just about everything, even how one endures the COVID19 illness.

How are we to approach the “aftermath” of an event that essentially will be lasting for a very long time? 

We are social distancing mainly to protect not only ourselves but others, especially the vulnerable. We can not stay indoors forever, and many of our leaders are telling us that the vulnerable must be sacrificed for the economy, that economic hardship is just as toxic as the virus. We see people with guns and paraphernalia from the confederate and fascist armies demand “freedom” to spread the virus to the vulnerable, so a large portion of society can get back to work, as well as get back to consuming too much food and buying things they do not need. An American president who refuses to use his power to help protect medical professionals and essential workers, is using his signature to force vulnerable populations to work in infected factories without the protections he could help manifest with an executive order, and the governors of the states where these factories reside are proclaiming that any resistance to this order means no unemployment, while the head of the US Senate is threatening to withhold funds from states unless the opposition agrees to stripping American citizens of their right to civil redress through the court system. No liability for the companies who lack safety equipment and procedures for their workers, no access to the courts, and no food for their families if they choose their health over working at minimum wage jobs in disease ridden deadly factories. The protests began as soon as the order commenced. 

It is obvious we as humans have what one would diplomatically call a mixed bag in terms of learning from past mistakes in terms of civilization. Any progress is met with intense, sometimes violent opposition, wearing down the populace into passivity as what happened in the Fall of 1848. All opposition has it's basis in excessive greed for "stuff" over the dynamic living human being.

But what if this virus infecting the largest human population in the history of humanity was inviting us to get it right this time?

The two things needed to adequately protect the population and ultimately the economy are protective gear for health care providers and workers, and testing so targeted isolation can commence while allowing the rest of society can continue to be in the public sphere. The global supply chain, which is international using much petroleum for transportation and also displacing workers from one nation and creating a permanent underclass of underpaid workers in another, has two locations for the manufacture of such products. Protective gear is produced in the region of Wuhan China, the  first place devastated by the virus. The swabs needed for mass testing are produced in Northern Italy, the second region ravaged with tragic outcomes. Forget the “China-Made-The-Virus-in-the-Lab” conspiracy which is the re-election campaign talking point for the morally bankrupt and inept president making low wage workers infect themselves in slaughterhouses so he will not have his taco bowl and hamburger access interrupted. For me it speaks volumes that the items needed to successfully encounter the virus while maintaining the global economy as we know it, are produced in the first two regions completely decimated by the pandemic. I can assure you, no conspiracy panel in a smoke filled bunker would unleash something that well thought out, to knock out the supplies in both China and Italy so as to infect the entire earth and shut down the global economy in the process. While I detest the behavior of many robber barons and petroleum industry executives, they still need us to buy their stuff and the virus is collapsing their bottom line. A consumer based economy needs consumers, and the virus is forcing everyone to stop buying most stuff other than toilet paper and food.

So what does this all have to do with The Black Madonna, the Knights Templar and the Crusades? Quite a bit actually. The Black Madonna is a symbol of the Human Soul, of endurance under tremendous odds. The Black Madonnas that dot the Camino de Santiago de Compostela were placed there by the Knights Templar during the era of the Crusades. The Camino was and is a path of modern initiation, the Knights wanted to create a civilization that could be a container for the Cosmic Christ. The Crusades were a time of preparation for the Age of Consciousness Soul, the era we are presently in and enduring with what I would argue varying degrees of success. We are to confront in our age, the Mystery of Evil. We also are in the middle of Earth Evolution, and on our way to transforming the Cosmos of Wisdom into a Cosmos of Love.

The Black Madonna is a message from the spiritual world and from our ancestors that we have a difficult path during our era, but that path has a purpose, to use our wills and deeds to create goodness and love on the earth.

Love is dependent on Freedom. Love can not be forced or coerced, it is freely chosen.

How we go forward in the aftermath of the Pandemic of 2020 is a choice. We have at no other time in history such access to our collective history, the nature and outcome of so many different upheavals and responses. There were somethings we got right after each challenges, but I would argue, we got quite a bit wrong, or the right and wrong was not evenly distributed. The global Great Depression of the 1930’s produced advances in workers rights, social programs and education in the United States of America, but it also created totalitarian and fascist regimes in many places resulting in a global conflict never seen before by human kind. In the aftermath of the horrors of World War II, incredible initiatives were commenced with the desire that such a tragedy not be repeated. The Marshall Plan attempted to address the economic disparity throughout Europe as well as the devastation of four years of relentless mechanized warfare. The tragedy was that Europe was divided along political ideologies which put the East under totalitarian regimes masquerading as “communist,” and the West had all the benefits of democracy, capitalism and some forms of socialism. The environmental disaster of the eastern block countries and the politically unstable governments of the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall have their own deep challenges, where entire nations of people are forced into low wage jobs to survive and a resurgence of fascism and religious fundamentalism in beginning to  surface in fragile emerging democracies. 

What choices will we make? What will be our governing principles as people lose their homes, are forced on the street by the son-in-law slum lord of the taco bowl consuming president?

The initial response has been for me, hopeful. A majority of Americans, regardless of party, supports social distancing and the governors who are trying their best to implement procedures to keep their citizens safe. While noisy and revolting, the initial gun and swastika toting protestors are a tiny fraction of the population. These vocal protestors are being funded by powerful donors who want their workers to get back to creating stuff that people do not really need to buy in the first place. People from all over the world are doing what they can to assist their friends, neighbors and people they do not know, doctors and nurses are traveling from one region to another to assist colleagues in the emergency room battle. Money is being donated, prayers said, and deep thinking is taking place. There is a recognition that our health care system does not address underlying immunity, our environment and our nutrition are not enabling large segments of the population to adequately build their immune systems. A consensus of what I am witnessing is that there is a great desire to address injustices, from how we treat farm workers and meat packers, to grocery store personnel and mail carriers, as well as a recognition that the environment is being improved by the reduced assault it experiences with our mindless consumption and transportation methods.

There is much to draw upon from major faith traditions. In the Jewish tradition there is the practice of Sabbath and Jubilee, a weekly rest and a periodic year where no work is done after a generation. Imagine what would happen if we gave the planet a weekly rest from trash and exhaust, and a once in a generational year where no pollution was created ? In this tradition, the Shalom tradition, there is a recognition that a harmony needs to be sustained between peoples, Divinity and the planet. In each plot of farmed land, the outer boundaries were left unharvested to allow the poor and landless the dignity of picking their own food. In the Christian tradition, specifically modeled in Acts and the Epistles, the foundation for a community was in that all contributed to the good of the whole. The land, water, plants and animals were considered to be part of the “commons” available for the good of the community. It was in the Middle Ages in Europe when this practice started to wane, and private ownership of land, particularly through the monarchy and institutionalized church, taking access to food and resources away from large segments of the population and essentially forcing them into servitude. This practice was shocking to the populace of the time, which inspired them to find alternatives, seek justice and create counter movements against the methods of depriving people of food and shelter.

As we start to “open” what is it that we want to open? Do we want to open our hearts and minds? Do we want to open our communities to justice? How do we go forward? We have been through this before actually, with varying degrees of effectiveness. It may be that this event has happened now, with so many of us on the planet at the same time so that our human community can be an effective catalyst for transforming a cosmos of wisdom into a cosmos of love. 

The Black Madonnas remind us of our capacity as humans, that we can endure the most difficult odds, we can endure upheavals, warfare, environmental calamity and still be present to divine love, we can still birth divine love from within.

What will you be doing to help birth this divine love as a foundation for the aftermath of the pandemic of 2020?

I eagerly await your response, as goodness surrounds us all.

Endurance

For many of us across the globe, we are now entering into month two of the pandemic. For others it has been longer much longer with deeply tragic results. In Southern California where spirit has given me an opportunity to be for the next few months, we have been in lock down since the 19th of March. I must say, now that everything is blooming and the days are quite warm, this sitting inside stuff is getting a bit old. What is a particular challenge for me personally is that the place I am staying has no internet, which means I must be incredibly resourceful at obtaining, especially now that the places I had been logging on (libraries, coffee shops, fast food restaurants) are now off limits. I must walk to the local library and sit outside the closed doors with my mask to enjoy the daily five hours of wifi that are still happening six days a week. At a distance of 3 miles, I must say it is actually helping me get in shape physically, for what I am not sure, but I am getting in my daily exercise as this trip to the library entrance is off the beaten path and I never encounter anyone other than an occasional police car and the maintenance crew that waves at me as they go inside the library to dust.

For those of us not on the front lines of the pandemic, this is an odd time. Most of us are laden with the anxiety of economic unknowns. Some of us are crashing like the stock market, others are trying to adapt to the world of teleconferences. All of us have had dreams dashed, plans obliterated, vacations cancelled and businesses stalled. In the States, for those of us who have stomach lining of steel, we watch the administration's daily performances with a mixture of disbelief, entertainment and despair. Fortunately, for many of us our state and local representatives are leading with calm and care, but it is still difficult to watch so many suffer so deeply. For many of us, we are suffering with the loss of loved ones, careers, health and so on. The only solace we all have is that we all, all of us are suffering together. Enduring a pandemic is not something that any one of us individually chose to or consciously contributed to create, and yet here we are, another week of abnormal existence, of trying to creatively live through this, attempting to keep our businesses alive, our families in tact, our health in gear, and wondering what the next chapter will bring.

During my original study of the Black Madonnas, I was struck by the many similarities that these images shared on the European Continent. The somber faces combined with stories of endurance I feel are especially instructive at this time. The Black Madonnas seem to be indestructible, surviving invasions, wars, religious and political upheaval, natural disasters, plagues, shipwrecks and vandalism. For those who were burnt at the stake during the French Revolution, they "resurrected" themselves through the memories of artists who recreated the images in meticulous detail to rein habit their shrines once the political unrest quieted down. What is most fascinating to me is how the restorations were darker than the original, mainly through the requests of the pilgrims.

The fact that so many of these images were brought to the Continent by the Knights Templar also fascinates me. Why would they do that, and why would they place these images in shrines along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela?

The Camino is a path of modern initiation. Before the time of Christ, only a select group of elites was initiated into the mysteries of the cosmos. After Christ, we all became equal in the eyes of the Divine, and all had equal access to the mysteries of the universe, only now, life is the great initiator we all encounter together.

The color black is the color of cosmic will being transmitted to human will. These dark images of the Madonna, the Madonna being the symbol of the Human Soul, for me speak volumes. One of the great endeavors of the Knights Templar was to invite civilization to be a container for the Christ. Rudolf Steiner tells us that the era of the Crusades, where the Templars were the leading figures, was the age of the preparation for the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, the current era we are enduring.

I have always found it instructive that the image of the Black Madonna was the leading image on The Camino. This path of modern initiation has images of the Human Soul, the Black Madonna, with somber faces, a sort of premonition that the coming age (the one we are in now) is going to be very difficult. The difficulties that humans have had to endure since the dawn of our current age fill the annals of history; plagues, wars, genocides, the wholesale purposeful destruction of the planet, and now this current pandemic.

One pundit pointed out the reason this situation is particularly difficult for Americans in particular is that we are a nation of "doers." Another comedian joked that this was a war he was prepared for, since a leading health expert said we must all go home and watch TV. He went on to say this will be the first time prisoners of a war will be fatter than when they became imprisoned.

But are we supposed to just sit around and watch TV until given permission to re-enter our lives with face masks and at six feet distance from anyone we encounter for the foreseeable future? Are we incapable of doing anything of consequence? I am reading Entering the Castle by Carolyn Myss (A library book that my county has told me I can hang on to without fear of late fees until the reopening at some point in who knows when.) The book is an interesting overview of Theresa of Avila and her famed Interior Castle. Myss also makes reference to St John of the Cross and his experience of being imprisoned, and how this led him to write his landmark Dark Night of the Soul. In both of these treatises, deeply insightful messages are conveyed as to how to have intimacy of the Divine, and that such intimacy often comes through suffering, isolation and the removal of all familiar aspects of daily life. What Myss points out throughout her book, is that we are all vessels of grace, and that by invoking grace, we can bring about deep healing within ourselves and others.

At this point in the pandemic, the question of how to re-open nations and economies is the major focus of attention. When is it too soon, is the cure worse than the problem, isn't poverty and economic devastation just as toxic to people's health as a virus? My perception is that the virus has done much to force all of humanity to simultaneously examine the major weaknesses and injustices of modern life. From the insanity of our global supply chain for pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, to the lethal quality of general poor health, to the sick relationship between humans and animals, to the dangers of an industrial food system, to an economic structure that really only benefits a very few and leaves out large segments of hard working people while simultaneously destroying the planet. Case in point: the major deficiencies for the medical professionals is protective gear and testing for the virus. The coveted protective gear (masks, gloves, gowns) are produced mostly in the region of China that was the first to suffer the pandemic and to be shut down to everything. The swabs that are needed for the testing for the virus are mostly made in the northern region of Italy, the epicenter and tragic location of death and destruction for Europe. The two main things needed to "combat" the virus, were made in the two places these objects were completely unavailable due to massive outbreaks and restrictive measures to stop the spread.

For me it is no coincidence that the 50th Earth Day was celebrated while the petroleum industry collapsed, now demand is all but vanished, and the industry is essentially awash in the substance having to pay others to take the stuff off it's hands. All  of this is happening as air quality is the best it has been in decades in major city centers and while wild life is venturing out of hiding and our air quality is improving. The Earth definitely had a great "Day" this year for sure.

Please if you are having a difficult time emotionally and spiritually with this ongoing pandemic, reach out for help, there are many free call in services with professionals and so forth, I am sure there are options where ever you are, just reach out please, you are precious and we need you. It is perfectly rational and healthy to be emotionally over burdened right now, with so many uncertainties regarding health and the economy. I cry about once every four days or so, usually on my walks, but I cry mainly because it is all very sad and upsetting at present.

Besides making sure our emotional health is being supported, the other thing  we can be doing right now as the sleeping sick giant of the global economy struggles to come forth, we can all be vessels of grace, we can channel "hot grace" through our prayers to heal anything we can think of, people, systems, animals, politicians you name it. We can ask that this grace lead us to imagine a world beyond the lock down. It will take much endurance and dipping into the chasm of cosmic love to address the injustices this pandemic has uncovered. Myss says that we are to be Mystics without Monasteries, active in the world, we can be mystical activists. We were all born for this actually. As Theresa of Avila would say, we are to pray as if God were in charge and work as if we are in charge. The prayer we can do now, and the work is to figure out what sort of post pandemic culture we wish to have and work tirelessly to bring that about when the time comes. Work by helping register people to vote, help people to register to vote absentee, volunteer to help your community in any way you can, we can all pick up trash in our local regions. For those who have more energy, volunteer with civic and faith organizations that are addressing the numerous injustices the pandemic has uncovered, and of course support the arts and culture in your area as this is very important for any healthy society, and the arts have suffered and will suffer greatly as things like healthcare, housing and food will take much focus of local and national governments in the aftermath of this crisis.

Each one of us, each one of you is a vessel of deep love, and it will take that kind of love in the rocky days ahead. As Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr said, the long arc of history bends towards justice. What he said and led by example was that the bending towards justice depends on us all. So while we all sit and wait, the one thing we do not have to wonder about is loving our community and the planet enough to channel divine grace through our prayers, and let those prayers inspire us to acts of courage and endurance when we restart our lives. I for one do not want things to "go back" to the unhealthy status quo, I want culture to move forward, towards justice, which is another word for love.

Activities for the Apocalypse

The Mystery of the Resurrection

Christ Triumphant, Gallery of Icons Prilep North Macedonia

Easter 2020, both Eastern and Western, is one of the most unique Easters since the first one in Palestine over 2000 years ago. In the specter of mass death due to the current global pandemic, Christians throughout most of the world celebrated behind closed doors either alone or watching live streamed services online. One particularly poignant pre Easter podcast from the Vatican remarked that all fear in general is essentially fear of death. From a materialistic point of view, death is at its base, uncontrollable and the entry into the unknown. The first Easter, the podcaster related, meant the followers of Christ were hiding behind closed doors, mainly out of fear of being executed. Now, we all hide behind closed doors because we are afraid of dying from a virus, or causing death in others by exposing them to the microbe.

Art is the creation of organs by which the gods speak to humanity.

                                                                          Rudolf Steiner

Our Lady of the Good Death, France

Many of the world's Black Madonnas have some sort of association with death. Numerous Black Madonnas have the word "death" in their names, often associated with the word "good." As I have been living with the symbolism and questions of the Black Madonna now for nearly two decades, some revealing messages have been coming through these mysterious images. For me, I view the art form of the Black Madonna as a deep messenger for the lessons and gifts of the first Millennium of Christianity.

During the aftermath of the terror attacks of 2001, I was intensely interested in The Book of Revelation. (Forgive the commercial, but I go into this topic of The Revelation quite extensively  in both The Virgin of Guadalupe, Mysterious Messenger of Destiny and Activities for the Apocalypse Workbook, so get your copies today.) I delved into quite a bit of literature and theology regarding this enigmatic book. At that time, I read The Apocalypse of St John lecture cycle by Rudolf Steiner. What I found the most interesting and actually comforting to be honest, was how these lectures articulated where humanity was at present in terms of our shared evolution. These lectures conveyed how we humans were basically right in the middle of cosmic evolution, and also that humanity was about a thousand plus years away from really comprehending Christianity. In other things I had learned before that time, the context was that we had really not comprehended the Christ event at the time it occurred, that the original evangelization of the Christian movement and message was one that did not spread through thinking, it spread through a felt sense, it spread through mainly the heart and feelings. Keep in mind there was no organized church or clergy, no real dogma or theology and no written scriptures other than a couple of letters circulating through communities.

I still struggle with this to be honest, being trained as a scientist immersed in materialism. Since second grade, I had been taught proving anything required reasoning and facts led to the existence of anything. Belief was different than knowledge. Knowing was based on material items and experiences. Since there were no pictures or news articles regarding Jesus and the Crucifixion, and certainly no skeleton bearing the marks of execution, it did not happen according to material science and history. When one delves into ancient scriptures, meaning actual copies of scrolls dating from the first few centuries after Christ and the materialistic scholarship that goes into Bible archeology, it seems that not one thing in the Gospels can be proven as legitimate.

It is quite interesting though, that even in the ever politically correct world of calendars and carbon dating, the "CE" or "common era" used round the world starts at 0 around the birth of the Christ Child in Palestine. Why is that really, that the dates all cultures adhere to in terms of years, if nothing could be proven or the event did not happen?

The other thing I learned during these last 20 years of delving into The Black Madonna as well as Anthroposophical Christology is that each era in the collective maturation of humanity, there is a mystery to be encountered for the opening of our consciousness.

The mystery during the last era, the one where Christ incarnated and the first thousand years of Christian art and the Black Madonnas occurred, the mystery was that of Birth and Death. It was also a time of a great era of materialism. It is hard to really fathom this era being more materialistic than the one we are in now, but it was, so much so that it was actually difficult for people to incarnate, and after their deaths it was difficult for the soul to let go and progress across the threshold. A great example of this comes from the Greek saying, better a poor man on earth than a rich one in the afterlife. Hades was seen as a gray horrid eternal existence. Jewish tradition at the time really did not even contemplate an afterlife, it simply was not relevant or even imagined.

In the midst of this, Christ came, Christ incarnated into a physical body. One of the difficulties humanity had with this entire narrative, which was also hashed out quite a bit during the first thousand years of Christianity, was how is it possible for a god to become a human? In crude terms, why would a god want to voluntarily take a ticket in third class, when the god already had a luxury sleeper car?

The other great difficulty humanity had with this entire scenario was how could a god die? How could a god sit idly by and let themselves be executed? The last one was how could a physical body come back to life? See this mystery aspect of the era? It really was and is a mystery, as life and death and birth is truly a mystery. We humans try our darnedest to harness the mystery, from birth control to in vitro fertilization, organ transplants, respirators and other technologies that are supposed to sustain life,  to the control of death by killing of others through guns, wars, executions and such. Still, there is a mystery and a great challenge to birth and death. Even religious institutions try to control life and death, valiantly trying to control the after life by withholding sacraments, excommunication and such. Life and death are truly out of our hands for the most part, yet we keep trying to assert that control with sometimes frightening consequences.

In this milieu Christ came, he lived in a human body, endured death and rose again. Why?

Death we are told was a consequence of that Garden of Eden event. What is also true is death is the one experience only earthly creatures, specifically humans endure. Death is something the spiritual world did not understand. In order to help heal the rift between humans and the spiritual world, Christ experienced death. He then went on to educate the spiritual and angelic worlds on the experience, after which he rose from the dead and taught his followers for an additional 40 days for which we are told, the subject of those teachings could not be contained in all the books on earth. My intuition tells me that Christ probably was talking quite a bit regarding the mystery of birth and death, among other things. The simple take away from this entire drama, passion of Christ, is that there is  only a physical death, but the essence of who we are as members of the cosmos, that lives on.

When I taught Sunday School, ever so long ago, I was struck that we Christians have these pat phrases we utter endlessly. "Jesus is my Savior" "Jesus Died for my Sins" and so on, which are all deeply true but I am not sure we actually understand them or could explain them in anything but circular methods. The experience of witnessing in the flesh the reanimated body of a person that was publicly brutally executed I am sure was quite dramatic for all who were present. The fact that it was not a zombie out to get them is also for me very meaningful.

It is of note that the original ancient Christian art did not have images of a crucified Christ. In fact, the earliest images of Christian art are actually of Mary and the infant Jesus. If Christ is pictured at all, he is represented as a young man, the image of a sun god. It is only after the first thousand years of Christianity that the crucified and even dead Christ is pictured frequently in art. After that, with increasing gruesomeness, images of the mangled body of Jesus start making more appearances throughout the religious art of the late middle ages and the Renaissance.

Why?

I do not have an adequate explanation for this phenomena, other than maybe the mystery had been understood, that physical death was not the end. Easter is the recognition of this phenomena on one level, but it is also the remembrance of the great deed done for us all, the entire cosmic community, of educating us all that physical death is but a phase. For me, it is also a great gesture to help the spiritual world understand the trials of being a human, of how terrifying death is for those dying as well as those who are left on earth. There is now a deep intimacy between the spiritual world and humanity commenced from that time forward, that the spirit world now understands death. So the mystery was encountered by the entire cosmos because of the Christ.

I learned something quite interesting many years ago, about the journey of those who pass on how they travel and what they do after leaving their physical existence. We humans have the freedom that few in the cosmos have, to travel about to different levels of existence and continue the educational process of the spiritual world. Humans also "talk amongst themselves" as they leave and come in to the earth plane. Great events, such as World War II, produced mass death of the young. This means that those who die, die with a level of consciousness that those who die when they are old and live through their lives do not always have. When we think of those who died during WWII, through the horrors of the battles as well as those who died in concentration camps and through nuclear bombs, these souls brought quite a bit of consciousness as to the consequences of evil and materialism with them as they crossed the threshold. The souls that were incarnating at that time, the early 40's, they grew up to be the "baby boom" generation. Even with all the problems of this generation, what one can say is they birthed a global peace and environmental movement, these were the ones who protested the Viet Nam war, who flocked to communes, who pushed civil rights, women's rights and so on.

As the majority of the world sat inside during Easter while many are crossing the threshold of death from the pandemic, I wonder what these dear martyrs are communicating to the souls incarnating at this time?

As of this writing, it seems the poor and disenfranchised are the first wave of victims. Those who do not have the luxury of working remotely from home, who perform in vitally necessary jobs which often do not pay enough to live on, who do not have access to adequate health care and endure many underlying conditions from poor nutrition and hygiene because of slumlords and neglectful governments. What is it that these souls will tell the ones coming in about their lessons learned?

The world is focused on this pandemic, the opportunity that most are embracing is to love and to pray, to surround the globe with prayers of healing and of solidarity. What are the souls that are leaving and coming experiencing as they travel through the spiritual world? What are they leaving, what are they bringing?

We will have to wait a bit to see the fruits of this unique time in human evolution. From the end of WWII to the 1960's, the youth of the latter age were teens and young adults when they took to the streets demanding an end to institutionalized slaughter of war. That really was the first time in human history that humanity said no to war on such a large scale, and many from that time credit their protests to ending the Vietnam War.

What will the world look like in 18 - 20 years, what will be the values brought by the generation being born as we all sit indoors glued to our TV's?

Easter is a time of the breaking of the mystery of death. We are not quite yet at the place where we can totally understand this mystery, but we are starting to understand the love that was involved in solving the mystery, the love unleashed, the love the current Easter is asking us to exhibit. Maybe that is why the Black Madonnas are so involved in representing death, these images that were created during the last thousand years of the era mystery of birth and death. So many Black Madonnas were burnt and destroyed during the French Revolution, which was quite violent towards clergy and anything involving religious tradition. And yet, images of these ancient treasures remained, many Black Madonnas were hidden until the turbulence quieted down, new Madonnas were drawn, carved, painted and molded. They "came back" so to speak, in spite  of being destroyed.

We shall over come, because we are deeply loved.

May the peace and renewal of this sacred festival enrich you during this time of trial.

Christ is Risen, Christ Is Risen Indeed!