Roses

One of the many unusual experiences I have had. I don't mind at all if others believe them to be figments of my imagination, or hallucinations, or lies. I share them merely so that others who know me will understand me.

He said, "The things in your mind - the thoughts and fears and anguish and self-judgment that torment you - are like a crown of thorns. I wore one so that you would not have to."

I was sitting in a meadow, in a field of flowers. There was in my heart the sense of joyful expectation that I feel when one of the handful of very special friends in my life are coming to visit, and I am anticipating their imminent arrival. As I sat in this expansive meadow bordered by limitless forests, I gathered flowers to make a gift for the one coming to see me. It struck me that I was still an artist even in this place and time, as if it were something inherently woven into my being, for ages to come. I was weaving the flowers I gathered into a small wreath. As I worked, my heart trembled with a sort of fragile thankfulness.

The next thing I knew, he was there, sitting with me in the meadow. Smiling, as happy to see me as I was him. My heart brimming with an intimate, wordless gratefulness, I leaned over to solemnly kiss his temples at each place where the thorns had left a faint mark. As I kissed, at each place my lips touched, a rose appeared. The wreath I had been weaving, a wreath of kisses for his brow.

Abyss

"This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance. We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any point and to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses." -Blaise Pascal

At the behest of a friend (to whom I am forever grateful), I saw donnie darko for the first time this weekend. It had me near tears, for so many reasons. Not least of which is that it reminded me of how I have felt at times in my life. Tormented by questions about god that opened beneath me like abysses. Feeling as if my inner life was more real than what I and everyone else saw outwardly. Suspecting my understanding of truth to be entwined with mental illness, but not knowing exactly how to disentangle them.

I remember watching the closing credits of rocky and bullwinkle as a child, as the lightening flashed and the ground split open beneath them, and knowing that is not only what I feared, but what I felt like inside.

I often say that there are few things in life that I am certain about. I suppose, if asked to articulate what they are, I might say it this way: That something loved me enough to throw itself under my feet. That something was big enough to fill the infinite abyss.

blue

I woke this morning, for some reason thinking of one of the earliest dreams I can remember. From the age of my sister at the time, I think I must have been between four and six years old. We were at my grandmother's house for a holiday, and I was wakened by my mother for breakfast. I walked into the kitchen - the family gathered around the table - to announce to all assembled what a wonderful dream I had been having.

"There were all these little blue girls", I said enthusiastically, "waiting in line to get in bed with me." 

I recall this pronouncement causing the breakfast conversation among the adults to grow suddenly and strangely quiet. "They were so nice, and so pretty", I continued, undeterred, "and they all glowed blue." 

In my dream, they were indeed translucent, and glowing with a pale blue light (my favorite color at the time) from deep within. They were all my age, and dressed alike. In fact they all looked exactly the same, a long line of identical blue girls receding into the sleepy darkness.  But though physically alike, inwardly each was unique, with an individual beauty and soul and identity. All were sweet and gentle, and each eagerly and patiently waited her turn to get into bed with me. It seemed there was an allotted time for each, during which her eagerness would slowly change to deep contentment as we lay smiling face to face. We would then say affectionate good-byes, and she would surrender her place to the next, completely satisfied and grateful for her time with me. I remember a soft tender word of gentle intimacy with the last one, that the others could not hear.

No one at the table seemed to fully understand how great this dream obviously was. I remember my father concentrating intently on his bacon and eggs. My mother and grandmother carrying on in wide-eyed but stony silence as if they had suddenly lost the ability to hear.
Nevertheless, after eating I quickly rose to earnestly declare my intention to go back to bed, in the hope of continuing this obviously wonderful dream.

Esmerine

"Esmerine’s Aurora is the sound of nations grinding to a halt as the dust settles from the final explosion of the final piece of nuclear ordnance. It is the sound of the meek waiting timidly in stripped shells of burning cars for the intrusions of cockroaches to abate. It is the sound of a loved one passing away, the sound of a marriage disintegrating; it is the sound of unrequited love. It is the sound of losing one’s sight; the sound of morphine overdoses and pethidine dreams. Yet, despite the sadness, there is an underlying beauty at work so immense that one cannot help but be drawn in and enveloped."

http://www.esmerine.com/reviews_aurora.html

a glimpse inside the core

"Only occasionally, when the light strikes their enclosure in a certain way, as an equinoctial sun struck an Icelandic volcano in Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth and revealed to explorers an opening to the core of the planet, will the pupils of the giraffes dilate in some contrary fashion, betraying in a clinically observable way, even to a hemodynamicist, a memory of something more than the walls that contain them."

J.M. Ledgard, from Giraffe

Rilke

"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly pressed me against his heart, I would perish in the embrace of his stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure and are awed because it so serenely disdains to annihilate us. Each single angel is terrifying."

-Rilke

Wonder

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of all true art and true science." -Einstein

Mystery, and the sense of wonder when confronted with it, has always been the thing that arrested and held my gaze. Like Moses, compelled to turn aside at the sight of the burning bush. It was only when he had paused to contemplate it that he heard god speaking to him.  Mystery has become the heart of my theology, the living, breathing, elastic thing at it's center. The one thing, the only thing, that is capable of filling and spanning the gap between mind and heart, reason and faith. A creed whose holiest words, "I don't understand...", are uttered in hushed, awed, humbled tones.

I am persuaded that it is not so much the correct answer, but the trusting question that god calls faith.

"Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not."  -The Book of Job, 42:3

"A comprehended god is no god." -Madeleine L'Engle