Early to bed
Wake rested
Be spirit-led
Free to be tested
I love my Alexandra
I love my drama
I love my ballerina
I love my neighbor
Like a butterfly
Gentle no force
Feeling powered by
Life’s course
Make beautiful moments
The year’s monuments
Theme for 2008
Jamie Coats February 2008
I find myself walking into the Church of Our Saviour, on Marathon Street in Arlington for a wedding. The church is mainly filled with angels. I take a seat half way up the aisle on the left of the church. We are sitting. The angels are a bit agitated as it is not easy for them to sit down and lean back with their wondrous wings.
At the front of the church Jesus Christ and Justice appear. They indicate that I should stand in the aisle facing them, which I nervously do; I get up and stand in the aisle. They address me, “Where our will is we will take you. Put out your left hand and in it hold the balance and in your right hand hold the sword of striking love. Know that when the balance is balanced the sword is of perfect love but when it tips either way the sword can turn to steel or glass and cut as you move it in your sway. So balance you will maintain through daily prayer and through membership of a community, a community that will help you be accountable to us. And you will be witness to our marriage.”
I return to my pew and the service begins, the marriage of Justice and Christ. I look up the aisle of the church and I see the physical man Jesus Christ and physical woman Justice bodily embrace in physical love. The voice of a man, God as Father, God as presence and at the same time the voice of a woman, God as Mother, God as Void says, “You are blessed.” The angels’ voices rise in a hosanna, and their song spreads down the pews.
I see Justice and Christ standing at the altar, kissing and married.
The angels are flowing into the church from on high and burst out into the street, singing. The whole of Marathon Street is full of human well-wishers and angels intermingled. Jesus Christ holding the hand of Justice and Justice holding the hand of Jesus walk down the aisle and onto the steps of the Church. And the people in their heart know that at last Christianity is embodied in every point in the body with not a speck of shame. Everyone proclaims, “We celebrate Christ and Justice from our toes to our heads. We bow down before them and celebrate and hold their child, the child of every one of us. All around we dedicate our lives to God.”
I nervously ask myself, “Dare I write this? The unison voice of God rings sharply in my ear “Yes.” I reply, “Does this not cross the line?” The unison voice says, “Yes, it is the threshold to opening the doors so the sense of joy in marriage when the couple step onto the steps of the church into the street, where everybody can see whatever they believe, that moment of happiness is the new dawn for our Christianity. In the same spirit we celebrate our faith, our remembrance of Jesus and his God-human partnership fully embodied on earth and here fully united and consummated with sacred feminine Justice, no longer blindfolded, with eyes of great beauty.”
The unison voice of God now commands, “This is new remembrance. Escort Christ and Justice from the church to a new bed chamber, an everlasting relationship where it will not be “to death do us part” because death is already here and the Resurrection has arrived, it is entwining in eternity, always has been, always is and always will be but was never seen until now. You will look around and in every person you will see a mother and a father, you see in them Justice and Christ. You will say to yourself “This person in front of me, I know they are born of these two, Justice and Christ.” Justice and Christ are indivisible in the One and held before the Beginning forever.”
Two donkeys have been prepared and are waiting. Jesus and Justice get on the donkeys and are led up to Marathon Street to Massachusetts Ave, (Mass Ave), the wide four lane wide road that is the main road through the town of Arlington. Thousands of people line the road and as the donkeys turn the corner onto Mass Avenue. People start cheering.
Suddenly there is an earthquake and the ground shakes and fear spreads across every one, everybody is stopped and there is complete silence as if everyone is holding their breadth. The whole earth shakes and the voice of the presence of God, the Father speaks, “If you can not imagine this then you do not understand that the fall was that man and woman, Adam and Eve were made one. In their separation one half claimed to be the whole that is the fall. You are all whole before God. You can all hold the pain of all the world but you break from me and sin as you do not believe that my love is stronger than all the pain and all the sin in the world.” And the female voice of God, the Virgin Void continues the sentence, “And you do not believe that I hold you always, that the beginning is in every person, is with you always.”
And male voice of God says, “Those of you disturbed at this image know this, if you believe that Christ is God and it is so, then the image of Christ at the altar with Justice is no different from that moment when the angel Gabriel, in the story you already have, came to talk to Mary the Mother of Jesus. If I, God the Father, with the power of the Holy Spirit in the story can sire with Mary then Jesus, embodied as man, can sire with Justice.”
And the unison voice of God speaks, “Let the angels line the roads with trumpets for the procession. Let the flowers reign down as Jesus Christ and Justice, God and God incarnate walk down our roads and look into each other’s eyes as equals. And know that you all are children of the man-God, woman-God, unison-God to every cell, and this is true for every being to every part of the planet.”
Then in middle of Mass Ave the wedding happens all over again. “I God the Father, the Presence of God, give my son Jesus in marriage to Justice.” “I God the Mother, the Virgin Void, give my daughter Justice in marriage to Christ.” Together they say, “And know now who your true parents are, Christ and Justice and through their union at every level you are born free to worship God with your whole being from the tip of your toes to the top of your crown tingling in every moment in exaltation around.”
Then with a booming voice full of wrath we hear, “I God the Father ask you all “Do you believe that Jesus Christ is Man and God?” People nervously and quietly say, “Yes.” And then realize that they had better say it louder and with a sense of fear they shout, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Then with a sonic booming voice, God the Father says, “Good! If God can be fully present in Man he can be fully present in Woman. Do you believe that this Woman Justice is fully Woman and fully God?” People do not know what to say. God the Father says, “Do you believe that this Woman and this Man, a Son and Daughter of God holding hands as a man and wife will have a child, and will be your true parents?” At this point people have no idea what to say. This is so strange, so alien, and completely uncomfortable. God the Father is heard to chuckle and his voice says, “I do not know if I shall roar at you in fury at your lack of ability to believe but I give you one thing. To believe in what is handed down to you is not enough. You will let yourself let go and be imagined by God.”
The woman’s voice of God says, “The Presence and the Void hold you. We hold you all.”
The unison voice of God says, “Beheld by the love of God, let go, fall back. We will imagine for you and you will merely have to live it.” People are nervous and do not know what to do.
A light from heaven shines down on Justice and Christ. They dismount and holding hands start to dance in the middle of the street. In between them an egg with a red cross appears and grows, then cracks and a light shines forth and everyone experiences the joy of a happy child within them.
Then they remount the donkeys that know what to do. The donkeys, feeling again like they are spring-born donkeys a month or two old they jump all four feet in the air in happiness with life. Christ and Justice hold on tight, laughing and the donkeys trot merrily up Mass Ave. A roar of joy goes up from the crowd.
And the unison voice of God smiling says, “Celebrate! Enjoy! Escort the couple who are the true parents of everyone to the place of the bedchamber where they will love one another from the tip of their toes to the top of their heads and they will have a child and that child will be you. Do not wait but prepare the world to welcome a child whose Father is Christ and Mother is Justice. Reorder your lives so that you stand proud at the time of birth.”
The donkeys trot up Mass Ave, close together so that Christ and Justice hold each other’s hands. They head to a house not owned by the church. Everyone cheers and parties.
That night is conceived a child, you.
Amen
The voice says, “Visions have come to you in the dark, in moments prepared by ritual cleansing and with the support of the congregation of your Church community. You have created quiet places with your eyes closed. Blindness has been raised over your eyes and the presence of God has stepped forth and taken all the things that have been your thoughts, experience, bodily emotions, and sensations too and has cast them into a story and fed them back to you to open your eyes.”
A voice of God, a man’s voice of God as Father and a woman’s voice of God as the Void intermingling into a single voice of unison say to me, “We have sent you Christ. We have sent you Justice. Now we ask you to look around and see with open eyes.” A spasm of pain goes through me. The unison voice says, “Let go. Let go of yourself for us. Listen all around you. Look all around you. Know that the voices that you hear and that sights that you see and sensations that you sense and the inklings that you feel and the groundedness that you experience will never overwhelm God. Set out to create spaces of Nothingness through which the presence of God will take the gifts of everyone around and mold a living story. Create spaces to open their eyes to the parables that surround them, that surround their selves and that gather all together.”
The unison voice of God commands, “Stand in the middle of the aisle in the middle of the Church of Our Saviour.” I find myself standing in the aisle of the small Church of Our Saviour in Arlington, Massachusetts. It is more a chapel than a church, with seating for about 100 with a single aisle. I face the doorway to the church with my back to the altar. I sense that in front of the altar the Risen Christ has appeared and is standing looking down the aisle towards the door. As I look out the open church door I see Justice, blindfolded, amazingly beautiful, dressed in black robes, carrying her sword and balance, walk up the steps and stand in the doorway.
The unison voice of God says, “We detect a nervousness in you because you know what we are about to do.” I stand still facing Justice knowing the presence of Christ stands behind me, just risen from the Cross. Two white doves fly down the street and appear above Justice. They untie Justice’s blindfold as she stands still in the doorway. I feel the presence of Christ now holding and supporting me for what is about to happen. The blindfold falls off her face to the ground. So not to look into Justice’s face my eyes follow the fall of the blindfold to the ground. I lower my eyes down to her feet daring not to look up at first. Slowly I look up. She is radiant gold and there is a light beaming so bright from her eyes that I cannot make out if she is blinded or healed. Then an image momentarily fills my mind convulsing my body in pain. I see the image of a man gouging out her eyes. The image dissolves and I am staring into the light emanating from her and I know much to my horror that now she has eyes and can see straight through me to Christ.
Slowly and gracefully she begins to walk up the aisle towards me. I can sense Christ walking down the church towards her. They can see one another but at one level they do not even see me and I know that the place where they are going to meet is exactly where I am standing. My mind shrieks, “I want to run. I want to flee. I want to get out of here. How do I get out? Where is the exit sign? Where is another door?” My heart is racing. I am panicking. “Which way to go? Do I climb over the pews? Which way do I run?” But my feet are stuck to the ground. I twist and turn my body but my feet do not move. Those boots that Christ gave me with little golden wings hold me. The golden wings have turned to golden anchors that fasten my boots firmly to the aisle floor. I cannot move. Justice is now approaching; her light is radiant; I fear her balance; I fear her sword. She stops right in front of me. Christ stops right behind me.
In unison they say, “Have no fear.” I say, “If you both step into me there will be an explosion nuclear and I will die.” They say, “You are already dead and today is the Day of Easter, the Day of the Resurrection when the only people to wait up and who had the belief and the faith were the women.” With that Justice steps and dissolves into me first, moment’s later Christ steps and dissolves into me. Before me I see a perfect white egg floating in the air at my heart’s height. Painted on the egg is a square eight point Maltese cross in red. The egg at first is the size of a chicken’s egg, now it is the size of an ostrich’s egg. I reach out and hold it. It continues to grow. Now it gets so big it is too heavy for me to hold and I set it down. It continues to grow.
The unison voice of God calmly says, “Christ and Justice is present in every person. Tell the story of the Resurrection as it happened. Ask people why did the women have faith first? Tell them that it was because they knew it from the ground up and went to meet Christ knowing when he was risen.”
The unison voice of God continues, “The egg with the red cross, the cross representing the Beatitudes, has a strong shell. Those that step inside this egg will be protected, will grow and will hatch. They will be filled with the spirit of Christ and they will carry the sword of striking love and scales of perfect balance. They will be able to listen without prejudice blindfolded. When they have heard all they need the blindfold will drop from their eyes and they will see with light. The sword and balance will still be in their hands. With their sense of balance and striking love they will scan every horizon and see everything. They will seek out those who gouge out eyes, who hide from the true light of Christ and who hide from the true story of the Resurrection. Now turn.” I turn to face the altar. It is a normal Sunday at the Church of Our Saviour, just before the service begins. People are coming in and filling the pews. I enter a pew and sit down. I smile.
Amen.
I have no idea where I am heading. I do not know what will emerge. I touch the soles of my feet together. I am in my feet. I ask, “Who am I to serve?” A woman’s voice replies, “Everyone.” I shift my conscious up to my genitals and ask, “Who am I to unite with, commune with?” The woman replies, “Everyone.” My consciousness moves to my stomach and I ask, “Whose pain am I to feel?” A sense of dread fills me, as I fear the answer. She says, “Everyone.” My stomach fills with pain. I scream, “Araaaaaagh.” I writhe in agony. I scream. I scream in pain. “Araaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.” I shout at the voice, “How can I hold the pain of everyone? I can’t. I’ll die.” I scream, “Araaaaaagh.” My stomach is bloated with pain. My consciousness sticks there. Angrily I shout, “How do I hold the pain?” The woman’s voice says, “You are pregnant, you are trying to give birth to a child.” “Why is it so painful?” I demand. The woman’s voice says, “Because every child knows the pain of everyone. That is why when we are born we disassociate from God because each one of us holds all the pain of the world and it is unbearable until we have turned our mind to God.” I want to cry, “I turn my mind to God.” I hope that if I turn to God the pain will go away. But I know it is an escape and I will have no choice but physically to birth this child and to go through the pangs. Knowing this I scream, “Araaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.” I am in a hot bath trying to give birth to this child. A child incased in God but a child that has the power to touch the pain of the whole world. I scream, “Araaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaagh.” A spasm of pain flows down me, wracking me, my back arches up as I scream, “Araaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh. Get this child out of me!” I shout at the voice, “How come in birth I suffer so long and yet all you can tell me is my child has the power to feel all the pain of the universe?” The woman’s voice says, “Will your child be born alive?” I know it will. At that moment I relax, I release and all my muscles go limp. The child plops out.
A beautiful baby child is born. I pick up the child and cradle it to my breast but as I do I say, “This won’t work. I am a man.” The voice says, “Spiritual nourishment you will give.” I cry, sob and my breasts hurt. The baby latches and I have comfort. Then I shout out, “What form of comfort is this experience? Are you transgendering me?” The woman’s voice says, “As a man you need to know what you do to me by denying my authority. It is in my body and the body of every woman to touch the pain of giving birth and immediately afterwards to give nourishment. Do you not believe in the Resurrection? After the blinding pain of giving birth the nourishment comes in and it is human. As a man you have it hard to understand this because you cannot feel your body in this way like a woman. Know this, I send you this anguished experience out of love and connection.” I cry, sob uncontrollably. “Now you know,” says the woman’s voice, “Why some women never need to climb, they already know. They are told from their feet upward through their bodies, from the ground up because life is as much a gift from earth as it is from heaven. Now you are held by the love of earth and the love of God’s presence. Sink into the heart of both and know that I, the Virgin Void of God is holding you all before the Beginning.”
I look up and sense light connecting through all seven points of my body, feet, genitals, stomach, heart, throat, head, and crown. I say, “My heart is beating with a child resting on my breast. I can feel my heart is open; my voice is clear to scream pain and I feel the joy. I am warm and bruised and my mind is open to God and earth.” The woman voice of God says, “Look at the gift of your body and the intimacy of the earth. It is a path too. Oh men I weep for you, for you know not this.” I cry.
“If you want to know,” the woman voice of God says, “Meet this blind folded woman holding a balance and a sword.” The most sensual woman appears blindfolded holding a sword and a balance. It is she, Justice. The woman voice of God booms, “If I look at Man’s handling of gender, sexuality or intimacy watch how Justice’s scales rock back and forth.” I see the scales violently rock from side to side to such an extent that Justice has to clench her fist to stop the balance from coming out of her hands. Now with anger the woman voice of God says, “On the one hand there is nothing but celibacy or barren abstinence and on the other side you grope for every piece of flesh you can get.” Now shouting she says, “Don’t you understand the balance that is the birth of a child or is the birth of a life long relationship that nurtures a child in spirituality and molds the resources of the world to its love? Whether the child is born of flesh or is the symbol of a spirit in a relationship nourished between two people it remains, always is and will be a child of God capable of feeling all the pain and all the love that you desire to afflict and give to it.”
Justice walks up to me. I ask, “Can I see your eyes?” She replies kindly, “No I am blind for a purpose. People think my eyes are beautiful.” Then her tone snaps and changes, she screams in a rage, “but the truth is they were gouged out!!!!” Before I can move she strikes me with the sword of striking love. She slices my body open from head to toe. My body falls away. I am left standing as a soul in the form of a body of shimmering gold. Angrily Justice demands in a cry, “To whom will you unite and give a spiritual birth?” My soul body shimmers changing gender depending on what Justice wants of me. Inside I ask myself, “Am I a man? Am I woman?” I know that as a spiritual body it matters not which. Justice plunges her sword into my chest up to the hilt. She cuts around the heart. She reaches into my chest and caresses my heart and she says, “To get to God you will love the earth on which you stand.” She turns my heart to the ground. Then she says, “Connect from the heart to touch your feet. From feet connect to the place of sexuality and where women give birth, two different dimensions of intimacy. From the place of sexuality and birth connect to the stomach and the place of pain. From the stomach and the place of pain connect to your heart.” She pulls her hand out of my chest leaving my heart inside me connected to the earth. She leaves the sword of striking love run through me. It absorbs into my heart and my heart grows big, my chest expands. Physically I feel the sense that I am a man, I am a warrior and I am a woman in the spirit as needed. I can fight and I can nourish with strength.
Justice says, “Give this out, one teardrop at a time. The tears will explode with power of an atom bomb of good for love as each one hits the ground. Know that when you turn your mind to God he will not come down and lift you out of your mind and carry you to some imagined heaven. No he will look over your shoulder and see everything that you have done, felt and been. He will judge your impact on every person in the world.” I look up out of my body, through my crown, the egg of light, towards heaven above. I touch my thumbs to my index fingers, forming a circle and open my palms. I interlock the thumb, index finger circle of each hand into two encircling circles. “Ah yes,” Justice says. “Now you see above you the interlocking circles of infinity. Do not think your revelations will just lift you out to God into some ecstatic place. No, they will bring you back to exactly where you are now in the present. All moments from the Beginning and all the way through to Eternity will be with you present when you die.”
At this point I rise out of my body. I find myself up above the planet earth looking down. There are others with me. We are departing from the earth. We have a perfect view of the earth and amazingly we can see right through to the earth’s core. We feel the physical universe reverberating through us. I know that God knows and feels everything, man, woman, earth and universe.
I am back in my body. Justice says, “Listen with the greatest care to what I have to say. Repair the Man inflicted wounds of Christianity. The men who crucified Christ, crucify him again, they crucify for their own power. Ask nothing for yourself because the world will give you what you need. Be present. Now awake.” My eyes are forced open. I sit up. Justice continues, “Cradle this baby that I have given you. Take it and show it to others, because they want to nurture it too.” Suddenly the baby is two babies and I say, “I gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl.” They are both suckling on my breasts. The amazing thing is that I know that this baby boy and this baby girl know what to do in the world on their own. All I have to do is to ask for the world to parent them and let go of that responsibility. So the gift of Abraham is solved. I do not offer my children as a sacrifice to some wrathful God but welcome the community of every human and say to everyone, “Help me raise these children. They contain all the beauty and pain that you do. Let us be the best parents for them and where each one of us fails know we can always invite others who will help, who will prop us up and bring us back in.”
I hold my hands palm up and open to God. I feel alone but suddenly I know that both Justice, with her eyes gouged out, blindfolded, holding the sword of striking love and the balance in her hands, is standing behind me next to Christ. Together they both overlook and over hear my shoulders and know how I treat these newborn children. Justice and Christ hold the children, born of the love of the presence of God, born of God of the Virgin Void and born of the earth that they Justice and Christ have given to me.
My focus fixes on my stomach, which with an in-breath I suck my stomach in. I turn round and face Justice and Christ. They say in unison, “You have experienced a total ring of pain. You have held it as you have walked the bridge. Build a set of guardians around you who will both protect you from yourself from within and from without people who will misunderstand you. People will look up to you, thinking they understand and will project on you authority. Other people will overstand you. They will bear down on you shouting their authority and raging at what you have said. Keep it personal. Do not talk of politics. Always talk of Christ and Justice’s children, our children. Ask people always, “If Jesus Christ is the father and Justice is the mother of this child, how will you treat this child, whether the child is now a grown person of ninety years of age or still a new born babe?” Love especially the women too because for too long they have not been able to author from the ground up, to speak straight from what they sense in their bodies. Everybody will be authors and tell their own parable. Everyone will stand with his or her feet fully embodied on the ground full of the love of God. They will be infused from the earth and infused from above. They will be infused with Christ’s spirit, be that male or female, alive in every moment. That is what you will talk about. Amen”
I see myself meeting a woman on the road. I say, “You nourish me with food and your home and still I make you worthless. Forgive me for this sin. It is pain I did not know how to connect with until today. How do I atone for this sin?” Justice and Christ say in unison, “Lift the blindfolds and blinkers from your eyes. Stop gouging out the eyes of others. Restore sight and let those with new eyes, let all their voices rise. You will think their voices will sound like a cacophony but it will sound into a glory to God. And there will be those who divide, and divide and divide. But carry on. If they strike you down by then it will be too late. Bridges will have been built across the world. They, who will stop these voices, will be left trying to figure out what went wrong, but by then a new hosanna will rise as the song from the earth. Keep your feet on the ground, walk one step at a time, your teardrops will be like atom bombs of love, let them shimmer across the world. The teardrops of joy will wash away the suffering of every man-man-woman-woman-child-child. Your day has now begun.”
Amen.
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.
It begins. It starts this time knowing that I submit; I bow down before Christ. Suddenly I understand, there is a point of light in all seven places of my body. At the base, my feet, in my genitals, in my stomach, in my heart, in my throat, in my head, in my crown a spark of light glows in an instant and I know I must make my submission not just to Christ, but now I submit to God and I am prepared.
First I see Christ in command of every part of me, loving and then I see my body dissolve. I am in space. I am standing before the Sun and the angels are arrayed all around and Christ is by my side. We begin to walk into the Sun. As we do my body disappears. We are now traveling at speed, in the Sun. The sense of Christ’s presence is all around and moves from a human form to a sphere of gold in which I am now encased. As that happens the speed accelerates, we are going back in time, heading at an increasing pace to the Beginning. Enormous pressure begins to exert on all sides. I cannot make out if I am going forward or backward in time, whether I am expanding or collapsing. All I know is that we are heading to the Virgin Void. Things slow down dramatically, then I realize what is happening, we are slowing to the Beginning, when it stops it is over. I am presence, I know not of what shape, encased in the living gold of Christ’s entity. Now we are moving so slowly, I know when it will come to a stop. Each point in time halves each point in time, an infinitesimal loop. Mathematics goes backwards, dividing in on itself.
At this point a voice says, “Just before it stops, a place you can not go the doorways will open in all directions to new beginnings. You will fire through them and expand to the strength of the Sun. Give birth to light in your own way and out of that create virgin births, eggs of light out of which will hatch angels who will actually come into the world and beam out. You will touch others and their angels will come through their eggs of light into their worlds too and change what they do in the world material. At each place in the hierarchy down your mountain will reside Christ, in full reign whether that be in total humility or robed as a King as appropriate but never in the wrong condition. This sphere of gold that encapsulates your soul will now reside at each major point in your body and in an encapsulated form in every cell throughout your entity. Do not think that you are allowed to do anything that does not have the connection from the Beginning incased in Christ present in it. Now sit!” I sit.
I see myself sitting in the middle of the Sun, in the Egg of Light, in the Church of the mind, in the place of the throat, in the center of my heart, sitting crucified in my stomach, sitting breaking bread at communion in the place of my genitals, then at my feet on my knees washing feet. In each place Christ encases me and I am completely blind, the Christ being seeing through mine. A new chapter has begun.
The voice commands, “Stand up! Raise your hand and say, “Out of Nothing I bring a gift. It is nothing unusual. It is what any human can experience and there have been witnesses to this at all times. The secrets that have been buried are merely and simply how to welcome this out of every living person you meet, and yes it is possible to have institutions that welcome the spirit of every person but they are rare. But we do not need to fear because Nothing is present to God, to love, to light, to beginning in human form and practical ways in every moment in every day.”
“Who would like to build an institution that does this? Come to be of service to other humans next to you. Be of a deep servitude that reverences the Nothing, the God, the Love, the Light, and the beauty in every person. Think especially of those you think are nothing and turn to venerate them. If you wish to take this call come to our communion table and we will welcome all, all; all races, all faiths, all kinds, all types, all languages, and all strangers. We will break bread and serve tea. We will ask first for you to offer a vision of your pain. We will take your offerings and we will pile them around the base of the Cross so that they act as a magnifying beacon for personal suffering that you feel and identify with Jesus Christ on the Cross. Then all of us holding the keys to Heaven in our hearts will unlock the dark door. Light of the love of the heart of Christ will flow to the offering around the Cross and those points of pain will be resurrected and the resurrection light will flow through them showing those who hurt, and the hurt, healing and forgiving. And then we will step into the heart. There is a radiant love that is possessed in the heart of every person however hidden, however damaged. It is the wealth of our universe that is given to each one of us. At that point from the love of the heart, perceiving our pain, celebrating our communion and remembering our service we will speak words. We will speak them clearly, and we will connect our experience to the traditions, stories of time, that connect and we will form a greater and more powerful story that is simple and clear. Then together we will go to the house of worship and there will cry to God, “We open the doors to the Risen Christ, to God and the Virgin Void.” We welcome, so that out of Nothing the love of the unity of the whole universe, God, will shine light and create, picking up all the material world and all the colors and all the voices, all the music and all the hymns, celebrating what is beautiful of old and painting broad brush strokes, fine strokes and tender strokes anew to create a larger Church which spans across the globe. Finally we will step into the Egg of Light. As we die our tombstones will come clear and proud in our eyes and the beauty of every newborn child will be offered to the work of God. As we ascend through the cleansing fire and become a ray of light we will finally collapse in time back to the Beginning, the Virgin Void and know that it is present in every person in every moment now.”
Amen.
I stand. I am at the beach, on the shoreline and the water laps against my feet. As the coldness touches me I ask, “Whom do I give service to today? How am I to wash the feet of others?” I look at the sea and in the distance on the horizon I see a small circular island and a silver pinnacle rises out of the middle of the island.
I walk; the water rises to my knees, to my genitals, to my heart, to my chest as I push out into the sea. The island is a long way away and there is a thunderstorm. I am swimming. I am worried that I have a long way to swim to the island with the pinnacle. When I turn round and look back even the land has gone and I am in the middle of the sea. I fear of storms but part of me does not worry. I stop swimming and I know that I am not going to drown. The sea carries me out and away until I am in a place where I can see nothing in the distance, all around is just sea. I wonder, “Will I panic? Will I drown?” I let go and I lie floating on my back.
The night passes at sea and morning comes up with clouds. The current bears me inexorably towards to the island of the silver pinnacle. I can now see it has a gold staircase that reaches all the way up to God.
Funny, along comes a very small-wooden-fishing-sailing-boat with nets. On board is Jesus with Peter and another man. Peter and the other man pull me aboard. They say to Jesus, “Look what we’ve caught.” Jesus says, “Throw him overboard if you know not what you’ve caught.” Peter moves to throw me overboard. I lie still and Jesus laughs and says, “Don’t throw him overboard. Know what you’ve caught!” Peter looks quizzically at Jesus, who says, “Fool! He is from a different land and generation. I put a key around your neck. You are not meant to wear it for your own edification. Take it off and hand it to the man. Give it to him.” Peter hands me the key. I put it around my neck. I roll over board and swim, as if I am a seal, to arrive at the shore of the island of the silver pinnacle with the stairway of gold to God.
There on the beach is a group of women. I have a sense that one is Mary Magdalene and the others are women apostles too. They help me up. Someone gives me a towel as I walk up the beach. They say, “I see Christ handed you the key as he did to us too.” We look at each other and burst out laughing. “Poor Peter,” we say. “He thinks he is the only one who holds the key to this day.” We laugh.
We walk towards the silver pinnacle that must be a hundred thousand feet high, with the golden staircase all the way reaching up into the sky, out to the highest atmosphere. I ask, “Where am I?” The women reply, “You are still at your feet.” I keep thinking, “Thousands of feet to climb the stairway to God in the sky. It seems incredibly high and I worry that if I climb I will fall or fail to pass through the right places.” We arrive at the base of the silver pinnacle. We each take the large golden key that dangles round our necks and hold it in our hands as we surround the base. A woman appears in front of us, Mary, the Mother of God. She holds a red cushion and says, “Place the keys on the cushion.”
Mary says to us, “To use the keys to heaven you must release from the flesh all your being.” Up to each of us a naked person walks. We anoint them on the head, put a word of God on their lips, hold our hands over their hearts until their hearts radiate with the love of God, we gently touch their stomachs to sooth the place of pain or to nourish the new unborn babe and as we look at the place of their genitals we pause.
The person in front of us is the sex most attractive to us, attraction of the flesh is felt and at that moment the person morphs to the opposite sex and we feel uncomfortable, even revulsion, self hate, as we have imagined sex with them. And Mary says, “If you hold any hate inside you about your sexuality or hate these people in front of you for their sexual activity you will hold hate before God the Father. Your attraction and revulsion is to the flesh and not to God, if you can not let go of both before God the Father you know what his wrath will do to you.”
From the top of the silver pinnacle the words of Christ boom and echo down, “I am love and present to everything. Unless I am present in your sexual energy as it resides within you, you will experience sin of attachment to the flesh. You look on some with tingling lust and others, who have sex unlike you, with quivering revulsion. If you cannot step through the flesh gripping you and stop it spewing lust or hate you will poison the love that I give you and the keys that Mary holds for you will not unlock the gates to Heaven.”
A sense of peace pervades us all. We bow before the people in front of us and wash their feet. The people merge into us and we now stand on our own. A sense of communion is what grips us now.
Mary hands us back the keys. The angels begin to pour down the golden staircase. They are everywhere around us. They raise trumpets and blast out a glory to God. Jesus appears at the very top and begins to walk down. All the angels sing the glory of God. As he walks down a gold beam of light shines down the stairway obscuring his presence and the light strikes the ground and us. The beam of light coming straight from heaven illuminates us.
A voice says, “This is my son the Beloved and you are Beloved too. Out of the Virgin Void came God. Out of the Virgin Void came God, then light. Out of light came the Virgin Womb, the Egg of Light. Out of the Egg of Light came you. The light will lead you back up into the heart of God and up into the Virgin Void. You will feel the cleansing of your sins in the wrath of God as you enter into the unity of the beginning of creation, the ultimate of holding all God and entity.” With these words the angels blow a blast on their trumpets and the pinnacle that was in front of us becomes a huge door. The golden stairway turns to a shaft of golden light that is the opening between two silver doors moving apart that stretch from the ground to heaven. The doors pull apart, a path straight out ahead appears and a voice says, “With Christ in your hearts, the key of heaven, and with the clarity of mind to reflect the light of God from above, walk forth into the world to proclaim the joy of Christ, of God and of the beginning.” We kneel down and bow. The keys of heaven absorb into our hearts. We shudder at the moment.
As we lift our heads we realize that we are all blind. The beam of light has left us blind. We hear a voice, “You do not need to see. In the darkness of your Void hear the beginning of creation as the spirit is born in every person. Do not imagine. Do not hope. You will behold every person held up against God and God held up against the Virgin Void. The beginning will begin with God in them igniting their creation and bursting into love and love will burst out of them to you.” And night came and with morning I could see again but know I can see further when blind.
I stand on the beach with the key to Heaven around my neck with the women apostles each with a key around their necks. We stand at the base of the silver pinnacle that stretches all the way up into space with the golden staircase. We look all the way up into Heaven and we see beyond the top of the pinnacle in the sky Jesus, the Risen Christ. Behind Christ is the fireball of the Sun, the energy of God the Father, and pure love. Behind we know is the Void holding all of us, the potential to begin. Angels flow up and down the golden staircase. We fear the love as much as it loves us too. Jesus begins to descend the staircase towards us. Angels take up positions, one on either side of each step on the staircase from top to bottom. Angels fan out at regular intervals around the base of the pinnacle. All lift up trumpets and blast a glory to God. Saints gather behind Jesus and proceed down after him. A glorious procession descends the pinnacle celebrating the grace of God. We remain standing, excited, fearful and anxious.
Finally at the base of the steps Christ appears, simply dressed in white robes. He walks towards us. We immediately kneel, bow our heads, and prostrate on the ground. There is silence. Jesus comes up to us. He begs us to all rise but we get up only on our knees. He says, “I bring you the ultimate surprise; Nothing holds everything; Nothing begets God, begets love, begets you.” He touches our foreheads and we shake with the Holy Spirit. Silver light flows down our spines connecting out to our toes. Rich orange light of the warmth of the love of God fills into our flesh and bodies.
As we kneel on the beach we are holding silver swords with a gold line down them as if they are each the silver pinnacle with the gold staircase running down it. Jesus says, “With these swords, of striking love, you will cleave open people from top to toe so that their souls maybe free to connect through me to God and to the Void. And know that to do this you need Nothing. No claims of power, no claims of authority, no attachment, Nothing. When you are present with Nothing for another person then God will be present, then love, then the creation will begin and their soul will rise and rise and rise. Tell everyone that it is Nothing you can give them because it is in them that they will rise. You are my apostles.” At that moment our bodies fall away and we are just souls. We have no body, no gender, just souls.
Jesus says, “Now be clothed in the humans that you are given.” Our bodies return around us. He says, “Know this! It is the soul that begets the body and not the other way round. Stand up! Behind you I assign an angel to each one of you. Sheath your swords. Keep your minds clear and know that each one of you has the key to the kingdom of heaven in your hearts. Remember that your authority is out of Nothing. You will blaze a way and it will be for the celebration of God. You do not need to see the future nor the path in front of you because out of Nothing comes your authority. You can be blind because it is all now.” We shake as the spirit reverberates in us.
I say, “How can we trust?” and Jesus replies, “Remember, look at your feet and just take one step. The footprints that you leave will leave a cross on the ground. Take another step. Where you tread does not matter because your footprints all lead to God, they will lead to the staircase to heaven. Without your footprints how will others be able to follow to find the staircase to heaven that is here?” He waves his arm and points to the base of the staircase to heaven reaching up the silver pinnacle to the sky with an angel on every step singing the glory of God. “Take a step, a step, a step in my name. Lead the people to God.” So slowly we all look down and place one foot in front of the other. Sure enough each step we take leaves an imprint of a cross on the ground. Where we walk and where ever we go it does not matter because all our footsteps lead to the golden staircase to God. At each step we do nothing, because without need Nothing gives birth to God and to the love that begets us all.
Suddenly we begin to dance with joy. We begin to create lots of footsteps everywhere as we dance in circles and for miles and we jump in the air and create footprints even in the sky. Celebration bursts through us all and we need nothing and leave footprints to God wherever we go.
Amen.
[Points of Consciousness in Square Brackets]
[Feet] It is a bright clear day. I am standing at the bottom of the mountain on a gently sloping grass plain, looking out across a landscape and then up into the hills, and then further up to the high mountain peek.
I say to myself, “Wow! It is going to be a long way to walk to get to the mountain and to climb it.” I feel good. I feel hearty. I have provisions with me. I am wearing hiking gear. My feet are on the ground.
I pause and say, “What is the service that I am to do? I will walk the valleys, climb the hills, get into the mountains, climb to the summit of the highest peak and rise above. The service is to come back and to feel just as good as this moment.” I have a smile in my voice and a sense of joy in knowing my ability to go up and come back. I feel a sense of wonder and openness in not knowing what I will bring back. There is always the possibility I will never come back. But it is the intention to return and to serve; to plant ones feet on the ground in the valley and to bring down to the valley the exaltation of God in the moment, in the blade of grass, in the people around. [feet]
I set off.
[Genitals] I walk and come to a large long trestle table set up in the middle of a field, in the middle of a wonderful, beautiful green landscape. People arrive and sit on the benches. There is a huge banquet picnic, informal, very good-natured going on. There is Jesus Christ sitting in the middle, breaking bread.
I pause, perplexed and then laugh because there is everybody there, everybody you’d love and hate: all colors and all nations, all types and all strains of people. People you’d never think would be there are there. People you dislike, people you love. There are good people and not so good people. Jesus is breaking bread with all of them. It is the most wonderful time.
I sit opposite Jesus on a wooden bench. Jesus looks up and says, “Take, eat this bread and drink this cup of wine, my flesh and blood. And by the way, look up and down the table, and enjoy the new apostles of today, not quite the ones you remember of the New Testament.” I say, “Much more racially balanced and more women than was said to be present in the past.” Jesus roars with laughter, and says, “Ah! That was merely what was written. Not how I lived on the earth. Now you know the next stage is difficult. It always is. But take a little bread and take a little wine by dipping the bread in it and put it in a pouch and carry it with you so even when you are further up the mountain you will enjoy remembering the communion with the apostles down here. Bring all back something good too.”
I get up to leave. Just as I am about to leave Jesus says, “I know at the beginning of your journey you got a nice pair of boots which I prepared for you. Remember, I always worship at your feet before you start out.” I look down and see that I am wearing the most wonderful boots for climbing. There is something magical about them too. They can sprout wings, golden. “Wow!” I say as I realize the little wings can turn me into an angel if I need to fly around. I smile. I turn to Jesus and say, “Jesus, you never lose a chance to humble me, do you?” He laughs. I laugh. [genitals]
I set off.
[Stomach] Time is now more somber. I am visiting the latest disaster, the murder and mayhem in Madrid, which happened this day on earth. People blown out of trains and killed. I cry. I cry. There before me is the cross with Jesus dieing. I see the pit of despair. I see people cursing God, “Why have you allowed this? Why have you done this?” Jesus dies and in that moment we are all forsaken.
Before me I see a deep wide trench a hundred feet across and thirty feet deep. It is full of dead, mangled bodies. I see an image of myself murdering a woman and I see myself as a baby being murdered by a mother. There are the remnants of a broken bridge across the trench.
On the far side of the trench is dark foreboding landscape. In the middle of the landscape, standing alone is a black-nailed-shut-wooden door. At the moment Jesus dies on the cross a tiny hole appears in the center of the door in the shape of a cross. Radiant light is burning the hole from the backside of the door. The light of the Risen Christ begins to glow through. The light burns the hole larger every second and the door begins to disintegrate.
I climb down into the trench of death and wretch at the smell of rotting flesh. Memories of holocausts, terror and the full horror of man surround me. I know that my sins contributed to the horror and that I experience the horror as a victim too. I walk through the dead and a path clears to the doorway. The door is gone; there is just an open doorway of light. The dead around me stand up renewed. The light blazes through the door and absolves us all. The murderers cower, cringe and fall back. Some ask for forgiveness and are forgiven. I cry out, “I do not know how you, Christ, can do that.” But others shrivel and burn and disintegrate into little pieces. [stomach]
I walk through the doorway.
[Heart] I am in the circle of the heart, of the love of Christ. I pause to savor the huge warmth and joy. There are thousands of people thronging the circular piazza. The angels are there too.
An angel comes to me and says, “Come, greet all the people who have ever lived and all the people who are alive. Here in this place is their love and their expression of it. The combined love of all people. Everybody has a part of them that is love. It is there for us all. It is the richest power that exists in the universe and it is inherent in human nature. Animals have it too as they care for their own. This caring is the greatest resource in the world. From the heart we have love and it makes a pulse. The heart beat of every human who has lived and is alive beats together to the pulse of the universe. All love and caring and life is here.”
There are people that I meet who I had always seen as unhappy and the angel says, “But there was always a happy part of them. A part of love, a place from the heart.”
There is Jesus in the middle, standing dressed simply in white robes. The light of God shines directly down on him and his total self rests in the heart of the universe, God. From Jesus radiates out a love from his heart, his self into us and into me. His love is so strong that it absorbs into me and my heart radiates his love to the people around and their hearts radiate too and too and too. All around our hearts are radiating the love because we love God with all our life. We bathe ourselves in the love and it radiates out. Jesus smiles and laughs and says, “It is perfectly human too.” [heart]
I leave and walk on to the place of the mount where sermons are given.
[Throat] Jesus is standing there – doing a handstand! He is talking to everybody doing a handstand! I am perplexed. He gets off the hand-stand and stands up and turns to me and I say, “What is all that about?” He says, “Some people were too far away to hear but I wanted to make it clear that I would turn their world upside down by the clarity of words. That is what I came to do. As they could not hear me I let them see me doing a handstand.” I laugh. “Yes,” he says, “You laugh too.” He admonishes me, “But turning the world upside down is disturbing as well. Sit!” So I sit.
Jesus says, “Let’s talk quietly. You are born of a different age and have come into a world of much difference. I have sent you disciples to teach you about the word, including the middle school teacher in Quincy, Massachusetts, Ron Adams and others too. So remember there is not much to say. Say it well, say it clearly and if you need to say it standing on your head do so because that is what the word will do to people. Do not be frightened that this is the message. The love of God is so powerful and people want to feel it. When it touches them they enjoy that it turns their worlds upside down. Of course those who have not yet opened their eyes are disconcerted and may resist. But speak gently and speak clearly and speak of the love of God and be off with you up the mountain, you go.” And I go. As I leave I notice Jesus practicing his cartwheels. I laugh. I walk. The mountain seems steep, rocky. [throat]
I begin to climb.
[Head] The mountain has never seemed so hard. I climb and get to a ridge. There is a cave and I climb in. It is cold and I sit, cold and miserable. I have my nice boots on. My boots which when I want them to can turn gold and sprout wings. I am thinking, “Why am I climbing up here, why not use the boots? Where is the church on the top of the mountain? Which way to go?”
I hear a woman’s voice, it is the voice of Mary, the Mother of God. She is up above me in an area where it is green and I hear her say, “Oh Man! Oh Man! Why have you climbed up the hard way?” Some steps appear outside the cave that curve up around the mountainside to a place a hundred feet above where Mary is sitting in a garden of beautiful roses. The garden is low-walled and is like an out door church. From the garden we can look out across the plains below. She says, “Welcome, welcome. Come enjoy. Smell the roses.” They are wonderfully fragrant. She says, looking slightly exasperated, “Trying to achieve again? Mountain climbing. Did you not notice that Jesus gave you boots that fly if you wish? You actually climbed up the mountain as if you were some form of superman?” I say, “Excuse me, if I had used the boots I would have been a superman. I came up the hard way like a human.” She laughs and says, “Come! Let us worship God.” At this point a path appears at the end of the rose garden that leads up to the top of the mountain.
We walk up to the very top of the mountain. She says, “Well you know if you read your scripture right when you step off the top of the mountain you will step into my womb but actually you will step into the womb of the whole universe.” We stand on the top of the mountain, it is like being at the top of Everest but in this case there are no surrounding mountains so we can see across the land. She says, “We are at the pinnacle.” It is pretty amazing. But she says, “You do know that you must follow what is alive, alive in each person and know that I will leave you when you step off the mountain because I am of a story book and what you are stepping into is the virgin womb of the universe. Think Man what this means. You enter the womb of the one who holds my son, Jesus and God as Father too. I know that when you met my son, Jesus, before in the beyond and God the Father began to appear from behind Jesus, you were frightened that you were going to die. But know that even God the Father is held. Know that as you step off the mountain where you will step. I will be gone.” [head]
I stand on the top of the mountain.
[Crown] The light encloses around me and I am in an egg of light. I spin around, up side down and back again as if there is no gravity. I am held and I am thinking, “Christ! I am in the womb, the womb of who? Who is this mother that I am in and into what world will I be born?” The egg opens like a flower. The petals fold away and disappear. [crown]
I am standing in space.
[Beyond] I look out into the universe. Jesus appears, the Risen Christ and says, “And here is the whole universe in motion everywhere.” He takes my hand and for the first time begins to lead me away out into the universe. He says, “Be reassured we will bring you back fully.” But I say, “But if I see God the Father I will die.” He says “You’re dead already and alive so don’t worry.” I ask, “You’re not bringing me to God the Father?” He laughs and says, “Didn’t my mother, Mary, tell you that even God the Father is held by the one whose womb you are in?” We walk towards the Sun. A fireball explodes towards me, the full wrath of God the Father. I feel a blinding burning sensation and fear that my flesh is going to burn off. Jesus says, “Do not fear, it will burn the sin from you. But if you are holding a sinful moment within you it will burn you and rip into your flesh. For this moment I bless you and hold you. And yes I know you are a worthless sinner and all that stuff but in this moment experience the wrath of God.”
We walk into the Sun and the blinding fire, an extraordinary orange of heat. “Can you imagine,” says Jesus, “If you were holding onto a sin and this heat hit. Imagine what it will do to you.” I look out across the universe and there are filaments and fragments, disintegrated souls of no coherence. Jesus says, “Destroyed by the wrath of unity.” I turn to him and say nervously, “I must return.” I pull away from him, a sense of fear and needing to return pervades. Jesus points to my feet and says, “Remember those boots that I gave you at the beginning? They are holding you to the ground this very moment. They are the special gift that I gave you. You thought you blew out through the top of your head? Didn’t you? But you didn’t because I was holding you with special boots all along.” I pause, look down and laugh. “It is true.” My feet are still on the ground. I ask, “How can you do this?” Jesus laughs and says, “That is for another time. Now I think it is time for you to return and do it carefully in steps. You will arrive back on the mountaintop.” [beyond]
At these words I am back on the mountaintop.
[Head] Mary is there and says, “How was my son?” I reply, “Quite a man. Took me to see God the Father, scary but Jesus was holding my feet to the ground.” “Ah yes,” she says, “He has a sense of humor too.” So we walk down an amazing golden staircase that stretches straight down the mountain. Part way down Mary says. “I will leave you here. It will be safe for you to walk down alone from now on to the next place.” [head]
I walk on down alone.
[Throat] People come up to me and ask, “What was it like?” I reply, “Well if you keep your feet on the ground it is pretty amazing and scary too. Time to try and live a good life I think.” I reflect, “I need to get my thoughts in order.” [throat]
I walk down further to the place of the heart, the circular piazza.
[Heart] In the circle of the heart it is quiet. It is evening time. There is real warmth and a sense of happiness in the air. I greet people and they wish me a good night and I know I will have good dreams. A sense of love, joy and general pleasantness pervades me. [heart]
I walk on to the pit of despair.
[Stomach] I kneel before the cross and say, “Jesus, I would have died before God the Father if you had not died for me. I understand what this forgiveness means.” [stomach]
I walk to the place of the picnic banquet table.
[Genitals] I am in the place of communion. It is night. Everyone except Jesus is asleep, who is sitting alone at the table. There is a candle on the table that illuminates his face. He says, “Sit.” I sit down and take out the pouch that contains bread dipped in wine and I eat it. And he says, “These are all good people. There are good people everywhere, through the spirit of communion commune with them all. Like you, they are all graced by God. Enjoy their fellowship and remember to break bread as I have always done.” I smile and I thank him. [genitals]
Finally I walk to the bottom of the mountain.
[Feet] I arrive at a simple wooden hut where I had put on my magical boots that helped me walk the mountain and helped me survive out in the beyond in the face of God the Father. I take them off and there is the man who looks after them and the footlockers. It is Jesus. I rented the boots off him but I did not recognize him when I started out. I say, “How come you are always looking after me and my service.” He says “You like the boots?” I reply, “I love the boots.” He says “Go fit some nice boots on other people. Good night and God bless, sleep well and learn the lessons of today.”[feet]
Amen.
Dear Jesus Christ,
I stand at my feet and feel them on the ground. I look up and rising up above me is my body, a mountain. I begin to walk up the mountain, up my legs, until I arrive at the place of procreation, the genitals, the place of sexuality. I look up again and walk to the place of the stomach, the pit of fear, the point of despair. I look up and walk up to the place of the heart. I look up and walk to the throat, the place of the voice. I walk up and arrive at my head, the top of the mountain. A church appears. Its steps are in the place of my throat. I walk in. Above the altar is a stained glass window depicting Jesus loving the children, like the window at the Church of Our Saviour, Arlington, Massachusetts. The stained glass window dissolves into a wall of white light. I step into the light, into the egg of light, the place of the virgin birth, the crown of my head. The top of the egg begins to open like a lotus with a thousand petals unfolding. I looked out beyond and there is the whole universe in motion.
Coming towards me across the cosmos is the Risen Christ, you. I feel all the love, nurturing and wonder of the universe flowing into me through you. Massed along side you I see all the hordes of angels and seraphims gathering. I remain half in the egg of light with my head sticking out and looking up. The egg of light grows into a larger place, an opening of light where the universe connects to me. I step to one side and the angels begin to pour into the egg of light and down into my body, where they take up positions in ordained places.
You arrive and stand beside me. You take my hand gently and say, “Walk with me.” Together we walk down into the church, my head. Angels fill the pews and begin to sing the glory of God. You turn and kneel in the middle of the church facing the light and speak the words you spoke in the Garden of Gethsemane on the eve of your unification with God. You pray to God.
You turn and walk out of the Church and stand on the steps of the Church, my throat, the place of voice. There you speak the words of the Beatitudes:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
And I hear the words of John spoken by an angel, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God.”
Then you say, “Come, walk with me.” We walk down to the place of the heart, a circular beautiful piazza. In the middle of the space is a throne. In the circle around, many rows deep angels throng, dancing and singing for joy as you are enthroned on the throne of the right hand of God in the center of my heart. I come before you. I kneel and prostrate myself before you and you say, “Arise and love God with all your heart, soul, and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.”
You get up and walk down to a place of the stomach, the place of the cross, next to the pit of despair. You are crucified on the cross and all my despair flows out of the pit and onto you. You cry out, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” At that point my agonies are no more. You die taking my despair with you. All my agonies and worries are absorbed and absolved by you. The cross turns golden and a beam of light coming from the Risen Christ connects from heaven above to the cross below.
We walk to the place of the genitals, the place of the Last Supper, the place of communion. You break the bread and you give your flesh and body as a spiritual communion that unites all people and reunites the spirit from generation to generation from now to eternity.
We walk down to my feet and into the world. I see you washing my feet and I am humbled beyond all humbling and know that I am commanded by you to wash the feet of others forever.
From that moment onward I know that when I wake up in the morning you will wash my feet, break bread for me, die for me, love for me, speak for me, pray to God for me, and you will rise again for me to give the everlasting love of life to me everyday. I know you will serve, share, forgive, love, speak, pray and know me as I born of God and ask of me the same.
Again, I am in the egg of light, the crown of my head. Jesus, you appear before me like a normal man. I kneel and you anoint me on the forehead and you say to me “Do your life in memory of me.” I cry. My tears pour down into my body. Where my tears touch the parched ground the earth blossoms into green and flowers sprout everywhere. An enormous sense of joy fills me. A joy of the world, a dance, the ability to see the light of Christ in each person, every which way I turn I see the joy of the Risen Christ flowing in people. In all their lives and all their beings I see their goodness and I love them all. My friends and enemies, I wash their feet and humbly submit my life to the love of Christ and it directs me in all times, all places and all spaces.
In the Church, my head, Christ turns and says, “Now you too will read the scriptures, and you will read into the scripture the work of the living so their worship may be sanctified in my name.” We walk out to the steps of the Church, my throat, and you say, “You will write words of the Spirit to give unto others.” In the place of the heart you say, “You will serve by reaching out and touching from the heart.” In the place of the crucifix, my stomach, you drop blood on my chest and say, “You will wear a red cross.” In the place of communion, my genitals you say, “You will give bread and wine.” In the place of the feet you say, “You will wash the feet of others.”
I rise up out of my body, beyond the egg of light and I see the face of Jesus, your face, and all the loving, nurturing power of God pulses into me. You begin to move aside and the presence of God as the Father, a light so blinding and terrifying begins to emerge from behind you and appear around one side of you. I quake with total fear because I know that if I see God as Father I am dead and a voice cries out, “You are Dead. You are Alive. Understand that the two are joined and they are joined in you forever more. No more fear because every person is chosen. Some do not wake to realize their cause. Love them all.” I turn before I can see God as Father and I watch as the angels pour down through into me and out to places on the planet.
And the angels say to me, “You are a gateway for us. You will give people angels; little words — aphorisms and epithets — that will spin out of you into their hearts and out to go throughout the world. But stay close to town because it begins around you, nowhere else.”
Again, I am in the egg of light, the crown of my head, the place of the virgin birth, Jesus you appear. You anoint me on the forehead and take me down to the Church, my head. You pray to God and walk out of the church to the steps, my throat and you say, “Love in the deepest sense that comes from God and know that it is the calling of every person to love all with the might of their self, as their self rests in the heart of God. So the love that they can give is mightier than they know. Go, look into your neighbor’s eyes and love the light and love the darkness too. Go to the place of the heart and to the people and say to them, “You have the power to inspirit the parable that is you. In turn, turn and inspirit the person next to you.” Tell them, “All your parables together, inspirited with the love of God and the fellowship of the living humans around, will build the world that you are looking for.””
The angels say, “Do not underestimate that there will be other forces at work. You will walk in the place of the cross, your stomach. The writhing agony of Jesus in his last hours will absorb all the pain and suffering you feel, all the despair, all the dark days and he will die on the cross for you. And the cross will become silver and then gold and then the light of the risen Christ will reflect in it and you will see the suffering melt into love.”
“Walk to the place of community, the genitals. It is the communion of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ that is the real communion. Do not be deceived that sexuality is the real communion. People are only alive in the communion of Christ. When it comes to claims of marriage the only question that matters is, “Do these two people standing here, stand with the communion of Christ, so through his love they be joined in body and flesh and blood and love?””
“Remember Christ washes your feet. The only Son of God was sent to wash your feet. Do not forget who holds your feet to the ground. Gravity is the servant love of Christ that holds your feet to the ground. Remember this, as you turn to your neighbors to serve them and to respect them where they touch the ground.”
The angels say, “Now come, rest in the body that you have been given and the relationships that you have received. Go to sleep this night and know that in every moment of sleep we are working, reorganizing your life so that you may serve the One God.”
Amen.
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The Stations of the Christ is a transcription of eight visionary experiences that I had during Lent 2004. The backdrop to these experiences is that I am a member of the congregation of the Episcopal Church of Our Saviour, Arlington, Massachusetts. Our rector is the Reverend Linda Fisher-Privitera. The Church is a vibrant community and a place of profound faith and deep inquiry.
During Lent 2004 Karen King, the Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard University, gave seminars at the church for members of the congregation on the Gospel of Mary of Magdala, a second century text that Karen translated from the original Coptic and Greek. The text shows that early Christianity was much more diverse and rich than had been previously known. Importantly the text reveals that women’s role in the early Church and the role of individual spirituality was much stronger and central to early Christianity than later orthodoxy would have us believe.
I offer these visions that make up The Stations of the Christ as a restorative and unifying work on re-integrating the role of the sacred feminine, women and individual spirituality in Christianity and as a reaffirmation of the importance of Jesus Christ, his life, teachings and resurrection.
The inspiration for the name The Stations of the Christ as the title for this work came from Karen when we were having a discussion during our Sunday service about Mel Gibson’s film the Passion of Christ. Karen reminded us that Christianity is about all the facets of Jesus’ life and resurrection combined and that we needed to keep this in mind and not just focus on one piece. So instead of focusing on the Stations of the Cross for Lent I set out to understand what the Stations of all Christ’s life and teaching might be if they were fully embodied in our daily lives. At one level this was a conscious inquiry but at another level I trusted that if I opened myself to connecting with the divine, that is in all of us, within a deeply spiritual, grounded and supportive Christian community then the answers would just come to me or be given to me.
Our rector Linda suggested that I attend a small group meeting during Lent titled a “Lenten Journey with Jesus” that would take place on each Wednesday of Lent. The meetings were organized and led by an Episcopal Divinity School student Carol Brorsen. There were five of us in this small group including Carol. I was the only man in the group.
Carol gave us a reading and writing homework assignment each week. The first assignment was to write a letter to Jesus Christ. I approached this assignment by doing a meditation that I have developed. As I meditated I dictated the vision or experience that came to me in words as best as words allow and then afterwards I transcribed the tape.
Typically a vision will last between twenty and thirty minutes and result in one chapter delivered in a near-continuous flow. I have made only minor edits to clarify some areas where the vision was so intense that even words in the moment failed to convey the experience. The visions were not just experienced as images but were felt in the body. In the first two visions I have added notes to indicate where my consciousness was “felt” at particular points in the vision.
These visions are my experience of attempting to connect with the divine. They are not “The Truth” nor do they posses any great meaning unless they speak to what is meaningful in you.
They are my gift to you. Please pass them on to others if the spirit moves you.
Thank you.
My best wishes to you in your exploration of your own insight and Christianity.
Jamie Coats
Arlington, Massachusetts, USA
Lent 2004