Healing Fear
House of Mirrors There has been a change in my relationship with God recently. For years I was told that when I “gave away” the knowledge that God had been teaching me, I would move on to The Second Level of Learning. In general, as I was growing up, I was most reluctant to share with anyone anything I learned from my visions. But, somehow, stumbling along my way in life I found myself in The Second Level of Learning. I was now on my own, so to speak. Because the change involved the word “learning” I decided that I...
read moreIn Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: To love what...
read moreLove
The White Room Not that long ago I discovered that I was studying something new in my visions. It turned out to be a new realm of God. The sixth realm study in my career. The first five realms of God that I have studied are obedience, surrender, discipline, acceptance, and grace. I write about them from time-to-time on my blog, The Value of Sparrows. This new realm had a different kind of presentation. The others were just concepts that I studied in my visions and in the world around me. They were generally set, I guess you could say. ...
read moreThe Ponds
Every year the lilies are so perfect I can hardly believe their lapped light crowding the black, mid-summer ponds. Nobody could count all of them— the muskrats swimming among the pads and the grasses can reach out their muscular arms and touch only so many, they are that rife and wild. But what in this world is perfect? I bend closer and see how this one is clearly lopsided— and that one wears an orange blight— and this one is a glossy cheek half nibbled away— and that one is a slumped purse full of its own unstoppable decay. Still, what I...
read moreImpossible
The flames grew higher wider They lashed out of the frame they were in They came for the surrounding material Anything everything they could consume They would consume The men in thick suits could not get close The fire was too hot too strong There was nothing to do but stand back And do what could be done from a distance Time went by The pastor sat on the ground and wept The heat pressed down on him But it didn’t matter It was all over His church His beloved precious church Was gone After the storm in the quiet The men in thick suits...
read moreThe Journey
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice— though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their...
read moreMercy
A Matter of Touch I The jackhammer sends stones of concrete flying as it screams its success at destruction into the night. A torch spews out its molten metal vapor that eats through the links of the chain. A skylight opens overhead lifting the heart up and out on a cloud of hope. A soft grass path replaces the walk of broken glass. Freedom from condemnation replaces the sentence of death. II He balances the plate on one hand while making sure he pours enough gravy on the mounds of food so that it forms rivulets around the plate, held in only...
read moreBird Clef
Composing With Nature Over a hundred years ago, F. Schuler Mathews wrote the book, Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music. It was a shocking kind of bird book: the author wrote out the notations of the bird songs on sheet music paper. Just like he was copying down a ditty that he had heard at the park and wanted to remember it. There were clef notations, key signatures, tempo indications, and even rhythmic markings. Birds were to be considered, at least in this book, as real musicians. A hundred years later, Judy Pelikan adapted Mr....
read morePsalm 61
The Path To Eternity Hear my crying, O God. Hear my prayer. Father, although my hair is now streaked with white, I am still your child. Stoop down from your vastness, lower yourself to my humble state, and listen to my whisper. From the ends of the Earth will I call on you when my heart is in heaviness. I cannot, will not stop calling out to you for what lays on my heart threatens to crush me. O set me up upon the rock that is higher than me, for you have been my hope and a strong tower for me against my enemy. Reach down your hand and lift...
read moreGod Is My Being
Praying for the Dead What I mean by “the dead” are those people on Earth who have lived in such a deep pit of darkness for so long that it has become their home. My question is, How do we pray for those who have lost their ability to know the truth about life? That there is a sun. Deep green forests. Other people who have never lived in the deep. I am trained to my bones to know that there is only one unforgivable sin. All others can be forgiven. But how do you forgive a shadow? I am thinking especially about people who...
read moreI Am Who God Says I Am
Breathing Space As I get older I appreciate more and more how orderly I am in my thoughts. How I have carved events of my life out of its stream and did my best to put them where they belonged. Somethings are best kept in chronological order, yes, but others have such a striking identity that they belong to other blocks with the same identity. Yes, I’m weird. But that’s the whole point of my life. The extent to which I am weird. Organizing my life this way – by subject matter, I guess you could say – has given me a way of...
read moreA Strange Tail
There is something magical about being somewhere for a period of time. A long enough period of time to be able to know things about where you are. I once had a job in my biology teacher’s lab. I measured seaweed. A certain kind of seaweed. He was studying the effect on its growth by the warm waters being evacuated from the nuclear power plant on the coast. And as the summer drew along, with only the company of the classical music station as company, I learned that observation was a process all its own. The longer I looked at these...
read moreThe Backyard, a return
I don’t know why such a simple thing like feeding the birds should make me feel so out-of-step with the rest of the world. It’s something I often feel. But bird feeding? It’s that our world has become obsessed with being special, I think. Special houses. Special cars. Special jobs. Special children. Nothing ordinary is tolerated any more. Everyone has a specialty. Or is supposed to. Everyone excels. It’s no wonder so many people seem lost. They are searching for their wonder. Their fulfillment. Their bestness....
read moreThe Backyard
It has been many years that I have lived here. I came to live here in a most round-about way, and in spite of desperately wanting to leave for most of those years, here is where I have lived. Children have grown up. Left. Come back. Left again. Usually leaving a cat or two. Once even three. I live on the ground floor. Except for the laundry room, the entire floor is mine alone. I read here. I eat here. I sleep here. I write here. It is my room. Only the laundry room end of the floor is underground. The back wall is all glass: windows and...
read moreGenesis 1:1 (part two): Creation
The Mystery of Nothing In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth. Creation. The next concept after time is creation. We are here at the beginning, and now creation begins. We tend to associate the concept of creation with the physical realm. We create things. The first few verses of the Bible make it clear that these words describe that what was being created was the physical world. Before this point in time (and we can never really know whether or not time, itself, was actually the first thing created by God or if it existed...
read moreGenesis 1:1 (part one): Time
A Time to be Born In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth. There are two parts to this sentence, each with its own list of confounding, even overwhelming, questions. So I begin with the first part: In The Beginning. In the beginning—there it is: Time. How did Time get here? Where did it come from? Was it the first thing God created? Even the concept “first” reinforces the idea that Time exists. Did Time just show up, all ready to go? Is there an end to finish up that which Time and God have just begun? Does a...
read morePsalm 1
My Own Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. Blessed silence. Blessed solitude. That wraps around her like an old family heirloom quilt. Something that matters. Something that is real. The separateness is real, too. As real as the sun. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night. Moon and stars That want nothing to do with the day. That express themselves only when shrouded. Against a backdrop...
read moreMy Limitations
A Maze of Mirrors It’s almost effortless today to see what my limitation is. (There’s a joke in there somewhere.) It’s the fact that I cannot see. At least not in the real world. In the unreal world, I’m an absolute wonder. But here, with my feet sticking to Mother Earth, zip. Nada. A big, fat zero. I think it was the way that I was brought up. To be always standing outside the ring of people before me. I think it gave me a kind of spiritual vision problem. In life, I am far-sighted. Now I see that I am far-sighted...
read moreMy Sin
Right to the End My oft repeated transgression against God can be summed up very efficiently by one word: intransigence. It means unwilling to change my view. Absolutely unwilling. There have been three significant times in my life when I resolved to be the one who was right in the face of God. The first was when I was seventeen. Having been told to, Come and do your work, I resolved, instead, to just slip out the spiritual back door of my life and go my own way. That basically didn’t work for me for a few years, but I persisted in it...
read moreWater Under Ice
Everflow I walk on a trail through the woods behind where I live as often as I can. As often as my body allows. And it is a truly wonderful thing. Because it makes my body stronger. And I’m out in the fresh air, which cheers me immensely. And I feel muscles in me working: muscles that haven’t really worked for a long, long time. I walk over a number of little wooden bridges that lift me a bit over whatever small stream happens to be crossing my path. I keep track of them. As I do the squirrels that sometimes run alongside me,...
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