The Light of the New Christ

Sunrise, Crawford Lake, Maine 

September 2021

I woke up this morning touched by the light of the new Christ.

I don’t expect anyone to understand what I mean by this. However, the light of the new Christ shines in the distance and is already alive with the promise of the new day in that light. 

I can only see it from a great distance, like a faint galaxy, because I am at that distance from the light. But it touches me as it touches everything on this planet.

On each planet, God is engaged in great works. Within each sun, God is equally engaged in great works; and so within each galaxy. All of those great works are aimed at bringing the light of the new Christ into each corner of the universe so that it can be born and shine into the hearts of the creatures of creation. 

This is a true thing which, once again, I don’t expect anyone to understand; I don’t quite understand it myself. Yet I have been shown that it is true, and I thus testify to this, as is my duty.

To us, the planet Earth looks like an ancient place, over 4 billion years old. The record of its creation and the life that has grown on it—complex, mysterious, and intimate facts that have been pried with great effort from the geological and fossil traces of its action using our sciences—seem ancient to us. They represent the annals of a great struggle which has culminated in life as we know it on the planet today. Yet all of this has taken place, within the eye of God, in a mere instant. It’s a single passing thought in the mind of God, a casual nod of the head in the direction of all creation.

I say this easily; yet there is nothing truly casual in the action of God, because all of it is precisely calculated according to plans and desires beyond our understanding. 

So if we are touched by the light of the new Christ, so is our feeling deepened and so is our understanding illuminated that we begin to see these things, and how tiny we are. One does not see with one’s eyes or hear with one’s ears; when the light of the new Christ comes, one sees and hears and feels and touches with the soul alone, which has all the organs needed for Being. This question of Being cannot be served by our ordinary organs, because they are mere tools for existence. Being is from a higher level than existence, because it’s aware. A rock exists; things that are alive can Be. In a certain and absolute sense, existence ceases if there is no Being to perceive it; and thus this great (to us—for God it is done with ease) struggle which took 4 billion years to produce our planet and the creatures on it, including myself and you who read this.

Yet in the midst of all of this deep examination of time and the cosmos, the simple and true thing is that the light of the new Christ not only can come and will come, but does come, according to the preparation of the soil. The light of the new Christ does not belong to earth or the sun or this galaxy, but to awareness itself. And this is a deep light from within the soul that speaks truth and nothing else. It has no other language available to it because it was created only for this purpose, and there is only a single truth.

As an individual, without the help of this truth, I don’t see the extraordinary scale of the privilege which has been granted me—to live and to breathe. This is not a small thing but the greatest one; to live and to breathe is the beginning of the opportunity to receive the light of the new Christ, of which I know nothing and can only bow my head in awe. Even here, from within what I receive of this light, I realize that I will have to let go of it and move on into my life this morning in the most ordinary of ways, holding this secret within me. 

Its beauty is immeasurable; its truth is immutable. Each fragment of creation is vouchsafed with its personal portion of this glory and this responsibility; and yet we human beings walk away from it without a thought, for the most part not even sensing its presence.

 A week from today I will be 66 years old; and despite the fact that I am “a large presence” (I have been told this, anyway) I see that I know nothing and that the only validity I acquire is through the birth of the light of the new Christ, which I do not deserve and cannot honor appropriately. 

When the light comes and the truth is born, I suffer greatly, because it shows me where I am and what I have done, and I am not good enough. Yet it is only through suffering that that any goodness can come, because the anguish of my insufficiency brings me to my knees in such a way that the light of the new Christ loves me not less for my failures, but more because of them. This deepens my grief and increases my wish to honor that light with a compassionate intelligence. 

Even then, I do not know how to do this and must ask for help.

These are my impressions from this morning on September 24, 2021.

with warm regards,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola magazine.