...to the grab-the-tottering-Ark-and-die image:
Long ago you spoke in a vision to your faithful people. You said "I have raised up a warrior. I have selected him from among the common people to be king. I have found my servant David. I have anointed him with my holy oil. (remember I saw this happen to you in a dream...the thread of glowing liquid silver that came down on you in the dark?) I will steady him with my hand. With my powerful arm I will make him strong.
Psalm 89:19-21
Here is that 'backwards' theme yet again in our experience: instead of you reaching out to steady the Ark, He will steady you.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Saturday, April 29, 2006
You will perfect that which concerns me...revisited
I first wrote of my "cardinal in winter" metaphor when it was winter. I wrote of how this bird has been an intimate little scarlet thread woven between God and me over the years. I thought of how scarlet dye was made in days of old: how mother worms died clinging to trees, both birthing and protecting their offspring until the moment of independent new life. In death these mothers spread the precious scarlet that was then collected and used in dyes.
Today, I found a place of acceptance that is a less morbid way of thinking. My last blog shows as much. Then tonight, all through dinner, I had that noble bird visit me again. I watched him prance around in the backyard...but this cardinal did not sit in stark relief against dead brown winter leaves and grass. Nor was he stirring up the velvety, white powder of winter's swan song, the final dregs of last year's plant life losing form and distinction. The final dust in the dust to dust adage. No...tonight I watched him dance in a sea of strong vital green--emerald everywhere around him. I realized his color was no less eye-catching here than it was when he sat in the drabness of winter...in fact the pairing with spring's green made him glow.
I wrote of my cardinal in winter metaphor when it was winter. I hope now my cardinal in the spring means a larger spring as well.
Today, I found a place of acceptance that is a less morbid way of thinking. My last blog shows as much. Then tonight, all through dinner, I had that noble bird visit me again. I watched him prance around in the backyard...but this cardinal did not sit in stark relief against dead brown winter leaves and grass. Nor was he stirring up the velvety, white powder of winter's swan song, the final dregs of last year's plant life losing form and distinction. The final dust in the dust to dust adage. No...tonight I watched him dance in a sea of strong vital green--emerald everywhere around him. I realized his color was no less eye-catching here than it was when he sat in the drabness of winter...in fact the pairing with spring's green made him glow.
I wrote of my cardinal in winter metaphor when it was winter. I hope now my cardinal in the spring means a larger spring as well.
The climactic scene...
...from Raiders of the Lost Ark. That's the visual I've been trying to surface that tells you, my dear, how it looks when I think of doing this thing. It's funny. When you practice doing what is wrong, your understanding of what is right and what is wrong is crystal clear. No gray anywhere...all black and white. But when you practice doing what is right, suddenly everything becomes cloudy. You begin to catch a glimmer of the power you're tapping with your commitment, and suddenly you become one of those that might be used in "ways mysterious" and you lose all comprehension of what is right and what is wrong for a while. That's where faith kicks in, I suppose.
The scene I'm thinking of is the one where Indy and "the girl" (and isn't there always a girl) are present for the "unwise" opening of the Ark. Horrific fire, brimstone, whirlwind destroying everything around them because these who would "use" the Ark's power foolishly thought they could harness the power it represented. Only Indy and the girl had the good sense to show that shred of reverence that kept them alive. When I consider our "calling" it seems to me that you are inviting me to stand with you in the eye of that fiery tornado and believe that we will be OK while everything else is consumed. (And not only do you make invitation. "He" has been, too, of course.)
Our friend's dream reminds me of the story I was reading the other day. I want to record the story and our interchange about it. I want to honor your wisdom. The story is about this very Ark. Long ago, when the people of God became "superstitious" about the Ark, and turned it into an idol of a sort, God permitted it to be captured by Philistines. When it was being returned to Jerusalem, it was put on a cart to bring it home. Specific instructions had been previously given as to how the Ark was to be transported. It was to be carried on poles by priests, not taken on a cart. But King David lost sight of the purpose behind the regulations for the safe movement of the Ark, he'd forgotten what it might cost, this playing with the power found in unadulterated "holiness" (a thing few of us today believe even exists, we're so prone to identify God's meek and mild side as His sum total.)
In his defense, David knew that previously, the Ark was moved safely on a cart by the Ark raiders of his day: Philistines. But they moved it by cart as a test to see whether the "bad luck" it brought them was really from this Hebrew God or not. So they hitched the cart to cows who had newborn calves, and then they placed the calves such that if the cows went toward the Ark's home amongst the Hebrews, these Mama cows would be leaving their baby calves behind. This made the cart a sacred prayer, in a way. God honored that prayer. The cows did indeed pull it back to the Hebrews, abandoning their babies.
But later, when David continued with this mode of cart travel it was not as a prayer for God to reveal Himself. It was for convenience maybe or for the sake of "easier work" for the priests. Whatever the reason, it was no longer sanctioned by God. When the oxen stumbled, a man who was walking alongside reached out to steady the Ark and was immediately dead because of his irreverence. This man, Uzzah, whose name means "strength" by the way, was sincere in his desire to protect the Ark, but the Ark was only to be carried on poles...and never touched. He broke a cardinal rule. He underestimated the power of God and its interdependent relationship with His laws. These laws were in place for protection as much as anything else. Power in its rawest forms is a treacherous thing. God had locked His power into that thing. Man would do well to respect that. In fact, the next time David attempted to move the Ark, he was indeed careful to follow regulations, but it was too late for Uzzah.
I see here a theme we've talked about so much lately: one person's rash unthinking act causing another to pay a painful price, with the result being a seeming situation of injustice. Uzzah's death made David mad at God. The same happens to many of us when we see these injustices. Then it made David afraid. This also happens to many of us when we recognize the tremendous power that is carefully managed by this God of ours, yet left in places of such easy access that many are either trapped by their foolishness in "playing with the matches " or else they are made to be glorious displays of that same power.
I shared the story with you, along with my fear that we were considering doing the same type of thing: grabbing the tottering Ark, and inviting a similar fate. You made a very astute comment. God never appeared to this man (like He did for you) and said "Here is what I want you to do. Grab the Ark." His reaching out to grab the Ark was a knee-jerk reaction to a bad situation. So much of religion now is exactly that: a knee-jerk reaction to what appears to be a tottering God. We try to fix His "problem" by methods He never ordained. I look back at the things I knew and wrote about your dreams on Palm Sunday: the priests will be told to move the Ark across the river in ways you've never traveled before. Follow them. Just this morning, my devotion had this question to finish it: How will you make today a Day of Remembering? I guess I just found my way of remembering.
Thanks for reminding me not to have that knee-jerk reaction. Thanks for reassuring me that you're not Uzzah, set up to die an unjust death. You're Indiana Jones.
Love,
Your wife (you know: the one tied to the pole with you, waiting for the conflagration to sweep on past us.)
The scene I'm thinking of is the one where Indy and "the girl" (and isn't there always a girl) are present for the "unwise" opening of the Ark. Horrific fire, brimstone, whirlwind destroying everything around them because these who would "use" the Ark's power foolishly thought they could harness the power it represented. Only Indy and the girl had the good sense to show that shred of reverence that kept them alive. When I consider our "calling" it seems to me that you are inviting me to stand with you in the eye of that fiery tornado and believe that we will be OK while everything else is consumed. (And not only do you make invitation. "He" has been, too, of course.)
Our friend's dream reminds me of the story I was reading the other day. I want to record the story and our interchange about it. I want to honor your wisdom. The story is about this very Ark. Long ago, when the people of God became "superstitious" about the Ark, and turned it into an idol of a sort, God permitted it to be captured by Philistines. When it was being returned to Jerusalem, it was put on a cart to bring it home. Specific instructions had been previously given as to how the Ark was to be transported. It was to be carried on poles by priests, not taken on a cart. But King David lost sight of the purpose behind the regulations for the safe movement of the Ark, he'd forgotten what it might cost, this playing with the power found in unadulterated "holiness" (a thing few of us today believe even exists, we're so prone to identify God's meek and mild side as His sum total.)
In his defense, David knew that previously, the Ark was moved safely on a cart by the Ark raiders of his day: Philistines. But they moved it by cart as a test to see whether the "bad luck" it brought them was really from this Hebrew God or not. So they hitched the cart to cows who had newborn calves, and then they placed the calves such that if the cows went toward the Ark's home amongst the Hebrews, these Mama cows would be leaving their baby calves behind. This made the cart a sacred prayer, in a way. God honored that prayer. The cows did indeed pull it back to the Hebrews, abandoning their babies.
But later, when David continued with this mode of cart travel it was not as a prayer for God to reveal Himself. It was for convenience maybe or for the sake of "easier work" for the priests. Whatever the reason, it was no longer sanctioned by God. When the oxen stumbled, a man who was walking alongside reached out to steady the Ark and was immediately dead because of his irreverence. This man, Uzzah, whose name means "strength" by the way, was sincere in his desire to protect the Ark, but the Ark was only to be carried on poles...and never touched. He broke a cardinal rule. He underestimated the power of God and its interdependent relationship with His laws. These laws were in place for protection as much as anything else. Power in its rawest forms is a treacherous thing. God had locked His power into that thing. Man would do well to respect that. In fact, the next time David attempted to move the Ark, he was indeed careful to follow regulations, but it was too late for Uzzah.
I see here a theme we've talked about so much lately: one person's rash unthinking act causing another to pay a painful price, with the result being a seeming situation of injustice. Uzzah's death made David mad at God. The same happens to many of us when we see these injustices. Then it made David afraid. This also happens to many of us when we recognize the tremendous power that is carefully managed by this God of ours, yet left in places of such easy access that many are either trapped by their foolishness in "playing with the matches " or else they are made to be glorious displays of that same power.
I shared the story with you, along with my fear that we were considering doing the same type of thing: grabbing the tottering Ark, and inviting a similar fate. You made a very astute comment. God never appeared to this man (like He did for you) and said "Here is what I want you to do. Grab the Ark." His reaching out to grab the Ark was a knee-jerk reaction to a bad situation. So much of religion now is exactly that: a knee-jerk reaction to what appears to be a tottering God. We try to fix His "problem" by methods He never ordained. I look back at the things I knew and wrote about your dreams on Palm Sunday: the priests will be told to move the Ark across the river in ways you've never traveled before. Follow them. Just this morning, my devotion had this question to finish it: How will you make today a Day of Remembering? I guess I just found my way of remembering.
Thanks for reminding me not to have that knee-jerk reaction. Thanks for reassuring me that you're not Uzzah, set up to die an unjust death. You're Indiana Jones.
Love,
Your wife (you know: the one tied to the pole with you, waiting for the conflagration to sweep on past us.)
Thursday, April 27, 2006
How do you spell relief?
I thought of that old commercial today as I watched a social interchange at my local CVS drugstore. Layers of empathic embarrassment washed over me and crashed into each other.
Wave #1) An old man has a gift card for $50. I know this because he announces loudly that he has the card because his son gave it to him. His son gave it to him because the old man can't afford to pay for his medicine without his son's help.
Wave #2) He doesn't understand why he can't just have $20 change after buying his $30 of medicine, so he begins to yell even louder. The concept of a gift card is too "new-fangled" I suppose.
Wave#3) The little pharmacy tech can't find a way to make the old fellow understand that he still has $20 on the gift card that he can use on other things in the store.
Wave #4) The old man throws the gift card down yelling that he's apparently making a gift of $20 to CVS, and he storms out.
Wave #4) Down the counter a little way, a woman waits on me. We both act ridiculously pleasant and oblivious to all this, as if it will help alleviate some of everyone else's embarrassment.
Wave #5) I, too, exit the drugstore and see the old man sitting alone in his car, looking miserable--I wonder if he really needed that $20 for something. On the other hand, did his son give him the gift card so that he would not spend cash on other things. Is he old enough he has lost his "good sense" that way? And this last embarrassment is now simply the conjuring of my own imagination, I'm so into the groove of it at this point.
As is often the case, my thoughts turn to you, O Maker of me. I think about how I winced, wearing the embarrassment that the poor old man was too ignorant to wear. Sharing the embarrassment that the workers were wise enough to wear. I wonder if You wince at me? How often am I publicly (at least in heavenly realms) ignorant like that man was? Stomping around, wanting things to go the way that makes sense to me, and angry because they don't. Do You wince over the profound ignorance of my reactions? Do You wince even more when You send the wisdom down to me that should enable me to have a more informed reaction (your own little pharmacy tech, if You will.) May I be humble enough to listen and allow "new-fangled" things to come into my spiritual world, too, dear God let it be so!
Last night I dreamed of the classic cherub and imp sitting on my opposing shoulders, making their debate with each other through my grey-matter. Seems like the minute I get a handle on that "ignorant old man" part of me, these two start in with each other. [You know what I mean, don't you, my husband? By the way, the "cherub" (aka the "good" voice) was a tiny elephant. And today in the news was an animal that is almost-elephant, almost-horse, almost-rhino and is an endangered species living in the land that is almost North America and almost South America. I thought you'd appreciate my dream-nod and real world musings that comically echo the enigmatic voice droning in your head, too. (smile)
Wave #1) An old man has a gift card for $50. I know this because he announces loudly that he has the card because his son gave it to him. His son gave it to him because the old man can't afford to pay for his medicine without his son's help.
Wave #2) He doesn't understand why he can't just have $20 change after buying his $30 of medicine, so he begins to yell even louder. The concept of a gift card is too "new-fangled" I suppose.
Wave#3) The little pharmacy tech can't find a way to make the old fellow understand that he still has $20 on the gift card that he can use on other things in the store.
Wave #4) The old man throws the gift card down yelling that he's apparently making a gift of $20 to CVS, and he storms out.
Wave #4) Down the counter a little way, a woman waits on me. We both act ridiculously pleasant and oblivious to all this, as if it will help alleviate some of everyone else's embarrassment.
Wave #5) I, too, exit the drugstore and see the old man sitting alone in his car, looking miserable--I wonder if he really needed that $20 for something. On the other hand, did his son give him the gift card so that he would not spend cash on other things. Is he old enough he has lost his "good sense" that way? And this last embarrassment is now simply the conjuring of my own imagination, I'm so into the groove of it at this point.
As is often the case, my thoughts turn to you, O Maker of me. I think about how I winced, wearing the embarrassment that the poor old man was too ignorant to wear. Sharing the embarrassment that the workers were wise enough to wear. I wonder if You wince at me? How often am I publicly (at least in heavenly realms) ignorant like that man was? Stomping around, wanting things to go the way that makes sense to me, and angry because they don't. Do You wince over the profound ignorance of my reactions? Do You wince even more when You send the wisdom down to me that should enable me to have a more informed reaction (your own little pharmacy tech, if You will.) May I be humble enough to listen and allow "new-fangled" things to come into my spiritual world, too, dear God let it be so!
Last night I dreamed of the classic cherub and imp sitting on my opposing shoulders, making their debate with each other through my grey-matter. Seems like the minute I get a handle on that "ignorant old man" part of me, these two start in with each other. [You know what I mean, don't you, my husband? By the way, the "cherub" (aka the "good" voice) was a tiny elephant. And today in the news was an animal that is almost-elephant, almost-horse, almost-rhino and is an endangered species living in the land that is almost North America and almost South America. I thought you'd appreciate my dream-nod and real world musings that comically echo the enigmatic voice droning in your head, too. (smile)
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
it might be hrd...
to post for bit here...bit of history here...I took my computer to the our corporte office to hve new cd drive instlled...our "tech person", who is neither tech nor much of person, decided to order nd instll the new drive himself. I picked the computer up yesterdy, fter 4 weeks of repir, nd ws excited to see tht the cd door did indeed open. When I rrived in Ls Vegs, I connected to the internet to review my e-mil. Much to my surprise, when I tried to log in, I found tht I no longer hd severl keys working....guess which ones...so, it looks like I will be hrd pressed to post nything for severl more weeks, s he now tried to scheme other wys of hmpering my productivity.....sigh...
Sunday, April 23, 2006
On my name...
My middle name has been a haunting thing of import of a sudden lately. My first name is obvious in its reference, but with your dream of passage with Christ Himself through waters so cold they woke you, and the day we had yesterday, it does not surprise me that my middle name is that of a river that is commemorated by Robert Burns (Scotland's bard) in poetry. Afton is the river and also my name. The song itself was inspired by a woman's home, called Afton Lodge, on the banks of the Afton River. The Mary is probably Mary Campbell, who Burns courted there. What a beautiful timeless ode to the places we've gone lately, my dear.
Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes,
Flow gently, I'll sing theea song in thy praise;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton,disturb not her dream.
Thou stock dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen,
Ye wild whistly blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green crested lapwing thy screaming forbear,
I charge you, disturb not my slumbering fair.
How lofty, sweet Afton,thy neighboring hills,
Far mark'd with the coursesof clear winding rills;
There daily I wanderas noon rises high,
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.
How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
Where, wild in the woodlands,the primroses blow;
There oft, as mild evening weeps over the lea,
The sweet-scented birk shadesmy Mary and me.
Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot wheremy Mary resides;
How wanton thy watersher snowy feet lave,
As, gathering sweet flowerets,she stems thy clear wave.
Flow gently, sweet Afton,amang thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river,the theme of my lays;
My Mary's asleepby thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton,disturb not her dreams.
Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes,
Flow gently, I'll sing theea song in thy praise;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton,disturb not her dream.
Thou stock dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen,
Ye wild whistly blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green crested lapwing thy screaming forbear,
I charge you, disturb not my slumbering fair.
How lofty, sweet Afton,thy neighboring hills,
Far mark'd with the coursesof clear winding rills;
There daily I wanderas noon rises high,
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.
How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
Where, wild in the woodlands,the primroses blow;
There oft, as mild evening weeps over the lea,
The sweet-scented birk shadesmy Mary and me.
Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot wheremy Mary resides;
How wanton thy watersher snowy feet lave,
As, gathering sweet flowerets,she stems thy clear wave.
Flow gently, sweet Afton,amang thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river,the theme of my lays;
My Mary's asleepby thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton,disturb not her dreams.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Thank you...
Today, my dear, you gave me the perfect day to finish this week. Elijah got to spend the night with a couple of friends who re-inforced his "acceptance" quotient amongst his peers, and you took me so deep into spring! Even though Indy isn't a particularly "lively" city, I still sometimes feel the churning frenzy of life in this piled-up setting. Those are the times you know to get me out to places like you took me today. My mental scrapbook that gives me peace has such wonderfully extremist sense imagery:
*the convertible's top is down, and the sun is hot on my face while the wind is bitingly cool
*the spicy smell of mesquite drifting from someone's backyard grill mingling with the sweetness of my first whiff of lilac this season.
*the quirky frivilous quaintness of the landscaping and decorations in yards and windows of the little towns we passed through compared to their very un-frilly utilitarian names: Dottie's Diner, Randy's Antiques.
*the soft petticoat of tiny white flowers peeking out under a rough skirt of bark gracing the trees in the wood where we walked.
*the mystery of the sun's transformation as it changed from being the sun in the sky to the sun in the water, and how the little waves on the lake looked as if they were lit with an interior light, making them hypnotically transparent; and how we sat in the grass, wishing we had so much time to dedicate to doing absolutely nothing but sit there and stare across the water.
*most of all the ageless familiarity of you beside me, alongside the ever-new thrill of looking over and seeing the golden-red of your summer color coming fresh upon you yet again after another long winter. (Remembering the flowers you gave me, and how you thoughtfully considered just the perfect color combination to choose...you know me well enough to know it would matter.)
Tomorrow can be for the kids. Today was for me. It was time well spent.
*the convertible's top is down, and the sun is hot on my face while the wind is bitingly cool
*the spicy smell of mesquite drifting from someone's backyard grill mingling with the sweetness of my first whiff of lilac this season.
*the quirky frivilous quaintness of the landscaping and decorations in yards and windows of the little towns we passed through compared to their very un-frilly utilitarian names: Dottie's Diner, Randy's Antiques.
*the soft petticoat of tiny white flowers peeking out under a rough skirt of bark gracing the trees in the wood where we walked.
*the mystery of the sun's transformation as it changed from being the sun in the sky to the sun in the water, and how the little waves on the lake looked as if they were lit with an interior light, making them hypnotically transparent; and how we sat in the grass, wishing we had so much time to dedicate to doing absolutely nothing but sit there and stare across the water.
*most of all the ageless familiarity of you beside me, alongside the ever-new thrill of looking over and seeing the golden-red of your summer color coming fresh upon you yet again after another long winter. (Remembering the flowers you gave me, and how you thoughtfully considered just the perfect color combination to choose...you know me well enough to know it would matter.)
Tomorrow can be for the kids. Today was for me. It was time well spent.
Friday, April 21, 2006
My love...you've watched Langoliers one time too many
Dang....there's never a Chinese-characters keyboard around when you need one!
Have I told you lately how much I love it when you let your clever side out of its kennel? We can't wait for you to get home!
Have I told you lately how much I love it when you let your clever side out of its kennel? We can't wait for you to get home!
Time...
....seems to go slower when you are at the airport, waiting to get home. At any other time, there never seems to be enough of it to get even half of your list done. When you need it, it is as elusive as a Greenpeace sticker on a BMW. Here at the airport, however, as you make your way home, it seems as though you could build a half-scale model of the Sears Tower with toothpicks in the time available. With the travel schedule I follow, I know about how much time to allow getting to the airport, getting my ticket, plodding through security, and making my way to the terminal. I try to allow just enough time to take into account any unexpected occurrences, but not so much as to get to know the gate surroundings very well.
Even with these precautions, each minute here seems to stretch an eternity. I understand most of it is my impatience to get home, but I have a theory. The doors to the terminal are actually rips in the space-time continuum, and you enter a 5th dimension of time, where small children stare at you from the next table, 8 different accents make up a tapestry of background noise, and travelers, both frequent and casual, swim their way through a soupy reality where time exists in and of it's own.
3 hours from now, I'll be home.....and my bet is that I won't hear Mandarin Chinese spoken anywhere....
Even with these precautions, each minute here seems to stretch an eternity. I understand most of it is my impatience to get home, but I have a theory. The doors to the terminal are actually rips in the space-time continuum, and you enter a 5th dimension of time, where small children stare at you from the next table, 8 different accents make up a tapestry of background noise, and travelers, both frequent and casual, swim their way through a soupy reality where time exists in and of it's own.
3 hours from now, I'll be home.....and my bet is that I won't hear Mandarin Chinese spoken anywhere....
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
OK...
....a first for me...I haven't blogged in a while...don't know why...as I reflect, it seems to me that I have not had a consistent line of thought for days....if you could read my mind now, it would read as a Larry King "News and Views, Random Thoughts" column. I can't explain this (other than another example of my adult ADD), but I don't seem to have a problem focusing on something now...
I am, for the first time, really questioning the amount of time I am on the road, away from home. As has been chronicled elsewhere on the blog, my son Elijah has been having problems with another child at his school. The situitation seems to be reaching some sort of resolution, but has also served to bring to mind, again, that there are things that I can't be a part of, due to my extensive travel. It is getting to me. I don't feel like I am present enough to teach my children the things a father should, like how to defuse a bully. I am not available to take my child to the emergency room, to lend a shoulder, or to do anything other than to be a dis-embodied voice over the phone, proffering a wholly-inadequate "you'll be ok"..."I love you". I should be doing more.
I am, for the first time, really questioning the amount of time I am on the road, away from home. As has been chronicled elsewhere on the blog, my son Elijah has been having problems with another child at his school. The situitation seems to be reaching some sort of resolution, but has also served to bring to mind, again, that there are things that I can't be a part of, due to my extensive travel. It is getting to me. I don't feel like I am present enough to teach my children the things a father should, like how to defuse a bully. I am not available to take my child to the emergency room, to lend a shoulder, or to do anything other than to be a dis-embodied voice over the phone, proffering a wholly-inadequate "you'll be ok"..."I love you". I should be doing more.
So starts the battle....the struggle between being a actual, live, present parent, and providing for my family, in a career that I truly like and am very good at. My absence is having an effect on me, and I would anticipate my family as well. I have gone to God about this, but am at a loss as to what to do. I have trusted Him on some very big things lately, and He has recently shown Himself in a very real way. I hope He is not too busy on other things....like me...
Unless ye be as little children...
Yesterday's situation has come to a place of peace. A child who observed the abuse against my son came forward, even though this brave little one was in tears last night as he talked with his own father, he was already counting the potential cost he would pay, claiming to be a little scared because he expected that today he'd become the new "target" because he spoke out.
My child went to school today. I don't think I would have. He told his story. Several staff members prayed with me. We talked about how I've had Lazarus as a figure pop up in my personal Bible study, as the topic of a blog that I follow...well, in a variety of settings Lazarus has made an appearance. My observation about it was that the "Lazarus focus" was to prepare me for this situation. The point of the story of Lazarus is that in the tragedy that surrounded him, in Christ's seeming disinterest in the eyes of those who were too wounded by the present moment to have a vision of Christ's purpose in "waiting" to take care of Lazarus' death...the point of the story is that in the end, Christ proved that He would take a circumstance of literal death and make it life, and not just to one but as a testament to many. He would use a grief-ridden moment that even dragged His own reputation into disarray and use that moment to reveal a higher power and glory found in the God He He called Father. It was God's design that we as an interactive community of Christian children and adults, would allow a Lazarus-styled moment to be orchestrated by God through us. So we prayed to see Lazarus come from his tomb today. And we saw him.
When the child who stabbed at my son was confronted by the principal, he confessed. When he returned to the room, he apologized. When he received the apology, my son gave forgiveness. In fact, later in the day, the two boys returned to a degree of interaction that still amazes me. On the one hand, I could be tempted to think the whole thing was a melodramatic blow-up on my son's part, except that I was there to see my son's initial reaction. The truth is that children have a resiliency of confession, forgiveness, acceptance, restoration...that is so swift and complete that we adults often doubt the "realness" of it. From one side or another, we find justification to downplay the reality of it, because such swift Godliness of response is often foreign to our "middle-aged-ness." The truth is that children have this spirit-resiliency as their special witness to the world of who we are to be: trusting, accepting even when defenseless, guileless, receivers of rebuke rather than self-justifiers, and not grudge-bearers, nor weak-hearted slow recoverers. They walk in this brilliant dawn-of-life type witness as long as we, their authority figures, don't intervene and teach them to learn the "new" ways that come from our years of experience aka pain. I almost did this myself. I almost encouraged my son to simply stay home today. I would have ruined his role to play in the Lazarus drama.
So now it is in my heart to say that I am honored to work with people who pray. People who seek God and then stay out of the way while the children themselves seek God and display His glory. People who lead the children in the paths of righteousness, but also allow the children to show the special righteousness that is unique to their very childhood. Thank you, God, that even though we experienced a dying-Lazarus moment, we also saw him leave the tomb. Now I pray that You keep him alive. For as was the case with the real Lazarus, there will be those who seek to kill the message of this day even as there were those who sought to kill Lazarus in his day.
My child went to school today. I don't think I would have. He told his story. Several staff members prayed with me. We talked about how I've had Lazarus as a figure pop up in my personal Bible study, as the topic of a blog that I follow...well, in a variety of settings Lazarus has made an appearance. My observation about it was that the "Lazarus focus" was to prepare me for this situation. The point of the story of Lazarus is that in the tragedy that surrounded him, in Christ's seeming disinterest in the eyes of those who were too wounded by the present moment to have a vision of Christ's purpose in "waiting" to take care of Lazarus' death...the point of the story is that in the end, Christ proved that He would take a circumstance of literal death and make it life, and not just to one but as a testament to many. He would use a grief-ridden moment that even dragged His own reputation into disarray and use that moment to reveal a higher power and glory found in the God He He called Father. It was God's design that we as an interactive community of Christian children and adults, would allow a Lazarus-styled moment to be orchestrated by God through us. So we prayed to see Lazarus come from his tomb today. And we saw him.
When the child who stabbed at my son was confronted by the principal, he confessed. When he returned to the room, he apologized. When he received the apology, my son gave forgiveness. In fact, later in the day, the two boys returned to a degree of interaction that still amazes me. On the one hand, I could be tempted to think the whole thing was a melodramatic blow-up on my son's part, except that I was there to see my son's initial reaction. The truth is that children have a resiliency of confession, forgiveness, acceptance, restoration...that is so swift and complete that we adults often doubt the "realness" of it. From one side or another, we find justification to downplay the reality of it, because such swift Godliness of response is often foreign to our "middle-aged-ness." The truth is that children have this spirit-resiliency as their special witness to the world of who we are to be: trusting, accepting even when defenseless, guileless, receivers of rebuke rather than self-justifiers, and not grudge-bearers, nor weak-hearted slow recoverers. They walk in this brilliant dawn-of-life type witness as long as we, their authority figures, don't intervene and teach them to learn the "new" ways that come from our years of experience aka pain. I almost did this myself. I almost encouraged my son to simply stay home today. I would have ruined his role to play in the Lazarus drama.
So now it is in my heart to say that I am honored to work with people who pray. People who seek God and then stay out of the way while the children themselves seek God and display His glory. People who lead the children in the paths of righteousness, but also allow the children to show the special righteousness that is unique to their very childhood. Thank you, God, that even though we experienced a dying-Lazarus moment, we also saw him leave the tomb. Now I pray that You keep him alive. For as was the case with the real Lazarus, there will be those who seek to kill the message of this day even as there were those who sought to kill Lazarus in his day.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Music soothes the savage breast...
...but only temporarily. Tonight I heard my oldest son's high school band concert. I was ravaged in my soul, and the vibrations of the low reeds seemed to kindle a similar resonance in my very cells, calming me, but only temporarily.
My younger son had quite an ordeal today. Now I can't sleep, and need my other restorative cure besides music: writing. Prayer at this moment is tough, as I feel no mercy for the one who caused the grief. Read my heart God. Forgive me for having no compassion for this one child this night. Because I learned that when injustice strikes those distant from me I can feel horror on their behalf, maybe deep grief. But when it hits the very issue of my own body, I get angry. I can go along mild-mannered for an age, but then suddenly turn into cauldron of fury when just the right provocation comes along. Today could have been one of those days. Thankfully, I did not witness the event. But I know enough about it to be angry, nonetheless.
My son is in fourth grade. He has had trouble with another kid...the other "big, strong" kid in the class besides him. This kid, Bryce, has terrorized his classmates for years, so say the kids, but he is clever. He knows how to do his abusive work when no teacher sees him. Strangely, this kid was the first to befriend my son at the beginning of the year, when my son was a new kid. But Bryce is unpredictable. One day he's nice, the next he attacks. A while back, he was trapping two girls in the closet of the classroom. My son tried to force him away from the door to let the girls out. At that moment, the teacher entered the room (I think they were returning from lunch or something,) saw them, and assumed Elijah was acting as cohort to Bryce. My son was devastated, not because a day's recess was lost as punishment, but at the fact that no matter how much the other kids tried to set the record straight, his character was defamed in the eyes of his teacher. We had a great object lesson about walking in the sufferings of Christ, counting it an honor when you are forced to suffer such a price in the course of defending against an injustice being inflicted on someone weaker than their abuser...all that went well. The themes sounded lofty for such a minor classroom incident, but through it he learned a hard lesson, unusually hard for one who is only 10.
Since then, he has been seated right next to this boy. Apparently, Bryce has been jabbing him with a sharpened pencil in the ribs, jabbing hard enough to break the pencil. Then he laughs and asks to go sharpen his pencil again. My son didn't tell me this in so many words, he mildly referred to it once. I thought it was less severe than it is. No, I heard it from the father of another kid in the class who has been horrified to observe what has been happening to my child. My son doesn't want to be known as a sissy or a rat. He also doesn't want to be known as a bully. (Which doesn't leave much of a margin on either side for self-definition in a situation like this one.) He's learning not to be concerned by what he's "known as" at all. But this is also a lofty concept for a child.
And today, it hit the climax point of my child's tolerance. This time, the boy chewed the eraser off the pencil and struck my son in the head, 14-15 times with the sharp metal tip. A few struck his temple. A few struck the base of his skull. No marks remained, but one other student saw the marks right after it happened. My son has been taught that you don't fight back. He is at a Christian school. He wants to set a good example. He wants to follow the rules about turning the other cheek. So he did nothing. Then at lunch, he quietly destroyed his lunch--squashed and shredded it, and part of another kid's lunch, too. He doesn't remember doing this. The other children reported it. Because he thought he was "losing it," he went to the bathroom. The headache that started from the head trauma...and that is what I'd call it, considering the kid held the pencil shooting down from his closed fist like a knife and stabbed my son with it, the headache was getting worse, and he was beginning to feel pain in his throat with every breath. He doesn't remember this part, but the other kids say he was wandering the halls, just looking into classrooms, trying to breathe, pacing mindlessly. They convinced him to go to the office, because he was starting to get so dizzy (no doubt from the hyperventilating because he was going into a panic from not being able to breathe without pain,) and the office staff called me. By the time we got to the emergency room (because at that time, I thought we were possibly seeing the beginning of asthma problems) and had some tests run, no physical cause could be ascertained, and he was beginning to feel better. Then gradually, I got the story out of him about the incident at school. Even then, he related it in a flat emotionless monotone. He still has not dealt with how angry it should make him feel, how much rage he pushed down that blew like a geyser in an unexpected place and way without his being aware what was happening. We talked about it. "Your body decided you needed to get out of there, even though your mind didn't want to accept anything about the situation at the time, so your brain shut off and your body stopped breathing comfortably to send a signal to you: hey, get away from danger." He understands me intellectually when I tell him what happened to him, but he still doesn't "feel" anything about what this child did to him. A classmate called to check on him, and he learned that immediately after lunch, when Bryce learned my son had gone to the doctor, he began attempting to divide the class, claiming my son was poking him with a pencil, and not the other way around. So...tomorrow, do I make my little one go into that environment, knowing that the day after his body was assaulted, his character is probably going to be assaulted, too? Can he handle it? I don't know if I'd be strong enough to handle it. We'll be meeting with the principal before school. Fortunately, another student who witnessed the injustice of it all and whose family has made sure that the nobility of fighting against injustice is instilled in their kids...this child is going in to verify my son's "testimony."
Honestly, I am appalled that this has happened. Every day, I hear some of the teachers talk about how wonderful it is that we at a Christian school don't deal with the discipline problems that are rampant in public schools. (You see, I teach at this same school, too.) But my own experience so far is that I had far fewer discipline problems, and my children were never secretly attacked and then diabolically laughed at, when we were all public school attendees and employees. I wonder what fuels their pride in this? I find more and more not to make sweeping judgments of anything...or I will soon have to eat my words. So help me pity this child who attacked my son, and help me to protect my son, God. Show me a balance for these; because for the time being, they feel mutually exclusive.
My younger son had quite an ordeal today. Now I can't sleep, and need my other restorative cure besides music: writing. Prayer at this moment is tough, as I feel no mercy for the one who caused the grief. Read my heart God. Forgive me for having no compassion for this one child this night. Because I learned that when injustice strikes those distant from me I can feel horror on their behalf, maybe deep grief. But when it hits the very issue of my own body, I get angry. I can go along mild-mannered for an age, but then suddenly turn into cauldron of fury when just the right provocation comes along. Today could have been one of those days. Thankfully, I did not witness the event. But I know enough about it to be angry, nonetheless.
My son is in fourth grade. He has had trouble with another kid...the other "big, strong" kid in the class besides him. This kid, Bryce, has terrorized his classmates for years, so say the kids, but he is clever. He knows how to do his abusive work when no teacher sees him. Strangely, this kid was the first to befriend my son at the beginning of the year, when my son was a new kid. But Bryce is unpredictable. One day he's nice, the next he attacks. A while back, he was trapping two girls in the closet of the classroom. My son tried to force him away from the door to let the girls out. At that moment, the teacher entered the room (I think they were returning from lunch or something,) saw them, and assumed Elijah was acting as cohort to Bryce. My son was devastated, not because a day's recess was lost as punishment, but at the fact that no matter how much the other kids tried to set the record straight, his character was defamed in the eyes of his teacher. We had a great object lesson about walking in the sufferings of Christ, counting it an honor when you are forced to suffer such a price in the course of defending against an injustice being inflicted on someone weaker than their abuser...all that went well. The themes sounded lofty for such a minor classroom incident, but through it he learned a hard lesson, unusually hard for one who is only 10.
Since then, he has been seated right next to this boy. Apparently, Bryce has been jabbing him with a sharpened pencil in the ribs, jabbing hard enough to break the pencil. Then he laughs and asks to go sharpen his pencil again. My son didn't tell me this in so many words, he mildly referred to it once. I thought it was less severe than it is. No, I heard it from the father of another kid in the class who has been horrified to observe what has been happening to my child. My son doesn't want to be known as a sissy or a rat. He also doesn't want to be known as a bully. (Which doesn't leave much of a margin on either side for self-definition in a situation like this one.) He's learning not to be concerned by what he's "known as" at all. But this is also a lofty concept for a child.
And today, it hit the climax point of my child's tolerance. This time, the boy chewed the eraser off the pencil and struck my son in the head, 14-15 times with the sharp metal tip. A few struck his temple. A few struck the base of his skull. No marks remained, but one other student saw the marks right after it happened. My son has been taught that you don't fight back. He is at a Christian school. He wants to set a good example. He wants to follow the rules about turning the other cheek. So he did nothing. Then at lunch, he quietly destroyed his lunch--squashed and shredded it, and part of another kid's lunch, too. He doesn't remember doing this. The other children reported it. Because he thought he was "losing it," he went to the bathroom. The headache that started from the head trauma...and that is what I'd call it, considering the kid held the pencil shooting down from his closed fist like a knife and stabbed my son with it, the headache was getting worse, and he was beginning to feel pain in his throat with every breath. He doesn't remember this part, but the other kids say he was wandering the halls, just looking into classrooms, trying to breathe, pacing mindlessly. They convinced him to go to the office, because he was starting to get so dizzy (no doubt from the hyperventilating because he was going into a panic from not being able to breathe without pain,) and the office staff called me. By the time we got to the emergency room (because at that time, I thought we were possibly seeing the beginning of asthma problems) and had some tests run, no physical cause could be ascertained, and he was beginning to feel better. Then gradually, I got the story out of him about the incident at school. Even then, he related it in a flat emotionless monotone. He still has not dealt with how angry it should make him feel, how much rage he pushed down that blew like a geyser in an unexpected place and way without his being aware what was happening. We talked about it. "Your body decided you needed to get out of there, even though your mind didn't want to accept anything about the situation at the time, so your brain shut off and your body stopped breathing comfortably to send a signal to you: hey, get away from danger." He understands me intellectually when I tell him what happened to him, but he still doesn't "feel" anything about what this child did to him. A classmate called to check on him, and he learned that immediately after lunch, when Bryce learned my son had gone to the doctor, he began attempting to divide the class, claiming my son was poking him with a pencil, and not the other way around. So...tomorrow, do I make my little one go into that environment, knowing that the day after his body was assaulted, his character is probably going to be assaulted, too? Can he handle it? I don't know if I'd be strong enough to handle it. We'll be meeting with the principal before school. Fortunately, another student who witnessed the injustice of it all and whose family has made sure that the nobility of fighting against injustice is instilled in their kids...this child is going in to verify my son's "testimony."
Honestly, I am appalled that this has happened. Every day, I hear some of the teachers talk about how wonderful it is that we at a Christian school don't deal with the discipline problems that are rampant in public schools. (You see, I teach at this same school, too.) But my own experience so far is that I had far fewer discipline problems, and my children were never secretly attacked and then diabolically laughed at, when we were all public school attendees and employees. I wonder what fuels their pride in this? I find more and more not to make sweeping judgments of anything...or I will soon have to eat my words. So help me pity this child who attacked my son, and help me to protect my son, God. Show me a balance for these; because for the time being, they feel mutually exclusive.
Friday, April 14, 2006
I just connected these...
...remember my blog about my favorite dream? About how I hoped that I could "prove" that I would be a worthy hostess in the magnificent castle when others indeed found it? Remember when I blogged about the dream of the visions of power and how I asked that Christ reveal His essence to the world? (and then He directly used words about "His Essence" in your dream where He met you, my love.)
I asked that He might make me ready to serve. I asked that He might give me the opportunity to prove that I would indeed share the palace with others...that I would be a willing servant instead of lone mistress. Now it seems you are the first to inhabit this strange wonderland with me. What a beautiful gift that you were the first to come and join me. How easy it is to welcome you. How easy it is to see that welcoming others...it will be all joy. I have indeed reached that moment...I don't need to have the dream again. The reality is coming into being.
I asked that He might make me ready to serve. I asked that He might give me the opportunity to prove that I would indeed share the palace with others...that I would be a willing servant instead of lone mistress. Now it seems you are the first to inhabit this strange wonderland with me. What a beautiful gift that you were the first to come and join me. How easy it is to welcome you. How easy it is to see that welcoming others...it will be all joy. I have indeed reached that moment...I don't need to have the dream again. The reality is coming into being.
a thing to reiterate...
It's Good Friday, my love, and I am glad you will be here soon. I looked at your "middle of the night" blog. I am so glad you are "awake" in so many new ways now. I said this last weekend, the day of the dream that jump-started your dedication to this call from God, these two things in particular. Because you are already accounted as a priest, these are "true" and no wonder you are sensing them deep inside:
1) "as soon as their feet touch the water, the flow will be cut off from upstream." You are right, my love. When you dreamt of your feet touching the water something very large began to change. I'm reminded of the scene from Lord of the Rings...when the stone falls down the well, a domino effect of change is started in the caverns of the earth. Not that it was seen immediately (cut off from upstream) but nonetheless, the change was established. Soon the signs followed. The same will be true for us, I think. No wonder you were affected as that touching the water moment happened in your dream...no wonder you woke me with your gasping. How amazing that I was the one person given the privilege of witnessing the moment. And...
2)"when you see the priests go...move out from your positions and follow them. Since you've never traveled this way before they will guide you." I utterly trust you to lead me in a way I have not gone before. I will indeed move out of my position and go where you guide me. I will tell you more about the amazing things I've discovered about this "going by a way uniquely given." You remember me telling you about the Rachabites, the ones given a special mission completely contrary to the mission of the rest of the Hebrews and yet when tested they were proven to be on special assignment and were thusly honored for carrying through that mission? Remember them? Guess what Rachab means: "chariot with four horses." The "four" in this will I'm sure carry validation for you. I am with you, love. I wonder when we will come to a place when we don't have to be so cryptic in our dialogue? Yet a public record of what little the world can see...this is right to display, I think.
But know this...there is still that mystery over what is to happen to me. Allow yourself to be open-minded to the possibility of the unexpected. This morning in the car on the way to school as I was praying, Nolan said, "When you die, you'll be dead 40 days. Then you'll be alive again." I asked him (you know how he "sees" our dreams and echoes them, etc.) I asked him who told him that. He said, "No one, I just know it." Very matter of fact. I'm thinking that you must accept that you can not put protecting me above your own destiny nor above ours together. Everything will be fine in the end, but it may look a little strange along the way. That's what I keep feeling. No matter. You will continue to be led. How could you ever doubt it after what you've experienced. How could I?
1) "as soon as their feet touch the water, the flow will be cut off from upstream." You are right, my love. When you dreamt of your feet touching the water something very large began to change. I'm reminded of the scene from Lord of the Rings...when the stone falls down the well, a domino effect of change is started in the caverns of the earth. Not that it was seen immediately (cut off from upstream) but nonetheless, the change was established. Soon the signs followed. The same will be true for us, I think. No wonder you were affected as that touching the water moment happened in your dream...no wonder you woke me with your gasping. How amazing that I was the one person given the privilege of witnessing the moment. And...
2)"when you see the priests go...move out from your positions and follow them. Since you've never traveled this way before they will guide you." I utterly trust you to lead me in a way I have not gone before. I will indeed move out of my position and go where you guide me. I will tell you more about the amazing things I've discovered about this "going by a way uniquely given." You remember me telling you about the Rachabites, the ones given a special mission completely contrary to the mission of the rest of the Hebrews and yet when tested they were proven to be on special assignment and were thusly honored for carrying through that mission? Remember them? Guess what Rachab means: "chariot with four horses." The "four" in this will I'm sure carry validation for you. I am with you, love. I wonder when we will come to a place when we don't have to be so cryptic in our dialogue? Yet a public record of what little the world can see...this is right to display, I think.
But know this...there is still that mystery over what is to happen to me. Allow yourself to be open-minded to the possibility of the unexpected. This morning in the car on the way to school as I was praying, Nolan said, "When you die, you'll be dead 40 days. Then you'll be alive again." I asked him (you know how he "sees" our dreams and echoes them, etc.) I asked him who told him that. He said, "No one, I just know it." Very matter of fact. I'm thinking that you must accept that you can not put protecting me above your own destiny nor above ours together. Everything will be fine in the end, but it may look a little strange along the way. That's what I keep feeling. No matter. You will continue to be led. How could you ever doubt it after what you've experienced. How could I?
It's amazing to me....
....as I look out my hotel window here in Downtown Atlanta, how many lights stay on all night....are these people 3rd shifters, or do the cleaning people all have investments in Georgia Power? Seems a waste to me.
So go the ramblings of someone who can't seem to stay asleep most nights. I am not sure of the origin of this insomnia. I have been told that the older you get, the harder it is to sleep. As a former world-class sleeper, I hope this is not the case for me. I enjoy it too much.
I wonder if it is a byproduct of the heightened dream-activity I seem to be having over the last few months? I know they are quite intense and detailed, and occur quite frequently. I could see this being the culprit, and as these dreams are driven from elsewhere, I am powerless to stop them. I understand now the necessity for them, and embrace the motive behind them. As my beautiful wife alluded to in an earlier blog, I had an "encounter" dream a few days ago...funny, but it doesn't seem to be that far in the past....the intensity and emotional residue of that dream make it seem like yesterday....funny....anyway, this dream seems to have served as some kind of catalyst, awakning some unknown part of me. I have a lot more clarity as to the "rightness" of what is being asked of me (us). At any other time of my life, any other situitation, any other circumstance, I would question the motivation behind these dreams. A small part of me still questioned whether a part of the visions, if you will, were self-directed....no more. I see now that God found the perfect venue for me to question my faith....another point of clarity. He spent 8 years allowing me to become comfortable in my knowledge of my basic "goodness", and now has asked me to have faith that something that was dead in my heart is now an intergal part of his purpose.
My love, I want you to know that this task scares me. But for every ounce of fear in me there are 10 that brim with excitement, and 100 that are humbled at the honor, for what unknown reason bestowed on this unworthy creature, of being a part of God's plan. I feel it building now, sweetheart...I can physically feel the gears that have been put into action...I pray that every action I feel God leading me to take, every thought, will bring honor to you, and to God.....
....I wonder how many other people are looking out their window, wondering why the light in my room is on so late at night....If they only knew...
So go the ramblings of someone who can't seem to stay asleep most nights. I am not sure of the origin of this insomnia. I have been told that the older you get, the harder it is to sleep. As a former world-class sleeper, I hope this is not the case for me. I enjoy it too much.
I wonder if it is a byproduct of the heightened dream-activity I seem to be having over the last few months? I know they are quite intense and detailed, and occur quite frequently. I could see this being the culprit, and as these dreams are driven from elsewhere, I am powerless to stop them. I understand now the necessity for them, and embrace the motive behind them. As my beautiful wife alluded to in an earlier blog, I had an "encounter" dream a few days ago...funny, but it doesn't seem to be that far in the past....the intensity and emotional residue of that dream make it seem like yesterday....funny....anyway, this dream seems to have served as some kind of catalyst, awakning some unknown part of me. I have a lot more clarity as to the "rightness" of what is being asked of me (us). At any other time of my life, any other situitation, any other circumstance, I would question the motivation behind these dreams. A small part of me still questioned whether a part of the visions, if you will, were self-directed....no more. I see now that God found the perfect venue for me to question my faith....another point of clarity. He spent 8 years allowing me to become comfortable in my knowledge of my basic "goodness", and now has asked me to have faith that something that was dead in my heart is now an intergal part of his purpose.
My love, I want you to know that this task scares me. But for every ounce of fear in me there are 10 that brim with excitement, and 100 that are humbled at the honor, for what unknown reason bestowed on this unworthy creature, of being a part of God's plan. I feel it building now, sweetheart...I can physically feel the gears that have been put into action...I pray that every action I feel God leading me to take, every thought, will bring honor to you, and to God.....
....I wonder how many other people are looking out their window, wondering why the light in my room is on so late at night....If they only knew...
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Aslan is Turkish for lion...
...just one bit of trivia we've picked up as we, like so many others all watch our new Narnia DVD's. I've chosen a favorite moment.
In the pop-up trivia, just before this "moment" happens, one of the pop-ups says "one thing about Narnia, you can only get there when you're not looking for it." I'd point out one instance where that was not exactly true, and this is my favorite scene. Yes, the characters find Narnia when they are playing hide and seek, looking for each other in the middle of the night, even while trying to escape punishment...but never when they are specifically going to the wardrobe to "find" this secret world...except this one time. One time Lucy sets out to find Narnia, and she does. Even after others have "checked" to see if Lucy, this littlest one of the four children, has had her imagination steal either her sanity or her honesty...and even though she is all alone in what she "knows," still...when she wakes in the night and has the insatiable desire to go there one more time, she gets out of bed with the intention of finding Narnia. She is in this moment the one exception to the rule of finding Narnia only when not looking, and I know why she found it...as she swung her little feet over the edge of the bed, out from under the covers, she had a choice to make: to cover her little bare feet with her bed slippers or with rubber boots beside them. She chose the boots. Grace gets you to Narnia. So does faith. Fascinating.
In the pop-up trivia, just before this "moment" happens, one of the pop-ups says "one thing about Narnia, you can only get there when you're not looking for it." I'd point out one instance where that was not exactly true, and this is my favorite scene. Yes, the characters find Narnia when they are playing hide and seek, looking for each other in the middle of the night, even while trying to escape punishment...but never when they are specifically going to the wardrobe to "find" this secret world...except this one time. One time Lucy sets out to find Narnia, and she does. Even after others have "checked" to see if Lucy, this littlest one of the four children, has had her imagination steal either her sanity or her honesty...and even though she is all alone in what she "knows," still...when she wakes in the night and has the insatiable desire to go there one more time, she gets out of bed with the intention of finding Narnia. She is in this moment the one exception to the rule of finding Narnia only when not looking, and I know why she found it...as she swung her little feet over the edge of the bed, out from under the covers, she had a choice to make: to cover her little bare feet with her bed slippers or with rubber boots beside them. She chose the boots. Grace gets you to Narnia. So does faith. Fascinating.
Monday, April 10, 2006
I got nothin'
After a day of feeling like a heavenly tsunami struck the shore of our lives, today it was business as usual. My math classes covered integers: positives and negative stringing out from the point called the origin, also known as zero. Their head exploded when we began talking about why subtracting a negative amounts to adding a positive. Every year it's the same thing. (Imagine calculating the temperature difference between the hottest place on earth and the coldest...you end up adding the negative cold temp as a positive to the hot temp to get the range.) Sometimes just the right example will make the fuzz that grows over their brains and out their eyeballs begins to clear, but only momentarily. It's all Greek again when it comes to solving that first problem independently. What a life metaphor for how things have been for us of late, huh, sweety? Don't you feel like we too are learning such a backwards feeling concept as if for the first time. You're not stupid; I'm not stupid--but the light bulb of "why" fails to come on. (sigh) Always before, faith brought understanding, but after the fact. Guess there's every chance it will happen again. Why not? But for now...I'm sitting on the origin; and like my kids in class, about all I'm interested in doing is playing...this is just too darn complicated for me. It's the first day back after break, so I'll play their little game with them: how many ways can you say "nothing" anyway, besides zero and origin, like we learned today?
Well, there's zilch, nada, zip, none, not any, not one, no one, I could get cryptic and talk about "none" being the fifth of the canonical hours. Then there's to no extent, in no way, by no means, and not at all. These are all fitting (well, except maybe the canonical hours thing, I don't know what the heck that means) to describe how deep is my perception of what God is wanting to accomplish through us, my dear one. Glad He's got it all figured out anyway.
Obviously I'd never make it as a Gnostic, eh? Nope! (Last one. Really...or not. OK, I'm finished...finis...ending...concluding...
Well, there's zilch, nada, zip, none, not any, not one, no one, I could get cryptic and talk about "none" being the fifth of the canonical hours. Then there's to no extent, in no way, by no means, and not at all. These are all fitting (well, except maybe the canonical hours thing, I don't know what the heck that means) to describe how deep is my perception of what God is wanting to accomplish through us, my dear one. Glad He's got it all figured out anyway.
Obviously I'd never make it as a Gnostic, eh? Nope! (Last one. Really...or not. OK, I'm finished...finis...ending...concluding...
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Another way I know your dream was "real"...
...was in watching you at church today, singing "not to us, but to Your name be the glory..." as you played the drums. You were different. I've waited a long time wondering if that mysterious act of worship would ever touch you as more than an activity of reverence, but rather as an intimate act of companionship, of secret union and oneness with the one being praised. It was in your face for the first time today. Did you feel a difference? Was it not like being shoulder to shoulder, brothers with one who is so incredibly...I don't know, I have no word big enough for it. Hearing you say you are so drained from the experience of one like that, who walks with such intense "presence" of being...this I, too, remember from the times last fall when I, too, felt Him visit. It is so rich for me to hear you echo these same sentiments. It validates what I experienced back then to me all over again, as I hear you echo the reactions I myself had.
feet in the water...
What an amazing wake-up you gave me, my love! What a dream you had! Here is the reference that I mentioned to you. I told you I was given a vision some time ago of you being designated as a priest, and now you dream yet again a confirmation of that assignment. First you dreamed it when you saw the blue waters in the twin pools, and now this one. When you gasped as you woke, did you realize the first words out of your mouth were, "I think I just saw Christ in my dream!"? I know you saw Him...for the two things that were most residual upon you from the experience were your being overwhelmed, weak from the experience, and your being so moved with love that all you could do was hold me and profess how profound was the love you felt for me.
When you said you and He rode horses through a pool of water that was either the start or the finish of a river, you couldn't tell (I think because maybe somehow it was both...yes, that is it) the waters that got your feet wet as you rode through then, they were so cold they woke you. Now here is the scripture that comes to my mind to give you in association with that dream. It is in Joshua. When the time came that God's people were to stop their nomadic existence in the wilderness and enter the land He had prepared for them (quite a parallel to the walk we Christians make as strangers in a strange land now) the first move was to cross the Jordan river. Two impossible water crossings: one being the Red Sea when the people were first leaving slavery in Egypt, (Christ's first coming to the earth from heaven foreshadowed in that one) then this one, when they were to enter the land of Promise. Joshua 3 says this: "...giving these instructions to the people, [from God] 'When you see the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, move out from your positions and follow them. Since you have never traveled this way before, they will guide you...the Lord told Joshua, 'Today I will begin to make you a great leader in the eyes of all the Israelites. They will know I am with you, just as I was with Moses.' ...The priests will carry the Ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth. As soon as their feet touch the water, the flow of water will be cut off upstream, and the river will stand up like a wall.'...As soon as the feet of the priests who were carrying the Ark touched the water at the river's edge, the water above that point began backing up a great distance away...the priests who were carrying the Ark stood in the middle of the river until all of the Lord's commands that Moses had given Joshua were carried out. Meanwhile the people hurried across the river bed...that day the Lord made Joshua a great leader in the eyes of all the Israelites, and for the rest of his life they revered him as they had revered Moses..." You woke before you were out of the water, my love. According to this, you will go into the water to facilitate a miraculous sign. More and more I believe a Joshua will be shown to have the power of the Lord with him as a result of your obedient and fearless act. After this is accomplished, you will be commanded to exit the river on the other side, and it will again close up so that the miraculous passage from the land of wandering to the land of rest is closed again. Are there any other priests? Will we meet them? It is to be as a testament to God, for in the original event it is said that the people will look to the place of passage, as marked by a stone memorial, and say "He [God] did this so all the nations of the earth might know that the Lord's hand is powerful, and so that you might fear the Lord your God forever."
By the way, this is written to have happened on "the tenth day of the first month" which was by a lunar calendar that we approximate to correspond to a date somewhere between late March and early May. Personally, I wonder if this very day is not the anniversary of it.
What a wonder it is to me to see you having the same reaction I did to His making an appearance in a dream. At first all you can do is weep at the power and majesty that comes so near to you. You didn't want to go play drums at church today because you didn't feel like you could get up and do anything after that dream. I pray that you found the strength to go again into the "real" world and function. And I pray for us both now this prayer of Paul's. It's found in Ephesians: "And pray for me, too. Ask Go to give me the right words so I can boldly explain the mystery of the Good News." May our faith-friends be inspired to lift such a prayer for us. And may He indeed lead us to "them" as He told you He would do. Do not fear the responsibility He has laid at your feet, no pun intended. He will take you...He will take us both...through it all. He told you He'd take care of us both. We must believe that, and move toward the water...you for the reasons He gave you and me for mine, and together they will accomplish His purpose. I love you.
When you said you and He rode horses through a pool of water that was either the start or the finish of a river, you couldn't tell (I think because maybe somehow it was both...yes, that is it) the waters that got your feet wet as you rode through then, they were so cold they woke you. Now here is the scripture that comes to my mind to give you in association with that dream. It is in Joshua. When the time came that God's people were to stop their nomadic existence in the wilderness and enter the land He had prepared for them (quite a parallel to the walk we Christians make as strangers in a strange land now) the first move was to cross the Jordan river. Two impossible water crossings: one being the Red Sea when the people were first leaving slavery in Egypt, (Christ's first coming to the earth from heaven foreshadowed in that one) then this one, when they were to enter the land of Promise. Joshua 3 says this: "...giving these instructions to the people, [from God] 'When you see the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, move out from your positions and follow them. Since you have never traveled this way before, they will guide you...the Lord told Joshua, 'Today I will begin to make you a great leader in the eyes of all the Israelites. They will know I am with you, just as I was with Moses.' ...The priests will carry the Ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth. As soon as their feet touch the water, the flow of water will be cut off upstream, and the river will stand up like a wall.'...As soon as the feet of the priests who were carrying the Ark touched the water at the river's edge, the water above that point began backing up a great distance away...the priests who were carrying the Ark stood in the middle of the river until all of the Lord's commands that Moses had given Joshua were carried out. Meanwhile the people hurried across the river bed...that day the Lord made Joshua a great leader in the eyes of all the Israelites, and for the rest of his life they revered him as they had revered Moses..." You woke before you were out of the water, my love. According to this, you will go into the water to facilitate a miraculous sign. More and more I believe a Joshua will be shown to have the power of the Lord with him as a result of your obedient and fearless act. After this is accomplished, you will be commanded to exit the river on the other side, and it will again close up so that the miraculous passage from the land of wandering to the land of rest is closed again. Are there any other priests? Will we meet them? It is to be as a testament to God, for in the original event it is said that the people will look to the place of passage, as marked by a stone memorial, and say "He [God] did this so all the nations of the earth might know that the Lord's hand is powerful, and so that you might fear the Lord your God forever."
By the way, this is written to have happened on "the tenth day of the first month" which was by a lunar calendar that we approximate to correspond to a date somewhere between late March and early May. Personally, I wonder if this very day is not the anniversary of it.
What a wonder it is to me to see you having the same reaction I did to His making an appearance in a dream. At first all you can do is weep at the power and majesty that comes so near to you. You didn't want to go play drums at church today because you didn't feel like you could get up and do anything after that dream. I pray that you found the strength to go again into the "real" world and function. And I pray for us both now this prayer of Paul's. It's found in Ephesians: "And pray for me, too. Ask Go to give me the right words so I can boldly explain the mystery of the Good News." May our faith-friends be inspired to lift such a prayer for us. And may He indeed lead us to "them" as He told you He would do. Do not fear the responsibility He has laid at your feet, no pun intended. He will take you...He will take us both...through it all. He told you He'd take care of us both. We must believe that, and move toward the water...you for the reasons He gave you and me for mine, and together they will accomplish His purpose. I love you.
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Two Husbands
"The outcome of every test of faith depends on how I look at the test."
--Unknown
This week my family went on spring break vacation. We had such a test of faith. We saw ourselves in a new way. I hope we came out of it on the right side.
I watched the interactions of our family with new eyes, partly because we were together as a family group for several consecutive days...an unusual event...and partly because I saw us through the eyes of my son's girlfriend who came along on our trip. The first night, she retreated to her room and pined to be with her mother...so severe had been the turmoil in our family trying to find its balance.
With everyone finally separated from each other after hours confined to the car, I sat playing solitaire, wondering if we needed family therapy. My husband and I talked about it...seriously. By the end of the week, we were a "unit" again, she was glad she came on vacation with us, and we had uncovered a vital point of relationship that has been drifting away from us even as we ourselves have been drifting apart from each other, like galaxies moving out from the big bang's center. Our main source of imbalance, I believe, has to do with this two husbands idea. We use it to find our unity again; and we use it wrongly.
I found this concept in a commentary on the book of Romans. In this book, Saint Paul uses the idea of successive marriages to illustrate the transition between living by law and by grace. In the analogy, the law is portrayed as a first husband, but he dies. If a person embraces the genuine walk of Christian faith, the law/ritual marriage in itself is not sufficient. There is nothing particularly Christian about such a marriage. Law is merely an indicator of need and insufficiency, and so can not serve as a true source of fulfillment. The second husband is not available until the first dies, but when it dies, the second can be taken legally. The second husband is grace as it came in the personage of Jesus Christ. This second husband...this final husband...has the power to fulfill completely what the first husband could only offer in shadow. But a person can not be married to both simultaneously. Therein is the rub. Our pride wants to be reassured that we are powerful enough to please the first husband while counting on the second as the sugar-daddy insurance policy for the great unknown variable: the after life. That fuzzy area between what we do and what He does: this is the problem that has plagued us without our ever realizing how disrespectful we were being to God. I, and maybe my husband too, have been trying to co-habitate with the husband of grace while living like the husband of law still has ultimate rule over us, still binds us and still must be inspired to grant us his approval. Thus, we basically render the power of the second husband impotent. Like the spinster in Great Expectations, we cling to a dead hope, kept morbidly before our eyes, in exchange for the very living possibilities that walk into our room and beg us to bestow a blessing on the potential hopes of the future. This "hope of the future" idea is a large one of joint faith for both my husband and me, so our receiving instruction about this is hardly surprising.
As I look at this commentary on Romans and then at my children, I see them fight, attaching their very identities to the outcome of this trial of who is right vs. who is wrong, and I know I have failed them. I see how we have ridden the pendulum across the generations--from swinging toward too much freedom in one generation to its opposing side now: identity completely defined by law, as displayed by either our conscious obedience or disobedience to it. In fact, our identity in this day can be based on the personal rewriting of law, should group-law go against our personal wants and needs. I have led my own children to become too preoccupied with pleasing this dead husband: law.
Right versus wrong. Fair for me versus unfair for me, with no thought given to fairness for another, because my being shown to be right has to be proven by that universally accepted measuring stick: fairness. Fairness, the ultimate measure of everything. How did I ever allow this mindset to creep into my family? I look at the other things I've blogged, and I believe I have a heart to grieve injustice even when it is not personal to me. Is this something my children will also discover as they age? How much does my example count in their growth? I know we live in a society, an age where everyone is law-suit happy, so this mindset is not just born out in my own family. Everyone being a law unto himself is a sign of the closing of the current age of mankind. According to ancient prophets, each person in the end will be doing what is "right in his own eyes."
So while I am not surprised my family is touched by this, I can not use this commonality as an excuse to avoid the effort required for change. We will remember what it means to be in the family of God through marriage to Grace and Truth. While this marriage is the only one to offer any sort of permanent satisfaction, it is nevertheless a harder marriage to face in a mirror, because I don't earn its proposal, I accept it. To accept it, I must acknowledge that what I see in the mirror is ugly, and I can't hire a cosmetic surgeon to fix it, nor can I work hard enough at the gym to earn it, nor can I even build up my own inner beauty enough to deserve it. Like a fairy tale, that ugliness is the Truth of me, and the Grace is that as I gain the courage to look in the mirror, face the ugliness, and then find the humility to accept Grace anyway, I become beautiful magically. The beauty that would have pleased the first husband is there, but given by the hand of the second husband. We had it backwards. We figured that pleasing the first husband would win the second. I see now that even we are very much like everyone Christ railed against when he walked this earth. Surely knowing this is a good thing. But...now what?
--Unknown
This week my family went on spring break vacation. We had such a test of faith. We saw ourselves in a new way. I hope we came out of it on the right side.
I watched the interactions of our family with new eyes, partly because we were together as a family group for several consecutive days...an unusual event...and partly because I saw us through the eyes of my son's girlfriend who came along on our trip. The first night, she retreated to her room and pined to be with her mother...so severe had been the turmoil in our family trying to find its balance.
With everyone finally separated from each other after hours confined to the car, I sat playing solitaire, wondering if we needed family therapy. My husband and I talked about it...seriously. By the end of the week, we were a "unit" again, she was glad she came on vacation with us, and we had uncovered a vital point of relationship that has been drifting away from us even as we ourselves have been drifting apart from each other, like galaxies moving out from the big bang's center. Our main source of imbalance, I believe, has to do with this two husbands idea. We use it to find our unity again; and we use it wrongly.
I found this concept in a commentary on the book of Romans. In this book, Saint Paul uses the idea of successive marriages to illustrate the transition between living by law and by grace. In the analogy, the law is portrayed as a first husband, but he dies. If a person embraces the genuine walk of Christian faith, the law/ritual marriage in itself is not sufficient. There is nothing particularly Christian about such a marriage. Law is merely an indicator of need and insufficiency, and so can not serve as a true source of fulfillment. The second husband is not available until the first dies, but when it dies, the second can be taken legally. The second husband is grace as it came in the personage of Jesus Christ. This second husband...this final husband...has the power to fulfill completely what the first husband could only offer in shadow. But a person can not be married to both simultaneously. Therein is the rub. Our pride wants to be reassured that we are powerful enough to please the first husband while counting on the second as the sugar-daddy insurance policy for the great unknown variable: the after life. That fuzzy area between what we do and what He does: this is the problem that has plagued us without our ever realizing how disrespectful we were being to God. I, and maybe my husband too, have been trying to co-habitate with the husband of grace while living like the husband of law still has ultimate rule over us, still binds us and still must be inspired to grant us his approval. Thus, we basically render the power of the second husband impotent. Like the spinster in Great Expectations, we cling to a dead hope, kept morbidly before our eyes, in exchange for the very living possibilities that walk into our room and beg us to bestow a blessing on the potential hopes of the future. This "hope of the future" idea is a large one of joint faith for both my husband and me, so our receiving instruction about this is hardly surprising.
As I look at this commentary on Romans and then at my children, I see them fight, attaching their very identities to the outcome of this trial of who is right vs. who is wrong, and I know I have failed them. I see how we have ridden the pendulum across the generations--from swinging toward too much freedom in one generation to its opposing side now: identity completely defined by law, as displayed by either our conscious obedience or disobedience to it. In fact, our identity in this day can be based on the personal rewriting of law, should group-law go against our personal wants and needs. I have led my own children to become too preoccupied with pleasing this dead husband: law.
Right versus wrong. Fair for me versus unfair for me, with no thought given to fairness for another, because my being shown to be right has to be proven by that universally accepted measuring stick: fairness. Fairness, the ultimate measure of everything. How did I ever allow this mindset to creep into my family? I look at the other things I've blogged, and I believe I have a heart to grieve injustice even when it is not personal to me. Is this something my children will also discover as they age? How much does my example count in their growth? I know we live in a society, an age where everyone is law-suit happy, so this mindset is not just born out in my own family. Everyone being a law unto himself is a sign of the closing of the current age of mankind. According to ancient prophets, each person in the end will be doing what is "right in his own eyes."
So while I am not surprised my family is touched by this, I can not use this commonality as an excuse to avoid the effort required for change. We will remember what it means to be in the family of God through marriage to Grace and Truth. While this marriage is the only one to offer any sort of permanent satisfaction, it is nevertheless a harder marriage to face in a mirror, because I don't earn its proposal, I accept it. To accept it, I must acknowledge that what I see in the mirror is ugly, and I can't hire a cosmetic surgeon to fix it, nor can I work hard enough at the gym to earn it, nor can I even build up my own inner beauty enough to deserve it. Like a fairy tale, that ugliness is the Truth of me, and the Grace is that as I gain the courage to look in the mirror, face the ugliness, and then find the humility to accept Grace anyway, I become beautiful magically. The beauty that would have pleased the first husband is there, but given by the hand of the second husband. We had it backwards. We figured that pleasing the first husband would win the second. I see now that even we are very much like everyone Christ railed against when he walked this earth. Surely knowing this is a good thing. But...now what?
Monday, April 03, 2006
Gulsoma
a girl in an arranged marriage at age 4 because her father died and her new step-father didn't want her. She went to live as the property of her husband's family for 7-8 years. She was not just enslaved, but treated with a cruelty that would make me insane to even consider inflicting it on another human being, let alone a child. At one point, she was beaten so severely she became unconscious, bones broken. Her father-in-law revived her by pouring scalding water all over her. She now carries a bald spot from the burn, and multiple scars from the beatings, although her family by marriage had the good sense to leave her face beautiful, and hid their abuse by laying it on her back and legs. One night, she was used as the "table" on which food was cut, scarring her back, as it was used for a cutting board. Who even has a mind that can imagine such cruelty? Thank God she is now, at age 12, in an orphanage, rescued from these living conditions. As for me, I live half-way around the world from Afghan society, and light-years away from such "family" interactions. I have a son who is ten. He will hear of her story. He will be reminded how much he has to appreciate. We both owe that much to the children like her. We actually owe much more. It takes me back to a similar article I read about young boys in Africa being forced into child-armies. Trained and forced to kill enemies when they are only age 12, maybe 10, maybe even 9. Some of them, like Gulsoma, were lucky enough to have been rescued and taken into orphanages. What is it like to resume a life filled with things like playing soccer, wearing a baseball cap instead of a helmet, carrying a toy instead of a weapon, after such an experience? How will these children ever remember...or even learn for the first time...the most basic tenets of justice?
In fact, how sobering it is for me to reconsider the things that I myself have complained were unjust in my own life over the last 24 hours, or the last 24 years. I'm struck dumb. Not one complaint actually deserved verbalizing...not as I see it now. Dear God, I pray such things end...everywhere...forever. You say you give the fatherless compassion. You also say we are your hands and your feet. Show us what you want to do through us. I feel silly about some of my priorities right now.
In fact, how sobering it is for me to reconsider the things that I myself have complained were unjust in my own life over the last 24 hours, or the last 24 years. I'm struck dumb. Not one complaint actually deserved verbalizing...not as I see it now. Dear God, I pray such things end...everywhere...forever. You say you give the fatherless compassion. You also say we are your hands and your feet. Show us what you want to do through us. I feel silly about some of my priorities right now.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
waxing poetic...
HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
- Yeats
Funny how some days I feel like I live the first half of this poem. Other days, I know I live the last half. But always I know, as did the poet, that whatever I have, I give.
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
- Yeats
Funny how some days I feel like I live the first half of this poem. Other days, I know I live the last half. But always I know, as did the poet, that whatever I have, I give.
Visions of power danced in their heads...the Beginning of My Encounters with the Crystal Spectre
No sugarplums in this suite. The other day I talked about something from my private, more fantastic journal...today I am wondering whether to post from it again. For the second time, I have had an encounter with power in a half-waking half-dreaming state. I had it last night. The other time was last July. I feel the urge to bring my metaphysical life a little more out in the open lately, so here goes. The big plunge:
Dream #1: Last July while camping. A couple in anguished fighting couldn't help but be heard by their nearest neighbors: us. By 11 or so, they'd quieted. By 12, I had this dream. I dreamed of a field of sky that was utterly black...no stars, no moon. Just one huge object coming toward me. At first, I thought it looked like a space ship, but on closer inspection, I felt like it had once been alive. And I felt that it was even yet conscious. Here is how I described it a few days after it occurred, as I was trying to process it. I had to wait a bit, the feelings attached to it were so strange:
Saturday night around midnight, I had a very strong feeling of disquiet, like free-floating anguish. (It was July 30 into 31 of 2005.) Then, I had a vision that makes me wonder if I saw Lucifer. Was he coming to the earth, moving over it? Was the antichrist born or somehow established this day? What is this dream vision about? This angel of darkness looked like an intricate crystal at his core, only he was covered in spikes like a gum ball fallen from a tree. The shape, however, was not round. It was more like multiple, conjoined tetrahedrons, a shape that was like a pyramid going up resting on a pyramid going down, and the same sideways, but covered in spikes. A dead brown crust, like long dead leaves, covered this core, only unlike leaves, this crust was sticky-looking, not crumbly. I could tell that before the brown death covered it, when it was clear and light could penetrate it easily, the "light" of God pouring through it would have had the effect of a glorious prism shooting beams of color out like a million rainbows. On either side of him were steel-looking arcs, so narrow as to look like steel cords; only they looked broken, delicate in their incompleteness. And they were huge. All of him seemed massive. Whether these arcs once had more to them, I couldn't say. They may have been the spirit "wheels" that the prophet Ezekiel describes as being on the heavenly creatures he saw. I asked God to allow me to see what this creature's former state looked like, but God said no, to see him in his former state would lead me to feel compassion over the ugly, lonely hulk that remains, and now was not the time to feel compassion for him. So I cannot even guess at the glory of the wings/wheels, their former beauty. But I know that as I watched this thing approach me in a black starless sky, I sensed terrific coldness; loneliness that was insanely deep; and massiveness and power that made me understand how people could confuse this power with the power of God. It was so big that it was hard to sense the intent of it, whether positive or negative---because the power itself was so massive. Were it not for the underlying sense of sadness and negativity, as well as the decay I saw, I might not have comprehended the badness of it myself. I looked up Lucifer. My Bible shows that the translation for the name Lucifer is Day Star, and interestingly, I saw the word Morning Star is a name for Christ, too, so I need to continue doing a little follow-up on this to confirm it, but if that is right, Day Star could easily describe the pre-fallen state of what I saw!
The feel I got was sadness, decay and coldness; a sense of lost beauty and horrible aloneness. The total lack of intimacy with anything must still pain him or else he would not attempt to recreate the communion of the saints with the Satanic or pagan orgy. He must still on some level want what he had with God, only he wants to have it without submitting to God. He tried to gain Christ, but failed. He could not break the communion of God and His Son. He offered Christ the only substitute he has ever known for intimacy: power. Christ did not take the bait. The display of the power of the dark being is indeed terrible and awesome, for this has become his solace, though small solace it is; for underneath it all, he knows it is never destined to be anything more than second best. Yet he cannot release pride and mistrust enough to find redemption himself. Elijah once asked me, Would God ever forgive the Devil? Personally, I think He would; if the Devil would ever come to a place of asking with his whole heart. But instead, power has become the closest thing to an intimate companion that he can find...no, the closest thing that he will accept. He won't humble himself to pay the price to have more.
Dream #2: Last night, as I prayed for clarity. Standing in the gap for so many as I see them walking in a relationship to You, Lord, that does not have that intimacy and open communication that we have. Wondering why I have it...why my husband has You leading him so pointedly through dreams...wondering as You tell us that You've already answered our question about the next step, and yet feeling like we still aren't sure what You want. Praying...praying last night that the restraint You show would move out of the way, that Your essence would become apparent to everyone. Feeling like you knelt to grip my shoulders as I slumped at Your feet. Hearing you say, "for now we must hold back." Then I ask: "but when the appointed time comes, You won't hold back, right?" Then the moment of power exposure. For the first time ever, I got a glimpse of what the ancient prophets saw that caused them to describe spirit beings with other than human characteristics, for you morphed into the lion I've heard You can be. Oh my vision was very limited. We are not in an age where such revelation is easily received, but even in that misty place, your face changed. The color went to a red similar to this, but not...I couldn't describe it really. The nose became enough like a snout to make me think bear, your "form" as it will be for that moment of battle, but mostly it was in your lion-eyes that startled me. The eyes had sufficient ferocity of power to match the devil crystal, yet You let him think he'll outsmart You, catch You in the net of Your own infallible law. His power you can easily match, the question is what strategy to employ while staying within the rules of the game. How amazing that You care to show us any of this. How can we matter enough for You to reveal this amazing game that is so much beyond our comprehension? How silly that we think we know so much. You were kind to me in that You only showed me Your warrior self for an instant. It was enough, I am confident of what can be there--what will be there--when the time comes.
When I think of these two brief encounters with power and how one day they will go head to head in plain view for everything that ever has or will be a living being, in front of the very earth itself...which has more sense than we do, for it aches and longs for this battle to be accomplished, as it will then be "healed"...when I consider these things, now that I've see both the good and bad power potentials that are currently hiding themselves to a degree, leaving us to make our decisions, I stand in awe. We go along obliviously, even going so far as to say that the higher reality is a sham and this image-place is the real world. One day we will all, like Neo in the Matrix, wake up to the truth. And like in the movie, there will be those who do not have the raw courage to face anything but life in the dream world. That, however, will not serve as an excuse. With our false senses of power we make the beds we will ultimately lie in, but not really so oblivious are we. We know good and bad as they are made evident in the uses of power. We know good from evil in the realm of force and justice, no matter what we may embrace as truth or falsehood. We all know when injustice happens, we recognize good and bad in the way power is wielded. When I think of the day when the greatest powers from beyond this universe will come out in the open, I laugh. What an ironic moment it will be for those who consider themselves to sit on "thrones" and reign over other people's lives in this day. To come into the presence of powers that--both the good one and the bad one--are so great that you can literally only collapse and hope that the right one catches you up...I feel like we play games with power like little kids play house or cops and robbers...Now my prayer has changed--instead of quit holding back--it is, Oh my God, get us ready before You do whatever You have planned to do.
Dream #1: Last July while camping. A couple in anguished fighting couldn't help but be heard by their nearest neighbors: us. By 11 or so, they'd quieted. By 12, I had this dream. I dreamed of a field of sky that was utterly black...no stars, no moon. Just one huge object coming toward me. At first, I thought it looked like a space ship, but on closer inspection, I felt like it had once been alive. And I felt that it was even yet conscious. Here is how I described it a few days after it occurred, as I was trying to process it. I had to wait a bit, the feelings attached to it were so strange:
Saturday night around midnight, I had a very strong feeling of disquiet, like free-floating anguish. (It was July 30 into 31 of 2005.) Then, I had a vision that makes me wonder if I saw Lucifer. Was he coming to the earth, moving over it? Was the antichrist born or somehow established this day? What is this dream vision about? This angel of darkness looked like an intricate crystal at his core, only he was covered in spikes like a gum ball fallen from a tree. The shape, however, was not round. It was more like multiple, conjoined tetrahedrons, a shape that was like a pyramid going up resting on a pyramid going down, and the same sideways, but covered in spikes. A dead brown crust, like long dead leaves, covered this core, only unlike leaves, this crust was sticky-looking, not crumbly. I could tell that before the brown death covered it, when it was clear and light could penetrate it easily, the "light" of God pouring through it would have had the effect of a glorious prism shooting beams of color out like a million rainbows. On either side of him were steel-looking arcs, so narrow as to look like steel cords; only they looked broken, delicate in their incompleteness. And they were huge. All of him seemed massive. Whether these arcs once had more to them, I couldn't say. They may have been the spirit "wheels" that the prophet Ezekiel describes as being on the heavenly creatures he saw. I asked God to allow me to see what this creature's former state looked like, but God said no, to see him in his former state would lead me to feel compassion over the ugly, lonely hulk that remains, and now was not the time to feel compassion for him. So I cannot even guess at the glory of the wings/wheels, their former beauty. But I know that as I watched this thing approach me in a black starless sky, I sensed terrific coldness; loneliness that was insanely deep; and massiveness and power that made me understand how people could confuse this power with the power of God. It was so big that it was hard to sense the intent of it, whether positive or negative---because the power itself was so massive. Were it not for the underlying sense of sadness and negativity, as well as the decay I saw, I might not have comprehended the badness of it myself. I looked up Lucifer. My Bible shows that the translation for the name Lucifer is Day Star, and interestingly, I saw the word Morning Star is a name for Christ, too, so I need to continue doing a little follow-up on this to confirm it, but if that is right, Day Star could easily describe the pre-fallen state of what I saw!
The feel I got was sadness, decay and coldness; a sense of lost beauty and horrible aloneness. The total lack of intimacy with anything must still pain him or else he would not attempt to recreate the communion of the saints with the Satanic or pagan orgy. He must still on some level want what he had with God, only he wants to have it without submitting to God. He tried to gain Christ, but failed. He could not break the communion of God and His Son. He offered Christ the only substitute he has ever known for intimacy: power. Christ did not take the bait. The display of the power of the dark being is indeed terrible and awesome, for this has become his solace, though small solace it is; for underneath it all, he knows it is never destined to be anything more than second best. Yet he cannot release pride and mistrust enough to find redemption himself. Elijah once asked me, Would God ever forgive the Devil? Personally, I think He would; if the Devil would ever come to a place of asking with his whole heart. But instead, power has become the closest thing to an intimate companion that he can find...no, the closest thing that he will accept. He won't humble himself to pay the price to have more.
Dream #2: Last night, as I prayed for clarity. Standing in the gap for so many as I see them walking in a relationship to You, Lord, that does not have that intimacy and open communication that we have. Wondering why I have it...why my husband has You leading him so pointedly through dreams...wondering as You tell us that You've already answered our question about the next step, and yet feeling like we still aren't sure what You want. Praying...praying last night that the restraint You show would move out of the way, that Your essence would become apparent to everyone. Feeling like you knelt to grip my shoulders as I slumped at Your feet. Hearing you say, "for now we must hold back." Then I ask: "but when the appointed time comes, You won't hold back, right?" Then the moment of power exposure. For the first time ever, I got a glimpse of what the ancient prophets saw that caused them to describe spirit beings with other than human characteristics, for you morphed into the lion I've heard You can be. Oh my vision was very limited. We are not in an age where such revelation is easily received, but even in that misty place, your face changed. The color went to a red similar to this, but not...I couldn't describe it really. The nose became enough like a snout to make me think bear, your "form" as it will be for that moment of battle, but mostly it was in your lion-eyes that startled me. The eyes had sufficient ferocity of power to match the devil crystal, yet You let him think he'll outsmart You, catch You in the net of Your own infallible law. His power you can easily match, the question is what strategy to employ while staying within the rules of the game. How amazing that You care to show us any of this. How can we matter enough for You to reveal this amazing game that is so much beyond our comprehension? How silly that we think we know so much. You were kind to me in that You only showed me Your warrior self for an instant. It was enough, I am confident of what can be there--what will be there--when the time comes.
When I think of these two brief encounters with power and how one day they will go head to head in plain view for everything that ever has or will be a living being, in front of the very earth itself...which has more sense than we do, for it aches and longs for this battle to be accomplished, as it will then be "healed"...when I consider these things, now that I've see both the good and bad power potentials that are currently hiding themselves to a degree, leaving us to make our decisions, I stand in awe. We go along obliviously, even going so far as to say that the higher reality is a sham and this image-place is the real world. One day we will all, like Neo in the Matrix, wake up to the truth. And like in the movie, there will be those who do not have the raw courage to face anything but life in the dream world. That, however, will not serve as an excuse. With our false senses of power we make the beds we will ultimately lie in, but not really so oblivious are we. We know good and bad as they are made evident in the uses of power. We know good from evil in the realm of force and justice, no matter what we may embrace as truth or falsehood. We all know when injustice happens, we recognize good and bad in the way power is wielded. When I think of the day when the greatest powers from beyond this universe will come out in the open, I laugh. What an ironic moment it will be for those who consider themselves to sit on "thrones" and reign over other people's lives in this day. To come into the presence of powers that--both the good one and the bad one--are so great that you can literally only collapse and hope that the right one catches you up...I feel like we play games with power like little kids play house or cops and robbers...Now my prayer has changed--instead of quit holding back--it is, Oh my God, get us ready before You do whatever You have planned to do.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Bittersweet
Reading a friend's blog about childhood days spent enjoying the "uncreated" (as far as man's hand goes) world made me think back to my own such memories from childhood. I, too, had the luxury of ample exposure to "where the wild things are"...at least as far as this part of the country goes. My grandparents owned 12 acres near the Shawnee National Forest. These acres were forested, except for the small block that was the "living" area. A road, always nearly un-navigable for a car due to the gullies that cut through it, led to the "vacation" property. This was way outside the box of the modern time-share concept. Nevertheless, my memories of the place make a true mental vacation when I visit them:
*playing with a little green lizard that lived around the base of the big tree behind the place.
*lazy wasps in the upstairs windows.
*a tall, heavy, "scary" ladder to that upstairs. It went through a hole in the ceiling that led to the dorm-styled bedroom that was the upper storey of the house.
*matching duck print throw pillows and curtains on the uncomfortably hard couch. Still the only other option were straight-backed wooden chairs. The old folks got the rockers.
*seeing relatives who made me shy, because I rarely saw them; and looking on in wonder as my immediate family spoke to them so familiarly.
*walking alone and unafraid through acres of woods. Now I look back in amazement that I never got lost. I followed the creeks. I'd leap from stone to stone. I learned to be quite nimble navigating...I could spot a "solid" one quite easily.
*standing and staring at the sun on a puddle in the red earth. It looked like a pool of liquid copper to me. I was quite fascinated by it.
*floating flowers. The wildflowers in the glens rose on such delicate stems they appeared to float in the air above the tall wispy grass.
*walking with my grandfather in the evening and in the morning. Learning from him about the different bird songs and about their favorite times of day to sing.
Funny, I don't visit that part of my memory very often. It is always delightful, but sad. Bittersweet is such a perfect word for what it means!
*playing with a little green lizard that lived around the base of the big tree behind the place.
*lazy wasps in the upstairs windows.
*a tall, heavy, "scary" ladder to that upstairs. It went through a hole in the ceiling that led to the dorm-styled bedroom that was the upper storey of the house.
*matching duck print throw pillows and curtains on the uncomfortably hard couch. Still the only other option were straight-backed wooden chairs. The old folks got the rockers.
*seeing relatives who made me shy, because I rarely saw them; and looking on in wonder as my immediate family spoke to them so familiarly.
*walking alone and unafraid through acres of woods. Now I look back in amazement that I never got lost. I followed the creeks. I'd leap from stone to stone. I learned to be quite nimble navigating...I could spot a "solid" one quite easily.
*standing and staring at the sun on a puddle in the red earth. It looked like a pool of liquid copper to me. I was quite fascinated by it.
*floating flowers. The wildflowers in the glens rose on such delicate stems they appeared to float in the air above the tall wispy grass.
*walking with my grandfather in the evening and in the morning. Learning from him about the different bird songs and about their favorite times of day to sing.
Funny, I don't visit that part of my memory very often. It is always delightful, but sad. Bittersweet is such a perfect word for what it means!
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