Dear folks, I was informed of yet another push-date on our next deep dive. The chief saw the look on my face and knew how I felt in my gut before we went to chair. So, out of a superabundance of kindness, to you or me, perhaps all, he gave me leave to write something brief and personal, not prescribed or formal, so that this winter would not be one of complete chilly discontentment. It is still the best of times and the worst of times today, as many remain dead who claim to be alive, while we are dead yet live… obviously Professor Schrödinger was well read on Master Dickins too.
Time before last, we discussed an intermission or break in Isaiah. Here’s a much smaller one timewise in Mark, which has been stuck in my mind for a minute this winter. Don’t let this more diminutive break go unnoted. It casts a revealing light upon our present situation. So, as I may, if it’s not too formal:
“As soon as the meal was finished, Jesus insisted that the disciples get in the boat and go on ahead across to Bethsaida while he dismissed the congregation. After sending them off, he climbed a mountain to pray…
(This space marks a significant temporal rift in the discourse. It’s certainly a departure from Mark’s rapid-fire storytelling trademark: “immediately!”)
…Late at night, the boat was far out at sea; Jesus was still by himself on land. He could see his men struggling with the oars, the wind having come up against them. At about four o’clock in the morning, Jesus came toward them, walking on the sea. He intended to go right by them. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and screamed, scared to death.”
My favorite part is that Jesus saw his people “struggling,” however when he sets off across the water, “He intended to go right by them.” It is real. That ain’t the aspect of the story they teach in Sunday school, heck, I’ve never heard it from a carpeted pulpit, for obvious but un-Godly reasons. And I get the distinct impression that Jesus doesn’t like being dehumanized, for it’s no coincidence that type of error also leads to dehumanizing others, the very people that we’re meant to rescue. So it makes perfect sense that I’ve heard this aspect of the story discussed and pondered, at length, repeatedly in the field and under fire out on the bounding chaos. I take great comfort in the narration when things get existentially stormy, so I might still “go out, even if the US Navy stays in port.” And I appreciate it theologically because that type of material wouldn’t be part of the canon of an emerging Jewish sect without very good reason. I believe it’s there because it’s true, just as we glossed another episode in Mark where his family and friends think he’s “beside himself” (crazy). I prefer Mark most often for these reasons, but then I am rough trade who has become “a basket case” for God’s purposes.
Our man Paul also has a similar temporal and spatial break where he talks about the parameters and conditions wherein followers of Christ might judge. In this age we are told to judge only those within the church or those who claim to be, yet they are not. We are not to judge those outside the Church, that’s not why Jesus came. But too many, often well intended men with the embarrassing condition of PE cry, “yeah sure but just a few lines later it says that we are to judge the entire world.” They’re right on the surface, but they’re deeply wrong because they have prematurely eschatologized, and that always leads to grave error. I can understand the human hermeneutic to make much of one’s self, I can even forgive it, but then it needs to be left behind to die. Instead look for markers, story guides provided by the writer(s).Do not ignore the subtle verb tenses, which mark a different time. And there too, Paul also rocks a revelatory interrogative line about a people judging angels.
Now, if you can literally call down angels today (or in this present age) and discern their role without prior knowledge and accurately appraise their works up to this point in time, please drop me a line. And if you can do it, then maybe you can start judging the world now. But if not, please confine your judgments to the everyday affairs within your church as practice for the coming age. If you do not control yourself, then you are drowning others. Lastly, don’t worry, I don’t have PE, as I have strict guards placed about me to keep me in obedience to first principles. I have embarrassed myself in other ways though, and I remember those who gave me a break.
On a brighter note, there are more descriptive markers that define gestures in a place (a particular location in spacetime) for great effect. I am thinking now about Ephesians wherein the celebrant eloquently confesses, “My response is to get down on my knees before the Father…” who apportions manifest authorities (rightly exercised power by name in reality) to every family, both in the heavens (plural) and on earth. Think of the tribal array mapped about the Tabernacle. I know some of you have, yes I am thinking of you sister, but it’s so much more than that. Ephesians, more so than John’s Apocalypse, is a discourse ahead of its time. It’s a real story that straddles all times and places, to focus on today, no matter what day that might be. Ultimately, you’ll see that all of it as a rectified reflection to close out an age. An age God inaugurated by separating and apportioning all peoples on earth to their various gods due to their selfish and prideful collusion with the powers that be in abominable, but distinctly human ways, “in only darkness and agony,” much like now-a-days (more on this later for those who make it to C school).
I’ll just finish by confessing that I get a bit chagrined when hypocritical Enlightenment interpreters of the Word, who’ve decried pagans and Marxists, occult this great revelation about the heavens and earth, which is repeated throughout the Writings, by whitewashing heaven (singular) into their own private club, “a workers’ paradise” of course as it would be rendered by Thomas Kincade. That is a sad state of affairs, and I thank God it is not true. They may not have PE, but they need to show a little more respect for the fullness of the texts, the significance of context, and Mister Kincade. I respect all of them; and they too, the selfish hermeneutics put aside, I love enough to give them a break, to point out that no one can rightly expect to inherit the reality of the beatific revelations of the first half of Ephesians in the age to come, if one does not obey the covenantal practices enumerated in the plain-spoken second half commands in one’s daily life.
There is a bigger pattern at work within the divine marking and articulating appointed times rightly; think about the covenant God cut in the Sermon on the Mount/Plane. ‘If you desire to inherit (in the future), then you must be (today).’ Amazing so many sell that promised, forever inheritance for a bowl of soup, which is something that comforts for only one day. They take a simple, real deal and turn it into a over-wrought credo existing only in thoughts and belief, to comfort the things they already want to be true. I ask them, if there were three frogs on a log, and one thought about jumping off while all three believed they could, how many frogs were left behind on the log? I cannot make it any clearer, get real man.
Now, since we are exactly where we are and my orders were clear, I’ll share some warmth that I’ve enjoyed this winter, a few most beautiful yet very human things: from the short take above to songs, a little comedy, and a moment on a human story, a biography really, which keeps resurfacing in my mind here below. I most earnestly hope that you find some comfort and Spiritual growth before what comes next… Necessary endowments too oft forgot by Jesus-haunted people who are always chasing or building their newer model messiahs; there are so many loudly produced and conspicuously consumed these days; and they’re all part of the liar’s dehumanizing project to beach Love. Our Father made me so I could always see, but because of their doubling-down reverie I have stopped blinking, and now, by my Lord, there is no more landlubberly slackness for us. Personally, I’ve always known, even before my soul’s embodiment, that God bore all souls into the flesh of this world, “so it is here you will be tested… water born and water bred, hurrah!” Engage that enthusiasm realistically, for James tells us to consider every trial before us as “all joy.” Trust me, there are historic “joys” headed our way, but still, we will go out. That is our call, faith, and duty. It is perfect messaging in the wake of Christmastide. His messaging is forever fitting in every way for the Rectification, the elemental breaking and reforming of all things, from age to age.
So now, I pray, “Father and Lord, grant your Spirit mercy in dealing with your most intimate family in the heavens and on earth. I desire most that we no longer squander your divine tenderness, your unsurpassed forgiveness painfully, so painfully raised, but instead help us make full use of your unique gift to recover those lost within the terrible sea, the chaos that men make of your works and creatures. Even though you don’t need us, I beg that you deign to train us, use us, to make right all of your Creation, not with the manners of other gods and fallen powers as we have too often for too long, but now only in the Power that descended to reveal both your Will and Way in “bruised” human flesh…. Enable us to serve Jesus’ way, no other. Even in Silence, I beg you to realize and amplify yourself evermore, in us and through us. Please do this Father no matter the cost to us, it will be justified for we can only do evil without you. Amen.”
From a magisterial sermon in one line (above), a gift given to real martyrs, to the ardent, human, and real prayer by a father for his daughter to God. A prayer to end the inherited lies and present destruction, the Curse, and God’s response with a father’s obligation (below):
Now some of the most sublimely spoken beauty in the history of the English language, made all the more weighty as it speaks to the bigger unseen picture, which is only for those with ears to hear and hearts to burn:
Sublime poetry to ridiculous comedy:
Silly comedy to an illuminating story… a tale in which I discovered more and more depth, the deeper I dove and grew. It’s been recurring to me this dark winter:
Samuel Houston was a man misunderstood by all but Providence. You couldn’t blame all, after all he certainly was a rascal in his youth. He scandalized “the good white folk” who thought they knew him, by running away from home to live with the Cherokee. It was there he took a brake and learned of his need to serve a higher cause in order to sleep through the night, while learning the broader scope of humanity, greater than the very limited one the people he came out from had taught him. In turn, the Cherokees gave him a call sign, “the Raven,” for his keen vision and strategic thinking. It was a better name because Cherokee names are not an ends in themselves like the European powers use them, a name to these humble and oppressed people reflect a deeper spiritual reality, not worldly power.
When he returned to the land of his birth, Sam thought serving a people that didn’t understand him at the risk of his life was a noble cause. He soon caught the eye of General Andrew Jackson, who most called the greatest field commander of his day. In turn, “Old Hickory” thought Sam was, especially for a man who never sought promotion. After the war of 1812, the candidate Jackson made Sam an integral part of his campaign. Once again, the Raven exceeded expectations, and after more victories, his mentor set him up in politics. He even remarried “the right kind of woman” for a bright future to help lead the young and growing nation. When the Cherokees were forced from their lands Sam did what he could to mitigate the brutal oppression, but the horror and shame of his people damn near killed him. He lasted all of six years in that soul-crushing pit.
He divorced his model wife and took a break among more civilized people, the First Nations People in the Arkansas Territory. I ask you dear reader, if “the savages” are more intelligent and civil than “the civilized folk,” who is zooming whom? Forget the propaganda, what’s the real cultural logic behind the vainly constructed reality of that world? It’s always been the case, or the Apostle Paul wouldn’t have nearly as good a biography to remember.
Anyway, after a spell and becoming renowned as “white brother big drunk,” he heard of a small band of Texicans fighting an empire to the south in order to restore the Constitution of 1824. The big drunk saw another higher cause and went to Texas. After Gonzales (if you know warfare you can’t call it a battle) where proud and stupid men revived King Leonidas’s ancient slogan of “come and take it” only to get slaughtered, Sam decided to help at war again. Once there, it was obvious to men of vision that even in his “delicate condition” Sam saw their actual situation clearer than anyone who never drank a day in his life. And after a few years trouble shooting the war effort, getting to know the landscape in detail, and a series of slaughters… those “in power” had seen enough and made him commander of the forces that remained, in their darkest hour.
This is the part that I’ve been thinking about most: It literally was a winter of discontent and dread. Who could stop the man that abused elected power so lawlessly to destroy the Constitution and ordain himself emperor, “the Napoleon of the West?” Meanwhile, Sam was living down to his infamous moniker, yet wisely ordered a sustained retreat. The movement was part of “The Runaway Scrape” to the east. This gave the Raven and those with him time to train, establish better logistics, and wait for the man with godlike hubris to make a mistake; they always do. Now, if you know anything about warfare know that it is intelligence, discipline, logistics, and patience that wins wars. If God did pick the winner of men’s wars, he’d pick that side every time because they shoot better in reality.
Of course, those who were supposed to be serving at Sam’s direction didn’t know war or God, not in any real sense. Most of them were proud and ignorant; they put more effort into tailoring their uniforms rather than their training, more time talking and bragging than listening and learning… real Patton-lovers before his time. It’s no wonder there were myriad coup attempts and non-stop defaming and complaining. What the rubes didn’t know was their man had taken all that and worse before, several times. The only wonder is why he stayed. But it is no wonder to anyone who looked at the arc of Sam’s life, and Sam did. Even on a ship of fools, he knew how to keep a the right course, with his eyes upon the markers and hand upon the rudder, even when the best became dogmatically dissolute and the worst were filled with ignorant intensity.
Remembering the Battle of New Orleans, in the spring of April of ’36, Sam seized an opportunity by feigning another retreat. This one led the petite Napoleon onto ground that the pipsqueak was not familiar with and lost his numerous advantages by camping there. He reinforced his position, feasted, and slept in the next morning confident in his apotheotic brilliance, superior firepower, and exponential numeric advantage. The battle lasted all of 18 minutes. But the killing went on for hours. It was a brilliant display of combined forces that took full advantage of terrain, tactics, fire, and movement a century before Omar Bradley went to WestPoint then to codify that very approach for the strongest military in the miserable history of human failure. But I digress… The Tejanos lost 9 men with 3o wounded, while their opponents suffered over 600 fatalities, hundreds wounded, and over 700 captured. Self-proclaimed gods bluster, fall hard, and act like punks under trial. True to form the disgraced general, dressed as an enlisted man, was out-ed among the prisoners as they showed him deference while they were brought before a wounded Houston for judgment.
The same damned fools who profaned Sam before screamed for total vengeance and an agonizing death for Santa Anna. But the Raven didn’t see things that way. The army was disarmed then granted supply and passage back to Mexico. And their leader was given a break because the Big Drunk knew that was the only way, the right way, to establish the place the Texicans had dreamed of with pains. Even the few devils who didn’t learn their lesson, couldn’t deny the astonishing victory. Texas was established as an independent republic, with Santa Anna’s approval, not long after that warm, sunny day. Now, there are numerous other accomplishments that “good people” admired after that day, markers in Sam’s life, any one of which would make any petty politico these days fat and happy for life, most of their histories are written that way.
But let me tell you what I admire most, in brief. Sam was an Anglo ahead of his time in fighting for the rights of the oppressed and it cost him dearly. Besides fighting a losing cause with FNP, Sam wanted slavery abolished and to preserve the Union; it cost him his job as governor. Notably, Sam used his influence to keep Lorenzo de Zavalla, an educated San Juanista rebel form Merida, as vice-president until the day he died. Sam thought it was mete and right as the republic’s strength would come from its diversity and inclusion, just as it had in the rag-tag assembly that he built into an army, to the chagrin of racists, so most. Tejano is still a name of honor there among true Texans, even as the petty Santa Annas in Austin today disgrace this, their own legacy in hateful acts. More personally and on the brighter side, Sam remarried “a deliberate woman” in ’40 and soon after he became a leading member in an early temperance movement, correlation or cause? Only the Big Drunk could say. And the coup de grace, the man quipped the greatest statement in the history of Christian baptismal days. In ’54, along the banks of a Texas bayou, the baptizer proclaimed “the water has washed your sins away!” Sam is said to have grinned and clapped back, “Lord help the fish below!” Who knew such a sardonic one-line master and spiritual realist could also be such an enthusiastic environmentalist? Well, anyone with integrity would… I know for a fact that God blesses and keeps pure-hearted Texas drunks close by, if only for choral and comedic entertainment.
He was a bit like Balian, weren’t he? Both were men who are heavily fictionalized and yet always seem out of time, because no matter the revision, they incontrovertibly lived as if they were already in the age to come but acted properly within their time according to that greater reality, which was still yet to fully be. That’s no small feat, but it is one that Jesus calls for from whomever he calls. None of us can do it perfectly but we must try. That’s what grace is for… to save, help, and guide us from failure to failure until we stop trying or die. It is simple integrity committed to rest in the spirit and truth of the greatest and therefore timeless Reality, while toiling on a day to day basis in the eternal now. No wonder the failing powers that be were the greatest adversaries in both stories. Compromised people in power usually have enough sense to know the real, the authentic McCoy when she arrives among them. What they lack is the integrity to act right, the moral rectitude to act sacrificially, because they know deep down that their reign is done and has already been judged lacking, and they are too proud to let go of their millstones. So they get increasingly deluded, hateful, and violent until they change or drown in their manifest sins, in the stormy sea that they created. That’s the idolatry story in a nutshell. No one reborn from the living waters of faith, especially not the One I serve, wants that, but they chose it. God gave them and us a choice. So he, and we, will honor that agency singularly even if it means separation from those we love. We who honor Him, live in his Spirit to live and let others live, even if it means live and let them die in reality.
…Intermission…
For the longest time I was forced to watch the generation of a people who bore me chose replacement messiahs and snow jobs until they are now frozen and buried away from reality, just where the petty Nimrods and greedy wolves want them. For a long time I was mad (a sane response), then indignant (righteously so), and after all that I gave out more than 490 breaks a head (like God said), finally I came to simply do what I could for those who wanted me to help (that’s Shalom), and I let the sea take the rest. For me the hardest part was not wearing the lost on my sleeve, but I got there, not to a “utopia,” but in reality. Then about three-and-a-half years ago (adjusted for the year of delay), at an inflection point that I didn’t see coming, I was given a most weighty proposition. It was the happiest and most comfortable I had ever been in my own skin. I had finally found the peace that I had struggled and fought for so very long and very, very hard. Accepting the Request would mean an end to my most treasured peace, “my own private Idaho.” So I was reluctant to say yes, and in my deepest, novel infirmities I asked to see my master in reality.
My lord saw that as a wise and right response, so he came to me. I said, “for a long lifetime I have begged, borrowed, and pleaded… stormed, struck-down, and walked away… all bruised to hell and back. I finally learned to treasure your Peace… away from a people who wouldn’t give up their religions of pride and self-righteousness, nor their worldly power and wealth. In sum, they would not forgive, turn from their replacement messiahs and live out your reality.” His response was brief and turned a half-century of learning about him on its sublime head and altered a final estate that I was already more than pleased with, one I didn’t deserve. He changed it all in an instant by saying, “That is my testimony too. They might not Stephen, but we do. We go out.” Then he showed me his bruise, “You know there are many families above as there are below. Please do our Father’s bidding. I gave you our choice for a bride, now…” his soft voice enjambed into silence, and he just smiled. But he had a longing in his eyes that disturbed me at first because it was all too human, almost needy… I’d seen the same look in my own mirror a thousand times, and I thought “ah young Porphyro,” and once again I had no choice. At least it didn’t feel like I did.
That is Real, no escapist blasphemies for me, for by his gaze my flesh embodied His principle. He gave me a break, so I should do likewise… (intermission) …even if there are people who make a show of reciting the Lord’s prayer mindlessly every Sunday or Wednesdays, or any other days, but never actually live it out; they only forgive the debts in their finely manicured worlds that they feel good about forgiving. That’s just a lived-principle of natural love, loving only those few they chose to love or forgive, for whatever selfish feeling or prideful reason. Actually, they do the opposite of Jesus’ commands to reveal their hiemal religion by nursing grudges, doubling-down in contempt, and even making up more lies, replacement messiahs always provide more lies and ignorance. In short, they do everything and anything they might do just to avoid doing the one and first thing, beyond lip-service, which sets-apart followers of Christ Jesus in reality. I’d long left-behind their patterns of a subnivean birth. I dropped their inherited curses like they were my infected garments. Everyday since, my life breaths, oscillates, between eye-scorching understanding with burning bones and threadbare thoughts to unappreciated serenity that reforms more peaceful wits, which makes my training well worthwhile, even to the point where I dread getting that comfortable in my flesh ever again.
That’s no present danger today, because in just a little over a year from now the last Jubilee in the Age of Grace officially commences. There’s always some splash and overspray between times in God’s use of times. Profound benthic currents in creation don’t reverse in an instant, unlike the gentile philosophers’ demands for clear cut lines and right angles at specific moments that never seem to workout for them. So they’re forever thrashing about their credos and teachings; they say truth but they cannot even tread water. They storm about, all for fear their “purity” will be polluted. Their teachings are the pollutants, their ways toxic. Pay heed to Paul’s instruction, confront them for reconciliation’s sake, judge them in your house if they persist, and cast them out of your assemblies if they still refuse to turn. It’s their choice to make if they want to drown in a pool of their delusions, but leaders do not let them harm or mislead the weak among you or else drowning will seem a kind escape at your time of final appraisal… At God’s other hand, it is only in his Silence that we might most faithfully attend to the voice of Grace until the end of its final echo over the abyss. We who’ve sacrificed our choices and surrendered our lives here below have sensed the undertow for a long time, while above Apricity’s gleaming re-colors the psychrophilic sky… descending into the world’s deepest winter, turning the snows into oceans.
( “As foolish voices proliferate, the restrained word is wise.” Delayed deep dive is now scheduled for sundown September 27th)
Ichthus and Ouroboros 