by Tim Dolan
Ascension, celebrated this Thursday, May 13, draws our attention upwards, towards the clouds. How did the disciples arrive at the momentous event?
Firstly, Jesus came into their lives as a wise and loving teacher. Someone who when encountered could open one's heart and whose gaze conveyed the deepest knowingness and unconditional love and acceptance. Eventually the most wonderful Being came to face death in his own timing until his earthly body fell silent and was lost to sight. Those who loved him experienced that loss in great sorrow.
Then the light of Easter dawned and they were able to perceive him and receive a new, more profound teaching and communion with him. They wished this to go on and on, but finally the day came when it was necessary for them (and eventually for all humanity) to let go of this quasi-physical presence and to have their attention lifted up to the clouds: the realm between the solid, gravity-bound earth and the cosmic expansion of the universe. This middle realm, permeated with the fire of the sun and the life-giving moisture that combine to draw forth the flowers of spring and summer, would be the last place they would see him in an outward way. These lovers, who had endured the horrific loss of the events of Golgotha and the exhilaration of Easter, now gazed into an empty sky instead of an empty tomb. Their bewilderment was not total since they had lived through the previous experiences and further teachings that left them in a somber mood, but now with an expectancy of what was to come from the future, from the unknown.
The culmination came on Pentecost, or what became known as Whitsun. Instead of being outer directed, this striking event emerged from within their very being. Each individual lover of Christ felt that they had somehow merged with the essence of the Christ spirit the fire of their individual spirits lit up within them, which was perceptible each in the other. Next, these spirit-permeated lovers of Christ encountered people arriving from all over, but it wasn't their foreignness that they saw. It was their common humanity and their common divinity that they saw.
A profound empathy and understanding came about, which shows us what is possible for humanity and a whole: A worldwide bond of all peoples no longer separated by nationalities, races, ethnicities or gender. No longer us and them, winners and losers, but a new cosmopolitan age wants to dawn in which we see and appreciate all that we have in common with every other human, extending to a love for the animal and plant kingdoms who surround us.
With our feet firmly planted on mother earth let our spirits join with all life, opening our gaze, opening our hearts to all that comes to meet us from the clouds, the clear blue sky, the sun, the stars, the planets and know that we are at home in the universe!