 |
|
|
Dear Friends,
The miracle of spring after the cold of winter is everywhere we look and every green bud is Holy! New life reminds us in spring that winter is not the final chapter in the life story. The resurrection is a multidimensional symbol with many layers of meaning. Easter is about the resurrection as well as the miracle of our hearts healing and transforming. We face up to our spiritual failings during Lent. It is the difficult journey of looking at our own areas that are dead, our demons, wounds, and shadows, We seek to diminish our small selves that live in fear, anger and despair. During Lent we look at the ways in which we have been living as ice kings and queens in the frozen pain of a kind of emotional winter. In Lent, we commit to practices of intentionally asking for God to love these parts of ourselves so they can heal and come to life again.
Symbols and religious stories are at best relational and need change and transformation as we grow spiritually. The painting pictured above of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, (Mary Magdalene is often a symbol of the Black Madonna, for she was the one who has lived in mystery because she was left out of the Christian story) is pictured here in partnership with Jesus. Not only does this image bring her back into our religious imagination but it portrays Jesus not as a rugged individualistic celibate living a solo life, but rather a man in spiritual partnership and in loving relationship. The coming together of our male and female aspects within us, is also symbolically expressed in images of Jesus and Mary Magdalene together. The two becoming one. The Christ-Sophia is the divine partnership of love within us that brings healing and wholeness within. They are together at night, both experiencing the awe of our cosmos of stars and galaxies. God's creative love brings us intimate love and relationship with the divine and a magnificent cosmic creation of both awe and intimacy.
Jesus and Mary Magdalene invite us to catapult ourselves out of despair and into the joy that is the love of God, never from denying our pain or our Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but in feeling our feelings. Today, another disorder that many of us are suffering from is humorously called Post Tumpatic Stress Disorder. Like a good hospice worker Mary Magdalene cares for Jesus, as he cared for her in life. As hospice workers we are called to remain awake, and we commit to being witnesses to all natural life cycles and to the real and inevitable pain and suffering of life and death and as well as the joy of the miracle of the life cycles. We pray and ask for God's help. We tell the truth about the evils of the Roman and or the current American Empire where domination over the less fortunate is celebrated. We open our eyes and see the cosmic vision that we are apart of all of nature that is alive and sacred and we gives thanks.
"But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him....not recognizing Jesus and thinking him
to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him,and I will take him away." Then
Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" Gospel of John 20:11-12, 15-16)
Mary Magdalene could not recognize Jesus at first in the tomb because she had been crying so much she could barely see. Many of us have grief and trauma from living in terror that comes from poverty, isolation, domestic violence, mental
illness, addiction, ecologic catastrophe, war, torture etc. We are suffering from a collective Post Trumpatic Stress Disorder after the presidential election just a few months ago. It is ti
me to do what Mary Magdalene did. Cry, weep, express our terror, rage and despair and comm
une with the world of spirit-TOGETHER!
We will celebrate Easter in a sunrise worship service on Torrey Pines State Park Beach at 6:30 am Sunday April 16th and hope to have you join us.We followed Jesus and Mary Magdalene metaphorically into the Cave of Contemplation during Lent as a spiritual practice this year. Join us on Easter as we share a "Cosmic Vision of Jesus and Mary Magdalene" and following our service we will enjoy hard boiled Easter Eggs, hot cross buns and coffee on the beach.
When you love someone, you care for them when they are suffering, or when they are being falsely accused, or being bullied, beat up, tortured, and when they are dying. Mary Magdalene never left Jesus from when he was engaged in a radical life work or teaching how to transform hearts,traveling together, celebrating Passover
and sharing their passionate love of God. They both model what it means to live a life of devotion and service.
The Christian message is symbolically told in the Easter story of the resurrection through the love connection of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Love is more powerful than pain and death. She sees him in a cosmic vision. Jesus sees her from another dimension. Love is why we are here.
He comforts her and encourages her to go share her vision of love.
Some of us believe that Mary Magdalene took the radical teachings of the wisdom Jesus to France. Walt and I plan to visit the La Saint Baume's Caves of Mary Magdalene in July this summer after our "Spirituality and Sustainability" Conference at the Vatican and Assisi Italy.
Science now teaches us what our common sense always knew. The witness changes reality. When we love someone they transform. Jesus and Mary Magdalene came to teach what is called the divine feminine. They modeled loving relationship, tenderness, and caring for "the least of these," as well as the least parts of ourselves, our most vulnerable parts of ourselves that used to be alive but died from a lack of love. The symbol of Jesus and Mary Magdalene together is for me a needed and
truer transformed vision of the Christ-Sophia, within all of us, in this historic time.
Buddy our beloved dog is dying and is on hospice care. We found an inspired vet who is both well trained at UC Davis, but one who is counter cultural, for she understands the limitations of modern science when it comes to dying and death. She has a veterinarian practice devoted to hospice and the need for compassionate care for animals that is not about saving their physical life, but begins with an acceptance of death as a nature of the life cycle. She provides pain management and love for the animals and their families. Her name is Dr. Kristi Freeman in the El Cajon area of San Diego www.kristi-freeman.com and I celebrate her visionary and urgently needed service to our community and recommend her to everyone.
Our regularly scheduled Sunday Dream Group will meet on the 3rd
Sunday -
April 16th
but will meet not at our regular time of 3-5 pm but a
little
later to
accommodate
Easter
family
plans, so join us at 4:30-6:30 pm Easter afternoon.
Join us on Sunday April 23rd for worship at 5 pm for an Earth Day Celebration
You are also invited to plant prayers and vegetables in our new community garden in our front yard. Come back in few weeks and pick fresh vegetables for your family to enjoy.
April 29th Saturday morning 10 am Climate Change March.
Dreams:
Entering Personal, Community and Sacred
Consciousness
Friday, May 5th 6:30pm-8:30pm
Rev. Bonnie Tarwater and Dr. Walter Rutherford
~ Wine & Cheese reception begins at 6pm ~
$10 General Admission / $5 Students / CEs available*Co-sponsored by the International Association for the Study of Dreams, San Diego Group.
See www.asdreams.org for information about IASD and the upcoming Dream Conference in LA this June.
EVENT LOCATION: Green Hall on the campus of Alliant University, 10455 Pomerado Rd., San Diego, CA 92131
CenterforIntegrativePsychology.org
* CONTINUING EDUCATION for Licensed Professionals require $20 certificate fee made payable to Alliant UniversityDreams:
Entering Personal, Community and Sacred Consciousness
Let's explore humanity's dreaming dimension together through
a sampling of historical, religious, and psychological
perspectives. How might dreams support the evolution of our
personal and collective consciousness? How might we enrich
the relationship with our individual and communal dreamlives
in the contemporary world? Approaches to facilitate a
deepening experience with dreams will be discussed and
demonstrated.
|
Women's History Museum of California
Liberty Station, 2730 Historic Decatur Rd #206 SD CA 92106, (619) 233-7963
May 10th a Wednesday full moon, 6-8 pm
$5 donation
Women's Radical Revolutions of Peace and Love
Past, Present and Future presented by Rev. Bonnie Tarwater
This interactive workshop begins with the idea that it is past time for us to wake up to the suicidal course we are on as a human species and ask what we should do about it. We will explore how we, as women, are uniquely called to create 'Radical Revolutions of Peace and Love'. We will explore past 'Revolutions of Peace and Love' in places as diverse as Liberia, led by Nobel Peace Prize winners, Leymah Gbowee, and Mairead Corrigan in Ireland, to Julia Ward Howe who inspired Mother's Day here in the USA over one hundred years ago as an appeal for women to unite for peace in the world, to the successful sex strikes in ancient Greece and modern Columbia, as well as the wisdom of indigenous grandmothers around the world and especially the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina. This workshop will include a sing along of "peace songs", as well as a power point presentation of images depicting many women's revolutions from the recent Women's March, the largest global march in the history of the world to One Billion Rising and a women's revolution of dance around the world. We will talk in small and large groups and leave the workshop with commitments to create a 'Women's Radical Revolution of Peace and Love' individually and collectively.
Our Common Home Counseling Center
Honoring intimacy in all our relations,i
ntegr
ating psych
ology, art,
spirituality, ecology
and the ancient wisdom traditions.
Counseling Center services include;
Short and long term psychotherapy, Group therapy, Dream work, Trauma and addictions
Pastoral Counseling and care of religious wounding, Spiritual Direction, Aging and Menopause
Past Life Regression, Pre-marital counseling, Healing Rituals, Visual and performing arts therapies
, Women's and eco-feminist issues, Energy Healing...........
Bridging head and heart, male and female, science and religion, East and West, right and left brain, body and spirit
....
|
|
IASD yearly conference will be in LA June 16-20th 2017www.asdreams.org, to register. We will have a IASD San Diego luncheon during the conference.DREAM BALL come dressed in a dream character from your dreams! Bonnie is a San Diego rep for IASD San Diego call with any questions.
Regular programs
Weekly Lectio Divina
and Centering Prayer every Wednesday, 10-11 am Lenten program
Thursday weekly Dream Group
7-9 pm, in person or Skype
Dream Group first and third Sunday of each month, 3-5 pm before church worship
Regular worship services every Sunday at 5 pm at 13014 Calle de Las Rosas, SD, CA 92129
Musicians needed, praise band for church, Rancho Penasquitos area, off 15 and 56 freeways, every Sunday 5 pm worship, piano, keyboard, guitar, bass, drums, flute, vocalists, trumpet etc. Very Progressive theology! All levels welcome, very easy clear organized charts and music provided. Gospel, Folk-Rock, Taize Chanting, Musicals. Soup dinner after worship!
call for more info.
Mission Statement
Encouraging awe and loving intimacy with all of creation and the cosmos, we explore the visual and performing arts, dreams, wisdom teachings of Christ-Sophia in the Bible and newly found Gnostic gospels, prayer, social activism, and relationships as we work to care for our common home Mother Earth, in a new kind of local and global community. Creating beloved community, we study the wisdom traditions and teachings of mysticism. Not following the "traditions" of the Christian church but the teachings of Jesus and Mary Magdalene we also honor all the world's religious wisdom teachings. We are a home church with people around the world via the Internet, exploring a new religious story for our time.
Vision
Our vision is to spiritually awaken and raise our consciousness about the sacred nature of all life and our inter-connectredness in order to come together as a human family and
care
for our common home and love God/dess with all our hearts, souls and minds and creation as ourselves.
|
|
|
| Please share your prayer requests with us at Church for Our Common Home. |
|
Bonnie and Walt are attending the a "Spirituality and Sustainability Conference" this summer in Rome and Assisi Italy. The goals of the conference include networking with centers and movements, exploring visionary recommendations for the future and supporting young ecologic leaders seeking transformative global change on spirituality and sustainability. We will attend lectures on the Papal Ecology Encyclical Laudato Si as well as attend a Papal Audience.
|
|
|
|
|
|
