The Kingdom's Everywhere

All space is sacred space. All space worthy of the name.

Anywhere is a beaded place. Everywhere one goes, one might step for a moment through the beads. Or beings on the other side might step through to us. Like light, is what I’m thinking. Leaking through the interstices. The spaces of communication. Transportation. Of intercourse, in the older sense.

Or a veil. A veil strung everywhere between ourselves and the other world. The heavenly world. Most often opaque, but if one gets just the right angle on the thing. Bingo. Bingo. I’m thinking.

Here it is. Right here. Look. Look.

Like a one-way mirror, except you can step to the side and look. Receive the angled light. And there they are. Beings in another room, just as plain as day.

Or like images imposed on one another. Registered on one another. Images of the same object but taken with two different cameras. One, from a camera that detects visible light. The other, from a camera. Oh. That let’s say detects heavenly light. The visible light and the heavenly light sometimes combining to reveal a superposed reality. A superposed universe. Both images available. Both kinds of light detectable by human eyes, the organic camera that can image from time to time both heavenly light and visible light.

And sometimes what I get is that people talking with me about my God-sightings, my little God encounters, are thinking. Oh boy. Oh boy. What have I gotten myself into here. What is this. What sort of a species of human being have I gotten myself involved with here. Can’t this guy just tone this down, please. Can’t this guy just forget about these God moments, please. Can’t we just pretend this guy and all the rest of the anecdotes and literature on this subject is just. Is just. Well. Material that’s off the deep end. Material we can sort of push over here to the side. Over there to the side. To be examined perhaps at another time. To be studied at our leisure in. Oh. Maybe a few thousand years.

I mean. It’s not that they’re crazy, necessarily. Or loony. Or weird. It’s just that. Weel. Weel. Maybe they’re mistaken. You know. The wiring gone bad. Seeing things. Seeing things that aren’t strictly speaking there.

I get all this. I get that there is considerable squeamishness. I get there is a suspicion that. Well. Some of us have a screw loose. That maybe a number of our screws are loosening and some maybe have fallen out and are rolling around on the deck of our rolling vessels. Our lurching vessels. In the rather violent and unpredictable sea of our lives.

I get all this. I get that some folks are thinking. Wow. This guy has some active imagination. Some active imaginary life.

But what I’m saying is. Look here. Look at the images your eyes make of the world. At the signs they find there. Just look. Allow yourself to see more than you might normally take the time to see. Look at the world as if God isn’t loony. Isn’t off his rocker after all. As if what Jesus has to say in the Gospels isn’t a lot of literary frou-frou. Isn’t a lot of wishful thinking. Isn’t a lot of creating castles in the sky. As if he actually has all his screws tightened down. As if he knows what he’s talking about.

Look at the world as if the Kingdom is in fact come. Is in fact here. Eternity at our finger-tips. Just like the prayer Jesus taught us to pray makes sense. As if proclamation in prayer about the Kingdom has an effect in the actual world. As if longing and praying were in fact powerful powerful practices. As if wishful thinking and wishful acting were both part of the same thing. The same gesture. The same discipline. As if praying and longing and wishing and imagining and expecting and looking and listening and believing and acting were all hugely effective disciplines. As if by asking God into the world. As if inviting him into one’s seeing. One’s imagining and one’s seeing and one’s hearing. Were the most practical. Most down-to-earth. Most rational practices available to humans. As rational as anything. As rational as solving quadratic equations or driving to Burger King for lunch or sending one’s mother flowers on her birthday or mowing one’s grass or paying off one’s mortgage or reading Annie Dillard’s The Living are rational. As if imagination could make seeing possible. As if God could actually show up and change the world.