Join me, Reverend Sage Cole, founder of the Helen Keller Spiritual Life Collaborative, each week as I share different doctrinal truths of the New Church that ground my life, that inspired the life of the great Helen Keller, and that create a portal for the new life that so many of us long for.
This week: The Word
Well, I’ve found the perfect corner of the world to speak about the Word — the Word of God.
People involved in the church, people interested and concerned with the spiritual life, people yearning for truth, for reality, for love, have long been concerned with this question of the Word of God: what it is to dwell with the Word of God, to be faithful to it, to listen for it, to live by it.
Within the New Church, we speak about the Word of God as being the inner sense we find told in the story of the Bible, and also in the story of the natural world — the ways of nature that we perceive and experience: the birdsong, the trees, the green, the cycles of life that move through death and decay to rebirth and germination, to blossoming and sprouting.
The Word of God, as the inner sense of the Bible, moves through the stories of the Garden of Eden, through the tumult of all the inner books of the Bible — the ups and the downs, the slavery, the freedom — all the way to the image of the Holy City, where again the tree of life is found, where the rivers flow, where there is life now within the containment of a jeweled city full of people of diverse origins and diverse pursuits.
The Word of God seems to be telling a story of evolution, of growth, of cycles of change — cycles of being bound and then freed again. And in the New Church, this Word is called to become flesh, to come into us, so that we observe it, we hear it, we read it, we study it. We look to the incredible insights Emanuel Swedenborg brought to understanding the scriptures, so that all that understanding, all that perceiving, then becomes embodied in our own stories. Because truth be told, each one of us as a being is also on a journey of evolution and expansion. Each one of us is going through phases of enslavement and freedom. Each one of us is on a journey to the Holy City.
So in that way, when I consider contemplating the Word of God, meditating on the Word of God, there are so many ways to do that. We can do it in a sanctuary, listening to someone read the scripture and share its inner meaning through a sermon. We can do it in our own private study, reading and meditating. We can do it with others. We can also do it by walking through the forest, noticing, appreciating, and coming to connect with the life — the Word — that is being expressed right here and right now. We can do it by paying close attention to our day-to-day lives, and the messages, the insights, the growing awareness that is beckoning us every moment.
The Word of God is constantly speaking. It’s up to us to listen. I have, by my bedside, Swedenborg’s four rules of life, and the first one is to daily contemplate on the Word of God. I believe that’s so important for each one of us, whether it be through the scriptures or through just deep noticing of the events and experiences of your own life. There’s something powerful about remembering that God is constantly speaking to us through these many different holy portals he has offered us — portals that have been expanding and growing all the time, to the point where now we have these portals of YouTube videos, where we can speak and share the Word we receive and feel called to express.
This Word is the Logos. It is truth being revealed, and it is accessible to all of us. It is the inner meaning — the deepest inner meaning — of all of life’s experiences. And it is beautiful, and it is good, and it is moving in this direction of expansion and wholeness.
Perhaps at this time more than ever, it’s important for us to expand and declare this wider, deeper understanding of how God speaks to us — especially when so many forces seem to want to take biblical stories at the most literal level and twist and turn them in oppressive ways. Let’s not be tricked into thinking that any of this is about the Word of God. The Word of God speaks truth. It speaks life. It speaks freedom. And it’s speaking right now. I pray that we are listening.
Thanks for tuning in. And if any of these truths particularly speak to you, I hope you’ll join us this fall for some larger conversations that I want to hold, because I’d love to hear your experience with them. These truths only are true insofar as we live them, and I’m so excited to hear about your experience.
Many blessings, friends.
Sage
