A conference looking at aspects of the Creed as an inspiration for Walking with Christ was held from Friday evening, 9 May, through Saturday,10 May, and a final session on Sunday morning, 11 May. Richard had worked with this material during his visit to the congregation in Hillcrest and has written a report that is available on this website.

The Creed that is read in the Act of Consecration of Man and is made available to everyone who chooses to become a member, is read by the Celebrant after the Celebrant removes the priestly vestment, the stole. It is not ritual text. It is a set of twelve statements regarding our relationship, as human beings, with the Spiritual World. This Creed is born out of Spiritual Science. It is relevant to humanity at this stage of our evolution where we are encouraged to develop the relatively new faculty of the Consciousness Soul. The Creed covers the whole of human experience and therefore this conference only considered very small aspects of it.

The first concept that we considered was the difference between ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief’. We discussed this in pairs and then shared the fruits of the discussion with everyone. It became clear that taking a thought as a hypothesis and coming to an experience of its validity by testing it in one’s life leads to real inner knowing. We are then more likely to be prepared to take another step in faith and test that in our life of experience. As one gains more confidence on this route one can feel a sense of certainty in something one believes that does not yet arise from knowledge alone. One should wrestle inwardly with concepts such as these to gain ever deeper and more meaningful insights.

The evening concluded with a look at the architecture of the Creed. The Creed begins with an introduction to the Trinity, the Father God, the incarnation of Christ and the role of the Spirit in the Incarnation. Nothing is said about the ministry of Christ; the Creed immediately jumps from birth to the Death of Christ. Then follow five statements regarding Christ’s role and work after his Death on the Cross and the creed concludes with two statements concerning our role as human beings.

There is an initial creative process and then, through the Mystery of Golgotha, there begins a second creative process that relies on the co-operation of human souls to be the place and the portal through which this creative process can be brought about by the Christ, thus redeeming the fallen first creation.

Saturday morning began with the Act of Consecration of Man. Then followed thoughts that particularly stood out for me. We go from a perception in the world, the percept, into a realm of concepts. These concepts are moving and in flux. Rudolf Steiner described truth as a spiritual ocean. Truth is not fixed. The ocean is reliable; all water flows towards it. It has currents and tides that are reliable. However, every time we meet the ocean the experience is different, the colours are different, the waves are different, the interaction is unique. We must learn to be receptive to truth in the moment. Concepts are living, spiritual beings and must be understood in the moment.

We delved into the first sentence of the creed and considered two concepts, what we can understand by ‘Spiritual-Physical’ and ‘Ground of the heavens and of the earth’. The considerations brought to light two aspects. The spirit becomes physical when it is contained. The natural world has come into being as a result of our becoming and is the ‘fall-out’ of our becoming. We shed what is not us so that we can remain malleable in our becoming. The ‘fall-out’, the world of nature, is ‘stuck’ at the point at which we cast it off. Physical creation is the ’ash’ of the creative process. When we, as human beings, create, our creative process causes an elemental world to come into being. It is our task to enter into a cooperative relationship with this elemental world in order to redeem it by streaming towards it Christ forces from our heart. How this happens was discussed further.

The next session considered the fourth sentence of the Creed: The Sickness of Sin. The process of Christ’s Incarnation is driven by Christ himself through the Holy Spirit. Christ’s incarnation was made possible by the Holy Spirit who worked to bring about that being into which the Christ could incarnate in space and time into the people of Israel.

Consciousness arises in the human being as a result of the resistance of our physical body – we wake up to ourselves in the body. We experience peripheral consciousness while in the spiritual world and have point consciousness in the physical body. Our body is permeated by blood. Warmth lives in our blood. The blood is the physical organ of the self; it is the organ of will. The spiritual and physical meet in a vortex. This is the experience of the blood in the heart, which itself is a physical vortex of muscle. Our blood allows us to exert who we are and to exert our will into the world.

Neither our body nor our blood can fully do what they need to do as a result of The Fall and the resulting Sickness of Sin (un-wholeness) that exists in the body and the blood. What our task is, is to work transformatively into the world. We cannot fulfil the divine plan though our current physical body. Christ came to undo the effect of The Fall in the human body. In doing so, he did it for all of humanity, for all of creation (past, present and future). Christ replaces the death forces in the human body with the original divine intention. I can come to the realisation that I come from God and cannot be excluded from God. Christ transformed every aspect of the human body until he could say on the cross, “It is complete”. Before his death, Christ pours his healing, formative forces into the bread and his resurrected life forces into the wine. Christ bleeds out between the Last Supper and the Crucifixion. When a dead body is pierced, nothing flows out of it. When the centurion pierced the side of Christ blood and water flowed out of the body into the earth. This was new blood that Christ has brought into being which has as its densest component the etheric - no earthly mineral content. This flows into the earth to begin the transformation of the earth. The earth protests this intrusion because the earth is the realm of the adversarial forces. The people’s experience of this was the earthquakes and a darkening of the sun.

On Maundy Thursday Christ initiated the Mass in which he transubstantiated earthly substances by pouring his transformed and healed formative and life forces into them. Every Mass is a continuation - a re-enactment of this deed as a new creative deed. The Festivals were already there on the Sun incarnation of earth and have been transformed ever since. They are cosmic events that affect the entire creation. Therefore it is no surprise to find the Festivals in pre-Christian times. We give the Festivals expression and they transform as our consciousness evolves. The Mass is a new creative impulse of the healing of the Sickness of Sin in the bodily nature of humankind.

Rudolf Steiner said that the earth is the seed of the dying cosmos. A regenerative process takes place here. The human soul is the germ of this seed. The Christ Sun is the force of this regenerative seed, that in us is reborn. Everything in the interest of the Good for the future can only come from offering. This offering is the opening of our soul to the Christ forces, so that they may enter anew. Through our offering we may receive the consecrated body and blood.

After lunch we experienced the Overcoming of Death as an artistic exercise. Using colours, we experienced the transformation from light into darkness and then the removal of darkness to reveal that the light was still there behind the darkness. The overcoming of the darkness through engaging with Christ forces is able to ray out into all of existence.

​On Sunday we considered faith. Faith in the western world declined from the spiritual to the seeking of political and economic harmony. However, people have awakened to the realisation that investing in a political system is futile and are looking for a new way of life. Social life must improve human life. This opens the soul to experience something that has been negated. The western world is slowly approaching this individually. Spiritual Science provides an entry point from which we can slowly connect to a renewed faith. When we take questions into sleep they are fructified, providing new insight into the questions. We can offer our soul by removing content from our thinking, feeling and willing, in this way we permit spirit to flow into us. Our freedom is untouchable and therefore if we stop inviting the spiritual world to work in us it is obliged to withdraw. We may aim to be in a breathing relationship with what sustains us. When I breath into nothingness in my heart and listen into this nothingness, and direct my efforts towards the Christ then He can work into us as a matter of Grace.

​The festivals of Ascension and Whitsun represent Christ uniting himself further with the earth and with human beings. Christ has become active in the realm of the life forces. When we can enter into the realm of the life forces, we can unite with Christ in this realm.

On Holy Saturday, Christ was able to free the souls of human beings who had lost the ability to ascend to the spiritual world after death. Since that event, human souls can again ascend into the spiritual world.

Christ is more present in the Earth today, so that we can experience the spiritual world more and more while on earth in a physical incarnation. At first, when human beings began to incarnate on earth and became conscious in wakefulness, the separation from the spiritual world was strongly experienced. We know that in the Ancient Indian Cultural Epoch the great desire of humanity was for a return to the spiritual world and not to experience earthly incarnation. But the evolution for consciousness required the human being to become more separated from the spiritual world until a point where it had become difficult for some to ascend again to the spiritual world after death. Now Christ has brought the kingdom of heaven to earth.

Let us look at a plant and use it as an imagination. When a seed sprouts a part of the plant reaches for the light and continues to elevate itself above the earth. At the same time another part of the plant anchors the plant in the dark earth. The purpose of the plant is so that a blossom can form and from the blossom a seed can be produced. Looking at a blossom, we see firstly the bud protected by the calyx. The sepals of the calyx open to hold the petals of the blossom. Deep within the centre of the blossom is an orb that is part of the female organ. This orb sits at the heart of the chalice that is the flower. Around the orb the stamens grow from which golden pollen is released. We can picture the orb surrounded by a crown of gold. The orb is earthly while the pollen is of the sun and rises into the air born by wind. Neither the orb, nor the pollen is the seed. Only when the two unite is a seed formed.

The flower has a gesture of offering, waiting to receive. The pollen and the orb meet. What happens in the spaces between? After fertilisation the orb develops into a fruit that bears the seed.

How is this in us? We can offer ourselves; we can become open and receive. What develops in us as a seed is unlike the seed of the plant. The seed of the plant perpetuates the past, a new plant like its parent plant. The seed is us does not perpetuate the past but rather develop something new. We develop fruits for our future growth.

A story was told to the children which is an apocryphal story of Thomas. Christ sent Thomas to India to build a palace for the King of India. The King gave Thomas a large sum of money and then departed on a journey of two years. During the King’s absence Thomas visited the people of India and helped them in their need. As Thomas helped the people the money given to him by the King decreased. When the King returned the money had run out. The King expected to see a palace built for him by Thomas, but when Thomas could show him nothing, he threw Thomas in jail. The King’s brother died and when he reached heaven he was told that he could select where he wished to live. He found a beautiful palace and said that he would live there. God said to the brother that this palace was already assigned to his brother. God allows the King’s brother to return to earth to ask the King if may live in his (heavenly) palace with him. The brother frees Thomas and tells his brother, the King, of the palace that awaited him in heaven, built for him by Thomas.

This is a picture of the fruits we create on earth through the work we do.

Ascension may also be imagined as a marriage – we can unite with Christ and overcome the earthly world in life if and when we can live out of the spiritual world around us..

Emil Bock includes a poem by Novalis in his book The Three Years as a prayer for Ascension:

​We celebrated a Whitsun Festival on Sunday, 24 May. Among the many mysteries of this festival is that of a new speaking and hearing of language. The Word, the Christ, becomes available to everyone in their hearts and as the Apostles speak, the people hear what the Apostles say as if they were spoken in their own language.

We listened to the story of Whitsun as told in the Acts of the Apostles Chapter 2. From what we read we were asked to think about the imagery presented. The rushing as of wind, the fire that descended and the tongues of flame that appear above the Apostles.

We celebrated the Whitsun Festival through an experiential sharing, in community, how the Word can be heard by another. We work from the seed planted in the individual to recognise the seed of the Christ in the other, so that the word I speak may resonate for the other. We experienced this through greeting another and through the resonance of music.

Then we listened to the same words spoken in other languages to learn to recognise that the Word may be understood even when the language is not. The Lord’s Prayer was spoken in Italian, French, isiZulu, Afrikaans, Spanish, Dutch, Hebrew, Ancient Aramaic (as Christ may have spoken it), German and Greek.

The festival ended with the words of TS Eliot:

​A shared lunch was enjoyed by everyone:

​On Sunday 19 April 2026, Rev. Bridgette Siepker spoke on a topic that is a theme for this Easter Festival and will be taken up again in a future conference; the theme of “Walking with Christ”. What does this really mean and how does it enter our own lives?

When we read scripture we can come to an understanding of what “Walking with Christ” may be. The women go to the tomb on the first day as the sun is rising with spices and no idea of how they are going to roll away the large stone from the entrance so that they can fulfil their task. When Mary Magdalene encountered Christ on the first day of the week, she thought he was the gardener. She spoke with Him. When he spoke her name, she recognised him. Later in the day, two of the circle were walking across the fields and “they were talking about the event”. As they were talking a third person drew near and asked a question. When they confronted his ignorance of the event that was uppermost in their mind, he began to lay out for them in scripture all that had been said about the Christ. When they arrived at their destination in the town of Emmaus, he was about to leave them and they invited him in. Yet, it was only in the breaking and blessing of bread that they recognised who their companion had been. Then they recognised that their hearts had been burning as he had spoken with them as they walked.

We can uncover a few things from these scripture readings: firstly, intention. The women had intention in their going to the tomb, Mary Magdalene in her questioning of the gardener and the disciples in their analysis of the event of the crucifixion and the body that was not in the tomb. Secondly, an openness towards the unknown in the intention. The women went alone to the tomb knowing there was an insurmountable obstacle to be overcome, a stone too heavy to move. Mary Magdalene was open to learning what had occurred. The disciples were open to understanding the mystery of the event. Thirdly, the ability to sense the Christ. The women expect to see, and see the angelic being. Mary Magdalene hears her name. The disciples recognise that their hearts had become aware of a truth.

In the Act of Consecration, we hear the words “walking with Christ” in the Canon. Yet, this translation from the German is insufficient to express the full meaning intended in the sacrament. The German word also implies a transformation, a deep and lasting transformation, that occurs in this “walking with Christ”.

We may also remember the theme of Passiontide which was the walking towards death. Death is a process of letting go. In our “Walking with Christ” is implicit the letting go of what is no longer of service to us.

In letting go, holding intention, being open and sensing the reality that approaches us, we can enter into an experience of “Walking with Christ”, and the practice will bring momentum to our ability to “Walk with Christ”.

​In the previous month’s article on the Gospel of Matthew, I wrote about a particular theme that I hope to follow throughout the Gospel. After Jesus speaks the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount He speaks about what it means that he has come to fulfil the law (not to abolish it). He raises six aspects of the law: killing, dishonouring marriage, divorce, swearing an oath, revenge, and for whom to have love. In each case, after stating the law, Jesus says, “But out of my own power, I say to you …”, placing to power of judgement upon the “I”. It is through the “I am” incarnate in us that we discern what is right and what is wrong. In this way the law is fulfilled in our right discernment and without having to turn to the written law of the Old Testament.

Jesus then turns to our engagement with a spiritual life. Our connection with the spirit is in our innermost being and not something that is visible or displayed outwardly. He teaches the disciples the universal prayer that connects us with the Father, and brings the will of the Father into earthly life through the human being. It connects each aspect of our constitution with our need and shortcomings.

Life of earth can so easily be about earthly matters, yet these bring nothing to our eternal being. Jesus instructs that any area of life (our being) that has fallen into earthly darkness is best discarded. This is followed by one of the most mysterious aspects of this Sermon on the Mount, how life is provided for by the spiritual world and our stiving should not be about food and clothing. When our stiving is directly correctly, the world of spirit will ensure that our earthly needs are also met.

​by John-Peter Gernaat

As promised in the April newsletter this article is repeated with the last days of Holy Week added.

We experience the Holy Nights at the time of the birth of Jesus as being connected with the month of the year. We can experience the events of Holy Week connected with human destiny.

In the southern hemisphere, we are in Autumn and the days are getting darker. Nature does not mirror the renewal of life that is celebrated at Easter. In the northern hemisphere, it is the opposite, and the mirror between nature and the renewal of life in the Resurrection is visible. Is it possible for us to hold both of these images within us simultaneously in balance?

Nature in the southern hemisphere can teach us something of the path towards death, the turning of the leaves, the ripening of fruit and the surrendering of seeds into the dark of earth. Holy Week is the path to death; it leads to the Deed of Golgotha. This was part of Christ’s time on earth. The possibility of Christ being on earth had been there from the beginning, yet the Deed was not accomplished until it was accomplished. What might have been the state of the spiritual world at this time?

Before this Deed of Christ there was a way of being for humanity; after the Deed of Christ there was another way. There was no going back. The Deed of Christ was done for all humanity.

In Holy Week, Christ walked the way to death. How do we walk this way? Resurrection is possible only after the process of death. We can experience resurrection more clearly in our lives if we can walk this way of death.

Each day of Holy Week has a particular signature of how to walk this way of death. Becoming conscious of this signature leads us to approach this way of death in a conscious manner.

Beginning on Palm Sunday, there is a deliberate act of entering Jerusalem. Christ is saying ‘yes’ to what lies ahead. The great welcome that he receives does not deter him from the road ahead.

In the picture of the palm tree, we have a plant that has no branches, only a trunk. At the top of the tree is the heart of three from which new fronds arise. It is a picture of a tree that raises its heart to the light of the sun.

From Palm Sunday, we see a frenzy of chaos and in the midst, Christ, undeterred, travels the road into this week. In this week we hear that Christ is in the Father. How may we receive the will of the Father in our lives? It is through the higher self that we access the will of the Father.

On Holy Monday, the day of the Moon, we are confronted with the story of the cursed fig tree. This is not so much a physical tree and the representation of a spiritual way that has ended and is no longer valid. The new way is clearly declared by Christ; it is faith. We can contemplate what this looks like.

There is a second activity connected with Holy Monday, the deliberate activity of clearing the Temple. Interest and active participation bring about change.

Holy Tuesday is a very active day with every section of society questioning Christ in order to find fault with him. It is the day of Mars and decisive activity. Christ answers the challenges in a way that points to the incorrect thinking of the questioner. He responds with parables. Some of the greatest teaching given by Christ is done on this day. We can experience hope in the change of thinking needed.

Holy Wednesday is the middle of this Holy Week. Nothing is said of the day. It is as if something ends, and in the evening something new can open up. In the evening we confront the deed of devotion of Mary in anointing the feet of Christ. Devotion for Christ arises out of love for Christ. We encounter two people who have been with Christ for an equal period of time, yet they have very different approaches to the developing way to death. Mary has developed devotion, while Judas has developed another way and walks out. Both of these ways live in each of us, and we can become aware of them. We can also contemplate the sacrifice of Mary, which angered Judas, because it is only through sacrifice that human destiny moves forward.

Maundy Thursday. This again is a day where the activity is primarily focused on the night. Thursday is influenced by Jupiter which is connected with the forces of life. Jesus washes the feet of the disciples demonstrating our future as humanity. It is through servitude towards each other that we arrive at a fully christened being. During the Last Supper Jesus (as presented by John in his Gospel) speaks extensively to the disciples about his relationship to the Father and to humanity. He speaks the last of the “I am”-statements, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” and “I am the vine”. Then follows the giving of his life forces as he unites them with the Bread and the Wine and initiates the Eucharist. Christ has given his life-forces into the sphere of the earth. He walks out of the Upper Room with his disciples spent of all his life-forces. What follows Christ Jesus achieves through the power of his will. The kiss of Judas lends Him life-forces to continue and, in one of the Gospels, the young man who runs away naked is another source of life-forces loaned to Jesus.

The Good Friday contemplation was a focus on the complete mission of Christ.

On Holy Saturday we started the artistic activity without a contemplation on the day that occurs in a realm invisible to the human eye. Our Creed reveals the significance of the deeds of Christ on this day.

On Easter Sunday, the octave of Palm Sunday, the question can arise in us: What can I acknowledge? And in acknowledging this, what changes for me? We take note of the devotion of the women who go at daybreak to the tomb. They speak of the insurmountable obstacle they must overcome to fulfil their task of anointing the body, yet even though they do not know how they will roll back the stone, they are not deterred in their devotion to fulfil this deed for Jesus. What obstacles do we allow to deter us from our goals?

Now follows a period of forty days of Easter. This is the number of gestation and of initiation.

​On Sunday, 15 March, Rev. Bridgette Siepker spoke about the Passiontide Epistle. What can we learn from the letter from the world of spirit about our relationship to the spiritual world and the spiritual world to us?

Before Christ came to the earth, human beings felt themselves to be separated from the spiritual world. The desire to connect with the spiritual world led people to attempt to purify themselves as a way of reconnecting. Through a long process of purification, an initiate could raise himself out of life into the spiritual world for a short period of time. The writings of the Hebrews share that they had to remove sins before they were worthy to enter the Temple.

When John the Baptist was able to proclaim, “There goes the Lamb of God”, it signified that Jesus had become the scapegoat for human sin. The divine united with human sin. The divine entered into the realm of sin and took this realm upon himself.

Through this deed, we can now live with sin and with God at the same time. The need for purity to approach the divine is past. The One bearing our sins lives in us!

Although we have this new knowledge, we have continued to live from the old mysteries. We no longer have to ascend to God; God has come down to humanity. In the Movement for Religious Renewal, we are working from this new Mystery.

In 2 Corinthians 4,

​we hear that God Himself spoke the word, “Out of the darkness let the light shine forth!” He has lit the light in our hearts. This tells us that although we may live in the place of death, death will not overcome us: the life of Christ is in us. Our heart may feel empty, yet Christ is the seed within our core.

We experience earthly life as if we are asleep because the spirit of awakening is difficult to access. It is in our blood that we experience the place of our life where longing arises. We share the air we breathe with every other living being. It is here that we may experience hope arising. Our consciousness experiences the separation from the divine, and we may become aware of a mournful lamenting within our consciousness that is seeking to reunite with the divine. We recognise the sting of evil within us and ask only for it to be overlooked. We can overcome the tempting power of weakness within ourselves. We, who should be upright in this world experience ourselves as being flat on the ground. The spirit that lives in us and brings us to Christ Consciousness can raise us. The “I” is accessible to us through the spirit.

We are never alone in earthly life; our work is met with grace. Hope is the doorway for grace.