BAPTISM IS A CIRCLE
Gospel of Mark
1:9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 1:10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.
1:11 And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
The Earth is alive. It is inconceivable that anybody, like most of the people in western science may think that the Earth is not alive but merely a rocky planetarian entity floating or speeding in space, by chance or by the similarly inanimate universal nature.
However the case of the Earth is similar to the case of God, as the 94th Psalm insist, that: “He who implanted the ear, won’t he hear? He who formed the eye, won’t he see? He who disciplines the nations, won’t he punish? He who teaches man knows. The Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are futile.”
Thus God, who created life and the source of all life, himself, is alive.
Similarly,
the Earth who produces life, is alive. It must be an axiom to all who
mull about the existence for a single second daily. The whole
universe is alive of course, and in the universe, visible and
invisible, the Earth is an Island.
The Earth, they say, at least
is an ecosystem. And this ecosystem wonderfully recycle for example
water, but also wonderfully regulates the Oxygene level, the Ozone
layer. The Earth, as we call it Mother Earth is also a spiritual
entity, though she also has a body, quite comparably big as we can
see it. It should make our heads spinning as the Earth not only
orbits the Sun with an incomprehensible speed of 107 k km / hour, but
also keeps spinning around her axis with a rotational speed of 1600
km / hour where the speed of the sound is merely 1200 km / hour.
Thus, the rotational speed of the Earth is a dizzying supersonic
speed.
Nonetheless, the celestial body of Earth has lungs, the forests, in order to breathe the air. If there is no air, there is no breathing, and not only the living creatures will die, but the Earth will die as a living entity, and will look like the Moon or the Mars. The air is sacred.
Similarly, the living Earth has blood, as well, and it is water. As the blood circulates in the human body, so thus water keeps circulating from the polar glaciers and from the springs of the mountains, nurturing the brooks and the rivers who all run at the end into the seas and the oceans, where the major evaporation processes create the enormous cloud systems and cyclones to precipitate Earth and the forests and make the ground fertile for cultivation.
Without
water, there is no life. The Water is the blood of the Earth.
The
Bible says in the Book of Leviticus that “For as to the life of
all flesh, its blood is with its life. Therefore I said to the
children of Israel, “You shall not eat the blood of any kind of
flesh; for the life of all flesh is its blood. Whoever eats it shall
be cut off.”
As
the Blood is the Life in the body, so is the Water is indispensable
for Life on Earth, that is why water is sacred, as well.
The Circle is sacred, as well,, as circulation is sacred, as the air, the water, the blood is circulating and itself the Earth is spinning and orbiting.
The
orbit and the rotation of the Earth give us the the recurring year,
especially in moderate climate, where we have all the four
seasons.
However, there is an other circle, the spiritual one.
The
circle of the family, the friends, the clan, the community, the
nation. The spiritual circle can be very populous, but in the
ultimate circle, there are only two.
The soul and its Creator God.
The
very Baptism of Jesus was like a manifestation of this ultimate
sacred circle,
when the Holy Spirit, in a visible form, the very
presence of descended upon Jesus, and the Heaven was opened with the
voice, saying: “You
are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
The
Baptism of Jesus
was indeed an extraordinary event, however this sacred circle is
present in every soul, as
in a spark form, God’s presence dwells in every soul, listens and
talks to everyone of us.
The soul and its Creator God is the
ultimate circle, as God’s omnipresence and omniscience connects us
with the whole universe, with all dimensions, even with time, with
the past, the present and the future, simultaneously.
That is why prophecy is really possible. Dreams and visions often
come true.
Around eighty years before Jesus was born, there was a man, remembered as Honi the Circle-Drawer, a pious scholar.
During an extraordinary drought people said to Honi the Circle-Drawer, "Pray that rain may fall." “All right”, he answered, " but go out and bring in the Passover ovens, that they be not softened." He told them to do so, because the ovens were made of clay. In a rainfall, they could be damaged. So he prayed, but the rain did not fall.
He was quite annoyed, how on Earth, it could have happened.
Imagine our prayers. Many times we pray and we do not get it granted
Honi, the Circle Drawer, got a bit annoyed, because he was a righteous man, and he demanded, that God must have listened to him.
He drew a circle and stood within it and said before God, that "Master of the Universe, your children have turned their faces to me, for I am like a son of your household. I swear by your great name that I will not stir from here, until you have pity on your children."
According to the historian Josephus and to the written tradition, the rain began falling drop by drop, then as a rainfall. It was a miracle, still some people accused him and reported him for wizardry to the court.
The head of the court, Simeon ben Shetah told him, saying, "Had you not been Honi, I would have pronounced a ban against you! But what shall I do to you? You importune God and God performs your will, like a son that importunes his father, and the father performs the son’s wish. Of you the Scripture says, 'Let your father and your mother be glad, and let her that bore you rejoice.' "
Some people, like Enoch and Moses, Elijah and Elisha, are like a friend to God, and their request are granted. They are like a tree planted by the streams of water, that produces its fruit in its season, whose leaf also does not wither. Whatever they do, shall prosper.
They were prophets, the men and women of God. But finally God, has sent his own Son, to make the innate and invisible circle visible, as it is written, that “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” May the eternal God be blessed in the Son by the Holy Spirit, AMEN
