The Winged Boot Fitting Service from Jamie Coats (The Fitter)

I am standing on the beach on the island of the silver pinnacle with the stairway to heaven looking out to sea. My back is to the stairway. The whole stairway has turned golden as the pinnacle parts, the doors to heaven open. Light shines out across the sea in a golden beam. I think at first I am going to be able to walk on the beam across the sea but that is not so. I follow the line of the beam into the sea and find myself swimming.  The sea, lit by the beam, is as warm and comforting as a hot bath. Two things happen: I am relaxing perfectly in the water and at the same time I am swimming as fast as a seal with in the confines of the light warmed water heading straight for the shore of the mainland. I arrive at the mainland beach at great speed and shoot out of the water and glide through the air and then find myself standing quite still on the beach. I am bare foot, wearing swimming trunks and a towel appears and wraps around me. I feel completely refreshed. I turn around and look back across the sea. I see that the gates of heaven are open and the line of light spreads across the water to me. I realize this very moment I am looking into the heart of God as it shines on the earth. The next minute – vroom, vroom, and vroom – the women apostles arrive, shooting out of the water and gliding to gentle standing stops on the beach. They too are quite relaxed.

We are clothed in simple robes. We stand in a circle. We stretch out our arms to the center and all our hands touch. We look around and we say we are about to set off but we know where we have come from. Although we are going different ways we are all together. Suddenly in the middle of us is a golden sphere that contains a soul, not an individual soul but the soul of us as a group. We are amazed and it hovers in mid air and we stand back and look at it – we have a sense that it is smiling at us. Next we sense that we are physically far apart from one another, all spread across the globe, and yet we are all just as close standing in a circle touching the sphere that contains the soul of our group. “You’re standing in the heart of God,” says the sphere. “Your hands reach out as you stand in a circle and you touch one another’s hands as you make the sign of the peace. As you do that do not imagine that there is any form of one-to-one communication that is between you and another as you look into each other’s eyes. The peace you have when see into the color of a person’s eyes, as you look as a lover with the peace of God, is the sign of the peace that you are standing in a circle touching soul of your group entity. The soul of your group entity lives in the heart of God and bathes in the beam that stretches across the sea. The sea out of which you animals have evolved.”

As we stand, hands out stretched touching the sphere, the Christ spirit around the soul of our group, we find ourselves all blindfolded, then blind, then holding the swords of silver with the gold streak along the blade, the swords of striking love. The voice says, “It is right words that you will teach. Remember you will always be blind so you can hear from the Void, God’s love, the light, the love and the creation in others; and remember to give them nothing and to claim no authority.” At that moment the sphere dissolves into each one of our hearts and we shudder a bit as we digest what has happened. We look around and we are just normal human beings all with our sins and frailties just as we were before but with a spark of more. So we look to one another and say, “There is no point to say Goodbye because with this covenant we are committed to one another and to the love of the heart of God.”

We set out, blind. Sometimes we stub our toes and we listen all the time and we talk gently. We hear people as presence before we understand their outline. As we walk we remember the gifts that we are given; the different skills that we have, of music, of writing, of talking, of preaching, of counting of money, of a twinkle in the eye, of a joy of parenting, even for some seducing. We remember all of these things. They are now in the service of the One.

My road is barred by a large, tall figure that I can tell is an angel; he or she must be at least eight feet high. A large trumpet or horn is pushed against my chest. I say to the angel “I am blind. I cannot see the road that you block. I have a sense of your presence. What is it that you have come to say?” But the angel says nothing, pushes the giant trumpet at me hard. I say, “You’ve got to be kidding. Your trumpet is huge how can I hold it?” But as I touch it, it shrinks tiny down to the size of my palm. “Oh no!” I say, “Not that.” The angel says nothing and still blocks my way. I know that I have to practice blowing through the trumpet the glory of God. I get a sense that the angel is nodding an approving way. I warn the angel that I am tone deaf. I have a sense that the angel is chuckling. I say, “Which way shall I point it?” I get a sense of a shrug that it does not matter which way.

As I raise the palm sized trumpet to my mouth is reverts to the great trumpet of the angel and I blow with all my force a glory of God. Then as I lower the trumpet it shrinks palm-sized and turns into a cell phone. The angel laughs. I am blowing the glory of God through a cell phone. I laugh. I close the phone and put it in my pocket. From this day onwards I know that my phone is the most glorious trumpet from the largest angel I have encountered.

I walk on and I am still blind.

I bump into a wooden barrier that catches me in my stomach. From a rustling of wings I sense five or six angels guard it. I sense they have blocked my way to stop me walking over a precipice. I say, “Thank you for blocking my way, lucky I did not fall off, I am blind.” I think, “You can’t always hear a precipice.” Then ping I know that I am wrong. They brought me here to know what the sound of a precipice is like.

A voice says, “You will get some inspiration and it will get you a few steps down the road. Then you will come to a precipice.” I laugh because I know it is a void. So quickly I turn round with my back to the precipice. I open my phone. It turns into a trumpet to God. I blow the trumpet and in an instant I have a horde of people in front of me. And I hold out my left hand, palm upward and all the people go blind. I say, “First I send you blindness, a soothing darkness. Now I send you light of love. Now paint the road ahead with all your imaginations and then with worldly materials carve the new road ahead.” With huge excitement they paint in their minds, in their bodies they quake and shudder as they conceive amongst themselves and then suddenly a golden sphere encapsulating the soul of this group appears. It rolls along the road. I put my foot on it and stop it like a soccer ball. I say, “I could never have conceived of what you have conceived. This is magnificent.”

I am standing with my back to the precipice and I remain blind. I take my foot off the golden sphere. It shoots by me over the precipice and suddenly I know that a whole new road and vista has appeared. The people cheer and they surge ahead into the world that they have created through their imagination, their labor and their manifest shaping of materials in the world. They rush past me and once again I am alone. The angels remove the barrier and I walk forth. I am nervous and have trepidation because I am still blind. But the precipice is no longer there. The people have built a stairway going down. The nice thing is that they included a handrail for me, a nice thought of theirs. I get down to the end of the stairway.

As I am walking along suddenly the road gradient goes steeply up. I realize that I am walking up in a loop that bends back on itself. I walk up until I am walking upside down and then I walk down to where the loop begins.  I am caught in a loop. I pause. A voice of an angel says, “It is right to pause when you are in a loop.” Suddenly around me there is a congregation of people just pausing.

My eyes open. We gather in a large sitting room. We sit down, put our feet up, put on the TV and ignore everything. We behave like lazy slobs. We just pause. But we know as we relax something is sinking into our ground. Suddenly the sitting room floor cracks. I fall through the floor and find myself high in the sky falling through clouds fast towards earth.  A flock of angels comes along side. I fly too; I have wings on my boots.

I can see below we are coming up on a large city teaming with people. We start to fly in a lowering, tightening circle. In a crowd below I suddenly spy a person, who from above glows gold. I know that I have never met this person before. I alight in the crowd near the person, no one seems aware of my arrival as I instantly blend in. I walk up to the person and say, “Hi! We have not met before. Something tells me that you have just done something very kind and I want to thank you.” The person looks at me amazed. As I turn to leave the person says, “Hold on a minute. How did you know?” I reply, “Your heart radiated the love that you have given. You are an example to others that shines brightly. Just because you are clothed like others does not mean that your love does not show. I do not bring any blessings for you because it is obvious that you already have them. The person says, “Do you say this to everyone?” I reply, “When appropriate yes, but when I sense it would scare or not get through I don’t waste my time.” The cell phone rings and I say, “Excuse me and what you are about see.”

I take out my ringing cell phone and it expands into the angel’s giant trumpet. I listen to a voice from afar then reply as I blow a glory to God on the trumpet. The trumpet shrinks back to a cell phone that I put in my pocket. I say, “Sorry. Sometimes there is reason to interrupt when the need to blast the glory of God in a different direction is called. I don’t mean to be rude. Today we have fun tools to blast the glory of God in all directions. I hope that you’ll do the same on your cell phone too.” The conversation ends, we say goodbye.

I am blind again as I walk through this teaming urban city. I follow my nose. I head to where the smell is getting bad. God is often most needed where there is a stench. I hear some children close by.  My eyes see again. I see a young boy smiling but his body is wracked by malnourishment. I hand him my phone. His eyes spark, as he is not surprised as the phone turns into a trumpet for the glory of God. He blows the most beautiful note of God, it broadcasts across the world. Beside me I see two large sports equipment bags full of cell phone trumpets of God. I hand them to all the children around. They give the phone/trumpets to others, who blow not just music, but words and pictures transmitting across the world the voice of God. Suddenly around me angels arrive. They say, “Follow the voice the child blows to a person across the world.”

I find myself in a modest home on the other side of the world in a well-to-do-neighborhood. I am in the home a young women, I have a sense she owns it and is single. She is startled by the sound and images of the trumpet of God reaching her ears and eyes. She knows that she is human and the child is human too. She shakes off the thought and her mind fills lists of busy-ness.

Suddenly she is aware of me. I say, “What did you think?” She is annoyed, she says, “The boy is a cartoon.” I cry and it is really embarrassing because my tears drop onto her kitchen counter-top. My tears are acidic and damage the surface. I say. “I am terribly sorry.” I look into her eyes, her heart and say, “You are human too. I know you have love inside you. I do not come to condemn. I come to love you and as much as I love the others too. I know of course that I give you nothing. It is your radiant love that I know you know you have.” I say, “Goodbye” and I leave.

As I step out of the house I appear in a different neighborhood. I am on the steps of a broken house in a ruined neighborhood. I sit on the steps demoralized.  It seems so hard, so much suffering so much poverty. Then I go blind. I laugh, I know we have so much wealth and so much joy. The fun thing of this world we live in is to experience the wealth and to share its abundance through our turning to the love of God. I shout, “Let us have a blast. Have a party! Invite a few more strangers every day.” Although blind I know the landscape I am in is turning from black and white into color as wealth rolls by and comes to stay.  I wonder how this happens and then remember the exercise of blinding people before asking them to imagine. Then they could all paint in their imagination and through their brilliance they sorted it out.

I see again. A soccer ball bounces to my feet. I get up and kick it back to the kids playing in the street. I know that my success and failure is nothing as long as I love. Love accepted, love rejected, both bring me closer to unity.

I am back at the mainland beach. The apostles gather. We stand together in a circle and reach out to touch the golden sphere that contains the soul of our group and we know we are in communion. I say, “I am hungry.” We walk over to a communion table filled with food. We eat and afterwards we go off to sleep.

Amen.

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