Sunday, August 5, 2007

15

Dearest Journal,

To get through these last lost days since I‘ve written (still don‘t know what to do about her, don‘t even know her name ), I went to the Doctor - I’m not sure what the Good Doctor gave me this time, but it put me in a really spiritual place where God taught me many things. God gave me a vision, a holy vision of God. I need to formally write it down in detail so that I don’t forget even one thing that God would say to me or show me.....

It began yesterday in the afternoon, lying on the floor of the Good Doctor, the breeze softly blowing from the fan in the living room window. Below the window, the city was bustling and alive. The sounds of footsteps mingled in with the crying of infants, clicking of high heels with innocent ‘hello’s’. The Good Doctor, he was gone, and I felt a change coming over me. The walls vanished, the lights shifted around in circles, I heard myself laughing from a million miles away....then I knew it had happened, God had come to me, God was here. Like the lady saints, like Julian and Teresa and Hildegard, like Saint John and Madame Weil and the Buddha and others, I was having my vision now, I was in ecstasy, laughing and having God pick me up and throw me around like a kid into vast expanses.

This went on for what seemed like a forever time, God ravishing my soul in love. Then, it felt like God was setting me down onto the ground from on high and I was lying down like a baby in a slumber. I suddenly awoke, and found myself standing before a very large family, my own family. They were tired and diseased. They were sickly and coughing and the children at the mothers sides were dirty and fallow. I looked out at them, and the men looked back at me with bent backs and heavy shoulders. I felt compelled to speak so I said, “I’ll fix it. I can fix it.”

No one moved a muscle, and I turned around and walked away from them towards a long row of mountains and hills. I believed inside that if I kept going on and on towards the mountains, I would find the help my family needed, healing and refreshing for the thirsty and poor.

Many nights passed and I didn’t stop. I walked on. There was cold, there were wolves, there were the shadows of thieves. There were dead ends and there were new paths I made, and I kept walking, bruised and with exhaustion. I did not sleep. No food.

I had seen it on the path - the mountain. Behind it the bright face of God awaited, where I would find the healing the family longed after. I danced when I saw the obscured image of God and I cursed the mountain. I promised myself that I would conquer the mountain. Then I rested.

In the dark that night, late in the quiet hour, my body being rested, I got up and walked on from where I was sleeping. I walked on and not long after came to a very deep river, a river with such strong currents that I could not cross it alone. In the river, beasts and sharks and obscured creatures broke the surface of the waters. The rushing of waters against the shores cried out like the wailing of faithful wailers. I was terrified.

I walked along the shore, nearly falling in, climbing through dark forest, mists, vine, clutching on to the trees for some stronghold against the hungry shoreline. Ahead of me, I saw a light. When I was close enough, I discovered a lantern attached to the side of a house. I was suddenly very tired, and realized that I was very afraid, and wanted to go in the house and just sleep, but then a voice came from beside me. I turned to the side, and to my surprise, I was suddenly pressing up against an enormous ancient man covered in shroud, faceless and holding a lantern of his own.

“You cannot go to sleep yet,” he said.

“I am so fucking tired though I need to,” I answered.

The man in the shroud replied immediately, “No.”

“I will sleep.”

He grabbed my collar, knocked me to the ground and began to drag me through the dark woods towards the river. Above, egrets cried and I could hear the dark beasts breathing their raspy dying breaths as they broke the surface of the waters. I cried out into the woods, but no one was there, the man dragging me over the rocks towards the river with a physical force I could not fathom him summoning.

We reached the shore line and he threw me against a tree. Choking me, pressing his forehead against mine, he said, “Never leave me nor forsake me.”

And suddenly his face appeared, only it wasn’t his face, but the faces of the sick family over his own face, slowly transforming into one another, crying. He threw me down again, turned his back to me and faced the mighty dark river. He raised his lantern, and as he did, an empty boat drifted towards the shore. He climbed in, and I knew inside that I should also.

We set out across the waters. All around us, terrible noises lurked in the air. A dull roar arose from beneath us, clicking metallic chatterings of teeth, the humming of wasps, the distant sounds of a flood from upstream, they filled the black void.

I wondered if God was here and wondered how I had gotten myself into this. By this time in the vision, I had forgotten how I had even gotten to this place, I only remembered the sick faces and kept on. I began to hate God and I was alone.

The old man was not afraid of the sounds though he kept very quiet and still at the helm of the tiny boat. His body shook a little from time to time as if he were crying, but he did not say a word.

After what seemed like days in the dark forest, crossing this river, we struck the shore. The old man did not get out. I stepped out of the boat onto the dark shore and turned to thank the old man. He was weeping and would not utter a word. I looked forward and walked on, hearing the sobbing of the old man, but when I turned again, the boat was drifting alone in the vast river. The old man was gone, and I walked on.

Not long after leaving the dark forest I came upon the Mountain. I awoke.///