May Monastery Letter
Dear Friends,
April was a quiet but active month.
As part of the Eastern Christian Church we use the Julian Calendar, the calendar that was in use at the time of Jesus, for religious events. Consequently the day of our celebration of Easter usually differs from that of the West. This year it was one week later, on the twelfth of April.
The Holy Fire
The day before, on Holy Saturday, we observed the blessing of the Holy Fire at noon. The ritual parallels the coming down of the miraculous fire at true noon on Holy Saturday in Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
This fire literally descends from heaven and passes through the thick marble structure around the place where Jesus was buried and ignites the cotton fragments spread out on the stone where his body was placed. 
Before that the Greek Orthodox Patriarch is closed in the tomb and prays for the sacred fire. When it comes down and ignites the cotton he lights bundles of candles and passes them out to the assembled faithful. For around twenty minutes this fire will burn nothing but the candle wicks. People touch it to their clothing and it does not catch fire. They “wash” their faces in it, and if they are bearded men, their beards do not singe in the least. This is one of the great, perpetual signs of the truth of Jesus’ resurrection.
Because the Holy Fire only comes down on the Orthodox Easter at the prayers of the Orthodox, it has been declared a fraud by Western Christians for centuries and ignored. As a result it has been almost totally forgotten in the West. During the time the Crusaders ruled Jerusalem, and the calendar had not been changed in the West, it was the Crusader Kings who entered the enclosure of the tomb (at that time the marble edifice had not been built around it) and distributed the Holy Fire.
The descent of the fire can be seen in videos posted on Youtube. What it tells us about both the Eastern Church and the traditional calendar is clear. 
It is believed that since Jesus released “the spirits in prison” (I Peter 3:19) in the astral world on the Saturday after his crucifixion, that day is their Easter and they send into the world to his embodied disciples this token of their joy and a proof of his resurrection. Therefore the descent of the Holy Fire and its commemoration by those unable to be present for its descent is a most sacred time of observance.
The ritual formulated by Bishop Leadbeater and Bishop Wedgwood of the Liberal Catholic Church for the blessing of the fire (which is kindled from the sun by a burning glass) is both extremely simple and extremely powerful. The supernatural radiation from the lighted Paschal Candle is tangible.
Then on Sunday we rejoiced in that first Day of Resurrection, the Pascha of the Lord, as it continues to be extended to us year by year.
Sensai Alan Imai and Natural Agriculture
On April 13 we had the privilege of hosting a presentation in Albuquerque by Sensei Alan Imai, the director of the Shumei International center in Crestone, Colorado. Alan travels the world helping people understand and apply the principles of Natural Agriculture discovered by Mokichi Okada, a twentieth-century philosopher of Japan. (You can learn about Shumei and Natural agriculture by visiting these websites: shumei.org; shumei-international.org; shumei-na.org; shumei-na.us.)
Also visiting us with Alan was Koji Nakamura from the Shumei America headquarters in Pasadena and Guy Standing and Naoko Iwamoto from the Crestone center. As always when we are visited by Shumei friends we greatly enjoyed every moment of the time they were with us. We especially appreciated Alan’s inspection and advice regarding our fledgling attempt at Natural Agriculture on a mountainside at 7500 feet elevation.
And that is the major news.
Yours in the Light of the Spirit,
Abbot George Burke
(Swami Nirmalananda Giri)