The Plural of God’s Love is a Feast
If you’re a regular reader, you know I’m a big word nerd.
Especially of the scriptures. For a long time the Bible seemed kind of, well, boring to me. Even as I was headed to seminary to arguably study it.
Honestly my plan was to just kind of fudge my way through the required Bible classes at my affordable Christian seminary then head across the street to the more expensive liberal pagan-ish seminary and take the really important classes like “Magic, Sex, and Liberation in Hindu Tantra,” “Revolutionary Witchcraft” and “Advanced Topics in Meditation.”
Imagine my surprise when I found myself transfixed by ancient Greek.
More and more of my time after the first unsatisfying pagan semester was spent with the Jesuits, the Franciscans, and even (gasp!) the Dominicans, who were notorious for quoting the super dense writings of Thomas Aquinas.
Don’t get me wrong, liberatory sex and revolutionary spellcasting are vital skills needed in this world. I was just discovering that using scripture as it was actually intended was far more powerful than I had first thought.
Need a little healing from the programming of religious language? Lots of my clients work on that in a Clairvoyant Counseling session.
I learned the original Greek meaning of the words sin, forgiveness, and redemption.
Hint, hint. They have nothing to do with being born again, Focus on the Family, or burning forever in the fires of hell. In fact, they’re more closely related to Buddhist philosophy and mean something like missing the mark, releasing captives, and having your perspective shifted by the indwelling consciousness of God.
Another important distinction that can’t be made from the English text alone is that there are four different kinds of love in the Bible all of them contextual and all meaning different things.
Our singular English ‘love’ could actually be eroticism, familial bonds, camaraderie, or agape which is God’s love for us.
In the Bible, agape is used whenever referring to the kind of expansive cosmic love God has for us and as a guide for how Christians are supposed to love each other. I think we can all agree some Christians have gone just a tad astray from that understanding, but we’ll leave that for another newsletter.
What I JUST discovered however is that agape in the plural form means feast, love-feast in particular. Now, the Romans were notorious feasters and loved to eat together. Roman feasting had all kinds of hierarchical rules as well as simply being a favaorite past time of the upper class.
But we often skip over the fact that much of Jesus’ societal healing work was done around a table.
Dominant Western Christianity likes to focus on the individual healing miracles because that matches our modern culture of healing individualistically. Plus they make for great stories. But the people of Jesus’ times were just as, if not more, interested in societal healing.
Thus, the table. It’s no accident that Jesus’ first miracle was at a wedding banquet. Or that he frequently dined with all the ‘wrong’ people. And of course his final instruction was really that we all break bread together and think of him while doing so.
Ever been excluded from the table of God? It happens. Let’s heal that up in a Clairvoyant Counseling session.
There are many paths to God, but what if one of them is the dinner table?
There’s so much more to say about how Christ was pointing to the eternal feast of God’s Kin-dom and how it might literally be about eating food together. I’ll just leave you with one of my favorite descriptions of the afterlife for you to contemplate as you eat your meals today.
Some say that heaven and hell are the same giant banquet table where everyone has a fork that’s three feet long. In hell everyone is starving because they’re trying to feed themselves. In heaven everyone is feasting because they’re all feeding each other.
May the love of God always come to you as a feast and may there always be more room at the table.
Upcoming Workshops! First one is Saturday March 23rd - Live and Recorded
Join me for an Agape Feast of Wisdom (Plus actual food!)
Workshops at Sakala Community Space in Denver
Teachings are live and recorded, followed by a shamanic healing clinic with David Darling, Jimi Brosius, and myself
Workshops are $27, healings are $20 for 20 minutes (seriously, such a deal for what I usually charge)
HEALING VIA THE PRIMARY CHANNELS - MARCH 23RD 4-7PM MT
The primary channels include the meridians, earth and cosmic channels, the original ‘stick figure’ blueprint, the pingala/ida/sushumna nadis, and more depending on your tradition. These channels are an excellent place to start whether you’re healing yourself or working with someone else. They hold emotions, mental stories, and spiritual blockages. Knowing how to effectively clear them is important for any healer.
HEALING BY PARTNERING WITH PLANT SPIRITS AND MUSHROOMS - APRIL 20TH 6-9PM MT
With so many people working with mushrooms and other psychedelic plants in Colorado it’s important to know how to respectfully partner with these powerful allies. When approached with curiosity, humility, openness, and conscious intent these medicines can be powerful beyond our wildest dreams.
HEALING THROUGH PRAYER AND PRAYING IN PICTURES - JULY 27TH 4-7PM
Spirit speaks in the language of pictures and though us humans need words to communicate, we can use those words to paint a picture of healing. This could include:
Describing a healthy flow of energy through diseased tissue
Calling in blessings of particular kinds of light
Opening pathways and removing obstacles for right work or a new career
Claiming emotional power and spiritual support for your healee
Releasing wounds and emotional scar tissue from the energy body’s matrix
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New Here? You can find lots more on my Instagram, all past newsletters on my Blog, and lots of services on my website included Clairvoyant Counseling, Courses, and Teachings.
Artwork? Top image is from The Last Supper by Elisabeth Ohlsen. Bottom images are of Sakala Community Space where we’ll be having our workshops.
