Verwandte Artikel zu Stations Of The Light: Renewing The Ancient Christian...

Stations Of The Light: Renewing The Ancient Christian Practice Of The Via Lucis As A Spiritual Tool For Today - Softcover

Ford-Grabowsky, Mary

 
9780385511650: Stations Of The Light: Renewing The Ancient Christian Practice Of The Via Lucis As A Spiritual Tool For Today
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0385511655 ISBN 13: 9780385511650
Verlag: Image Books, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Describes the fourteen symbolic events that make up the Christian Way of Light, the ancient spiritual tradition that celebrates the post-resurrection events in the life of Jesus Christ following the events of Easter, introducing a variety of spiritual practices, exercises, meditations, prayers, and other activities designed to enhance one's spiritual practice. Original. 12,500 first printing.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

MARY FORD-GRABOWSKY, a writer, editor, teacher, and scholar of mysticism, holds a doctorate in theology and spirituality and a master’s of divinity, both from Princeton Theological Seminary. She has published numerous inspirational and academic articles and book reviews, and edited four highly praised books: Prayers for All People, Sacred Poems and Prayers of Love, Sacred Voices, and WomanPrayers.

Aus dem Klappentext

While Christians of all denominations are familiar with the Stations of the Cross, few are aware of the Stations of the Light, a practice that came into being through inspiration from ancient Roman sources, which listed most of these new stations. Recognized by the Vatican in its Jubilee Year 2000 campaign, the good news of healing and salvation found in the Stations of the Light serves as an important theological balance to the darker themes of the Stations of the Cross.

STATIONS OF THE LIGHT is a clear and inspiring guide to making this ancient ritual part of contemporary Christian life. The stations mark the fourteen sacred events in the post-Easter story from Jesus Rises from the Dead to Pentecost: The Risen Lord Sends the Holy Spirit. For each one, Mary Ford-Grabowky presents a variety of spiritual practices, beginning with relaxation and releasing the imagination, which invite readers to form their own realistic and sacred image of the event. Other recommended and optional exercises designed to help convey the story and foster inspiration include ancient and contemporary meditations, reflections, and prayers, as well as journal writing, art work, music, and mantras.

Like Lauren Artress s Walking a Sacred Path, which generated wide interest in walking the labyrinth, STATIONS OF THE LIGHT revives a tradition rich in spiritual, practical, and representational power.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

chapter one

THE WAY OF LIGHT


A New Journey


This book is an invitation to practice a new spiritual journey called the Way of Light, which celebrates fourteen of the most inspiring events in the post-Resurrection life of Christ on earth. These great archetypal moments in the Christian story, which are called the Stations of Light, have been known and cherished since the first century, but as far as we know were never gathered into a precise devotional practice until the present time. Also known as the Via Lucis and Way of Resurrection, this devotion follows the footsteps of the risen Christ and his friends for fifty days, from the dawn of the first Easter Sunday through Pentecost, along a path of transforming joy.

Part I of this book describes the rich origin and significance of the new devotion for Christian spiritual life. Praying the Stations offers gifts of grace that awaken the body, illumine the mind, and train the heart for happiness. Among the gifts are love and faith, which are the purpose of all prayer, as well as peace and comfort, reverence for the sacred, and joyful optimism about the future and growing toward elderhood. Part I also contains a chapter on the Way of the Cross to show how its focus on a single tragic day of Jesus' life is like telling only the first part of a story and leaving out the happy ending. The Way of Light takes up the story with the Resurrection and celebrates the awe-inspiring events that occurred from then on.

Part II, the devotional section of the book, contains spiritual practices for praying the Stations of the Light. The practices for each station are designed and arranged for maximum soul-building, community-building, and loving intimacy with God. They involve the whole person--body, mind, and spirit. One exercise teaches relaxation and centering; others elicit your insights and new ideas; some release imagination and creativity; while others evoke deep feelings and thoughts; still another invites movement to awaken the body (which has been called body-prayer).

Here is the Way of Light:

Station 1: Jesus rises from the dead (Matthew 28:5–6).

Station 2: Women find the empty tomb (Matthew 28:1–6).

Station 3: The risen Lord appears to Mary Magdalene (John 20:16).

Station 4: Mary Magdalene proclaims the Resurrection to the apostles (John 20:18).

Station 5: The risen Lord appears on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–27).

Station 6: The risen Lord is recognized in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24:28–32).

Station 7: The risen Lord appears to the disciples in Jerusalem (Luke 24:36–39).

Station 8: The risen Lord gives the disciples the power to forgive (John 20:22–23a).

Station 9: The risen Lord strengthens the faith of Thomas (John 20:24–29).

Station 10: The risen Lord says to Peter, "Feed my sheep" (John 21:15–17).

Station 11: The risen Lord sends the disciples into the whole world (Matthew 28:16–20).

Station 12: The risen Lord ascends into heaven (Acts 1:9–11).

Station 13: Waiting with Mary in the Upper Room (Acts 1:12–14).

Station 14: The risen Lord sends the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:2–4).


The Empty Tomb: A Lost Symbol


The Way of Light opens at dawn with the dark beauty of an empty tomb. Like a cave where a holy man meditates for years in search of illumination, hewn out of natural rock, this most sacred of all sacred spaces has a natural earthen floor and opens onto a lush garden that is almost invisible in the pale light of dawn, but soon will be radiant. Angels in dazzling white clothing make the astounding announcement that the cave is empty because Jesus, whose body was placed there three days ago, is risen from the dead.

The empty tomb with all its dark, silent fertility is one of the two primary symbols of the Christian faith but has long been neglected in favor of the other, the cross. The two great images should be seen as inseparable complements of one truth, although they are virtually opposites in meaning. The cross is a place of cruelty and violent death, while the empty tomb is a site of new life. On the cross, Jesus is totally emptied out, and it appears that mindless human destructiveness wins a battle over the forces of goodness, but in the empty tomb, God's infinite creative power restores what evil human behavior temporarily took away.

Without the empty tomb and all that it births, from the joy of Easter to the ecstasy of Pentecost, the Christian story would end meaninglessly with Jesus dehumanized on the cross, defeated and discredited. His traumatized followers would flee for their lives in fear of a similar fate and never regroup, with the result that the spiritual community that has endured for two thousand years might never have come to be. Jesus, his mother, Mary Magdalene, Peter, and all the other protagonists in the story would have slipped out of human memory. Without the Resurrection, Jesus' destiny would be no grander than that of other "lower-class dissidents," as the Romans termed young men whom they crucified for disturbing the peace.

But the story does not end there, of course. Only a few days after Jesus' death, he reappears, and that is the whole point of the story. The tomb opens like a womb giving birth, and he is released into Resurrection-life. The rebirth archetype is so incomprehensible and overwhelming that angels are sent to enlighten humankind with the mind-bursting news of life after death. Throughout the subsequent fifty days of the first Easter season, the light grows increasingly brighter. The journey that began in the first light of dawn on Easter Sunday morning progresses through varying degrees of sunlight to its culmination in blazing fiery light on Pentecost. Here, we followers of the Way learn to believe that darkness is always overcome by Light. We need only wait for it.

In the dazzling light of the Pentecostal flames, with Jesus' disciples gathered around his mother, one in prayer and faith and love, united in the new spiritual community that is being born, the Way of Light draws to a close, and the two paths on which Jesus journeyed, the Way of Sorrows and the Way of Light, are brought into their right relationship as two halves of a whole, two complementary phases of a single path.


Why Did the Cross Become Dominant?


Why did Western Christianity allow the cross to become the dominant symbol while the empty tomb signifying the Resurrection lay in the background like an unexplored treasure chest? How is it possible that, in the story of ancient Rome's brutality, the archetypes of negativity could overpower the breathless joy and heart-stopping beauty found on the Way of Light? This difficult question requires painstaking research and reflection that lies outside the scope of this book.

A tradition exists (that will be mentioned in Chapter 2) according to which Mary the mother of Jesus made daily visits to the sacred sites where Jesus suffered and died as well as to the sites of the Resurrection and ascension. If this were historically accurate, it would suggest that early Christianity honored both the sorrowful and joyful mysteries of Jesus' life, not only the ones pertaining to suffering. Nevertheless, the Way of the Cross emerged markedly over the Way of Light and has colored Christian spiritual practice since the Middle Ages.


Alternative Versions of the Way of Light


As the scenes commemorated on the Way of the Cross changed rather dramatically over the centuries (which will be discussed in Chapter 2), different versions of the Stations of the Light are possible. For example, in this book, the Second...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Image Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2005
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385511655
ISBN 13 
9780385511650
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
214
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
CMN Printpool Inh. Mathis Neumann
https://www.also.com/ec/cms5/en_6000/

Friedrich-Karl-Str. 9
Hamburg
22391
Deutschland