Last year, I felt like You gave me a birthday gift--a gift of cherry blossoms everywhere--and the beauty and elegance and appropriateness of that gift warmed my heart through the cold winter months.
So, as Advent ensued, I wondered if I'd again receive a gift--this time a Christmas gift--from Thee. I told myself things like--a person doesn't give out gifts on His own birthday, but still I felt a thrill of anticipation. I told myself that if the gift I received were the gift of Your Presence, then the most fitting thing to do with it would be to ask that You pass over me and give it instead to someone else who has not experienced such a thing as the wonder of that Presence. I told myself that if You asked how I'd work such a re-gifting moment, I thought first of my husband, who works so hard to make my life a little easier this year. He works both a full time and a part time job that I might take the year off from full-time work, recovering some of the physical strength that has been slowly depleted these last few years, but his own strength is depleted in the process. Always, that price to be paid. I prayed that he might receive some gift of deeper communion with You and rest for his soul, that he might catch a sense of Your nearness without the sacrifice or heartbreak that seem to often accompany such a moment...I pray that for all of us--even though I know to pray for paradise on earth for now reaches beyond the spiritual realm's brand of physics. Still, as long as we're wishing...
I felt like You responded with a glance at Solomon--a reminder that if I should ask for the good of others and not myself, You'd give me that and more--Your Presence for me as well. You gave me a reminder that Your stores are like candle-light. For one candle to share its light means it gives another candle the full measure of its glow without itself being diminished in the least. Such is the limitlessness of the storehouse of Your Presence, and I need not sacrifice that treasure so that another can have his share, to do so cheapens grace--and who can measure the depths of Your real treasures anyway? It is blindness to try. Deafness to barter. Illiteracy to count. I simply rested in silent anticipation as the snows began to fall.
The days until Christmas dwindled, and I told myself it might be a last minute gift You'd give...such is a common principle of gifts given by grace and received by faith--most likely it would appear as something quirky and out of place, or else as something redundantly presenting itself to me again and again...and would I feel Your Presence when it came? It had been long enough since I'd felt that sort of nearness to You that I'd begun to look back over old writings I'd done at those "special times" just to recapture the "feel" of it. And Christmas drew even nearer.
Three times--once per day on the 23rd, 24th, and the 25th--I did find that divine redundancy crept into my celebrations. Three times, almost back-to-back I heard and/or sang O HOLY NIGHT. The first was at a humble little church service during a precious sharing of the Gospel. The second was at a lavish Christmas Eve service where excellence reigned supreme and no expense was spared to celebrate the night of Your birth. The third was Christmas morning on TV--the broadcast of the Disney Christmas Parade. Yanni's Voices performed it. The song was Your gift, but the night before--at the Christmas Eve service--I'd had that moment of Your Presence, and so I thought that was "the gift" and so it was, but hearing the song yet again Christmas morning made me think, "You know, I don't think I've ever had that song present itself to me so often right at Christmastime-proper. Carols yes, but not that one in particular." Such an impression often constitutes my unwrapping of Your gifts like the flowers and the song. (You're such a romantic, aren't You?) But first, the gift of Your Presence begs description.
How do I describe it? Much like light and warmth, sometimes the best description involves measuring the absence as well as the presence of it. Your Presence has at times been an aroma that filled every room of my life, but lately (the last few years) it has been more a thing I just catch a hint of here and there. Oh, I still see Your leading and sense Your humor and interpret Your purposes, but that Presence--it is a gift that comes and goes like the wind, say the prophets, and they're right. I can't contrive it; I can't demand it. At best, I can simply revel in it when it comes, and it came Christmas Eve. What does that Presence bring with it, in human terms? Well-being is a word that comes to mind. Satisfaction and joy outside the brackets of ambition or even of time, these, too, come to mind. A contentment with things as they are no matter how they are because all things of pain will ultimately fall away (to know this deeply and certainly) comes to mind. Yet strangely this contentment is paired with a quintessential advent ache, a joyous grasping for something as yet unseen and nearly unknown, yet called for with a longing that swells the breast and draws the arms up like the arms of a baby who knows she's about to be held by her mother. This is the effect of the Presence, and I had it the whole of Christmas Eve and much of Christmas Day, although laced with a little grief Christmas Day, I know not why.
Christmas Eve at that service I felt a picture form in my mind--as it had been times before when Your Presence visited me, drawing me to the Cross and once to a fountain of glittering ruby waters that were as the blood of Communion for me with Thee--these were past visions granted by Your Presence. Now came another in which I saw myself approach the place of Your birth. I wore the white robe You'd wrapped around me. It slid over my bare feet and ankles, moving as I walked, pulsing with a sheen as it caught the starlight where my feet fluttered the hem of it--time is of no consequence in these visions as You are the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, though You were but new-born, the robe You would put around me was mine already in promise and the only fitting thing for me to wear at such a moment.
My thoughts turned to Mary. If she indeed was a 14-year-old--as legend tells--when You came into her life, then she was the age my middle child is now. I imagined what I would do to help one that age deliver a baby when in a strange place and experiencing something so new as the birth of a first child. I felt myself cradle her head in my lap, as Joseph helped her deliver You. I prayed for her peace. I prayed for her to know the joy of such a moment, the blessings hidden beneath the dire circumstances that might try to rob her of her bliss. Then I saw You in a manger, felt the softness of your just-born cheek with the knuckles of my hand--hating to even run my fingers against your face for fear the roughness of my work-worn hands would be painful. I did not wish to be one of the first pains to Your soft cheek, but how else would I caress You? I thought how strange that in this world comfort and pain are flesh of each other's flesh and how the only way to have one purely is to take both.
Then I thought how if Mary were indeed 14 when these events occurred, then she was likewise near my age now when You died. I leapt through time to see her then. I embraced her yet again, but here our roles were almost reversed--she giving the comfort of one experienced with suffering while I was the one looking into the unknown and wondering what my tomorrow holds. The daydream ended, and the church service rose again in prominence in my conscious mind, but I stored it to ponder as all treasures should be pondered.
Since Christmas Day, I've studied on this carol--the gift above and beyond Your Presence--and what it could mean that You would give it to me. Quickly, I discovered that if a song was what You would give me, then this is the perfect carol for You to choose. I've also learned why Yanni was the ideal performer. I hardly need look very far back across these blogs to see the promise You've made for my musical compositions. Specifically, You've promised this will be a next-phase of ministry for me. For a long time, I've hesitated from seeking publication due to my lack of training in composition. To reassure me, You not only gave me a friend with a vision of my gift perfectly formed to feed others (a friend who incidentally figured prominently into that first presentation of the song on the night of the 23rd) but You also gave me Yanni as a performer--a musician who had no formal training and could not read a note, yet who is a Grammy-winning instrumental composer in this day--a reminder of what "can be" whether formal training is involved or not.
And the carol itself has an interesting back story. Not always has it been the carol that all the soloists long to be chosen to sing as their churches gleam in the candle light of Christmas Eve services. No, I learned it endured quite a "shameful" period in its early days. (I learned of this at the website: hymnsandcarolsofChristmas.com.) This was a hymn that during its infancy was loved briefly by the public, but was swiftly "attacked by churchmen in [the lyricist's] native France" with one french bishop denouncing its "lack of musical taste and total absence of the spirit of religion." This flare of offense taken by the church is a mystery to us now, but is easily understood when consideration is given to the other attributing factors, ones that were outside the hymn's doctrinal truth or melodic beauty. The church saw words written by a lyricist who was classified as "a social radical, a freethinker, a socialist and a non-Christian. Indeed he adopted some of the more extreme social and political views of his era, such as opposition to inequality, slavery, injustice and other kinds of oppression." The church also saw a melody written by a musical composer who was more prominently known for composing "light operatic works and ballets." These factors were "deemed incompatible by those churchmen with the composition of a Christian religious song." I can hardly condemn them. Was I not myself just chided for taking measure of the treasure? Christ Himself warned us about mis-classifying the sanctifying agent when comparing the sacrifice to the altar that bears it, but that is a lesser lesson to the one of the song's glory. The glory is that the message of this song rose above politics and reputations, and just over 150 years later, when that generation had turned to dust--when the words and the music could stand on their own merit and when the only reputation involved in its publicity was the reputation of its subject, well that's when the song became a cornerstone carol of the season. Of all carols, this one strikes me as having a history, a life-story that matches the life-story of its subject more fully than any other I've found.
So what did You give me for Christmas? You gave my Yourself, played out again in song and story even as time spun itself into the darkness of the world's winter solstice. And, You gave me the reassurance of the approaching labor and delivery of my own song, one both for and from Thee. As always, Your gift was nothing short of sublime.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
the cursing of the scapegoat...the Crystal Spectre, part III
Strange the way confirmation You give confirmation to the conversations You have with Your people--confirmation that You really are a part of the dialogue.
After having had that last dream, the very same day in fact, I mentioned to a friend something I hoped she'd raise in prayer with me. She began to get a vision during that prayer, and she shared it with me. I hadn't told her about this Crystal Spectre series of dreams, but here is what she saw: she saw an ear of corn beautifully formed, but surrounded by a rotting dead husk. The rotting husk on it would fall away by the prayers of people who knew of it. When the dead husk was stripped away, what was underneath would be exposed: a golden ear of corn, fine and glowing--not a thing needing to be grown or developed like a seed, but fully formed and ready to be revealed. I spent the rest of the day stunned at the imagery parallels between her prayer vision and my morning's dream. Her vision was in response to my search for a practical application in my everyday life to the more fantastic elements of my dream, her vision lifted into that other realm to meet mine. While mine was literally in the air and full of rainbow-promises, hers was in the earth, growing grain--growing nourishment. What an amazing bridge of wisdom I see as I look for the cords that bind the vision and the reality together.
So I entered the last dream that felt related, although the Spectre made no appearance--this dream was, while fantastic, still in the realm of mankind. My memory of the early part is sketchy, only that things were chaotic for people but they got a handle on things and improved them a bit, bringing relief. But the relief was short-lived, and the second period of chaos and confusion did not get any better. People were running around in a panic everywhere. I moved through the crowd until I saw a church. I decided to go into it and pray. When I did, a priest saw me. He pointed me out, told everyone else in the church to think evil of me, and using something like a rosary that he wrapped around my head, he pushed me to the floor. He held me down by the cord he had wrapped around my head--and pressing my head into the floor, he began to curse me. As he cursed in a language I did not understand, I found myself beginning to spin, as if my head were attached to a spinner that swung my body around in a circle, fast enough that my feet left the floor--yet strangely he stayed positioned just above me, holding my head in place. As he cursed and I spun, I began to feel a strange trepidation and wonder--as if I had reached the apex of my reason for being human, and I wondered what the curse spoken over me would do to me. Somehow I knew it would not do me eternal damage, but I did know it would cause fundamental change. As he continued, I began to feel a sort of bloating happen to my body, until I could actually see the tissue beneath my eyes swell up enough for me to see a yellow puffiness just below by eyeballs. When he finished the cursing, I felt filled with a strange puss-like substance, and I panicked. I ran out of the church and milled about with the crowd just a bit--matching the common denominator of their confusion with my own. But soon, I calmed down and came to realize the pus was not damaging me and knowing again a sense of longing to be with Thee, I entered the church again--or tried.
The priest met me at the door, he barred the thresh hold with all the people behind him, looking over his shoulder. "You'll never be able to pray here again," he said.
I turned away from the church and immediately knew that although this pus could not hurt me, it could badly damage those around me--I'd become something of a Typhoid Mary in this respect. I did not want to bring harm to others, so I took ran into a wilderness area just to the right of the church. People didn't go there because there was none of life's basic requirements guaranteed there--no assurances of food and shelter. But my choice was between putting myself at risk that way and putting everyone else at risk of the pus-like substance that swelled my body. I chose to put myself at risk, and I ran into that unknown land, perceived to be forbidden because of its fiercely inhospitable nature.
The dream ended there as I woke up at the stress of it, but I woke with two things on my now-conscious mind. Revelation 12--and the woman flees into the wilderness that is prepared for her--and second stage of the Day of Atonement Ritual. In stage one, an animal dies for the sins of the people. But in stage two, a second animal is cursed for the guilt of the people. This animal is not killed but is taken into the wilderness and left there. It is the scapegoat.
Thankfully, the experience with K. and her vision is indeed like a tether to the growing earth. She helps me learn to detach personally from that world of the visions when the time comes for me to be "me" again. It is a detachment that grows harder the more these images overflow with portentious themes, the more "significant" they become in scope, for no longer are they simply about me being tested--a thing difficult enough, but at least comprehensible. Now they are about my fulfilling some slowly unveiled reason for being--not just being human, but being at all. In fear and trembling I feel called to explore the furthest boundaries of why I--why any of us--exists. To stay in the visionary realm could prove quite an abyss from that position; so to find a physical-world connection for expression, and to realize I may represent something larger than just myself in these dreams--these help to shield my sanity.
After having had that last dream, the very same day in fact, I mentioned to a friend something I hoped she'd raise in prayer with me. She began to get a vision during that prayer, and she shared it with me. I hadn't told her about this Crystal Spectre series of dreams, but here is what she saw: she saw an ear of corn beautifully formed, but surrounded by a rotting dead husk. The rotting husk on it would fall away by the prayers of people who knew of it. When the dead husk was stripped away, what was underneath would be exposed: a golden ear of corn, fine and glowing--not a thing needing to be grown or developed like a seed, but fully formed and ready to be revealed. I spent the rest of the day stunned at the imagery parallels between her prayer vision and my morning's dream. Her vision was in response to my search for a practical application in my everyday life to the more fantastic elements of my dream, her vision lifted into that other realm to meet mine. While mine was literally in the air and full of rainbow-promises, hers was in the earth, growing grain--growing nourishment. What an amazing bridge of wisdom I see as I look for the cords that bind the vision and the reality together.
So I entered the last dream that felt related, although the Spectre made no appearance--this dream was, while fantastic, still in the realm of mankind. My memory of the early part is sketchy, only that things were chaotic for people but they got a handle on things and improved them a bit, bringing relief. But the relief was short-lived, and the second period of chaos and confusion did not get any better. People were running around in a panic everywhere. I moved through the crowd until I saw a church. I decided to go into it and pray. When I did, a priest saw me. He pointed me out, told everyone else in the church to think evil of me, and using something like a rosary that he wrapped around my head, he pushed me to the floor. He held me down by the cord he had wrapped around my head--and pressing my head into the floor, he began to curse me. As he cursed in a language I did not understand, I found myself beginning to spin, as if my head were attached to a spinner that swung my body around in a circle, fast enough that my feet left the floor--yet strangely he stayed positioned just above me, holding my head in place. As he cursed and I spun, I began to feel a strange trepidation and wonder--as if I had reached the apex of my reason for being human, and I wondered what the curse spoken over me would do to me. Somehow I knew it would not do me eternal damage, but I did know it would cause fundamental change. As he continued, I began to feel a sort of bloating happen to my body, until I could actually see the tissue beneath my eyes swell up enough for me to see a yellow puffiness just below by eyeballs. When he finished the cursing, I felt filled with a strange puss-like substance, and I panicked. I ran out of the church and milled about with the crowd just a bit--matching the common denominator of their confusion with my own. But soon, I calmed down and came to realize the pus was not damaging me and knowing again a sense of longing to be with Thee, I entered the church again--or tried.
The priest met me at the door, he barred the thresh hold with all the people behind him, looking over his shoulder. "You'll never be able to pray here again," he said.
I turned away from the church and immediately knew that although this pus could not hurt me, it could badly damage those around me--I'd become something of a Typhoid Mary in this respect. I did not want to bring harm to others, so I took ran into a wilderness area just to the right of the church. People didn't go there because there was none of life's basic requirements guaranteed there--no assurances of food and shelter. But my choice was between putting myself at risk that way and putting everyone else at risk of the pus-like substance that swelled my body. I chose to put myself at risk, and I ran into that unknown land, perceived to be forbidden because of its fiercely inhospitable nature.
The dream ended there as I woke up at the stress of it, but I woke with two things on my now-conscious mind. Revelation 12--and the woman flees into the wilderness that is prepared for her--and second stage of the Day of Atonement Ritual. In stage one, an animal dies for the sins of the people. But in stage two, a second animal is cursed for the guilt of the people. This animal is not killed but is taken into the wilderness and left there. It is the scapegoat.
Thankfully, the experience with K. and her vision is indeed like a tether to the growing earth. She helps me learn to detach personally from that world of the visions when the time comes for me to be "me" again. It is a detachment that grows harder the more these images overflow with portentious themes, the more "significant" they become in scope, for no longer are they simply about me being tested--a thing difficult enough, but at least comprehensible. Now they are about my fulfilling some slowly unveiled reason for being--not just being human, but being at all. In fear and trembling I feel called to explore the furthest boundaries of why I--why any of us--exists. To stay in the visionary realm could prove quite an abyss from that position; so to find a physical-world connection for expression, and to realize I may represent something larger than just myself in these dreams--these help to shield my sanity.
The Hem of His Robe...
...an aside from the series started by the last blog--for the sake of record-keeping. What is my latest "assignment"from God? Hems. I read of the border of the garment of the priests being a thing they "enlarged" all to make much of themselves before the people. It captured my attention in a new way during that session of Bible-reading. A few more references to hems gave the topic even more significance, until I recognized You were specifically directing my attention toward it. But I was busy and did not make a study of it while a few days passed. Then in the midst of a homeschooling session, my youngest came to me with his language workbook and asked, "Mom, is hem a noun or a verb? What does it mean?" He had to mark its function in a sentence--the moment was a palpably leading question to the spiritual student in me even as it was a functional one to the natural teacher in me. I went ahead and prioritized a Biblical study of hems and hemlines.
Here is what I found in an online concordance, from Blue Letter Bible's website from Vine's:
the extremity or prominent part of a thing, an edge. It could also be a tassel that Jews attached to their mantles to remind them of the law.
It is also one of those areas that is full spectrum in its potential meaning--as is so much of the truly prophetic message that comes from You. Your leadings are so awe-inspiring in that they ever respect the potentiality of free will, for it can be "good" in the sense that both the bleeding woman and others were healed if they so much as touched the border of Your garment. But it is also an example image used by You in Your list of woes for the scribes and Pharisees, as their enlarged fringed hemlines were in truth a sign of pretense that--along with other indicators--proved their works to be motivated by a worldly drive to receive the praise of men.
I also think of that dream I had about standing before You, and You fastened a mantle upon me, and all over the back of it were hands reaching upward out of its fabric. And when You had it fastened about my neck, I took off into the air in flight. And the mantle was miraculous in that its hem never left the ground, but rather expanded to fill all the sky behind and below me with those hands reaching up toward Your domain. Is it time for that dream to find some sort of human world realization? Help me understand Your leading, O God.
Here is what I found in an online concordance, from Blue Letter Bible's website from Vine's:
the extremity or prominent part of a thing, an edge. It could also be a tassel that Jews attached to their mantles to remind them of the law.
It is also one of those areas that is full spectrum in its potential meaning--as is so much of the truly prophetic message that comes from You. Your leadings are so awe-inspiring in that they ever respect the potentiality of free will, for it can be "good" in the sense that both the bleeding woman and others were healed if they so much as touched the border of Your garment. But it is also an example image used by You in Your list of woes for the scribes and Pharisees, as their enlarged fringed hemlines were in truth a sign of pretense that--along with other indicators--proved their works to be motivated by a worldly drive to receive the praise of men.
I also think of that dream I had about standing before You, and You fastened a mantle upon me, and all over the back of it were hands reaching upward out of its fabric. And when You had it fastened about my neck, I took off into the air in flight. And the mantle was miraculous in that its hem never left the ground, but rather expanded to fill all the sky behind and below me with those hands reaching up toward Your domain. Is it time for that dream to find some sort of human world realization? Help me understand Your leading, O God.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
peeling death away..the Crystal Spectre, part II
Prophesy according to the measure of your faith the New Testament tells us.
When the bride moves from betrothal to honeymoon to beyond...how does prophecy define the change in her state of being, in her role and in her purpose now as bride of the Christ? Is she there simply to gain peace and prestige for herself; or is there some larger, more glorious purpose--one that is larger than her own personal security?
Oswald Chambers gives something of an answer to the question when he comments on Eccl. 7:1. "A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of one's birth." Oswald says this verse is not about reputation--as many think at first blush. Rather, it is about character. "Everyone who comes across a good nature is made better by it, unless he or she is determined to be bad...The test of a nature is the atmosphere it produces. When we are in contact with a good nature we are uplifted by it. We do not get anything we can state articulately, but the horizon is enlarged, the pressure is removed from the mind and heart, and we see things differently." How often, God, have I experienced that very thing after a time with Thee! And I have known a few people who have moved within a cloud of that peace-inducing spiritual "mist" he describes.
But are we as a corporate Bride making such an impression on those around us? I fear not, I fear the Church is indeed falling into its apostate era to the degree that it shall soon hit a point of no return. This then is my best first interpretation of the next phase of these dreams about the Crystal Spectre. I pick up with a dream I had in early November, and in the last installment of these reflections on this dream series, I'll consider the church's response.
I lay one morning in the near-dream state of initial consciousness and saw again the crystal spectre. I knew somehow that now was the time for that compassion I'd been forbidden to show earlier, time for it to rise and direct my actions. I flew toward him and touched under the one small point I'd peeled away earlier--that time I cleared a sliver of the husk on him, just enough change to prove that I could do more. But I hadn't been given permission to peel any more death off him, so I asked about it.
"You know I can peel this away. I offered to do so, but you never answered; you only looked at Him." I looked at Jesus, too, then, standing silent and watchful, the perpetrator of my power. "May I peel it away now?" I asked again.
He did not communicate his answer with human words. Somehow, I got the impression he disdained that form of communication unless absolutely necessary, preferring the spirit-image communication that is a more natural mode in his domain. It is indeed profoundly lovely. Was it God or was it him that sent this image to me in a recent dream, an image that would bubble up here as answer to my question? I don't know--but I know that the reflection on this back-dream was the answer to my question about whether to unencumber him from the death shroud.
In that answer-preceding-the-question dream, I'd been looking at an open book. All across the two pages of that book had been written the name Eileen. I know because every time the name appeared, it was underlined in red. When I woke, I felt a profound unction to learn what that name meant. It means: light, or bringer of light. You, O God, once named me Hepzibah melding strange immediate divine imagery with the pre-written text of Your Word. Who was giving me this name now? You or the Dark Spectre himself? Whatever, it little mattered, because the message was clear enough to prompt action.
I began to peel ever so gently the bulk of death off him. He didn't stop me. Death then began to come off him in sheets like rolls of insulation, only it was thickly packed brown deadness. A thing once meant to be supple and dewy with life was now stiff and dry, made of molecules clinging together in desperation, as though through sheer clumpiness it could retain some sense of its former self, despite the loss of moisture. When this death was cleared, I watched my hand drop the last sheet of it, and it fell away into the darkness below to a place too distant for me to see. (We were still in a black, undefined universe.)
I remembered how when I'd recently flown, I'd seen a rainbow outside the plane's window that looked to be in the shape of an eye. The verse popped into my mind. "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." This being is indeed intended to twinkle if the light that plays through him is subtle. And death has indeed been exchanged for the freedom of incorruption. But this one's incorruption was not presented as a new thing to put on, but rather a thing already there to be revealed. It is a bit of a difference from the Bible passage's reference to human expectation. "So when this corruptible shall put on incorrution and this mortal immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O hades, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
I think here of the references to the hems of the garments of priests and of my own mantle spreading its borders in that other dream. All these things swell to proportions I can barely comprehend. Peter, too, describes the potentiality I saw in this newly cleared one when he says of prophecy that we heed it as "a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts." And what of that hemline of the law? A case could be made that I respected it, but likewise that I desecrated it. All I can do is ride on Romans 13:10: "Love works no ill to his neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." As long as I am neighbor to this Dark Spectre, I have no doubt I acted in love.
But after the clearing had been accomplished and light could again penetrate the body of this being, he turned his attention to the broken shells of spirit wheels that clung to either side of him. I had been given no instruction as to how to rectify the problem of the broken spirit. He grew angry, and his countenance--for he'd taken the form to bear a recognizable countenance here--showed his rage at being taken half-way to his goal and then dropped there. He felt I'd succeeded only in mocking him, a condition he'd deflected successfully for a long time. But this was not in my heart, and I asked him to be patient while I asked You about this problem.
I did come and ask You. When I returned, I came with this message from You to him: you have been given a great gift--an opportunity to experience hope and faith. The question now is not what I--a human--can further do for you, but what you can do with this gift from above? You have the hope of a renewal that is already started. But do you have the faith that He who began a good work in you would be faithful to complete it? (I wondered to myself: has an angel ever required faith such as this before--or even experienced a situation requiring it? I think not--they have their own form of faith, but it is nothing like this. I know faith without works is dead--so this faith needed a circumstance for proving itself valid, of working--or else the death being stripped away would never become anything more than a dream.) I said, "This is a work I cannot do; only your faith can accomplish it." Then I slipped away from the dream and woke to life again. I do not know what the Crystal Spectre will do now, but I hope for the best. I have, however, one more dream to consider. It touches on the response of the scribes and the Pharisees to my actions.
When the bride moves from betrothal to honeymoon to beyond...how does prophecy define the change in her state of being, in her role and in her purpose now as bride of the Christ? Is she there simply to gain peace and prestige for herself; or is there some larger, more glorious purpose--one that is larger than her own personal security?
Oswald Chambers gives something of an answer to the question when he comments on Eccl. 7:1. "A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of one's birth." Oswald says this verse is not about reputation--as many think at first blush. Rather, it is about character. "Everyone who comes across a good nature is made better by it, unless he or she is determined to be bad...The test of a nature is the atmosphere it produces. When we are in contact with a good nature we are uplifted by it. We do not get anything we can state articulately, but the horizon is enlarged, the pressure is removed from the mind and heart, and we see things differently." How often, God, have I experienced that very thing after a time with Thee! And I have known a few people who have moved within a cloud of that peace-inducing spiritual "mist" he describes.
But are we as a corporate Bride making such an impression on those around us? I fear not, I fear the Church is indeed falling into its apostate era to the degree that it shall soon hit a point of no return. This then is my best first interpretation of the next phase of these dreams about the Crystal Spectre. I pick up with a dream I had in early November, and in the last installment of these reflections on this dream series, I'll consider the church's response.
I lay one morning in the near-dream state of initial consciousness and saw again the crystal spectre. I knew somehow that now was the time for that compassion I'd been forbidden to show earlier, time for it to rise and direct my actions. I flew toward him and touched under the one small point I'd peeled away earlier--that time I cleared a sliver of the husk on him, just enough change to prove that I could do more. But I hadn't been given permission to peel any more death off him, so I asked about it.
"You know I can peel this away. I offered to do so, but you never answered; you only looked at Him." I looked at Jesus, too, then, standing silent and watchful, the perpetrator of my power. "May I peel it away now?" I asked again.
He did not communicate his answer with human words. Somehow, I got the impression he disdained that form of communication unless absolutely necessary, preferring the spirit-image communication that is a more natural mode in his domain. It is indeed profoundly lovely. Was it God or was it him that sent this image to me in a recent dream, an image that would bubble up here as answer to my question? I don't know--but I know that the reflection on this back-dream was the answer to my question about whether to unencumber him from the death shroud.
In that answer-preceding-the-question dream, I'd been looking at an open book. All across the two pages of that book had been written the name Eileen. I know because every time the name appeared, it was underlined in red. When I woke, I felt a profound unction to learn what that name meant. It means: light, or bringer of light. You, O God, once named me Hepzibah melding strange immediate divine imagery with the pre-written text of Your Word. Who was giving me this name now? You or the Dark Spectre himself? Whatever, it little mattered, because the message was clear enough to prompt action.
I began to peel ever so gently the bulk of death off him. He didn't stop me. Death then began to come off him in sheets like rolls of insulation, only it was thickly packed brown deadness. A thing once meant to be supple and dewy with life was now stiff and dry, made of molecules clinging together in desperation, as though through sheer clumpiness it could retain some sense of its former self, despite the loss of moisture. When this death was cleared, I watched my hand drop the last sheet of it, and it fell away into the darkness below to a place too distant for me to see. (We were still in a black, undefined universe.)
I remembered how when I'd recently flown, I'd seen a rainbow outside the plane's window that looked to be in the shape of an eye. The verse popped into my mind. "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." This being is indeed intended to twinkle if the light that plays through him is subtle. And death has indeed been exchanged for the freedom of incorruption. But this one's incorruption was not presented as a new thing to put on, but rather a thing already there to be revealed. It is a bit of a difference from the Bible passage's reference to human expectation. "So when this corruptible shall put on incorrution and this mortal immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O hades, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
I think here of the references to the hems of the garments of priests and of my own mantle spreading its borders in that other dream. All these things swell to proportions I can barely comprehend. Peter, too, describes the potentiality I saw in this newly cleared one when he says of prophecy that we heed it as "a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts." And what of that hemline of the law? A case could be made that I respected it, but likewise that I desecrated it. All I can do is ride on Romans 13:10: "Love works no ill to his neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." As long as I am neighbor to this Dark Spectre, I have no doubt I acted in love.
But after the clearing had been accomplished and light could again penetrate the body of this being, he turned his attention to the broken shells of spirit wheels that clung to either side of him. I had been given no instruction as to how to rectify the problem of the broken spirit. He grew angry, and his countenance--for he'd taken the form to bear a recognizable countenance here--showed his rage at being taken half-way to his goal and then dropped there. He felt I'd succeeded only in mocking him, a condition he'd deflected successfully for a long time. But this was not in my heart, and I asked him to be patient while I asked You about this problem.
I did come and ask You. When I returned, I came with this message from You to him: you have been given a great gift--an opportunity to experience hope and faith. The question now is not what I--a human--can further do for you, but what you can do with this gift from above? You have the hope of a renewal that is already started. But do you have the faith that He who began a good work in you would be faithful to complete it? (I wondered to myself: has an angel ever required faith such as this before--or even experienced a situation requiring it? I think not--they have their own form of faith, but it is nothing like this. I know faith without works is dead--so this faith needed a circumstance for proving itself valid, of working--or else the death being stripped away would never become anything more than a dream.) I said, "This is a work I cannot do; only your faith can accomplish it." Then I slipped away from the dream and woke to life again. I do not know what the Crystal Spectre will do now, but I hope for the best. I have, however, one more dream to consider. It touches on the response of the scribes and the Pharisees to my actions.
On being wine...the Crystal Spectre, part I
It's been a while since I've written on the topic of my encounters with the dark one who would make a trade to have me in his company--and it is not easy to write of him, because I don't' fully understand who he is, nor how he trades; I know the trade evokes corporate joy in heaven, but the whole scenario is a dream-madness that I don't understand. Nevertheless it follows a logical and reasonable progression and feels significant in a larger way than I comprehend, so I record it. Only now do I feel inclined to speak of it, because only now am I beginning to learn how these images from the fantastic can funnel down into a practical, perfectly sane presentation in normal human life. I thank a few dear friends for being instruments to the purpose of my instruction. My own perceptions are one thing. To live them out is another. The spiritual may feel like drifting into madness, but the physical gives it sanity, much like the rule of time in a magnetized, gravity-riddled universe.
If I should wish to attach these latest dreams to other dreams on the subject, I'd go back to the Strange Pilgrimage ones in March of '07 which represent my being in the realm of this one who traded for me, of Christ's abiding presence despite that unholy environment. I'd also point to the one of the visions of power in April of '06 as a description of the original dream of encounter with this fallen being. These dreams have spread themselves as such a thin glaze over the last few years of my life that I can't even remember which have been reported here and which have stayed on the private pages of my prayer journal. If the one about his trading for me isn't here--it needs to be. In it, I now perceive myself serving as 'representative' of the city of Jerusalem, unless it is the other way around, but can not say for certain. What is a symbol and what is the thing symbolized is an area still weak in my development, but growing stronger. Whatever I may represent, I know this: ever present--either on stage or in the wings--is the one who seems covered in death, and ever present is the covering of "my" strange relationship with him.
One other time--I don't find it in past entries so I mention it here--I dreamed I was granted the power to flake that layer of death off his crystal form, making the incredible possible: white light could once more strike his form, pass through him and become the myriad of rainbows that were the fruit of his original design, a return to his original purpose.
Here then are the most recent in that progression--the next move in a chess game that goes beyond the cosmic, and certainly beyond my own strategic skills! I dreamed today of a large commercial coffee maker. It had multiple warmers, with pots warming on each one, but my hand took a pot and raised it to a second tier, setting it in a metal carriage where the actual coffee drip could fill the pot with fresh coffee. When I woke, it was in my mind that I go into a season--after a rather long dry spell I'd say--of revelation. I go into a season of being lifted up to receive new "coffee" which has been a long-term metaphor for me. It serves as symbol akin to the turning of water into wine, something the people needed in order to continue celebrating a glorious wedding. In kind with Christ's miracle making wine out of water at that wedding-- even so, I would go up to receive the coffee that is a universal symbol in our day. The whimsy of it makes me chuckle.
Indeed, a heightened sense of the other realm returns like the tide, along with a fortuitous motivation to get myself physically healthier--exercise and diet discipline more rigorous--and I'll need it as these times of revelation always take a physical toll on my body. Anyway, the immediacy of interaction began one moment in October when I was reading a book by Taylor Caldwell called Dialogues with the Devil. The book gave me much food for thought as it portrays our enemy as being a seducer of man more than a willful harmer of man. His goal is rather to convince man to harm himself in order to prove to God that He made a mistake in creating something so base and gullible as man. In his mind--by Caldwell's presentation--he is doing God a great service by demonstrating how very vile we humans can be. He tempts us, watches us closely until we fall, then highlights us before the throne of God, saying: "See, see how low they can stoop? Are You not yet convinced to be disgusted with them beyond reparation? Let it be that we, your angels, live as your only servants in this universe." In this scene, he does not exercise violence himself, he only provides the initiative that makes us shoot ourselves in the foot!
The story made me frequently reflective, pausing to pray and consider as I read. The idea that he could not have the faith to see some future benefit in God's relationship with degraded man is certainly understandable; but being one of the horrific species myself, I can't help but turn to him and say: "Can't you just let us love Him? We may not be brilliant or beautiful or excellent in the hierarchy of things created. We may be an enigma that is a thorn in your flesh, but must you ever interfere with our ability to perceive His love for us? How does this benefit Him? And when one of us does find Him to be magnificent enough that we seek His will with gladness, you call us 'bots' and mindless sheep. Surely it grated on you every time Christ cast our sheep-like status in a positive light and gloried in being our Shepherd. Do you despise us for moving about on the spirit plane with you? We carry our wine of the spirit in crude wineskins. Why will you not accept that the wine is destined for new skins and an existence in them worthy of the creative endeavors of the Ancient of Days?"
I sighed and dropped my eyes back to my reading. The next line read: "Lucifer dashed the wine in his goblet on the grass." I laughed at the seamlessness of the imagery.
I once dreamed of being a happy blade of grass in a sea of grass, my little green face lifted blissfully to heaven. Satan has indeed splashed the essence of his destiny all over the fields of mankind. I gaped at such an immediate response from the Spirit and the Christ to my musings before Satan and apparently before all heaven. It seemed as though I'd been granted an opportunity to stand for mankind alongside Christ in that great trial that runs in heaven's courtroom--what a moment!
Can bitterness save this one whose wine was dashed all over mankind? Certainly not. His sacrifice is therefore all the more tragic, though his continued efforts and the ever-more frenetic energy of them is understandable. He is the quintessential tragic hero. But is that the end? If the story were written by the Greeks, it would be. But this story is larger than man. So what is its conclusion?
I dreamed once that I could peel off the death that encrusted him. That death had destroyed his capacity to diffuse light and make it lovely, the very essecene of his raison d'etre. I dreamed I could peel that death off. When I dreamed this, and made my offer to peel--demonstrating my ability by peeling the tiniest of chinks, he did not answer. Rather he turned and looked at Christ who stood behind me. Their gazed locked. Christ was behind me, I could not see His face, but the other one's expression was filled with intensity and sorrow. It was a mystery to me. That he knew the Christ intimately was evident on his face--for he had a face at that point in the vision. But what else was implied in that look of resignation? Maybe it was the thought, "You saved them to save me?" Is such a thing possible? Can it be? Is faith an issue in believing such a thing, or is it heresy to entertain such a belief? Could it be the will of almighty God: that the atonement of the one condemned might be possible through embracing the one whom he held in greatest prejudice, that this one could serve as gatekeeper for him--because this one had the Spirit of the Christ within, a role even his honored brethren could not fulfill?
But what of prophecy? Does it allow for any such thing as the fanciful exchange described above? Should knowing it won't work be a good enough reason for not trying, if trying is the most agape-love thing to do?
What of when John tells us Jesus' words: All things are possible with God. Is this a vision of Christ taking authority over death to the degree that death is set aside entirely? For now, it is still an enigma and incomplete to my heart, so I wait for further revelation.
If I should wish to attach these latest dreams to other dreams on the subject, I'd go back to the Strange Pilgrimage ones in March of '07 which represent my being in the realm of this one who traded for me, of Christ's abiding presence despite that unholy environment. I'd also point to the one of the visions of power in April of '06 as a description of the original dream of encounter with this fallen being. These dreams have spread themselves as such a thin glaze over the last few years of my life that I can't even remember which have been reported here and which have stayed on the private pages of my prayer journal. If the one about his trading for me isn't here--it needs to be. In it, I now perceive myself serving as 'representative' of the city of Jerusalem, unless it is the other way around, but can not say for certain. What is a symbol and what is the thing symbolized is an area still weak in my development, but growing stronger. Whatever I may represent, I know this: ever present--either on stage or in the wings--is the one who seems covered in death, and ever present is the covering of "my" strange relationship with him.
One other time--I don't find it in past entries so I mention it here--I dreamed I was granted the power to flake that layer of death off his crystal form, making the incredible possible: white light could once more strike his form, pass through him and become the myriad of rainbows that were the fruit of his original design, a return to his original purpose.
Here then are the most recent in that progression--the next move in a chess game that goes beyond the cosmic, and certainly beyond my own strategic skills! I dreamed today of a large commercial coffee maker. It had multiple warmers, with pots warming on each one, but my hand took a pot and raised it to a second tier, setting it in a metal carriage where the actual coffee drip could fill the pot with fresh coffee. When I woke, it was in my mind that I go into a season--after a rather long dry spell I'd say--of revelation. I go into a season of being lifted up to receive new "coffee" which has been a long-term metaphor for me. It serves as symbol akin to the turning of water into wine, something the people needed in order to continue celebrating a glorious wedding. In kind with Christ's miracle making wine out of water at that wedding-- even so, I would go up to receive the coffee that is a universal symbol in our day. The whimsy of it makes me chuckle.
Indeed, a heightened sense of the other realm returns like the tide, along with a fortuitous motivation to get myself physically healthier--exercise and diet discipline more rigorous--and I'll need it as these times of revelation always take a physical toll on my body. Anyway, the immediacy of interaction began one moment in October when I was reading a book by Taylor Caldwell called Dialogues with the Devil. The book gave me much food for thought as it portrays our enemy as being a seducer of man more than a willful harmer of man. His goal is rather to convince man to harm himself in order to prove to God that He made a mistake in creating something so base and gullible as man. In his mind--by Caldwell's presentation--he is doing God a great service by demonstrating how very vile we humans can be. He tempts us, watches us closely until we fall, then highlights us before the throne of God, saying: "See, see how low they can stoop? Are You not yet convinced to be disgusted with them beyond reparation? Let it be that we, your angels, live as your only servants in this universe." In this scene, he does not exercise violence himself, he only provides the initiative that makes us shoot ourselves in the foot!
The story made me frequently reflective, pausing to pray and consider as I read. The idea that he could not have the faith to see some future benefit in God's relationship with degraded man is certainly understandable; but being one of the horrific species myself, I can't help but turn to him and say: "Can't you just let us love Him? We may not be brilliant or beautiful or excellent in the hierarchy of things created. We may be an enigma that is a thorn in your flesh, but must you ever interfere with our ability to perceive His love for us? How does this benefit Him? And when one of us does find Him to be magnificent enough that we seek His will with gladness, you call us 'bots' and mindless sheep. Surely it grated on you every time Christ cast our sheep-like status in a positive light and gloried in being our Shepherd. Do you despise us for moving about on the spirit plane with you? We carry our wine of the spirit in crude wineskins. Why will you not accept that the wine is destined for new skins and an existence in them worthy of the creative endeavors of the Ancient of Days?"
I sighed and dropped my eyes back to my reading. The next line read: "Lucifer dashed the wine in his goblet on the grass." I laughed at the seamlessness of the imagery.
I once dreamed of being a happy blade of grass in a sea of grass, my little green face lifted blissfully to heaven. Satan has indeed splashed the essence of his destiny all over the fields of mankind. I gaped at such an immediate response from the Spirit and the Christ to my musings before Satan and apparently before all heaven. It seemed as though I'd been granted an opportunity to stand for mankind alongside Christ in that great trial that runs in heaven's courtroom--what a moment!
Can bitterness save this one whose wine was dashed all over mankind? Certainly not. His sacrifice is therefore all the more tragic, though his continued efforts and the ever-more frenetic energy of them is understandable. He is the quintessential tragic hero. But is that the end? If the story were written by the Greeks, it would be. But this story is larger than man. So what is its conclusion?
I dreamed once that I could peel off the death that encrusted him. That death had destroyed his capacity to diffuse light and make it lovely, the very essecene of his raison d'etre. I dreamed I could peel that death off. When I dreamed this, and made my offer to peel--demonstrating my ability by peeling the tiniest of chinks, he did not answer. Rather he turned and looked at Christ who stood behind me. Their gazed locked. Christ was behind me, I could not see His face, but the other one's expression was filled with intensity and sorrow. It was a mystery to me. That he knew the Christ intimately was evident on his face--for he had a face at that point in the vision. But what else was implied in that look of resignation? Maybe it was the thought, "You saved them to save me?" Is such a thing possible? Can it be? Is faith an issue in believing such a thing, or is it heresy to entertain such a belief? Could it be the will of almighty God: that the atonement of the one condemned might be possible through embracing the one whom he held in greatest prejudice, that this one could serve as gatekeeper for him--because this one had the Spirit of the Christ within, a role even his honored brethren could not fulfill?
But what of prophecy? Does it allow for any such thing as the fanciful exchange described above? Should knowing it won't work be a good enough reason for not trying, if trying is the most agape-love thing to do?
What of when John tells us Jesus' words: All things are possible with God. Is this a vision of Christ taking authority over death to the degree that death is set aside entirely? For now, it is still an enigma and incomplete to my heart, so I wait for further revelation.
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