Angels in the Materialistic World

A late Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!
I hope all of you had a day filled with joy and family....ok, and food. :) We enjoyed an evening at my grandmother's house and some Christmas decorating during the day...

 

W plucking the candles from my 31st Birthday cake!

Now that I am settled in back home from this past session of teacher training, this is the time where I start to "live into" everything that we had discussed. Every day life situations bring me back to discussions and through my own experiences, I begin to make the information my own. A teacher told us last Summer, "go home and forget everything...".....I take that to mean, "you'll remember (and use it!) when you need to most."

One of the experiences that stood out most for me last week was an optional evening lecture held at The Christian Community (movement for religious renewal) within the town. (please follow this link to find out more....it is fascinating.) In short, The Christian Community is a worldwide movement for religious renewal that seeks to open the path to the living, healing presence of Christ in the age of the free individual. This life is at work most potently in its renewed Seven Sacraments, where the thoughtful, heartfelt devotion of the congregation and the words and gestures of the celebrating priest work together to form the vessel that can receive the grace of God.

The lecture I attended was entitled Angels in the Materialistic World, presented by Rev. Julia Polter.  I wasn't sure what to expect at first, but I felt imediately drawn in and excited upon walking into the space...

"Welcome to the Waldorf Church", a man said as he held open the door for us. I had to kind of snicker, but really, I had never before been in a church with violet lazured walls and a lack of right angles. It was very pleasing to the eye.

The lecture was about the siginificance of angels in our contemporaru mainstream culture. Rev. Polter began by bringing to mind the need for the angel today, still......statistics of Hallmark stores and their plethora of angel trinkets, the Victoria's Secret Angel Ad campaign...they are still all around us. It is, however, a matter of if we call upon them to assist or guide us that they will remain with us. 

She went on to assert that everyone experiences a miracle every single day. Whether it is something we recognize outright or not, that's another question....

Angel renderings by the Seminary students..

She also spoke of how we can call upon the spiritual world (i.e., angels) to assist us; even calling upon people who have crossed the threshold to guide us in our lives. Part of my practice as a teacher is to call upon the guardian angels of the children I care for in the evening before sleep. (i.e., "taking the children into sleep with you"..) Much of what I may need guidance with is too big for me....this is where I call for help. I do find that this experience often changes my path of thinking and truly does help.

In our waking state, we can work in such a way that our relationships to the spiritual world are strengthened, both to the angels and to the human souls who have died and are living in the world of the spirit. This relationship can manifest in our daily life in various ways. For example, in the German language, when one receives a sudden idea one says it has eingefallen–-”fallen in.” But what has fallen in and from where has it fallen? This can be the work of the angels, pouring their thoughts into mankind, or it can be the help of those human souls who are now in the spiritual world that wish to help us and work with us.

.......We need to realize that every child, every colleague, every parent is more than just a physical being. Every one contains a spiritual being as well, which brings something with it from previous earth lives. Recognizing the spiritual nature of other human beings is a prerequisite for finding our connection to the spiritual hierarchies.

Helmut Von Kugelgen

The following is an articles/essay which speaks of Working with the Spiritual World:

Working with the Angels

The article below is somewhat unrelated to the post, but very poignant and imporant. Entitled "Drowning in Dialogue"....one of the best I have read in some time.

Drowning in Dialogue

In conclusion, we will today take one feeling, one conception, which may be of great help to our souls. Unfortunately many people in our modern materialistic age find it very difficult to feel what I might call the holiness of sleep. (The materialistic life is being somewhat softened by this period of trial, and not only ought it to remain softened thereby — which can hardly be hoped if materialism remains at its present strength — but it ought even to be enormously and increasingly softened.) It is indeed a curious phenomenon of man's intelligence today that he is entirely devoid of respect for the holiness of sleep. We need only consider how many people who spend the evening hours in purely materialistic ways, go to sleep without developing the realisation — which indeed can never become a living thing in a materialistic mind — that sleep unites us with the Spiritual world, that sleep sends us across into the Spiritual world. (These things are not mentioned by way of blame, nor intended to drive people to asceticism: we must live with the world, but we must at the same time have our eyes open, for only thus can we wrench our bodily nature away from the lower and lift it higher.) People should at least become gradually able to develop a feeling which can be expressed somewhat as follows: ‘I am going to sleep; until I wake, my soul will be in the Spiritual world. There it will meet with the guiding-power of my earth-life, who lives in the Spiritual world, and who soars round and surrounds my head. My soul will have the meeting with my genius. The wings of my genius will come in contact with my soul.’ 

~Rudolph Steiner

Lecture, The Human Soul and the Universe