The Promised Land

Joining our voices with angels and archangels 

and all the company of Heaven

Beloved children of Patriarch Abraham, whose very seed has filled this beautiful earth, you who were once called out of the wilderness, out of that place called Ur, who once gathered in tents to hear our One God's call, now hear again to what the spirit is saying to all of us.

Our God, the One whose being is all being, whose self is the all in the all, who is both creator and lover of us all, who made us for communion with each other and himself, is asking us to listen again to His ancient call to us.  He made us as vessels into which His great wisdom and spirit would flow to continue His great on-going, ever-living, ever-new creation. He, by whom we sing ourselves into being, is inviting us again onto the journey to that long ago Promised Land.

We were first called out of the wilderness, out of the vast desert of unknowing, to gather as one people. At that first calling, we were gathered into one great communion, but that union was broken by fratricide and jealousy which caused us to fall into slavery.  For 500 years, we staggered under the heavy burden of slavery until another was sent to guide us out of slavery, back into the desert and on the way toward a Promised Land.

We grew in wisdom over those two generations in the desert, listening again to words which would inform and form our hearts and minds for the next leg of our journey. Finally, we were ready. Together, as a nation of people, we crossed the River Jordan. Once a sacred river, yet now a terrible divide, we crossed over with the hope we were entering a land "flowing with milk and honey," rather than the place of terror it is today, with bullets and bombs shattering throughout this once holy land. We didn't understand that it was always meant to be a mythic journey and the beautiful River Jordan, a symbol of the river of life, was a place of new birth into wholeness and union, not a great dividing line.

Later, after several thousand years of on-going fighting in the name of our One God, we sought and were led to another promised land, again a place of hope and promise of freedom from oppression. Yet, soon after stepping onto that new soil we again found ourselves fighting over many issues, religious and political, under the banner of "One nation under God," again slaughtering those who lived there in order to found a place of peace and prosperity.

But, the Promised Land is not a country, a parcel of real estate. Rather, it is a magnificent kingdom within us. It is a place of peace, compassion, hope manifested in radiant technicolor out into our collective life together.  Unless we understand this ancient truth, now, we will always be people seeking and never finding.

While Abraham led us out of the wilderness and Moses led us back into the wilderness and on the way into the promised land, it was Jesus who led us on the way to the real promised land and taught us how to enter it. This is a real and authentic inner spiritual realm of perfection, a realm of light and love and hope and ever-living creation, energy, power and joy. It is all that is real.

It was always supposed to be a spiritual journey, but back then our young spiritual eyes and ears were closed.  We could not hear nor see what the Spirit was saying to us through Abraham or Moses and sadly not even through Jesus who was killed for this message.

In fact, Jesus' own baptism in the River Jordan is a powerful iconic image of this message:  the sacred river of life, which this river symbolizes, unifies all people as Jesus' own message calls for - the love of neighbor - even enemy - as we love God. To Jesus, the river of life calls us all together: Jew and Palestinian - all people - because all people are made in God's image, all people have within them the kingdom - the universe within, the universal mind -  which is visibly within them.  Clearly, this ancient and sacred River Jordan was never meant to serve as a boundary, a dividing line separating brother peoples.

Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is within you."  It is not a place out there somewhere on our Earth.  It is beyond the river of this world, beyond the River Jordan.  It is in us - it is the whole universe with us and that entire universe is for all time, all dimensions, all that is, and it is within our minds and hearts.

Love is the key that gently opens the door into that inner kingdom, that very real Promised Land. It is in that soft place of your heart which has the strength and courage of an entire army, more power than an arsenal of weapons. To love your enemy, to hold the dying man in your arms who was killed by your own weapon, and weep at the sad realization of ages, of the madness accumulated into that one moment, is the kind of courage that opens that door.

Today, we can understand what God was saying to us all those years ago. We are Jews, we are Christians, we are Muslims, we are the people of the land and people of the heart, we are all chosen because all human beings are chosen. We have all been called to participate in this great adventure and listen to the Spirit and join our voices together to lift up this great creation and experience this great encounter. 

We can join our voices today with the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven circling that great tree of life that rises up out of the Garden of Eden, watered by the river of life. We can do this.  I know we can.