Or Perhaps It's The Crown Vetch

Or perhaps it’s the crown vetch that takes us through the doorway. The cascade of the pinkpurplewhite flowers coming over the brow of a hill, the bumblebees busy in them. Buzzing. Fumbling. And fumbling some more. A color that reminds us of Jesus’ robe after his Roman beating. But lighter, more full of white. A delicate color that comes over the brow of the hill in the back of one’s house like a crown. A late spring blossoming. A festive and seasonal and sensual and hopeful color and texture and flowingness all hanging down over the edge of the wall. Along the brow of the semi-holy hill full of oak and fern and maple.

Oh, and it dangles and dandles in the breeze in the weekend morning. Just in sun beneath the mile-high trees. As one regards it moving slightly in air, one’s attention moves to the moving light and shadow back in woods. And the hummingbird that comes to suck at the azaleas. The humming and the blur of wings. And the red of the azalea blossoms that are the red of blood spattered in the bushes’ green. A butterfly that makes its way also from blossom to blossom. And suddenly one recognizes the real practical nature of flowers. The real food provided by the beautiful. The real literal food basis of the beautiful things of the world. The God-made loveliness of the world.

The real literal spiritual basis of beauty and how it sucks us into it and makes us fumble in our eyes and in our ears and in our hands and in our mouths and in our minds at it. Turns us into bumbling altar boys and girls at the feast of it. At the light and shadow shifting like many light beings moving about the wood, under a tall canopy of leaves. Leaves that seem light itself way up there. A form of light itself.

And then one understands that all of this. All of these beautiful things. These flowers and the green and the bumbling bees and the humming birds and the butterflies lilting about in air like animated melodic lines in three dimensions. All these are forms of light. Are the material correlatives of light. Are what light itself is for. To reveal these forms. These instantiations. These incarnations. Of itself.

The light itself that is everywhere one looks, today. In everything one sees, in one form or another. Living. Breathing. Light. That tumbles over the brow of the hill. Falling all among the ferns. And the buzzing and humming and shhussing of the wind manifest in leaves are the sounds of light, if it has sounds. The music the light makes traveling down and all around. This beautiful place. This place that surrounds. That seems organized. Around this exotic. This crown vetch that cascades down like an invitation to fumble and frolic on this hill.

Or Perhaps It's The Traveling

The sense maybe of being. Neither here nor there. The sense of being on one’s way but in between anywhere one was or will be. The places defined as home and one’s destination, perhaps. Operational definitions. One’s source, in a sense. And one’s objective.

The sense that one is not oneself. Because of course in between one loses one’s sense of who one was and who one will be at some point in the future. At some point in space. In space-time. In the context of where and when one was and will be.

One is. One definitely is. One senses this. But since one is nowhere in particular, one has become no one in particular. One is, but one is generally. One is only in the general sense of being. One exists, but one is more diffuse than usual. More vague. Suspended, as it were. Beside oneself. Outside oneself. Disconnected from one’s usual relations.

Other. A possibility. A node of potentiality. A transience. A consciousness. A recording device that is on. That is merely passing through. An aficionado of experience. The traveling experience. The getting from here to there.

And so there is this. This extent of the definite. Which is to say. A definiteness that is indefinite in certain respects. That is definite in that one is neither here nor there but is indefinite as to where one is. Precisely. Or who or how. Or what it is. One should be doing. Or thinking. Or feeling. Or being now. Now that one is nowhere.

And what this opens up is a sense that. Well. One might be anyone. Might one not. One might try anything. Who knows what may happen. Who knows what may fit. Who knows which of the congress of possibilities here one might discover as one roots around. Possibilities one might pull on like a new shirt. Like a new suit of clothes.

This kind of. Oh. Utter. And complete. Possibility of abandon. Of complete silence, for example. Of complete and utter solitude and. Well. Much like a mirrored surface. A silvered surface. Faithfully recording. Faithfully reflecting. Silent as the silver on the back of glass.

Pared down to this. Thinned down to this. Purified to this one sense.
And so. So. It is as if one has. Well. Just winked out. Just disappeared from the face of the earth for the time it takes. The period. The extraordinary elastic period. In which one is more like a potentiality. A zygote once again. That mysterious. That small. That possible. Once again.

And in this state, much is in fact likely. Maybe. One might hear the beads delicately ticking against one another. One might see odd lights. And sound becomes muffled in such a state. In a state of air travel. In the terminals and on the jetways and in the planes. And one finds oneself at a great distance from everything. Insulated oddly from the noise, which is now so far away. At a remove from the visible world that might as well unfold at the wrong end of a telescope.

And this is a peculiar state. One is neither in the world nor out of it, exactly. One is neither connected to its events nor disconnected. Suspended as one is on the surface of a substance that is so clear one might see a dime magnified one hundred feet below with one’s naked eyes. And everything. Including one’s own hand. Seems at least that far away.

And then. Now this particular example is in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh airport. In between flights as well. In between here and there and now in between flights of fancy. Or fancy, cloud-topping flights. And then there’s a fellow dressed in robes. A guy that is. That seems. Oh. I don’t know. Younger but older. That’s dressed as if for a desert walk. A dusty walk. A walk through Judea perhaps 2,000 years ago. A hairy guy. A bearded guy. Who strolls and sits. Who looks. Who stares as if I am. As if I in fact exist. And am in some way interesting. Who continues to stare to the point. Oh. Well. I get annoyed, okay. And then I look down the row of seats at him to. You know. Warn him off. Back-at-him kind of thing. And what I see. Is. Nothing. No one. A vacancy. A pure absence. Air.

Then I look away. And there he is again. On the periphery of my vision. Again. Down at the end of the row of seats. And so I get up. I stand up and saunter. You know. Like nothing’s happening. Like nothing’s going on. Saunter like a casual traveler down the corridor. Down the long corridor of life. Toward the higher numbered gates. And what do you know. He gets up also. He gets up and walks. Paralleling me. Walking along with me there half a corridor away as we make our way down the concourse to the higher numbered gates.

And as I’m wondering what this is. As I’m walking. As carefully as I might. And am wondering mightily what this may be. Whether I’ve gone. Well. Funny. Funny in the head. As these kinds of thoughts are wandering through my head. There is this. I know this is odd. So excuse me. I don’t mean to sound as loony as I do. There is this communication. He doesn’t speak. But he does communicate. I don’t know how. A sense of peace. Peace, he seems to say. Without the word. With only the feeling. The feeling emanating from him like light maybe from the sun. Just appearing here. Just showing up. And then I’m peaceful. I am profoundly peaceful.

And it makes no sense. None whatsoever. But here it is. We’re walking down the concourse and this guy who isn’t there is radiating peace. And I sit down again. And he sits down again. And we just sit there. Me feeling peaceful. He. Well, I don’t know what he’s feeling. But perhaps he’s feeling peaceful as well. And we just sit here like this. For awhile. Until it’s time to board the plane.

Or Perhaps It's You

Or perhaps it’s you. Perhaps it’s in relationship with you, for your friend. With your friend, for you. With another person. Your lover, perhaps. Perhaps almost any other person. Most others.

Relationship with the other, so to speak. Because of which we are able to make it through. The doorway moving past us. And now. Suddenly. We’re on the other side. Suddenly in the room. Perhaps what happens is these others who are our family. Our friends. Our co-workers in the vineyard. Our colleagues in the Kingdom. Our neighbors in the now.

Fellow volunteers in the great charity bazaar in which all of us participate. All of us volunteer. The great grace bazaar. The great forgiveness function. Or most of us, in any event. Or many of us. These others, as I say. These others in whom we become. We find ourselves lodged. Wedged. In whom we find ourselves guests. Find ourselves entertained. Find ourselves freed. Find ourselves welcome. Find ourselves wined and dined. Find ourselves discovering. Find ourselves wandering. Find ourselves wondering. Find ourselves in whatever mood. Find ourselves opening. Find ourselves rivering.

Find ourselves flowing and riding and ferrying and surfing and peeling out and jetting and paddling and spinning and gandering and learning and absorbing and eddying and bracing and bumping and dumping and swimming and recovering and dousing and shivering and warming and drying and revving and motoring and weaving and dodging and sliding and sneaking and streaking and dropping and adventuring and exploring and resting and floating and drifting and listening and hooting and giggling and guffawing and turning and looking and looking and seeing and seeing and hearing and listening and touching and smelling and. Well.

Doing everything we can think of. Being everything we can imagine. Becoming everything that is possible. This way. Through the doorway of the other. Through the being of a friend. Through the possibility of the other. The undisciplined easy necessity of the lover. The eros lover. The agape lover. Same-same. All one. Love. Caring. Concern. Sympathy. Friendliness. All from the same spring. The same artesian well. The same deep earth place.

All the same necessity of the living. The living other. The other who is here. Right here. All around and in and through everything we know and how we know and what. The other in whom Spirit resides and whose Spirit draws us. Writes us. Creates us. Makes us. Enlivens us. Affirms us. Encourages us. Identifies us. Discovers in us a corresponding Spirit.

And it is in the communion. The commingling. The merging and separating. Together and apart. To and fro. The dancing quality of coming together and parting and coming together again. Of these Spirits. This Spirit that wants union of all its bits. Its pieces. Its replicated selves. Its distributed being. Its disparate living. Among us.

That wants to bring us into intimacy with one another. The dirty and the really dirty. The sinners and the really sinful. The rich and the poor. The stupid and the smart. The ambitious and the lazy. The well educated and the not so well educated. Men and women. Old and young. Ugly and pretty. Tall and short. Blue eyed and brown eyed and green eyed and gray eyed. The arrogant and the humble. The selfish and the selfless. The cruel and the kind. The miserly and the generous. The faithful and the faithless. Christian and non-Christian. Dark skinned and light skinned. Articulate and inarticulate. Shy and glad-handing. Honest and deceitful. Birthing and dying. So forth and so on.

Wants to reconcile the one with the other in the Kingdom of Grace. The Spirit that is hauling all of us into a state of Grace, weather we will or no. Pulling and hauling us through the eyes and the ears and the lips and the nostrils and the skin of one another. An industrial strength magnet operating on each of us. Exercising extraordinary power over us. Dragging us like a spiritual gravity toward its center, which is everywhere in everyone at once.

Or something like this. An industrial strength spiritual gravity that works on our hearts and minds and souls and spirits. That is at work even now. Even between us, who may not have ever met. You and me. Whoever we are. Whoever we are becoming in one another. Through one another. Because of one another. Through whom the Spirit is doing his wonder work. His miracle work. And isn’t it enormous. And isn’t it extraordinary.

And isn’t it like something out of the Bible or out of fantasy literature that this extraordinary redemption may occur. This amazing mystery. At work in us. You and me. Right at this moment that is a moment that is extensive after all. That is infinitely extensive after all. That feels like it may be forever. Who knows. Although it feels like we do. It feels like we know. But it’s something that is. Well. Strictly speaking. Unknowable. And isn’t this. Well. Perplexing. And confounding. And well. Paradoxical. And impossible. And improbable. And true.

Or Perhaps It's Work

Or perhaps it’s work that takes us through the doorway. Perhaps it’s work that brings us into his presence. Perhaps it’s writing. Perhaps writing is one discipline. One way. And as one writes, perhaps God joins us in the writing.

He enters in and suddenly this is not what one is writing for oneself or one’s friends but what God is writing to one. And he’s using one’s own fingers and eyes to communicate this. Is using one’s own mind. Has control of one’s own mind because one has relinquished control, gladly, to him.

Or not control. More a conversation that’s going on in here, and it’s God’s turn. He’s speaking now, and this is what he has to say to me. Maybe to us. To some of us. A few of us who might read these writings. But that’s enough, he’s saying. That’s plenty.

Then your work Bill. Your work will have coincided with my work, and we will be one. Your work and my work will be one work. Your work will be good because it is my work, you see.

Or perhaps it’s work in the sense that one loses oneself in one’s work. Loses one’s self-consciousness and gives oneself over to the pleasure of unconsciousness of self. Of the absence of self. As if self had disappeared and been absorbed in the work itself. Totally submerged in the work itself. So that the work becomes the work of another. The work happens outside the self. Outside of all the silliness one finds in oneself.

And is done only with a sense of the rules of performance and the sense of what the outcome should look like. And that’s about it. Only this. A purity here. Oh, like a tennis player, maybe. A person pared down to the role of player on the court. Pared down to whacking a little fuzzy rubber ball across a net. And that’s the thing. Getting that little fuzzy rubber ball back over the net in such a way that one’s opposite—one’s friend there on the other side who makes this loss of self possible—cannot whack it back over the net.

Or a clay mill operator calling for the overhead crane operator to dump clay into the hoppers and then running water into the hoppers and then turning on the metal gangs in the hoppers and then filling the hoppers with water to a certain level so that the clay becomes dilute but not too dilute. And then one sits with one’s giant squirt gun in front of the screen in the side of the cylindrical hopper and squirts the screen until one dislodges the particulates enough that the clay in solution flows a bit out of the screen and down in front of one into a catch basin and through a pipe into a pool the size of an Olympic swimming pool where an agitator keeps the clay solution stirred up until it’s pumped to another building where it is reduced to powder and added with crushed limestone and other stuff to form cement.

Dry cement. That is pumped into silos and stored until it is pumped from the silos into bulk container trucks or rail cars or bags to be stacked by strong men on trucks to be trucked who knows where. To form something somewhere like stone.

Or a limestone mill operator who enters art work into the computer that runs the giant saw and then sets the limestone slab that was made millions of years ago by dying creatures over millions of years accreting here in Iowa on the bottom of a sea on a table to be cut by the diamond tipped blade of the saw in increments of an inch. And the slab after it is cut by the saw will be placed on the polishing table, where it will be polished by a tool that uses a synthetic stone to grind the surface of the limestone until there is a slickness and a shininess to the surface that is sufficient for the person placing the order for the slab that will be used as a table top in his home.

The stone mill operator like the clay mill operator is working with the stuff of the earth and will as he works become in a sense hypnotized by the work itself. Will become unconscious of his cares and of his particular history and of his particular obsessions and worries and sorrows and personhood quirkiness. He will for a time forget his family and his friends and his very own particulars and will in this blissfully forgetful state do his work with the work of the earth.

And the fruits of his labors will satisfy. Will augment. Will enhance. Will give pleasure to. Others. Will be the worker’s contribution to the human enterprise. Will be his enduring legacy. At least one important sort of contribution to this enterprise. And this God smiles upon. This God blesses. Because this sort of work is selfless, by its nature. Is self-denying. Self-forgetting. And it is other-blessing. Is other-centered. Is the creation or fashioning of something that will be sent out. Will be offered up. Will be given for another to use.

So. This work. This enterprise. This occupation. This calling. Is doubly blessed. Because if one is looking. If one is listening. If one keeps one’s nostrils open. One finds God here. Perhaps especially here. Because this is after all what one does with one’s life. This is where one lives most of one’s waking life. It is finally and indeed one’s calling whatever one’s paradoxical emotions. Whatever one’s negative emotions.

Whether one has emotions on this subject at all. Because emotions are beside the point. It is the discipline that matters. It is through discipline that God works. And joins us in our work. It is through discipline we lose ourselves and find the Other. Find out Otherness. Seek a holy Otherness. Seek a holy blessedness. Which turns up at work, believe it or not. Turns up regularly at work. I kid you not.

In the space one makes between crises, for example. In the space one finds between arguments and hard words. In the space that opens like a sea between one conflict and another when. Oh. Let’s say someone is promoted and gets a raise. Or a contract is won. Or sales figures suddenly shoot up. Or the new application finally decides to work. Or the SEC does not object to the purchase and another company—another group of people one has come to know—suddenly becomes us. Our company. Is suddenly now in the fold. With us. After all. After all that work. That it took. To make this. This new thing. This new reality. This new company. Happen.

Or Perhaps It's The Mystical Shmystical Nonfiction

Perhaps it’s the mystical shmystical nonfiction, such as The Sacrament of the Present Moment. Perhaps it’s in a passage such as the following: “Faith is required for everything divine. If we live continually by faith we shall always be in touch with God, speaking to him face to face. In the same way as our thoughts and words are transmitted by air, so are God’s conveyed by all we are given to do and suffer. Not only the substance of his word will be manifest, but everything will be sanctified and perfected for us. In heaven this is glory, and on earth faith, with only a difference of degree, not of kind, between them.”

You read a passage like this. You reread a passage like this. It sounds. Well. Frankly. It sounds a little namby pamby at first, doesn’t it. It sounds a little churchy. Sounds a little like the guy is advancing that argument. Oh, you know. The best of all possible worlds argument. The opiate of the masses argument. The argument that says, No matter what, everything will be okay. This was meant to be. Whatever this is. Look for your reward in heaven.

But no. No. Get past that. Get beyond these rational suspicions. These rational approaches. These reasonable and skeptical defensive positions. Set all this aside. And go with the guy. Let him take you up the path that does not seem to be there. Up the path that does not seem a legitimate path. That is all boulders and rocks the size of Buicks. Follow him up his path to the grand prospect. To the place he has there in the mountains he’s explored and climbed.

A Frenchman of all things! A Frenchman. And I detest the French! Name of de Caussade. Name of de Caussade. Jean-Pierre. A so thoroughly Frenchified name I want to be ill. To be ill all over the place.

But get past this also. This. This lack of charity. This lack of restraint. This queasiness with respect to national character. Or national stereotypes. This stereotypical national character flaw. This. Whatever this is, get past this also. And take the words in. Take them in because they have God in them.

Whether they were written by a Frenchman or not. They are in fact about faith. They are in fact about how faith is the method. How faith is what Christ asked of us and is our method of knowing him. Of worshipping the Father. Of finding the Father. Of recognizing the Holy Spirit.

But listen to me! I go on and on. I drone on and on like any dime a dozen sermonizer. Like any dime a dozen street corner proselytizer. Like any hack pumping the public for its loose change.

But faith. This is true. Faith is a form of love. It is the trust part of love. And it requires us to look for God everywhere, does it not. Oh. Perhaps that’s too strong. Strike that. It asks us, does it not, to look for God. For the Holy Spirit. Everywhere. In everything.

But de Caussade is. Well. He’s. He’s just into this suffering idea. He’s really oriented toward this suffering business. And there is a good bit of that in the world. There is a great deal of that in the world. But there’s also the flip side. The pleasure side. The joy boy side. The joy girl side. The music and art and poetry and wine and dancing in the streets. The happy time between the sheets. Et cetera.

And there is. There is whether you in particular like it or not. A great deal of this in the world also. If the suffering part were the size, let’s say, of a normal cellophane-wrapped Twinkie. (To use a well worn cliché. A well worn movie simile.) Which is maybe the size of oh. Say a cell phone. The pleasuring part would be. Oh. A Twinkie the size of the Empire State Building.

Think about it. Making love. Eating. Breathing. Moving around. Going to sleep. Waking up. Bathing. Playing catch with your children. Taking them to the zoo. Kissing. Reading. Reading stories to your children. And so forth. Most of life is the Empire State Building. The duration of the part that you might legitimately call suffering is maybe. Oh. Even smaller than the size of a cell phone. Maybe more like the size of a cookie. One of those leetle. One of those pretend little chocolate chip cookies. Minis I think they call them.

Hyperbole. Pure hyperbole, you’re muttering. And maybe there is some of that. Depending on your circumstance, these things move around. They can move around a lot. But for most of us here. Most of us educated and blessed citizens of technologically advanced states. With advanced economies. This is mostly true. This mostly holds.

But what am I talking about. What am I going on and on about. Yes. I remember. What I was talking about was faith, which the writer says is the earthly counterpart to heavenly glory. To the glory in which the inhabitants of heaven wander about. A luminescence. A brightness. A light that is infinitely beautiful and that shines out of all the beings there. Out of all the objects there.

That is the light of God in which everything partakes. And faith. Well faith in God that he is also in all things here. All events. All enjoyments. All blessedness. All love. Even also in the suffering. In the cruelty. In the events that are brought about by greed and hatred and pride. That he can also be found in these. Not as the motive force. Not his will. But his comfort. His healing. His compassion. His patience. His acceptance. His grace. Even here. Even when we are most distressed. Most put upon. Most put down. Most literally tortured. He is also here. In this. With us. Available to us. Even now. All about us here.

Or Perhaps It's Prayer

Or perhaps it’s prayer that takes us through the doorway. Perhaps as we’re sitting in our comfortable chair. (My chair is burgundy and is aptly designed to recline.) Or perhaps as we’re kneeling beside our comfortable chair. Or in front of it. Or perhaps as we’re lying in bed or kneeling beside the bed. Or perhaps as one is standing outside under some trees and the sun is filtering down through the trees that are moving in the breeze.

Or perhaps as one is standing outside and one is doing so at night and the moon is full and magnified on the horizon and is yellow-orange and is ten or more times bigger than it should be. And it is just past evening and now night. Or perhaps as one is paddling one’s canoe out onto a glacial lake in the evening, the sun evening down red and the few clouds are orange and the sky is still blue and there is no wind, only a smooth lens over the water. A liquid lens extending for miles and miles over the curvature of the earth. A curved surface of God’s eye all smooth as glass and a placidity that one rarely finds.

Or perhaps one is walking somewhere on a dirt path and comes across a deer or a group of deer and they are placid and are accepting and do not run away but look at one expectantly. As if one might have something for them or have something to add to the conversation of silence they have been sharing, and one does add one’s particular silence to their silence and so together there is this comforting silence in which we converse among ourselves, saying we do not know exactly what because this kind of prayer is prayer without words.

Prayer without articulateness. Without any specific attention to oneself and attention only to the peacefulness and the gentleness and the sense that we are in the presence of something here that we need to attend to. That we need to attend to with all our senses. This conversation we are having with something that we do not know quite what it is or where it is except that it is here.

Or perhaps we are alone and walking in Manhattan. Perhaps we are walking a long ways one day in Manhattan. Perhaps we know exactly where we are going, or we have no idea where we are going. But in either case, we are just walking and carrying a sudden sense of peacefulness and quiet with us in all this hurry and noise and people and grandness and history and excitement. We are simply carrying a silence and peacefulness with us as if it were a small music box, let’s say, that we are holding in our two hands.

As if it were a gold box that had some precious music in it that no one had ever heard and that only we knew and were holding silently in our hands and taking to someone or keeping for someone. We aren’t quite sure. It feels like this or something like this as we’re walking along through time. Through space-time. With this timeless sense inside ourselves that seems unassailable. That seems invincible. That seems perfect and complete in itself.

And that seems a gift. A great beneficence. A great tenderness. A feeling that we have been touched by the holy one himself. And that he is with us. With us always on this little walk of ours through one of the great cities of the world. Through all the history making of the day. Through all the distractedness and nowness of the day. And here we are, separate. Separated off by God for himself.

Blessed by God himself for this time of quiet contemplation and quiet joyfulness. Gentle lovingness. Or perhaps we are with someone who is dying and we are saying over and over again, Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on this man. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on this man. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on this man.

And let’s say we say this for hours over the dying man and there comes the sense that you and this man are alone together. Alone in all the universe together. No matter what has come before and what may come afterward. No matter if anything came before and if anything will come afterward. You are alone together now, each doing what he has been made to do at this moment. And you are ministering to one another in doing what each has been made to do.

And this is not easy. This is in fact very difficult for both of you. This is in fact something you would rather not do, but you will do it because. Well. Because you were made for this. This moment. To be here with one another and do this. And there is therefore a rightness to it. A feeling that one is doing what one was made for, even though it is not easy. It is not fun. It is not pleasant. It is not quiet or peaceful or serene or smooth or comfortable.

It is none of this. It is right, however. It feels perfectly right. It is faithful. It happens in God’s sight. And that is how we both know we will do this. We will keep doing this. Until we are done.

Or perhaps it is fixed hour prayer. Perhaps we must duck into a bathroom to perform this task or close the door to our office, if we have an office and we have a door. Perhaps we have a book of prayers that we use. And perhaps again, even though we clear a spot of time in our day for this, we do not feel ourselves enter through the doorway, even though we have. In other words, there is no emotional pleasantness. No emotional well-being.

We are being faithful. We have on the one side a meeting to decide, for example, on the disposition of certain invention disclosures and on the other, a meeting to decide whether we will in fact use a particular open source software product that could require us to make a good deal of our proprietary software available and thereby compromise our product’s unique advantages. We do not feel a change from the quotidian to the eternal. But this doesn’t mean anything.

This doesn’t mean we are not in eternal time. It just means that we don’t feel a difference today, at this particular moment, in the different kinds of time. But feelings can be misleading. Feelings are secondary. And so we say what we say because we are faithful. And it brings us comfort because the words we use have been used for hundreds or thousands of years by many Christians. By many believers. Around the world. In all sorts of circumstances.

And it links us. Connects us all together. Networks the living and the dead all around the curved space of the world. In one saying. One praying. That is continuous. That is harmonious. And that praises. Whatever its particulars. Him.

Or let’s say we are praying and a sudden sense of warmth comes over us. A sudden release of warmth over us and through us and in us. Like a spiritual Florida ocean summer warmth. Like an at the beach warmth on a warm, sunny day at the sea. The place of healing. A place in which it feels as if we’ve been placed within a shell and the sound of the sea is everywhere around and through and in.

The sound of the sea and wind between our ears and in our hearts and through all our fingers and toes and in our skin. The feeling that we are completely warm and peaceful and disconnected from all our cares and connected now into another plane entirely, another realm altogether, another reality that exists out here beyond our everyday experience. A world that has God in it. In which God is everywhere at once. Is in everything that is and that could possibly happen. That is in the water and in the sand and in the air and in the sky and in the sounds the wind makes and in the sounds the people make. The sense that he has made this just for us. This haven. This vacation from the world.

Now

This is where God is. This is where life is. All the past is brought forward into the present and is here, whether we like it or not. Whether we’re aware of it or not. Encoded in our experience of things. Encoded in the things themselves. In us ourselves.

And the future is here also. The full rounded possibility of the future resides in the present like DNA. Like DNA that given enough time may morph into anything. Any shape. Any structure that may be imagined. Plastic possibility.

And here is where we are. Ever. Balanced on a point in space-time that is both insubstantial and real. That is immaterial and actual. That is emergent. That is an idea merely.

The already and the not yet intersect at this one point on which we stand in space-time.

The now is the doorway through which all things are possible. Eternity is possible. The possibility of eternity is present. Is in the eternal present. Is present eternally.

God is always in the present. This is his nature. His supernatural nature. His supernal nature. He exists outside of space-time in the everlasting present that always is and was and will be. When he enters in, this is the doorway he uses. His activity is always present. Always eternal. Always now.

When we experience him, this is the doorway we use. He uses.

We obsess about the past. About what has happened and we have done. About what we have not done. About what might have been. About what we might have done. About what we might have not done. An only-if kind of circulation in our minds and hearts. And we obsess about the future. About what could be. Only if, we say. We think. Only if this or that were to happen. Then everything would be. Would be. Smooth as mouse hair. Then we would live happily ever after. We think. Or, Oh no. We think. What if this were to happen. Or that. What would happen then. Oh no. Oh no.

Well of course. This is death to God. This obsessive business. This round and round. Because it takes us out. Away. The doorway disappears. And we circulate in utter darkness. Cycle off into the nothing of Godlessness. The blankness of that.

It is hell. This cyclotron of the future. This cyclotron of the past. These circulations we make are in hell, as Dante so insightfully wrote. Hell is arranged in obsessive circles. Is arranged around loci in the past. Loci in the future. Loci that are not God. And because they are not God, we obsessively circulate about them.

Loci that are not now. That are not yet real or are no longer real and therefore do not exist. Have no basis. No standing, as it were.

Now is expansive. Is elastic. Time in the now can seem long because of all that may happen. Or it can seem short because of all that may happen. God occupies this time that is actually timeless, and he is always busy. Fully occupies us, if we let him. If we ask him. If we go to him. If we step off the edge of the known universe through the doorway of the now. Step onto the now water. The now that is through the doorway and is everlastingly present.

Or maybe he is the one to pass through the doorway. Maybe we are minding our own business, not particularly looking for him, and he emerges in a vision or in the voice of someone we thought we knew or do not know or in lights that may not be here for everyone or in lights that are here for everyone or in the form of someone who seems to be here but also seems not to be here.

Maybe we’re worshipping. Maybe we’re singing praises to him. And we feel his hand along our spines or on the back of our heads or on our thighs, and it feels comforting and electric at once. And it feels like we’ve taken a step through the doorway, and he’s reached out his hand and is stroking us like a pet. An animal. A human animal he loves and he strokes when it gets up off its comfortable cushion on the floor and wanders over to its master for a little stroking by the fire. The fire of its master that seems to burn gently. That seems to burn brightly and warmly. And that seems like it may burn like this and he may pet us like this and we may sing like this. Well. Forever.

Rivering

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb….” (Revelation 22:1-2)

The river’s method is both simple and devious. It’s objectives are both direct and indirect. It seeks and is always seeking the sea. The sea. The sea. The great wild, dangerous, deadly, teeming, quickening, placid, wine-dark, beryl-colored, lovely, sun-struck, moon-doused, life-infested, tempestuous, white-flecked, windy sea. The emblem of God’s love. The source of life, it is said. The buoyant broad flood.

Both simple and devious. Both guileless and cunning.

It is the river of knowing and forgetting. Of remembering and unknowing. It turns and turns and turns and turns. It pools and rushes and dwindles and increases.

There’s nothing straight-line about a river. A straight-line river isn’t a river. It’s a ditch with water in it. It discovers nothing but mud. Nothing but turbidity and muck-feeding fish. Its discharge is a pollution into the sea of God’s love.

The water of life runs clear because it runs a river. A true river. That progresses by retreating, that descends by ascending, that advances by returning.

The river of the waters of life runs through the mind and the heart. It runs through our lives. And we discover our lives in it. Through it. Because of it.

Its method is indirection. Is irrational. Is circuitous. Is the long way. Is puzzling. Is riddling. Is cascading. Is flattening. Is pellucid. Is clean run.

In its running one hears the very sound of delight. The very beginning of music. God singing in the tongues of the waters. Of the living waters. The very water of waters itself.

The river of the water of life is about itself. Is about its business. Is about joy and the sounds of joy and beauty and the colors and shapes of the beautiful.

To travel in the river of the water of life is to discover what it discovers. Is to flow. Is to turn and return. Is to descend and ascend. Is to fall and recover. Is to surround oneself with the sound of origins. The sound of beginnings. Of quickenings. Is to float and drink one’s fill of the sweet, sweet water. To look deep into the sun-filled sand-bottomed and rock-bottomed river and see everything one might see there. Everything that lives there. The silvery fish and the many-colored fish and the gold-colored fish.

Everything changes as one floats down the river of the water of life. Everything unfolds. Everything becomes. Everything resembles and is new. Each turn. Each bend. Each cascade and each placid stretch.

There are eddies. Boulders. Standing waves. Haystacks. Riffles. Strainers. Pour-overs. Waterfalls. Jets. Holes. Whirlpools. Flats.

But it’s all one. Each turn takes us where we’re going. Each placidity. Each chute. Each discovery. It all is one, and we are in it. Whether we will or no. Its method is our method. Whether we would like to ditch this or not. Whether we would like to make an unrivering sense of things or not. Whether we would like to make a straight-line version of our lives or not. Whether we want to be somewhere else doing something else or not. This is where we are.

Let’s enjoy the float trip. The boat trip. The aesthetic glide and rush and calm. Let’s listen to the mourning doves and the red-winged blackbirds. Watch the turtles dive off their logs into the water and the great blue herons strut like ancient beings, stately beings, beginning of the world beings, in the shallows. Regard the sun dazzle off the water. The moon shimmer off the water. Let’s look at things as they are and see the things that are here. Let us not look elsewhere. We are rivering down the now of the living. The living beauty of the waters. The living concert of the waters. The living dance of the waters. See how the sun-dapple strobes in the ferns under the many leaves. The patches of sun moving in the ferns like excited spirit beings. See how the water rises over the boulder ahead and leaps from it in many directions. Explodes outward into a fine spray that holds rainbow. Rainbow. And now, as we float past, the angle changes, and the rainbow disappears. Feel the cool mist on your skin, like a blessing. Listen to the water. The mighty water. Roaring up its noisy praise.

Bright Dark

Oh but it’s odd. Don’t you think. How much of it all comes down to something like this. This sense. This oxymoronic sense. This bright-dark sense. This beautiful bright-dark sense. This jumboshrimp militaryintelligence sense. That the beautiful is both this and that. Both bright and dark. But how. But how does this make. How does this come about, one wonders. Why this particular oddity. This way. This structure to things.

But of course it gets really interesting when you notice someone grinning when tragedy strikes. Grinning and the person’s father let’s say has just died.

Or say someone in church. The Holy Spirit shows up. And this person. This woman is full to overflowing. And cannot do anything but cry. Or a man. Sex doesn’t seem to matter. So much joy that it’s released through tears. Copious tears. Tears that fully wet his cheeks and chin. Her cheeks and chin. All about the place.

Or say it’s a tsunami. December 2004. The sky blue. A beautiful blue. The lush island green. A beautiful green. And then the lovely blue sea. The sea, the sea. The beryl sea that is the very symbol of God’s love. Rises. Monsters up and smothers the lush green island. Smashes and drowns all the people. An entire people destroyed in one grotesque gesture of the sea. The day perfect. You couldn’t ask for a more perfect. A more cloudless unblemished smooth sky. But all the people. The children. The old people. The middling people. All the people. Drowned or crushed. Or broken some way. And floating. Or sinking. Distributed all about in the water around the island. Or after the sea subsides, bodies in the trees. Bodies on the beach. Bodies all about the place.

I know a woman who just had a baby. A miracle baby. The cord wrapped around its neck six times. Five pounds of tumors growing in the woman’s uterus along with the baby. But the baby is born. Successfully born. A healthy, fine baby. To a woman who by all rights would never be able to have children, the doctors said. And then another. Another woman young healthy woman. Who is both as blameless and guilty as the first. Neither especially one way or the other. Whose baby dies in her. A baby who dies a week or two from the due date. A woman who must give birth to a dead baby. Who must go through labor to birth death. The very image and sign of death. Coming out into the world from her. From inside her.

What in the Sam Hill is going on. And who in the Sam Hill is Sam Hill. And when you ask this out there on the web you get various answers. All of them converging on the nineteenth century. On a guy. Could be New England. Could be Northwest. I like my dad’s the best. My dad’s explanation the best. A Michigan guy. State I’m from. A roustabout. A logger. A guy who helped bring down a creation’s crop of trees. White pine and cedar. Who had a foul mouth. Always swearing and cussing. Always outraged and angry. Always a stream of profanity. Of profanation. In response to the outrages. The screw ups. The offense of the world. The transgressions of the universe. The imperfections. The hellish way the world has of being downright disappointing. Diabolically hostile. Dangerous. Dark. Frightening. Violent. Cruel.

Or that bright dark sense of God we get in the Bible. The Old Testament sense that God is with the Jews as they annihilate cities, whole populations. And the New Testament sense of God as Love. The Love God. The God of Death and the God of Love. The God of creation and the God of destruction. The God of the revealed and the God of the hidden. The God of Mystery and the God of Truth. The God of light and the God of dark.

The God of knowing and unknowing. The God of comfort and the God of discipline. The God of correction and the God of unconditional love. The God of perfection and of imperfection. The God of the wealthy and the poor. The God of the arrogant and the God of the humble.

The bright dark sense of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Who is of all women most blessed, according to Luke. Who became pregnant out of wedlock in a society of fundamentalists. Whose son for years was regarded as a blasphemer. Who had the opportunity of seeing her son crucified and of burying him.

This bright dark sense that becomes. Without one really intending it to or getting that it is becoming and now is. A kind of Zenish way. A kind of irrational path through the light and the dark of the world. A meander. A sort of riverine wander. A kind of zigzag Zenish riddle box ramble of a life. A puzzle box. A puzzling river box. That will not. No matter how we all apply ourselves. Our great cleverness and ingenuity. Our American cando attitude. Our optimism and paradigm of progress. Our entrepreneurship. Our indefatigability. Our energy. Our money. Our enthusiasm. Our enormous inventiveness. Our cooperation. Our practicality. Our team work. Our process orientation. Our ingenious tools and methods. That will not. No matter what we do. Be opened and laid bare. Be deconstructed and diagrammed and dissected and schematized and. And. Well. Understood.

Understood as one may. Let’s say. Understand a frog’s anatomy. Or the structure of a fly’s eye. Or the valuation of a company for purchase. Or electron mobility in gallium nitride.

So if this is what you’re after. If you are interested in breaking open this puzzle box. In dismantling the rivering box to get at the secret of its intricate construction and its mysterious, rattling contents. I’m sorry to say. There’s nothing for you here. There’s only this unmodifiable riverine environment. The given of our story. The fixed and immutable condition of our story. This switching back and forth through the bright dark more or less on one’s own. Listening to the current. Reading the river in the starlight. The moonlight. Puzzling out one’s way. To where, one has no clear idea. There’s no map, you see. We could all ride this river right over the edge of the world and fall purely into nothing forever. For all we know. For all our rational minds are able to provide us.

And if you want to swear and cuss, that’s your business. Many a logger has. Peavey gripped hard like a weapon. Riding a boom like a banshee. Screaming his way down.

The Beautiful

But of course this is difficult. It can’t possibly be defined. It can’t possibly exist since it can’t be defined. Therefore, we should all call it a day. So much for logic. So much for rationality. For the appearance of knowing what we’re doing. So much for orderliness. For the well mannered clavier. The well behaved concept. The ordered universe. The clockwork universe.

Beauty. One knows it when one experiences it. One thinks. When one’s breath comes more easily. When one is less labored. More calm. More peaceful. Suddenly more given over. Suddenly at ease. At rest.

But oddly also when one’s breath becomes erratic, perhaps difficult. When one gets that stunned sort of a feeling. That shocked sort of sense. That mind suddenly on vacation and heart leaking all over the floor type of deal. Joy pouring out into all the world from every pore.

What is this. How can this be. Why does this happen. Why is this so various. Peace but also the absence of peace. Revolutionary joy, for example. Startling and subversive and energetic joy. The sense that one could jump up into the air and fly. Purely fly by flapping one’s arms. What in the Sam Hill is going on here?

I think it must be that God has stepped in. That God is moody and these are a couple of his moods. These are ways he has of stepping in in power. These are two of the meanings of glory. These are what God’s glory is, maybe. These are two of the ways we know his lights are on and he’s open for business.

Imagine a world in which there is no beauty. In which all music is cacophony and dissonance. In which all stories are concerned exclusively with viciousness and death. In which all color has been reduced to shades of black and gray. In which all shape has no symmetry whatsoever. No regularity at all. No cleanliness at all. In which there is no courage or honesty or truth or goodness or faithfulness or forgiveness or grace or hope or love. In which there is no variety. In which there is a same drabness to everything. A same ugliness. Meanness. Depravity.

Wouldn’t this be hell? Wouldn’t this be the place God isn’t?

We speak among my crowd sometimes about God’s in-breaking Kingdom. Kingdom theology it’s called. Well. What I want to say is yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Bring on the beauty. Bring on the glory. Let’s go wild. It’s joy-boy time. It’s joy-girl time. It’s heaven-made time when beauty is.

And more. These qualities I mention. These attributes. These indications in people that they have been touched by God and made beautiful in their hearts and in their minds. These moral attributes that we ascribe to righteousness. This is why the fixation with righteousness, of course. This is why we have an enormous herd of us stampeding in the direction of righteousness, because it partakes of God. Of God’s beauty. Of the beautiful itself. Because it seems to sum up all of these admirable attributes into the one attribute—itself. But this is incorrect. This is off the mark.

It’s love that sums up all of these. It’s love that is the one gesture that stands for all of them. Love’s the one habit of heart and mind through which we may be said to be in God and God in us. To have God in oneself. And this only happens in oneself, not of oneself. In oneself by the work of the Holy Spirit. And by his work alone. One only receives. One only chooses to be a courteous host. That is our only work, really. Inviting Holy Spirit into the house of ourselves and providing him interesting company. And clean sheets. And freedom. Complete freedom to go wherever he wishes. To rummage wherever he wishes. To clean our house for us, if that is his pleasure. And to love. To love shamelessly. To love fervently. To love wantonly. Immoderately. Imprudently. Indecorously. Obviously. Blatantly. Embarrassingly. Fully. Completely. Drunkenly. Riotously. Repeatedly. Freely. Joyfully. Perfectly. Hedonistically. Wastefully. Carelessly. Richly. Tenderly. Honestly. Courageously.

And that is his love. Holy Spirit love. And we are the joyful hosts who get to join with the Guest in what he does. In his work, you might call it. Or his play. Same thing. It’s what he does for a living. The living. For those of us who will have him.

But what about beauty, you ask. Where did beauty end up in the great mad scramble here to invite the Holy Spirit in. To bring the Holy Spirit into our discussion. Well. Isn’t beauty what we’re talking about when we talk about Holy Spirit. Isn’t the Holy Spirit what we’re talking about when we talk about beauty. Isn’t Holy Spirit the spirit of beauty. Isn’t what the artist presents to us the intimations of the Holy Spirit. The forms of him. In music, in paint, in words on paper, in stone, in bronze, in plays, in dance, in body, in earth, in any living thing. So forth and so on. Aren’t all of these his vessels. His media. His languages. His instantiations. His expressions. His immodest proposals. His love-making. For us and through us. Because of us. Around us. And over us and under us and everywhere we look. If we would. If we would only open our eyes and ears and noses and mouths and skin. And admit him to the place where we live. Our heart and mind place. The place where heart and mind join in ourselves to create our house. The house of ourselves. The holy home of ourselves that is made for the Guest. That has been fashioned for him. For ourselves and him in the first instance. From the beginning of the world.

Billions

But of course you can’t see billions. Can you. You can’t even see millions. You can only see—with the naked eye—thousands. And this is funny also, isn’t it. They. The scientists who get to talk to us knowledgably on TV. They know there are billions and billions, but we. Pathetic liberal-arts-major humans with their naked eyes. Can only see a few thousand. Heh-heh-heh!

So what do we know. What do we know on our own. See how limited. See how faulty. Notice how comically we all think we see billions and billions when in actual fact this is a calculated number. Numbers. Numbers, I should say. These are calculated numbers. It’s what must be, we think. We are told. What needs to be, given a whole boatload of assumptions. But nobody’s ever counted them. Nobody’s ever said, a-one anna-two anna-three anna-four and gone through the numbers lika-that and got to billions.

I wonder why that is. I wonder why the scientists, who are good at this. Who God made for this. Haven’t done it. I think maybe it’s too tedious and boring. Do you agree. I don’t know. Is anything too tedious and boring for scientists. That’s what I want to know. Hard to imagine. I know. I know. Very difficult to imagine.

But whatever the number is, it seems like a lot. When you look up into the sky. You know. Out in the country. Out in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of Iowa, let’s say. Where I am right now. Today. Rubbing elbows with the cows, so to speak. And the pigs, so to say. And the corn. And the soy beans. Rubbing elbows with God’s humble creatures. And you look up. Look up and feel the whole of the universe suddenly settle round about your head like a crown. A crown of light. A crown of dark. A crown of light and dark. Of infinite light and dark. Or close enough to infinite for liberal arts purposes.

And you discover. And this can be sudden. This can be shockingly sudden. That there is this allspacetime surround. This universe that exists outside of the photographs. Outside of the planetariums. Outside of National Geographic Magazine. Outside of TV shows about it. That it exists out here, right over head. And we discover that it comes right down over our heads like a second skin. And that it is wild. And unexplored. And really really dark and deep and bright. Well. It’s the universe after all. All that’s not us and our little silly blue and green planet. The one verse. The all in all. Everything God has to say. His poem, if you will. And it’s all around us. And it is uncounted. And nobody’s been there. Except for God. And. Well. It’s astounding. And frightening. And big. And it goes on and on. And. Oh. It is beautiful. Don’t you think. Isn’t it. Doesn’t it light up that inner room. That secret place. Doesn’t it explode in there with the light of a sun and burn. Burn. Burn brightly in there as if it would never stop. As if there’s no stopping this ever. This sense that. This feeling that what has been made won’t stop. Won’t ever stop. Will keep on going like this. All these stars. And the dark mystery between the stars. This deep bright dark beauty. Forever.

Suddenly Now

And what an encounter like this means, then, I cannot say precisely except to say that it is suddenly now. Suddenly real. Suddenly not stray chatter in my brain but actual. Real. Another. The Other.

Not so much a way as a destination. Not so much poetics as a poem. Not so much a theology as a story we find ourselves in. With real people. A real person. The actual story of our lives, for example.

A subtext that is where the story really happens. The story within the story. A story in which we poke around, trying to understand the characters, for example. Where they are. Where they’re going. What they’re up to. The ideas. What are the ideas here, for example. What are the ideas that motivate these beings. This author. What kind of world is this anyway. How does it work. What are its laws. What is its behavior. And what is the tradition it comes out of. Or what traditions. Because it does have many strands, does it not. Many narrative and lyrical and historical and philosophical and. Well you get the idea. Strands.

But mainly the method is to live in this story. To act. To discover what’s next. To jump in with all the fingers and toes at one’s disposal and to grab hold. To look around. To listen. To jump into the middle of things. Not to hang around the perimeter of the dance floor. But to get in there and dance. So what if one’s dancing is a little wild. So what if one’s dancing is a little improvisational. A little inspired. A little quirky. A little funny looking. So much the better is what I’m thinking. So much the better.

To keep one’s eyes open is the thing. And one’s ears. And one’s nose, for Pete’s sake. And. Well. I go on and on. And then suddenly. Now. As I look. As I listen. The room changes. A sense of who is here and where and what they’re all doing changes. Someone seems to be at my back as I type on the keyboard here. As I write these words. Someone who seems to put his hand on my back and on my shoulder. Someone who likes to look in on what I’m doing. What I’m saying. And there’s a sense of confidence here. A sense of confidence from this God being with the large hand. The warm hand on my back and shoulder. A sense of confidence in him for what I’m doing here. A sense that this is what he’s got in mind, more or less. That this is okay. That this will work for now. That we are both in this together and will sort this all out together. And he will be with me as I make my way through this. As I follow his lead, whatever that means. Wherever that may take us.

Look, Buddy. He seems to say. Or not say with his mouth. But say with his mind. Mind to mind. Look, Buddy. Just keep writing. Just keep that up. It may wander around some. It may not be strictly speaking one hundred percent logical. One hundred percent perfectly crafted. One hundred percent normal or marketable. It’s not going into a museum, for example. It’s not the well wrought urn, for example. It’s not one hundred percent aesthetically pure and holy. Neither is it going to be a best seller. It won’t make the New York Times best seller list. No. Not by any stretch. It won’t give you immortality, and it won’t provide you a retirement in Tonga. I’m telling you right now. So don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get your spiritual or commercial greed juice going. Your fantasy island juices.

That’s not what this is for. I’ve got other ideas for this. I’ve got other ideas in mind for this baby. So make sure you stay out of my way on this one, Bill. Billiam. Old Billabong. Old Billibillions. Billibilbo. Billibrobdingnagian. Billiboat. Billigroats. Billibodacious. Billiloquacious. Billibally. Billisilly. Billibully. Billineologistic. Billispastic. Billiplastic. Billihooligan. Billitickytacky. Billiwilliwacky. Billiwilliwonkazonka. Billibazooka. Billipalooka. Billiumph. Billiomphalos. Billiomphaloskepsis. Billibrink. Billistink. Billirinkydink. I’ve got bigger plans for this than that. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. About that end of things. Nooooo. Don’t even think about it. No. I’ve got plans you have no way of understanding. No way of. Look. Let’s just say that it’s kind of like quarks. Okay. Quarks. You have no idea what they are or how they work or what they’re for, do you. No. You don’t. But you manipulate the matter of this world every day. Every stinking day. Without having the faintest idea what’s inside that pen you’re twiddling. That pocket knife you obsessively open and close. The paper you print stuff out on. What quarkdoms exist in there. What’s happening in these quarkdoms. What these quarkdoms are for. Who does what when and why in a quarkdom. You have no idea.

So don’t worry about my plans for these writings. Or any of the others. Any of the rest I put here in your head like so many embryos. Gestate and bear. Gestate and bear. That’s your job. Just keep writing. Writing. Working. Working. That’s it. That’s the ticket.

And then he gives me Godel’s Theorem. He gives it to me on the screen here in front of me. The clear, glassy screen. So to say. He says, look. Here’s this idea, see. The idea is that there are things that are neither true nor false. Neither true nor false, according to the explicit system statements. Things that can be proved neither true nor false according to the rules of the given system. But the ace I’ve got up my sleeve is that I’m, strictly speaking, outside the system. I come in here to say what these statements mean. If they’re true, I’ll tell you. If they’re not, I’ll tell you. Simple as that. One way to think about this business, anyway. Just one way. There are many others. Many others. Count the stars, for example. Believe me.

Remember the guy who kept saying, billions and billions. Billions and billions. On TV. Funny, really. He didn’t realize it, but I was the one who put the humor in there for him. It’s funny. He couldn’t help himself. Big numbers are always funny. I made them that way. Boggles the mind. Do they not. Of course. Of course, they do. And that’s why they’re so funny.

Or Say It Isn't A Dream

Or say it isn’t a dream. That a dream isn’t the way it happens. That maybe there’s a silence in the house. An expectant silence. You are minding your own business. You’re cleaning or cooking or reading or surfing the web or whatever. You’re alone. And then you’re aware of something. Aware of a presence. A comforting presence, once you get past the startle. The sudden awareness of someone or something here. Right here in the house. But it’s okay. You almost see who it is, as you come into a room. Or you turn around. You almost see the person sitting there in the chair he’s chosen. Or standing there by the fireplace. Or by the sofa. Or the dining room table.

He might be wearing robes. He might look. But that isn’t right, because you might not be able to see him as you see flesh-and-blood earthly people. You probably don’t. He might seem to be wearing the traditional robe of someone from Palestine. Judea. Someone from that area. A couple thousand years ago. The dress that one sees depicted on men from that period. But he seems to be wearing this because you don’t see him directly. You sense him. Almost like he is only sensible through a sideways glance. A quick movement of the head. A change in the way sound seems to travel through the house, the way sound’s absorbed or not. A difference there.

And you say to yourself, this must be my imagination. I must be getting a little funny in the head. I must be losing my marbles. But this would be a mistake. This would be unfortunate. Because. Well. Because this would not be true. This would not account for the evidence. This would not admit into your mind experience that is just as real and valid—arguably more real and more valid—than what passes for the kind of experience we all say is daily. Normal. Verifiable experience. The experience of telegrams and anger, to reuse one author’s characterization. Or angry email, to recast the thought into this century. The experience of the Bunsen burner and the beaker and the test tube. Of the video tape and the. Well. You know what I mean. Of the court room. Of the dinner table. Of work. The shared experience of work.

But of course, he will appear in all these contexts. He is present in all these contexts. We know this. We know it theoretically. But there’s a practical knowledge most of us don’t have. A personal and practical experience of him with us also in these contexts. If he is theoretically here, well then. He must be actually here. And so one has a responsibility to open one’s eyes, doesn’t one. One has a responsibility to find him wherever he theoretically is because. Well. When a good friend gives you a call on the phone for example. Or a good friend knocks on your door unexpectedly. What do you do. Turn that good friend away. Is that it. You turn that person away. I don’t think so. In fact I know you don’t turn your good friend away. You pick up the phone and try to listen to what your good friend has to say. You open the door and let your good friend in. You ask your good friend what’s up. You want to know because. Well. This is a good friend. You love this person. You want to honor and care for and. You’re interested in what’s going on with your good friend because this is your good friend after all.

So it would stand to reason then, now wouldn’t it. That you. What am I saying. Why do I keep saying, you. I. So it would stand to reason that I. Both you and I. Would want to be a good friend to Jesus, if he shows up. Would want to understand what he’s doing. Would want to understand what’s on his mind. Why he’s here with us and what he would have to say to us. Would want to engage in a kind of conversation. A kind of an understanding. A kind of communication.

It may happen with words. It may happen with feelings. It may happen through physical sensations. It may happen through impressions or intuitions. It may happen however it happens.

And so in the house. In the quiet house. What happens is you stop. Or to make this clearer I’ll say that I stop. I stand or maybe sit. I wait. I wait for whatever it is that God the Father or Jesus or the Holy Spirit or one of the angels or archangels or whoever it is that has shown up. I wait for whatever it is that is coming if I let it. I wait for whoever it is who has come to help me understand what he would like. What he would want me to know. To sense. To conclude. Or alternatively what he would want from me. What he might have come to ask from me. What he would have me do. If I ask. If I wait and expect and ask. If I do not dismiss this experience as the result of an over-active imagination. If I don’t pretend it is so much dust floating in the sunlit air above the floor, beneath a window. If I have the honesty to understand this for what it is. If I have the integrity to admit it. Him. To step into and fully occupy my own skin. To invite him. To open the door. To welcome him. Into my everyday. My waking life.

Something Happens

Something always happens. (It’s always something, as Gilda used to say.) Sooner or later. In most cases. If one is patient. If one is faithful. Especially if one is wanting. Especially if one is expecting. Is looking. Is feeling around the place. The infinite metal place. For the door. The beads. The blinds. Fiddling around, one’s hands in the air. Sensing around for where the air parts to allow true entrance.

Oh, you know. Not the pretend kind. Not the play-acting kind. Not the mime-silly kind that the mime finds and pretends to step into. Through and into. No. Not that. That is a lie. A white-faced lie that one must always reject. It is always silly. Hollow. Pathetic, really, because there’s nothing there. Nothing at all. And so it’s a kind of sad, sad business. Because the point is the other place is real. Real as this computer I’m typing on is real. Real as these hands and mind and eyes are real through which these words come. And to pretend you are entering a pretend place is purely. Is completely and utterly hopeless and faithless and wrong and a lie. So please don’t do that. Don’t do that to God and yourself. Your soul and God’s soul. It creates real damage. It creates real havoc. So please. Please. Don’t act like you have found the room and entered the room and are wandering around in God’s room when you haven’t. When you aren’t.

It’s an example of the mimetic fallacy. A false mimesis. A mimesis that is always false. So let’s leave mimesis out of this. Let’s not pretend anything. Let’s get holiness and Christlikeness out of our vocabularies forever. Let’s just be ourselves. Let’s not try to be like holy people at all, because what do we know about holiness. We’re just human beings, after all. We’re not God. We’re not angels. We’re just people. And let’s leave it at that. Well. People who God chooses. People whom God takes into his presence and fills with light from time to time. But people nevertheless.

And so. Where was I. Where am I. And so. People nevertheless. Given to forgetting. Given to faithlessness. Given to mistakes. Given to falling out of bed. Given to falling off the mountain. Rolling and rolling down the mountain. Or jumping. Just jumping for the thrill of it. The dramatic what-the-hell cavalierness of it. Or whatever. Whatever it is that we’re doing when we forget ourselves. Forget where we are and what we’re doing. Forget God and God’s room and where God’s room might be. Forget how lovely. Forget how light-filled and song-filled. Forget the life that is in the sound and sight, the song and shape of the songs one discovers there. And cast ourselves out. Cast ourselves down. Cast ourselves away. So that we are castaways floating on the ocean of ourselves. Floating among the sharks of ourselves in the blistering sun without a drop to drink.

And we’re all wondering what happened. Who did what here. Who arranged this flotilla of humans in rags with raging thirst, drifting toward death. Drifting toward a windless death, mouths blackened and skins full of sores. The currents taking us wherever they will. Without sail or motor. Totally at the mercy of the elements. And as we contemplate this circumstance, we begin our looking again, because we are desperate, you see. We are at the end of our ropes. Our water’s been shut off, and we’re utterly without moisture. And we’re completely hopeless, you see. Pathetic and wondering. And in this blessed state. And often not before. We begin looking again. Scanning the horizon, you see. Listening and looking. Peering into the water to whatever depth we may believe we might see something. Regarding the sky with an expectancy. Regarding the wooden surface of the raft. The log-humped surface of the raft. Looking for what we do not know. And then we turn. Then we turn our heads slightly away from the sun and looking into our own shadow in the water here by the side of the raft and here. Here. Is a fish we haven’t seen before. An impossible fish, as far as we can tell. A rainbow fish. A fish that has all the colors of the rainbow. A fish that swims up and up and up, until it breaks the surface. We believe we watch it as it swims up to us for hundreds of feet, from way down in the dark. Way down in the waters of the earth. Getting larger and larger and larger. Until its dorsal fin breaks the surface. A fish we’ve never seen in nature or in the fish books we’ve read. A fish that looks right at us. That eyeballs us carefully. A fish that’s several times the length of our raft. A fish that could swallow us for a snack. A fish the like of which the world has never seen. A fish to redefine the meaning of fish. A fish that is extravagant. That is fantastic. That is Technicolor. That could be in the movies. That is impossible. That is incredible. And that is here. It is blessedly here. It is providentially here. And now what do we do, we are thinking. Now what do we do.

What I Mean Is

What I mean is that rationality is the equipment. The substratum. Like maybe it’s here for the basal needs. The lower level needs. Like it isn’t actually where we’re going. It’s on the road or maybe the road itself but isn’t the destination. Therefore isn’t all that interesting. Like maybe mind is in the service of heart, let’s say. Just for the sake of argument. Just for the sake of being a little provocative. A little First Century. A little Johnish, maybe.

John. The one whom Jesus loved. I imagine him simultaneously old and young. Don’t you. In the Gospel, he’s young. But the writer of the Gospel is old. I imagine him walking and talking and supping with Jesus, both of them young men. And then I’m thinking of the white-haired guy with a quill pen, for example. At a writing desk. With paper. Outside, brilliant sun. The wind blowing. Dry. The earth very dry, under the white-hot sun.

All of the Gospel still happening. Still lodged in the present of John’s heart and mind. The mind retrieving the bits to assemble the moving pictures of what happened. Assemble the moving bits of the acoustic files. The acoustic registers. And then he plays them. Starts the player up in his mind and plays them out, paying attention. Super present. Super real. Super actual in the days of his master. Super aware in the presence of his master. Unconscious of the brilliant sun today decades later. Of the wind. The present dry earth. Aware only of Jesus moving about him, with him. In that present. Present in that present that is brought forward bodily into the current present. Living that. Living that over and over. Because. Well. That’s where his heart is. That’s when his heart is. That’s how his heart became involved, you see. And once the heart becomes involved. Once it connects out into that. Oh. That erosphere. That agape-erosphere. That connection that informs every other. Maybe.

Maybe the shape of the room into which one enters, then, is curved. Space is curved and maybe time is curved also. And relation. Maybe all relations are curved into one curving shape that defines a room into which we go in love. In truth. Maybe all love allows us entrance into this room because this is where all love resides. This room that John exists in as he writes. As he walks and in his walking writes out his walking and walks out his writing as he speaks with the master. As he moves there with the master in a space that has been divided off into a place one might call a room but that has earth and sky and sea and wind to it like earth but is another earth that maybe exists right here. Right in the heart of the physical. That is both in the physical but is metaphysical also. And this new world, this other world, in its metaphysicality reveals the heart of the matter. The heart of things. Informing sense of why all this equipment is strewn about like dust and water and sky.

Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. Sometimes it seems like one’s saying strains. One’s saying gets beyond one and then blurs. Gets blurry as one’s sight out at the horizon, where the world drops away over the rim of itself and hides. Hides plainly from one’s view. Runs so far out and away that it starts to drop off and curve underneath where one cannot see, from here. And begins its long sneaking up behind. Its long curved blue and green curving that is beautiful as a promise or an ornament. An essential ornament. In the black great surround of space. The starry great sphere of space. And beyond this, the unstarry great sphere of nothing.

And hanging here in the midst of all this. All these concentric spheres. Dangling at the end of gravity’s odd string. Wandering about on the next innermost sphere. One quickly discovers what the heart knows. Which is love and joy and gentleness and pain and loneliness and death. Inside the curving inner room is love and joy and gentleness. And outside this room is pain and loneliness and death. And of course one wants to find a way into the inner room. The hidden place. Wants to locate the door, open it, enter, and remain forever. But one cannot. One tries, but one cannot. There’s something about the way all this works. I don’t know what it is. But soon—much too soon, always—one finds oneself wandering about outside the room looking for a way back in. Wandering and wildering. Caught in a rain of ice and slate and burst metal and every sort of stone. It feels like. Sometimes. Caught in that or the other. The long shining metal surface that extends forever in every direction. That leads nowhere. That is populated with wanderers like oneself, moving slowly or quickly, they don’t know where. And sometimes it is both of these. And the light is a grayish metal light. A fluorescent metal light. And then something happens, and one finds oneself in the inner room again. The room of joy and love and truth and tenderness. The room in which the light is a light of fourteen different tones of red and yellow and orange. A light that has music in it. And one is happy. Happy. One cannot find the words for what this is precisely, except to say it is the place all words ultimately want to go. Ultimately want to go to arrange themselves in songs. Songs that one wants to sing forever. Together. With the others, who are oddly bursting into light sources themselves. Song sources and light sources themselves because they no longer can contain themselves and must extend. Must change. Must metamorphose into what they must become. What their hearts know they must change into. And so they do.

Washington High School Concert

Oh, what is so rational about this after all. About our lives. Our living. Is what I’m thinking. What is at all rational about this choral concert, for example. Putting on this concert. Attending this concert. This end of the year concert in which they pull out all the stops, so to say. Where they have gathered all these children to sing and all these parents to listen. To sing and watch and to listen to all of this. Well. This aural and visual beauty. This exquisite aural intimation. This auditory soaring. This feeling that one has been thrust into hyper-reality. Has been remade in a world that is super-real. That is super present. As though we, ourselves, are now more present. More actual. More aware. More awake. More observant. More intelligent. More connected. More tuned. More together and more separate onto ourselves. More part of something that is getting. That is penetrating at a terrific rate. That is traveling at faster than light speed. That is arriving at enormous velocity. That is immediate, it is so fast. That is now. And now. And now. At a place we don’t altogether know. We can’t speak about coherently. We can’t articulate maybe with the precision of a frog dissection, let’s say. We can’t all video tape and say, yes. Yes. That is what it is. Because the video tape will not record it. Isn’t designed to get this inner sense. This inward understanding that all of this. The entire enterprise. The whole mare’s nest of one’s life. The complete tangled ball of fish hooks and filament and sinkers and split shot and bright lures and so on that is a kind of metaphor for one’s days. May all be set aside for this. Because this. This is what we are here for. This is what we all want to come to. This love. This excellence. This.

I don’t know what it is to say it. It is something so elusive. So fugitive. So shy. So hidden and so much more comfortable in its hiding place than it is out here in language. Than it is out here in the quotidian. The easily verified. The video reality in which we think we live.

Listen, I want to say. Listen. Over and over again. Listen to that. Hear that, please. Oh. Don’t you want to be here forever. Doesn’t this. Isn’t this the sound of the living water your soul thirsts for out there in the desert of this world. Oh. Sing. Sing and in your singing take all of us with you please to those places the soul knows are all home. The one place that is many and that is one and that is home for us all. The place that is the everlasting place we belong. Here. Together. Singing. Singing, and in our singing opening the invisible door together. Opening the door into the hidden place. Opening the door into the light-filled place. The place where everything and everyone is a startling brightness. Is a light source. Is a song source. Where everything is song. Where everyone is singing. Where the songs are all perfect. Are all flawless. Where our voices are all pure as anything just made in heaven. Just made in paradise. And now praising. Worshiping and praising. For all time. In this moment for all time. Because this is where we live, you see. Where we truly live. Is in this song. These many songs that are one song after all. In this song that is a kind of revelation. A kind of travel. That is a kind of cool burning. Into which we step. And disappear.

What the video camera records is that we’re all sitting up straight. Piller straight. In our seats listening. Looking. Attentive. We’re good listeners. We can be. But this is off the point. This is beside the point because the important thing is that we look as though we’re actually here in the video tape. But we’re not. Of course we’re not. Or only in a sense. Only in one very limited sense of the word. Otherwise, we’re gone. Almost completely gone. Invisible in the hidden place. The place of dazzling light. Of song that is a kind of light. A song that emerges from everything. Everywhere. At once. That is not so much sound waves at so many cycles. Such and such a frequency. Although there is that. That is the medium, of course. The physical substratum. The physical representation in the world out here. But what is carried like the electrons in a circuit fabricated in silicon, for example. Or gallium arsenide. Or gallium nitride. What is carried like information in the circuits of our singing. Is.

Is. Well I hate to sound like John. I hate to be repetitive, don’t you. Don’t you wish you could be original. But that is beside the point. My point is that this is love. That this beauty and truth is love. That this beauty and truth and excellence is love. That this is where we all live. That this is why we strive for excellence. That this is where we all go when we can. When we can find the substratum that will support this sudden communication. This sudden connectivity. This sudden joyful sense that we have all opened the door together here and are in the room where everything is possible. Where everything good is likely. Where everywhere you look or hear or sense in whatever manner you wish to sense is love. Only love. Nothing but love. And one another. One another in intimate union. Intimate interpenetrating spirits. That are joined in love. In the sound of this intimate music. In one spirit. Here. In this place right here. This place that is full of doors opening into the one true room. And this. This concert. Is one of them. And we are here. We are in the one true room that is the inner place. The hidden place. That is the heart of the universe. The light source of all light. The melodeon of all melody. The heart of heaven and all its hosts.

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.

Abstract Space

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

Do you recall the black and white T-shirt that has a picture of the universe on it. The small portion of the universe in which we live. The snapshot of the Milky Way. There’s a little caption. And there’s a squiggle running from the caption to a very leetle tiny dot in the snapshot. And the caption says, You are here.

Only now what we need to think about is that this dot isn’t just in two-dimensional space. In the two-dimensional space of the T-shirt, so to say. No. It exists in n-dimensional space. Where n is anybody’s guess.

Oh. I guess there are a few Mystical Physicists who believe they know. Some of them say 10, for example. Some say 11. Some say. Oh. 23. Something like that. Most seem to like prime numbers for the number of dimensions. I don’t know why except prime numbers seem maybe more mystical than other numbers. But what they’re all agreed on—this group of Mystical Physicists—is that 4 is definitely not the right number. The number we’re used to. The number we think is obvious. Up-down-sideways-time. A no-brainer to us. Is totally wrong to the big brains. Totally wrong to the people who spend all their time thinking about the very large and the very small. Large and small. Large and small.

Some of us small brains think. Oh. Yes. We can see gravity, for example. How gravity might be thought of as a dimension. Also maybe how electromagnetic energy. How that can be thought about as a dimension. But maybe not. Anyways, that might get us to 5 or 6. But 10! Or 11! Or 23! We have no idea. We have not a clue as to what these big brains are thinking about.

But what we can get is this. All these other dimensions are places where we cannot see what’s going on. Directly touch or taste or. You know. Normally get what might be going on. Unless. Unless there’s something more going on here than normally gets picked up in the camera’s lens. Than gets picked up in a microphone.

Oh. Like the Moses encounters. Like the Transfiguration, for example. The Lazarus deal. Or Paul being struck down and blinded temporarily. The risen Jesus eating fish on a beach. And so forth.

In-breaking. The Kingdom shattering the one-way glass between dimensions. Or no. Maybe there’s no bursting whatsoever. Just a stepping through the curtain. The invisible curtain. The bead curtain that others from the heavenly dimension, for example, slip through with little warning. Just step through the beads that have the consistency and transparency of air.

A curtain between worldly space and heavenly space that is easily penetrated, really. That is easily passed through. By the actual on either side. When this is needful. When heart longing for someone or something on the other side becomes deep enough and wide enough. When sorrow or joy or radiance becomes great enough to become the other. Become the other two. Sorrow-joy-radiance. And light a way through the spaces between the beads. Or the metaphor of light. And then that being from heaven, let’s say, translated and standing for a time in the space that is just here. Just next to us. The Kingdom. The shining Kingdom. Right here. In the space that is folded all around us here. The whole business abstract, maybe, until something steps through. Some vision perhaps. Some being. Some words from someone on the other side. And then.

And then it becomes particular. Then it becomes actual as an angel sitting in one’s family room. Poof. Presto. Sitting in one’s wife’s comfortable chair when one’s wife is gone. Has left for another state. An angel, mind you. An angel! Listening to How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Just sitting here. Next to oneself. Sitting. Sitting and listening. Reassuring in a way. Listening. Suggesting. Suggesting. I don’t know. Peace. Not talking. No. Just this peace that fills the room like light from a candle flame. Like scent from a scented candle.

One does not look directly at this being because. Well. Because this has happened before. A few years before. And the angel goes away if you look directly. So. So I watch out of the corner of my left eye. And sing. Sing with Bono. And listen.

Nothing more complicated than that. Peace, the angel says. Peace be yours. Peace be unto you. All will be well, one believes this angel is saying. Sitting here. All manner of thing. Finally. Will be well.

Or Jesus. I’m not discounting the possibility of Jesus. Jesus or an angel. One or the other. Is what I’m thinking.

What Scientists Say

Scientists say this and that. I don’t know what they say. They say a lot of things. For example, your physicists. Your quantum physicists and your astrophysicists work more in the area of metaphysics than the traditional metaphysicians. The traditional metaphysicians are so spooked by all that’s been written in the field and by all the science that impinges on the metaphysical questions and so nervous about appearing to be theological in any way that they avoid the whole business. But the scientists. Certain physicists in particular. Well. They feel quite free to say just about anything that’s on their minds. After all, this isn’t really my field, they are thinking. So I’m free to speculate. And they do. They speculate quiet freely. Is the impression one gets in one’s cursory reading.

Then. Oh. Occasionally. One reads on Yahoo or somewhere like this that. Or one hears on NPR in the morning while one is shaving. While one is minding one’s own business, shaving away. That prayer is effective. There’s been a study, for example. On bacteria. On bacteria in test tubes. And one pictures a kind of murky substance. A kind of semantically cloudy and perhaps viscous and maybe a little gross type of substance in these test tubes, see. And around these test tubes, one pictures a lab with little people in lab coats. White lab coats, with pencils and pens in their breast pocket and in their one hand, a clipboard in the other. People recording what’s going on on the clipboards in little tables. They’re tabulating the data, you see. They begin with a tabula rasa, but soon the tabula begins to fill with data. Which is as it should be. The rasa is erased, as it were, by the data. By the experience. Or the record of the experience. The memory. In a sense. Of the experience. The experience codified, as it were. The experience coded so that every bit of the experience is captured for analysis later. But I go on and on.

These little people in their white lab coats stand around recording what happens when a gaggle of folks with crosses around their necks. Some of them hidden under shirts. Some of them flapping out here in the breeze. Some of the crosses wood and some of them metal. Some of them cheap and some of them expensive. As I say, these cross-bearers are in the lab here. They’re standing around a rack of test tubes with this milky stuff in them. They’re standing in a semi-circle, with their hands extended. You know. Palms open. Facing the test tubes that are in a rack on the lab bench with a sink in the end in case you need to flush your eyes or hands or something because you have been contaminated.

These Christians, one guesses. But maybe a couple of them don’t have crosses. Maybe a couple of them are Muslims and Jews. All the Abrahamic faiths represented, maybe. In any event, they all believe in the effectiveness of prayer. And so they pray. It’s an experiment, you see. It’s experimental prayer. God under the microscope, in a manner of speaking. And so they pray, because they’ve agreed to pray. Because they want to help put God under a microscope. They want to see, also. See whether God actually performs. Performs for us. You know. A little like going to the circus. A little like going to the God circus in which God puts on his little show. A little like a science fair circus in which God shows us one of his tricks.

And so they pray. They pray that the bacteria in the vials do well. That the bacteria prosper so to say. That the bacteria increase.

Outrageous, you’re thinking. There are way too many bacteria, as it is. In the world. And now we’re praying for more. We’re praying for more of the leetle beasts! But what I’m saying is the truth. This really happened, and not too long ago. It was in the news.

And the way it came out was this. The bacteria, which were provided with abundant food and abundant warmth and abundant laboratory light and attention by the little people in the white coats. They increased! They multiplied like rabbits in the spring of the year! They prospered. They thickened. They quickened. They swelled their test tubes. Grew up the test tube walls and overflowed the walls. They threatened to take over the laboratory. To cover the little people in the white coats and the people with their crosses and the absence of crosses, with their hands outstretched or clasped tastefully and piously in front of them. In front of their genitals.

But wait, you say. But wait. Where is the control. Where is the control group, you want to know. Calm. Calm. These scientists who ran this experiment are good scientists. They know how to do science, as we all do. Of course they had their control. Of course there was a rack of test tubes identical to the first, kept under the same temperature. Fed the same disgusting food, whatever it was. Hovered over by the same little people in white coats, looking like so many rabbits. The only difference being. The only recorded difference being that no one prayed over this group of bacteria. This group of bacteria in the other room.

The poor babies. The poor lonely bacteria, you’re thinking. And you’d be right. Even bacteria have feelings. It’s much more enjoyable to be prayed over than not. Is what I always say. So much more lonely and forsaken and forlorn. And forgone. This is what the control group experienced, because. Well. They didn’t increase. They didn’t quicken. They didn’t prosper. As much, in any event. Significantly less is the finding.

And so. The moral of the story. Yes, the moral of the story.

I don’t know what that is, but I do know this. Scientists are taking the supernatural seriously again! Isn’t that wonderful. Isn’t that precious. Isn’t that encouraging. To have the wonderful world of science taking mystery and supernaturalism and mysticism seriously. We’ve arrived, is what I’m thinking. We’ve definitely arrived. Again. We and our God are making headlines again in this regard.

I don’t know. Next thing I expect is a degree in mysticism. Next thing I expect is some university somewhere will begin churning out Ph.D.s in the Physics of Mysticism, or the Physics of the Deeply Mysterious, or the Inexplicable Chemistry of God. They’ll get hired by seminaries and by the schools that churn them out like Chiclets. They’ll get hired by news organizations to analyze and comment on Mystical Science. On all the Mystical Science that’s going on. To sort out the good Mystical Science from the bogus Mystical Science. The sound Theoscience from the unsound.

A whole industry will develop. Whole libraries will be filled with books on the subject. Great debates will rage about, oh. For example. How many quarks can dance on the head of a pin. How many nanograms a person’s Honored Guest weighs. Or which of the 10 or 11 total dimensions of the universe actually contains or contain heaven. Or Something like that. Is what I’m guessing. Is where this all may be going. If you extrapolate the data. If you project it out on a reasonable slope into the future. Into the empty space on the graph paper. The space that contains no data. That is purely imaginary space. Purely abstract space. In which. Really. Anything might happen.