Douglas Smith’s sermon 6/23/2019
Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church

We don’t usually think of this time of year as midsummer, but it is just in these longest days that midsummer festivals are celebrated – and have been from time immemorial. Stonehenge, built in 2500 BC, is aligned to the position of the sunrise on the summer solstice. Native Americans, Ancient Chinese, and early Europeans all built celestial monuments and celebrated the summer solstice.
Our first reading, the poem by Carrie Richards, reminds us of this in the words:
This was when the whole world measured time
This is when the light would turn around
This is where the past would come undone
and the spinning earth will mark a new beginning

Midsummer’s eve is celebrated on this day, June 23rd, all around the world. It also marks the evening before the feast of the nativity of St. John the Baptist in the Christian calendar. In many countries, St. John’s Tide is still celebrated with bonfires, herb wreaths and dancing – in honor of old pagan traditions. It is also a little known fact that July 4 was once known as “little St. Johns day” in parts of England, due to the change from the old Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar in 1752 – in which 11 days were lost.
These midsummer rituals honored the sun-gods, of simply the power of the sun, during the longest days of the year. In connection with St. John’s Tide, we are reminded of John’s statement about Christ Jesus, that “He must increase, but I must decrease”; which connects with the sun diminishing after the summer solstice – until Christmas time, when it begins to increase again.
We are also reminded of the Holy Spirit at this time of year. The Holy Spirit is formally celebrated at Pentecost, 50 days after Easter, which was in June this year. The Holy Spirit is referred to by many different names in the old and new testaments, such as: Spirit of Life, Spirit of Truth, Spirit if God, and Comforter. It is interesting that the word for spirit in several ancient languages, including Hebrew and Greek has a dual meaning, for both “spirit” and “breath”, and is also associated with the life force, as in: “breath of life”. In ancient Sanskrit, the corresponding word is “prana” which refers to the “life force”, or “vital principle” that permeates reality on all levels including inanimate objects. In Hindu literature, prana is sometimes described as originating from the Sun and is connected with the elements of earth, air, fire and water.
These concepts are echoed in the prayer by Hildegard of Bingen that I recited earlier, where she calls the Holy Spirit “Sacred breath”, “Comforting fire”, “Fire of love”, “Life of all creation”, “Filling the world, from the heights to the deep”, “Raining from clouds, filling rivers and sea”.
Hildegard was a very remarkable woman, by the way. She had clairvoyant visions from a very early age, and in later life became a Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, and visionary. She lived in the 12th century, and was canonized a saint and doctor of the church in 2012.
In our second reading, Rudolf Steiner describes the process by which the earth breathes in and out its soul-life forces throughout the course of the year. Rudolf Steiner was another remarkable individual. Clairvoyant from an early age, he became a philosopher, architect, social reformer, and founder of the Anthroposophical society – which led to several key initiatives in education, medicine, agriculture and religious renewal during the 20th century.
There is a wonderful video made by NASA which shows quite vividly the breathing process that Steiner refers to. You can find it online by Googling: “NASA breathing earth”. It shows 20 years continuous satellite observations of plant life on land and at the ocean’s surface. It is mesmerizing to watch as the snows descend from the northern arctic during winter alternating with the greening of temperate zones and blooms of oceanic plankton during summer. Of course the process is the opposite in the southern hemisphere, which is now at the depths of midwinter.
But Rudolf Steiner emphasizes that there is much more going on than just the periodic warming and cooling of the earth. He describes how the forces from the earth and cosmos appear to spiritual vision at St. John’s time – which he calls the St. John Imagination. I will give a brief summary.
The earth below appears suffused with deep blue which is permeated by a silver-sparkling crystallizing lines, which live and work in the earth as cosmic will forces and ray out to the cosmos. Weaving around these ordered crystalline rays are disturbing shapes that continually gather and dissolve – and which represent human errors. Up above, one can perceive a rarefied light shining forth in gold and reddish tones that reveals a living cosmic Intelligence as polar opposite of the earth forces. And in that living light above, which Steiner names as the Archangel Uriel, one beholds a kind of creative, admonishing conscience, reflecting a high morality, who earnestly gazes down at the scene below. Human goodness and virtues are able to rise up along the silver-gleaming crystal lines and enter into the clouds of radiant Intelligence, transmuted into works of art, and culminating in the form of a white dove between the heavens and the earth.
Thus, he says, the activity and weaving of cosmic life above and below reveals a natural Trinity. The Earth-Mother below – who represents the material mother of all existence, the Spirit-Father above – raying forth cosmic intelligence and morality, and the divine offspring, the Holy Spirit, living and moving in between in the form of the dove.
So it is that we may find an image of the Holy Trinity arising out of nature at this time of year. It is reflected in the gospel image of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan river, when Jesus came up out of the water, heaven was opened and the Spirit descended on him in the form of a dove. And we can also see it in the vision of the prayer from the Tewa Indians that we read earlier. In which, we bring gifts of love to our Mother Earth and Father Sky, and they weave for us a garment of brightness out of the white morning light, red evening light, the falling rain and standing rainbow, so that we may walk fittingly where birds sing and the grass is green.
We are reminded in each of these images of the moral element that we must bring to our actions so that we can “walk fittingly”, and be received and blessed by the Spirit-powers.
Each day we should strive come closer to the ideal of truth, beauty and goodness of which we sing in our doxology, and seek to radiate it forth to the whole world with the intention that it may be “sung in every land, by every tongue”. Then we will truly begin to bring healing to our world, and to all the living beings that dwell upon it. It doesn’t matter whether we achieve it or not, only that we seek to reflect these ideals in all that we do.
Like us, the Earth, of which we are a part, is a living being with a soul and spirit. We must resist the materialistic view that our world as simply a ball of condensed dust and cosmic debris that happens to have evolved living plants, animals and humans because of a series of random accidents and the chance selection of favorable configurations of atoms and molecules over vast eons of time. Beware also of the idea that intelligence and consciousness are simply a serendipitous result of the complex connections between neurons and the action of neurotransmitters in the synapses of our brains. Nothing could be further from the truth. The cosmos and everything it contains is filled with of living, intelligent, and conscious spiritual beings. They permeate all of outer and inner space.
At our core, you and I are also living spiritual beings with a consciousness that transcends our human bodies. We find ourselves in these human bodies because we have chosen to live on this earth in order to learn to grow in love and wisdom. We identify strongly with our bodies – saturated as they are with sensory experiences, thoughts, feelings and life memories that hold our attention and prevent us accessing our higher, eternal selves. But by uniting with the wonder and beauty of nature at this glorious time of the year – the growth of plants, singing of birds, beautiful ocean, majestic clouds, sun and nighttime stars – to the point where we lose ourselves in it, we may hope to find ourselves again in the warmth and light of the cosmos and draw closer to our eternal spiritual selves. This is the true magic of midsummer.
We live in a material world, and the advancement of science and technology through which we understand it will undoubtedly continue. But so far, this so-called advancement has also resulted in the degradation of our environment and the release of so much chemical pollution upon the earth that the very existence of life is now threatened. Scientists tell us that we have already entered into the sixth great mass extinction event since the time when animals first appeared on earth 500 million years ago – and as many as 1 million species are now in the verge of going extinct.
Here’s what two leading climate scientists had to say: “We’ve reached a point where we have a crisis, an emergency, but people don’t know that … There’s a big gap between what’s understood about global warming by the scientific community and what is known by the public and policymakers”. and “Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences”.
We should listen to the voices of our courageous children, like Greta Thunberg, who are demanding that we stop destroying our world and start making the changes that are needed to enable them to have a future worth living. As individuals, it may seem as though there is very little we can do, but collectively we can make a difference.
Let us merge with nature, then, in this midsummer time. Let us heed the cries of our Mother Earth, and listen to what the Great Spirit speaks to our soul. As the apocalyptist said: “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear”.