Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

In our early childhood we are most happy when we are with our family, embedded in its warmth and security. Even in our childhood we have a growing urge to experience freedom, to escape the nest and start looking more independently at the world around us. Come adolescence we grab the first opportunity to spread our wings and by the time we are adults, one of our deepest drives is is to experience ourselves as free.…

John 14: 23-31

The heavens and the earth are in a beautiful relationship with each other.
Celebrating Ascension was to renew our awareness of this relationship.
Christ weaves and lives in both realms.
The plants and trees are visible signs of the harmonious relationship of the earth and the sky.

Human beings are a visible sign of the relationship of heaven and earth.…

Whitsun Address

Tom Ravetz

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

In the middle of the Gospel of St. John, in the middle of the long final conversations of Christ with His disciples, there is an enigmatic sentence. What does He mean with these words?

“Rise, let us go hence.” (John 14:31)

Thereafter, as if this sentence had never been spoken, the river of words flows on until finally the moment has come when He does indeed rise, and goes together with his disciples to Gethsemane, the place of treason.…

When we observe the seven candles burning at the altar we are reminded of the twelve tongues of fire that appeared and rested on the heads of the disciples and women on this day 2,000years ago.

The inner nature and gesture of the ever-upward striving flame is the same for each candle. Each candle though burns and radiates its own flaming light, each candle is we can see different.…