"Let us not enter into your Promise alone, but bring us God, along with all those for whom we pray, into the Mercy of your Hiding Place, beneath your Robe soaked in Blood."

Before sleeping, I wrote this prayer, based upon readings from another prayer book I like to read at the end of the day. Yesterday, I read a great deal about the prophecies of Revelations, the concepts of tribulation, armageddon, the seven seals. The symbolic content of said prophecies, which have fascinated me since childhood, and the potential interpretations of them. Some believe the end times are here. Some feel they are indicative of a spiritual evolution, a transcendence that is to take place on a multi-dimensional plane. Some are able to embrace an awareness of both literal and figurative representations of the revelations themselves.

I am a poet, musician and artist. While I cannot dismiss the prophecies of the Revelations, I believe that God is one for whom all things are possible, and I believe that God can do as God pleases. I am most affected by the knowlege of God as Infinite Love and of Christ as Merciful Saviour.

Once, my mother and I were cleaning her house. She said, "It's dusty as Hell in here!" and then chuckled at her speech, unusual for her. She queried, "do you think Hell is dusty place?"
I automatically responded, I mean, it was a natural reflexive soul response, " Yes, I do. "
"Why's that?" To which I responded that I hoped Hell would be an empty place, because of Our Lord's Mercy. It just came out of me. My mom burst into tears and held me so closely, giving thanks to God for a daughter who would or could say such a thing.

Have I told this story before?
Please excuse me if so. The concept of Divine Mercy is greatly on my mind. This began in the beginning of this new millenium when I came across the writing of Thielard de Chardin.
Is it the work of souls to be revealed in it?

the other night, I was left with this observation from a dream.

"If we refuse the apex, how can we calculate the foundation?"

update

It has been a few weeks since i have been able to resume the practice of morning writing. I have, however, continued with much study, reading and contemplation, and have tried to jot down what remembrances of my dreams remain by morning. Of late, i have kept a notebook beside the bed, and have written some things in the dark in the night. It has been the case that i have awoken suddenly in the wee hours before dawn with specific thoughts. These i try to cull and retain, and they are often brief, one sentence or two, after which i fall immediately back into deep sleep and then dreaming. This is nothing new, and a practice I have utilized off and on over the years, since i was about twenty.
IT should be stated here that i would not dream of obsessing over these events, nor would i tend to brood over significance. I feel compelled only to report, as i have found the content of these dreams to be striking, meaningful in numerous ways, and most importantly, educational to me personally. The uncanny rapidity with which these dreams are referenced the next day is enough to connect my conscious thoughts to the stream of communication taking place between my own sub and unconscious thought processes, and the use of the realm of images that the unconscious mind makes of the provinces of the subconscious are sufficient for me to notice in detail and to give my attention to consciously. I remain prayerful, turning my face always toward God. I have asked God for lessons, training and teaching in both sleeping and waking hours. I have actively requested the participation of spiritual teachers and guides. The extent of information that has flowed into my hands and mind has been greater than i am able to write down. These entries here, as well as some on My Secret Religion and the Cosmic Jitters, were begun in order to serve mainly as exercises so that i might prepare myself for writing full time, in hopes that i would be able to compose the book i have been researching these past three and a half years. However, they also are a log, an honest accounting of the different streams of thought bordering on revelation that occupy part of my many thoughts.
Many of the things I have studied and applied myself to over the years are beginning to coalesce into a greater and seemingly seamless understanding. It is as though I were being brought further back, and the view is one of proportion and perspective. I trust in prayer and humility, and have a natural distrust for my own understanding, that is, a natural skepticism that tends toward testing. However, I find that it is most efficacious to simply bear witness herein to the beauty of potential being revealed to me, a simple wayfarer. I feel as though I am becoming less and less active here in the world, while emerging more and more into a distance beyond its view.
Suffice to say, much of what I perceive will not here be contained. May the Lord of Lords suggest Himself to you through His Holy Spirit in what way He sees fit.
For myself, I am content to marvel and scribe.

The Golden Man

Fitst of all, I awoke before dawn singing "For the Beauty of the Earth.." One momment I was asleep and aware of nothing, and the next I was awake, and filled withthis song. Only I was stumped on a verse, and so was making it up as it went along..

For the Beauty of each hour, for the Sun and for the Moon,
for the blossom of each flow'r, for the Ocean's tide and swoon,
Lord of All to Thee we raise
this our Hymn of grateful Praise.."

I Love this song, and have always sung it, since I was a child.

There is music in my head all of the time. Every day. There is always music.
I used to marvel when I was about twenty, as I could choose entire works and listen to them in my mind. I thought this was like pressing the play button on a tape machine. Nowadays, it is very much like an iPod with its files and files of music. I used to play a game with myself on the train from Brooklyn to Manhattan, and listen to albums in my head.

Some days, I play a game with the music in my head still. I just jot down all of the songs that pop in throughout the day. Alot of them are hymns. I always loved hymns. They comfort and assure me.

My husband came in and kissed me good-bye, he had an early srtat today. I went back to sleep.


Later, I awoke with vague running recollections like flashcards of a dream I was in.

Iwas looking out the window of a studio apartment and realised that I did not recognise the street below! I went to another window and looked out. This vantage point looked out over a hillside, which lowered in steps, like little terraces. On the first one I saw the shape of a large dinosaur down among the trees, which were a little taller than eye level, from where i was standing in my apartment, looking out the window. The sun was filtering through the leaves, and it was a very beautiful day. Soon I could make out the actual shape of the dinosaur, and saw that it was a sculpture made of pressed sheet metal that was stamped with a grid pattern like you see on those big silver tool boxes welded to the backs of Ford trucks! It was bronze coloured. As I looked more closely, I could see that its feet were actually wheel wells, and its horns on top were foglamps! Its snout was the front cab of a hollowed out truck! Then, to my amazement, a man came around and got into the driver's seat. He was wearing a hard hat, and he was completely gold! It was as though he were made of shimmering golden sand! He was like a moving particle sculpture! He started the truck and looked as though he was going to drive, but I had turned and run to the doorway!

I rushed to the hallway and down the stairs to the outside: it had changed again! I rounded the corner of the building, and it had changed again! I was now inside a convenience store/gas station! I went outside into the parking lot and looked out over the hill where I had seen the golden man. There were a number of men working there now, with shovels and rakes and wheelbarrows. They were landscaping tarraces.

I stood, dumbfounded. People were coming and going, and it was just like being at the Marathon station down any street. Then I was stricken with a kind of panic, and suddenly remembered that my baby had been napping upstairs! I raced around to the doorway I had come out of, and nearly ran into an Asian man holding two babies, and I touched their little backs, patted them as I went by. I then began to panic, because the door was already gone, and the side of the building had turned into a boarded up and graffiti'd warehouse, along which the street I had been standing beside had turned into an alley in a city that went under a raised train track.

I looked up at the windows, trying to recognise my little studio. Then I saw a series of images like looking at a roll of film negatives from a movie. It fastforwarded, leaving choppy impressions in my mind's eye, like the staggered speed of animation. Eventually it landed on a woman and a man asleep in a bed. She had a sort, modern haircut. It was all back in time, but it was monochromatic, in sepia tones.

Cubby

Again looking for space to work. Living in an apartment and wondering if my roomates would mind if Irearanged the furniture to accomodate an easel. Eyeing the walls for shelving space.
walking outside with Fred, down the sidewalk, Iremember saying, "We've gone too far- it's a few blocks back. " We were in some sort of chinatown full of slot machines on the sidewalks, everything gleaming with neon and adverts. In the slot machines were vegetables and food. People were gambling for different kinds of food. beautiful mushrooms, chickens, peppers. it was weird. Fred began to stand on my feet, making it hard to walk. I remember thinking " i am dreaming. i am dreaming..."
Then waking up.

Decided to build a platform in the closet of my office and put the bed in there, like a medieval bed, in the wall like a cupboard. I can store a few things underneath it, and make it cozy with big pillows to lean up against the wall and lounge; keep the curtain on the door. It will be a real cubby! Then I will have a few more feet of space in here..

Springtime

I dreamed that I was at my grandparents' house, as I have before. It strongly resembles the original structure next to the Masonic Lodge in Broad Ripple where my father grew up, but in dreams, it expands, and has secret stairways leading to many rooms, and a favourite secret spiral staircase to a lovely turret. There was some sort of banquet going on, with many guests roaming about the decidedly late-victorian settings. The furnishings were made of marble and carved wood in deep cherry hues, with lovely textiles of tapestry and heavy draperies, intricate wallpapers, leafy vine patterns woven into wool carpeting, all much like the actual characteristics of my grandparents' home.

There was much bustling, and I was to perform at seven o'clock with John Mellencamp and his band, outside in a bandshell on the premises. For some reason, I had to wait for Rob, who showed up late, and apologized for making me lose my job. It was ten after seven and I had been informed that my presence was no longer desired. I was unperturbed, however, and put a pair of John's gloves and a scarf into a ziplock bag, attaching it to the back bumper of a large flatbed truck with chairs on it that was to be part of a parade for his fans. Apparently, they were to be allowed to reach out and touch the ziplock which contained the gloves that once contained his hands. I remember that this niether impressed me nor bothered me. It was more like the way one feels when cutting the grass. It was just something that was to be done.

Then I went inside and up a hidden staircase to a room in which my father was lying in a bed, propped up on pillows, with the windows open and a fine breeze blowing through. My mother was there at the foot of the bed on a divan, relaxing with something, sewing? a book? A few others were there, but I only had eyes for my dad, so I could only see them peripherally. We were just hanging out, my dad and I, and talking. He was content, casually supping on a shallow dish of ruby red pomegranate seeds in a sweet jewel red sauce over a dark bread-like cake. He handed the dish to me, did I want a taste?- and I noticed the dish was piece from the English Porcelain given to Rob and I for our wedding. The bedcover was also red, a dusky rose red silk, and the walls were papered in a similar pinkish red brocade.
I thought of myself thinking of Persephone, and awoke.

Mercy Sunday

"He who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through the door of My justice. (Diary 1146)."

Just the other day, after posting Fever, I came across this quote, which I found to be categorically, mystically pertinent. I call these coincidences and serendipities Consolations, as I am upheld and encouraged daily in my heart and soul by such appearances in the seemingly random and even mundane. Never do these occurrences take place without acknowledgment and thanks given immediately in prayer. Prayer takes place throughout the day, pulling the soul toward the Spirit like a needle is pulled to the north.

In looking further into this quotation, I discovered that this Sunday is Mercy Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter, a timely notification after a timely recollection.

I had never heard of St. Faustina, nor had I heard of the chaplet of Divine Mercy, or Mercy Sunday. However, I felt as t hough I had received a clue in January, when I was drawn to the prayer card at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. I now know that it was a depiction of the image St. Faustina had been commanded to have painted, that of Christ in His Divine Mercy, with two rays emanating from his Heart, one scarlet, the other white, representing the cleansing power of God's Love through His Passion. At the bottom an inscription: Jesus I Trust In You. A simple instruction, and simple prescription for the maladies which burden the soul, from the heart's own true doctor, the likes of whom Asclepius himself was a mere shadow..

I encourage anyone to read about St. Faustina and her obedient diary, her quiet resolve, her predictions of the "spark from Poland" Pope John Paul II, and her brief life beginning in 1905.

http://www.faustina.ch/index_en.htm

May God's Grace be upon you, upon us all, and may you be specifically blessed with acceptance of His Divine Mercy this coming Sunday, and all Sundays.

Fever

In 1998, I was stricken with a virulent form of encephalitis, a brain fever from which it took many weeks to recover. During that time, I could neither move nor eat without violent nausea, as my brain was swelling inside my skull, impacting my equilibrium and major nerve bundles. I could only lie flat in a darkened room, as my optic nerves were overly sensitive to light and even motion. My parents took me in, and tended me with spoonfuls of water and broth. There was little that could be done but wait and pray.

I drifted in and out of sleep for days on end, occasionally opening my eyes to find them standing there, together, gazing down at me in the room I had slept in during high school. I remember thinking one day that I might be dying. I could see it in their faces. I fell back to sleep, and dreamed.

I was in an ancient tower, made of stone, in a room at the top. Parts of the walls were crumbling, and seemed decrepit, but the floor was solid and smoothed by many years of foot traffic. There were windows, through which I could see the blue sky, and a beautiful green landscape in the distance, and I desparately wanted out. I was frightened in a nervous sort of way, and seemed aware of an impending doom. Something terrible was approaching, something unspeakable and horrendous, and I feared for all mankind. I felt a great knot of sorrow in my chest, and began to cry, surveying the perimeter for a way out.

The way to the top was a wide smooth ramp, which opened onto the spacious room
I was in, but I feared to go that way down, as what I dreaded was approaching from there. The windows were simple gothic arches cut into the stone, without panes, open to the outside, but too high up to jump from. There was a doorway also set in the stone, but it gave me a sense of foreboding. The sense of Terror approaching drove me to it. I crossed the room in an eyeblink, and flung open the door.

I was assailed with a shock of horror and disgust. From the doorway, a tunnel led downward, the walls of which were made of tongues, millions of tongues lining every inch, dripping a gooey thick saliva which reeked of something foul. The air was full of a buzzing sound, and I saw that it came from countless large black flies. I slammed the door shut, and stood shaking in a kind of traumatized still panic. My heart felt like it was breaking in my chest.

I went back to the center of the room, and prayed, weeping with sadness, for mercy. Divine Mercy. I prayed to God Almighty, pleading with him for the mercy of His Holy Son Jesus. I prayed for Jesus to save us all from this terrible dread. Everything was very still. Dusty. I felt as though I were in crypt. I knew that Jesus would not come if people did not have faith, and I wondered if my faith could be enough. I asked myself, in the still of that moment, where the dust had settled long ago, if I truly had faith.

I looked up and saw a simple golden crown hanging from a nail in the wall, high out of reach. It was dusty, as though it had been waiting there for centuries. I knew that the crown was somehow the key, and that by restoring it, all would be made well. I knew that I was alone there, and it fell to me to do it. I couldn't reach it. I jumped, I scrambled. I tried to shinny up by toes and fingernails. I searched around for a table or a chair, frantic. My heart was pounding, and I felt that time was running out! I begged Jesus to come, come and not to let this terrible thing come to pass.

This is when I began to fear that the emptiness there was real, that there was no more faith. I wanted to believe, even if I was the only one who would. I began to hear a rasping, a halting step coming up the ramp now, closer and closer. I waited, unable to breathe.

To my shock and amazement, there came into view a lion, tall and stately, walking like a man. He was emaciate, and his coat was thin and worn away in spots, bald patches where his skin showed through. His mane hung down, forlorn and matted and his left leg was paralyzed and dried like jerky. My heart burst as it seemed to recognize this lion, so slowly progressing toward the wall. Jesus. His eyes were full of compassion and sorrow, and I cried and cried.

Time was running out, as He scraped toward the wall. I realized what He had come for, He had come to get the crown for me. He couldn't reach it. I thought I would die of sorrow for Him. I loved Him, and believed that He could perform a Miracle, that He could do anything, that the crown would come to His hand.

I felt that we were almost out of time, and He looked at me, as though He knew that was so. And then He reached down and broke off his own leg, the one that was paralyzed and stiff, and standing on the other leg, held it up like a staff or a stick, and tipped the crown onto it, at which point I awoke with tears puddled in my ears as I lay still, on my back, the sheets wet beneath my head.