In the autumn fruit trees stand ripe for harvest. With its fruit the tree offers its own living substance to the earth. It makes this sacrifice so that new life, so that new trees, so that more fruit can grow and develop. That fruit surrounds an inner kernel, a seed. When the fruit falls, the kernel, the seed, is born. Life continues and metamorphoses. God made the tree's fruit so abundant that when cared for by humans, the fruit is harvested so that the tree's abundant life can feed others.

This week we watched in horror as malignant forces harvested human lives. We struggle to make sense of such madness, for we know that a human life is not fruit for the taking. Human lives are not food for some malignant appetite.

We have been shown, again and again, pictures of overwhelming destruction. And in our proper horror before the face of evil, we may ask ourselves how a good God could allow such things to happen. The answer is that the capacity for evil is the shadow side of God's gift of free will. God values our freedom of choice. He values it perhaps more than we do. Our freedon has such an enormous value because it is the only way we will learn to develop his creative love. God has taken an enormous risk in creating human beings free to choose. We are free to develop ourselves toward good or towards evil. God allows evil to exist. The function of evil is to rouse us, to stimulate us to develop our true, higher humanity.

We are beginning to awaken after the shock and daze of this week. We are beginning to come to ourselves again. We are beginning to react. But we are also beginning to realize that our very natural reactions, reactions of fear, of anger, are perhaps not the best that we can do. For it is very clear: evil attempts to disable the best of the human spirit.

One of the ways evil tries to disable us is through fascination. We have found ourselves gazing in horror at images of destruction and suffering, repeated over and over, until we realize that now it is our souls that are now being invaded. We need to practice soul hygiene. We need to keep ourselves informed, but not overtaken; open, but not overwhelmed. We need to do this because we must control our arousal. We need to find and maintain our calm, upright human center.

In 1910 Rudolf Steiner said:

We must root out of the soul all fear and horror of that which is approaching mankind from the future. How fearful and anxious we make ourselves today before that which lies in the future, and especially before the hour of death! Human beings must make their own a calm composure in connection with all feelings and sensations directed toward the future, behold with absolute equanimity everything that may come, and think only that no matter what comes, it comes to us out of the wisdom-filled guidance of the world. This must be placed ever and again before the soul.

Innumerable wars and conflicts later, the same thought, meditated upon, can help us find and keep our true center. Avoiding cold fear and heated rage allows us to find creative ways of reacting out of our true human center, creative ways of acting in love. It allows us to find ways to bring healing into damaged souls and bodies.

There is much that we can do to help. We can donate blood. We can contribute to the many funds and drives that are springing up. But we should not overlook the efficacy, the very real help we generate through our own prayers.

We find ourselves concerned for all the lives so suddenly lost. From this side, it looks as though those lives have simply been eradicated. It is easy to overlook the important, but more hidden aspect: that, contrary to appearances from this side of the threshold, human life does not end in death. Over and against the monumentally negative images we have seen, can be set another, more important and equally real image:
As bodies fall to earth, grand and gentle Beings of Light receive and carry the further life of every one of those souls. They are presented to Christ. He gathers them up and takes them home.

No one's real life has been lost. The kernel, the seed, the best of each of those individuals has been gathered up by the good beings in the universe. This best will be sown again, will grow and blossom and nourish.

We may be assured that those souls, perhaps bewildered at first, are now beginning to understand the real reasons why their lives on earth were harvested, how the event of their death fits into the pattern of their own past and present lives, how it fits into our lives, and how it will fit into the future life of the earth.

Their earthly lives were sacrificed, offered--by some unconsciously, by others, like the rescue workers, with more conscious intent. But their offering only moves toward meaninglessness if we refuse to accept the seed they are holding out to us: an awareness that human life is actually unceasing; that the grimness of death has another side-that it is a birth into another realm, a realm illuminated by Christ. They want us to realize that death serves the formation of new life, the sprouting of new trees from the fruit of the old.

In the time to come, those of us left on the earth can watch for signs of that new life and care for that new life. The children who will be born in the near future will have experienced what lives in the souls just released by these events. As the approaching souls and the newly released souls mingle near the earth, those yet to be born will be inspired to take up the threads, the ideals, the guiding impulses of those whose lives were offered. These approaching souls, as well as those who have just crossed, will be filled with a drive toward true peace, true love, and true human freedom. They will be inspired, just as even now, we ourselves can feel the inspiring forces of those released. There is much we can do.

For those who have died, we can pray:

May the Good Shepherd lead them
Where they are transformed
That they may breathe
The air of eternal Being.

Where they work as soul
For worlds to come
The grace of the Spirit
Unite us with them.*

Even now there are yet many, recovered and unrecovered, who, gravely ill, are hovering near the threshold of death. And many are those who mourn. We may pray:

May the Good Shepherd lead them
Into peace of heart
Into hopeful thinking,
Into patient strength of will;
Health of body,
Harmony of soul,
Clarity of spirit,
Now and in the time to come.*

The United States is a great social and political experiment. It is an experiment to determine whether the freedom, the self-determination which God has given to the individual, can be exercised on a broader social level. This experiment has gone relatively well during the two hundred years of its existence. But now we perhaps sense that here too there is more going on behind the externals. We sense that there is a spiritual battle taking place, between the spirit of freedom and spirits that would either shrink and paralyze us in fear or overheat us in retaliatory rage. We are being challenged not to let these events stimulate us to hatred, or prejudice. We are being challenged to realize that the whole world is our community, and that we are fighting, as Paul says,

"not against powers of flesh and blood,
but against evil spirits mighty in the stream of time,
against spirit beings powerful iln the molding of earth substance;
against cosmic powers whose darkness rules the present time..." (Ephesians 6)

"Stand firm then," Paul says, "girded with the truth. Connect yourself will everything in the world as is justified in the spiritual world, and this connection with the spirit will protect you like a strong breastplate.
And may Peace stream through you down to your feet, as the message that comes from the realm of the angels."

The message from the world of the angels is always, first and foremost: Do not be afraid. Have no fear.

We may pray:

O Christ, you know
The souls and spirits
Whose deeds have woven
This country's destiny.

May we who today
Are bearers of this destiny
Find the strength and the light
Of your servant Michael.

And our hearts be warmed
By your blessing, O Christ,
That our deeds may serve
Your work of world healing.*

We are encouraged to consciously offer the best fruits of our souls, here and now, before the harvesting of our own life, whenever that may happen. We are encouraged to practice now giving back to God and his angels our best thoughts, our hearts' love, our warmest devotion. We offer these fruits of the spirit so that they too can cross the threshold into Christ's arms, so that he can gather them up and transform them into the nourishment for his angels. The angels, thus nourished, can in turn strengthen all of us human beings in the battles and trials of our times.

The message from Christ is: I am with you all days.

Christ carries and orders our lives. He carries and orders the life of the world. Taking up the fruits we offer, He arranges how life on our earth evolves. And he embodies peace. Working out of the calm center of peace which he inhabits, which he freely shares, we need fear no evil. We can begin to notice that the shadow of death is illuminated from within, by him. We can begin to realize how much we can do. We begin to realize that he always walks with us. And that he embodies
strength,
and love,
and peace.

May we consciously align ourselves with him.

*Adam Bittleston, Meditative Prayers for Today, Floris Books