To see with God's eyes. I feel like I did that once, by pure grace. It was an intervention, even a triage on God's part. He had nothing left to do and since I was unprepared, it was necessarily crude, so not only a triage, a battlefield triage. I might have died. I came close. I had a scrambled mind and was living on the street after. Literally starving to death. He made no promise that I would survive.
Of course the essence of the vision was how completely thoroughly all right everything was, and also how completely thoroughly this whole thing is dynamically supported by the divine energy at all moments. One gap in that once and the whole thing becomes smoke and mirrors, just exactly right now stops. His energy is the spanning momentum of the indeterminate (very large but finite number) set of quantum gaps in the universe. Drop one. The whole thing dissappears. To see with God's eyes is to see original beauty and to know that without His eyes neither will that beauty be visible. So much more.
To know too, that this cannot be taken back to ordinary mind, ordinary eyes. Seeing with God's eyes won't fit the ordinary human shape, is much too large for that. To grieve that. To argue against it. To try to return at will (utter failure already known). To realize that what is next is a disciplined life, full of practice, not really to return to the lap of God so much as to pay for the incredible gift already given. Now that I know, I am compelled to pay. Such is my life.
Now, 43 years later, He is still calling me to practice, and I am still far from the top of the mountain. It's a helluva life.
You Keep Trying To Teach Me
Now you go one more
and tell me it's not finite,
nor infinite. What?
You say they are both,
the fin and the infin, both
are parts of the ite.
This just gets to me.
Then you say the ite is bliss
and the fin, infin
are just the two fronts
that merge and all is then bliss
and now my teeth hurt.
February 12, 2009 4:25 PM
Contraction
1 week ago
Maybe the top of the mountain isn't nirvana, maybe the real peace in the valleys.
ReplyDelete****
Sense of humor in the end of the poem.
I think when it just 'is' and that's okay is when it is. Make sense of that?
ReplyDeleteMy teeth hurt too.
xxx
Some things just are, no matter how you take them apart to examine the pieces.
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling there is a chemistry to this somehow. I have noticed that even adventurous women strike out in different directions than men tend to. Even after you scrape away all the hogwash in the men are men and women are women thing there seems to remain certain differences that are fairly obvious and lead to fundamentally different sensibilities even though it may well be the same view.
ReplyDeleteI am completely convinced there is such a thing as a call. If I follow mine it will have a man thing in it. If you women follow yours there will be a woman thing in it. I suppose there are at least a few man themes, woman themes. They may overlap but they are not the same.
That is the truth that underlies the "war between the sexes". I think you know by now that I love honor and respect women. I find many women more deserving than I, the way they must live, and the slack that I get in this society. I still acknowledge that women are different from men.
just follow the signs Christopher...... just follow the signs...
ReplyDeleteSnort!
ReplyDeleteWell yes, of course.
That's the fun bit
*said with tongue in cheek*...
xxxx
Wonderful. Your poem makes me think, as they all do. It also reminds me of conversations I have with a friend who is a philosopher. He keeps trying to teach me. Unfortunately, I'm hard headed. I keep looking at the dirt on my hands. Your last line made me laugh and think of those conversations. But I love the poem and its meaning for me.
ReplyDeleteI also love the introductions to your poems, Christopher. I learn a lot.
And now, right now, I want to say the biggest mother of all cuss words. Is that horrible of me?
ReplyDeleteeeeerrrrrrrghh, trying to resist........
it's not working.......
FARK, Christopher, this is it! This is the farking answer! Brilliant!
Great text, very intersting reflection about the modern paradigm change. Also very nice poem, reflecting about that.
ReplyDeleteJust let me add one small thing. It keeps trying to do it because it needs to feel superior to you, better, that it knows more stuff.
This is laugh out loud delightful for me!
ReplyDeleteIn a just world, we could all gather in the garden of E.M. Butt and Sons House Boats, on the shore of Lake Dal, near Srinagar in Kashmir, India side. There we would spend the afternoon chewing on the meaning of it all.
Heh.
picture from a houseboat garden where you say.....
ReplyDeletechewing?
Ghost, the garden I was referring to is very old, in fact reputed to have been planted by Alexander in his venture into India. It is certain that he got that far. It was a remarkable moment in my life to think I was standing where Alexander stood.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, chewing...as in "Some days I wake up and it hardly seems worth it to chew through the leather straps."
Came over at Woman In A Window's suggesting and glad I did. I love this post. God and I do battle most days and it is comforting to hear of another who's life is not a cheeky praise song. Need to see myself through God's eyes soon, lest I disintigrate under the intense scrutiny of my own. Unbelievably, I imagine His gaze kinder than mine. Perhaps I am mistaken. Scary thought.
ReplyDeleteW&W, I think it is an ordinary thing we suffer, you and I. A rebellious spirit. I think God actually prefers that to a quiet conformity. I think mainly that honesty is critical and the worst position I could find myself in is to try to hide my spirit to somehow please God, as if He didn't already know.
ReplyDeleteAs for self judgement, I think that is the only kind, that God doesn't need to judge us because when we see clearly (like with God's eyes) from our own largest vantage we do indeed judge ourselves and cannot help doing that. It is my faith though that I will be fair by then, whenever that is.
That brings to mind the idea that I live by grace, it couldn't be other because I am far too well treated to be getting what I deserve.
Welcome