THE HUMBLE DONKEY OF HOLY WEEK

By Rev. Dr. Arthur Chang

 

THE DONKEY

By G. K. CHESTERTON

 

When fishes flew and forests walked

   And figs grew upon thorn,

Some moment when the moon was blood

   Then surely I was born.

 

With monstrous head and sickening cry

   And ears like errant wings,

The devil’s walking parody

   On all four-footed things.

 

The tattered outlaw of the earth,

   Of ancient crooked will;

Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,

   I keep my secret still.

 

Fools! For I also had my hour;

   One far fierce hour and sweet:

There was a shout about my ears,

   And palms before my feet.

 

On Monday of Holy Week, I woke up thinking about a poem that had not crossed my mind since high school. That is a long time ago. It is shown above. It took some time to get past the title, to retrieve the poet’s name, to be able to recite the first verse. I even got into the second verse. So here it is!

The Gospel writer, Matthew, laid out the commencement of Holy Week as follows:

Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King

 

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”

This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

 

           “Say to Daughter Zion,

‘See, your king comes to you,

gentle and riding on a donkey,

and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ ” 

 

The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them.  They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,

“Hosanna to the Son of David!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?”

The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” (Matthew 21:1-11)

 

Poets and mystics are enablers, bringing to our attention vital reflections of stories, secular or sacred, that we would be inclined to miss. Poet G. K. Chesterton’s parody of the oft-disrespected donkey is an example. The poem features the donkey’s voice recognizing the priceless gift he has received, a new sense of self eternally synchronized with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

Matthew’s Gospel tells of Jesus requesting the colt, a young undisciplined donkey.  Jesus riding the undisciplined colt, tells us the Christ presence within each of us must take charge of the body, the donkey, and ride it in the path toward achieving our highest spiritual objective.

The Hebrew prophet, Zachariah, wrote about the donkey as noted above. The king, he says, is gentle, riding a young donkey. While orthodox Christian teaching will say, as Matthew suggests, that Jesus was fulfilling the prophesy of Zachariah, religious scholars familiar with the Jewish  Midrash writing style will recognize it here.

Whether one does or does not recognize this style of sacred literature, all can appreciate the lesson of Holy Week that the humble donkey, one’s body, will serve best under the mastery of the Christ presence within each of us.

 

PRAYER IS A COSMIC THRESHOLD

By Rev. Dr. Arthur Chang

 

Imagine entering your Consciousness Station, the ubiquitous center of the universe to be empowered and refreshed. That is what prayer does for you. This reestablishes our affirmative relationship with God, especially after the stresses of life tend to wear us down. Observing electric cars at charging stations or our dinosaur gasoline cars filling up at gas stations, should remind us that we, too, need to fill up at our Consciousness Station. As an energy fill-up empowers a car, so does a consciousness fill-up empower our creativity, resilience and compassion for our chosen mission. Does the Sun not provides its life-giving energy to our world? Similarly, does the Invisible Presence provide the consciousness for us to participate fully in our lives.

 

The key to our effective participation is to realize we are living in a process-relational world where everything is related to everything else. This includes the Infinite Source. Our engines of consciousness can demand more energy to achieve seemingly miraculous results. Everything we desire to create will be from our empowered consciousness. Recognizing our enormous creative power inspired the priestly writer of Genesis 1 to declare that God made humans in his image and likeness. This was the genius behind our godlike action of being fruitful and abundant and having dominion to create our lives. On a secular level, William James said of this consciousness or attitude,

One of the greatest discoveries of my generation is that a man (male and female) can change his attitude and change his life,”

 

James’ offered the secular version of prayer. However, the spiritually brilliant Hebrew prophet, Isaiah, gave the more traditional version of prayer in saying,

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11) 

 

The words of James and Isaiah, and the priestly writer of Genesis 1, revealed the creative consciousness accessible through prayer. The astonishing achievements of our civilization are evidence of our evolution of consciousness.

 

Alfred North Whitehead, process philosopher, speaks of two fundamental aspects of process, “concrescence” and “transition.” This means things come into being and perish. They materialize and then transition into the future for the next manifestation. This is process or reality. Isaiah’s “Word” is like the transitional power of prayer. It is like our expressed idea or an architect’s plan, or a musician’s sequence of sounds, or our affirmation of our better health. The Gospel of John says, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” However, quantumly, this is not a onetime event, but is forever occurring. William James saw this as desirable change. Prayer can direct process or creativity. This is why Isaiah knows his word will result in a demonstration or concrescence. There are great similarities among these thinkers.

 

Prayer, however, works with immutable universal principles. Consciousness must include knowledge of principles and feelings, which our beliefs become. Principles are of science and feelings are of the mind. They form the consciousness for our demonstration.

 

Creativity to life is fundamental and creativity breaks out where prayer rings the bell of the Cosmic Source. Jesus’ expression of our consciousness from the Source was, “It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Here, Process Theology says that the Infinite is forever putting options before you for your choice.

 

The first choice is to let your prayer bring you to your Cosmic Home to recharge your consciousness for the work at hand. After your prayer rings the bell, you will be able to enjoy leaving your doubt and stresses behind so that you can be filled with the consciousness to achieve.

 

Cross this Cosmic Threshold into your greater becoming by means of your prayer!

 

 

THOUGHT: THE MAGIC WAND CHANGE

 

THOUGHT: THE MAGIC WAND CHANGE

By Rev. Dr. Arthur Chang

                                                                                                                 

One of the five unavoidable givens is “Everything changes and ends.” There is no way to stop change. As fish live in the ocean, humans live in a reality of change. Meister Eckhart said, “God is that great underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop.” Eckhart, the great medieval mystic, may well have described change as God’s nature, despite the paradox of ancient tradition that thinks of God as changeless. In this era, process theologians assert that God, though changeless in some aspects, does change in others. If we argue that God is love, where love is the compassionate responsiveness between two entities, then how can God love us if God cannot feel us individually? In loving us, God must feel us. To feel is to change.

 Thought is our magic wand of desirable change. Humans are not helpless pawns being moved about by a super mind. We have the freedom to think and to change situations we do not like for better ones. The present is the result of our past thoughts. The future, which is open, will be the result of our present thoughts. Thought will make these changes possible. George Bernard Shaw said, “Some men see things as they are and ask, “Why?” Others dream things that never were and ask, “Why not?” Dream is intuitive thought. Thought moves us from limited to unlimited possibilities. Thought is our magic wand for bringing desirable change. Even after twenty-seven years in prison, Nelson Mandela remained true to the thought of freedom for his people, who were living under apartheid in South Africa. Freedom seemed impossible, but it was achieved.

The magic is not simply thinking about the changes we wish to make. We do not just think about food and become satisfied. The magic is in knowing the path to our goals, or destinations, our purpose. Life is actively changing and we are part of its activities. Our thoughts do not change our situations as much as they change us to see new possibilities in our situations. Change is process. That is the nature of life. The process is governed by unchanging laws, which are the only unchanging things in our reality.

Gandhi said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” Gandhi is echoing the Chinese sage, Lao Tzu, who said, “The way to do is to be.” Our thought must be integrated with who we are and what we do. It is not just that we think; the magic of the wand of thought is that it translates into action—our action in the world.

Ernest Holmes says,

“When you want to do a big thing, get the mental pattern, make it perfect, know just what it means, enlarge your thought, keep it to yourself, pass it over to the creative power behind all things, wait and listen, and when the impression comes, follow it with assurance. Don’t talk to anyone about it. Never listen to negative talk or pay attention to it, and you will succeed where all others fail.”

The mental pattern is the magical pattern of the wand of thought. We must accept it and know it has a reality in our universe. This means it is in accord with the way universal laws work. It works for us by working through us. This is the power back of the creative process that life is. To wait and listen is to sharpen our senses to the intuitive inspirations that will come and following them with assurance. This means to act; to do your part knowing the universe is doing its part. As Mandela did not spend his time listening to negative talk, you, too, will find success if you are true to yourself, using the magic wand of change.