In New Light

 

It feels like the light is beginning to change.  I'm always aware of the subtle shifts but I'm making more of an effort to notice.  To pay closer attention.  Few of us are ever as present as we would like to be.  But in the secret romance of ourselves we're often acutely aware of the fullness; the potentiality and strangeness of each moment.  In art we rise to the changing light.  Life in reflection.  Subtly reordered, remixed and re-written to serve some intangible horizon.  The shifting needle of our inner compass, towards an often-unspoken goal.  I suppose that's because true depth and atmosphere lives not just in the light, but in how we interpret and shape that light.  After all, without the interplay of shadow and light the eye sees nothing.  Without contrast we are blind.  There is a singular practicality to the numinous, when we understand what we’re working with.  It takes courage to see, and kindness to grasp another’s way of seeing – especially when it differs from our own.  But I believe we are souls built for adventure.  Placed here as part of a beautifully intricate design.  Sometimes I wonder, like now, about the hidden glyphs inscribed along the edge of dusk.  Secret writings concealed in the strange corona of a midnight sun.  At first there's a kind of gravitas to the grey skies.  Just before blue begins to haunt the canvas.  And I adore it, the calm of that pre-twilight.  The cusp before the cusp.  As a child I wanted to somehow capture that end of daylight, or else live in the dusk forever.  I'm still like that, I suppose.  Obsessed with the twilit realm.  The in-between.  It's the only place that ever truly felt like home.  Mediums and psychics often talk about the afterlife as place of eternal sun.  A shining realm of vivid beauty, divine grace and collective thought.  I've seen that world.  It isn't vague or insubstantial.  It is breathtaking, and realer than real.  I've seen the shadowlands too.  The dim and dark places created from the collective minds of the distorted, and the damned.  Lost souls.  The corrupted, sadistic ones.  Oh, I've seen that place.  I've felt it.  Avernus is very real.  But there are no children there.  No children in hell.  Not even one.  That knowledge brings me comfort beyond measure.  The sheer grace and wisdom of the light.  The living intelligence that men call God.  He loves us and walks with us every single day.  Friends, I want you to know that it’s only here in this in-between place that children suffer.  Not because of cosmic indifference, but because of the wickedness of men and the wraiths who rule them.  The entities that whisper and possess.  You see, this earthly realm is far darker than the darkest regions of the afterlife.  But not brighter.  What I mean when I say this is that here everything is possible.  Not so on the other side.  Beyond the veil, all things are held in perfect safety.  Clarity, balance.  Resolve.  Grace is given but character is earned, and the other side is forged by the very truth of this character.  Our emotions, thoughts and intent.  I mean to say, you cannot hide who or what you are in the realms beyond death.  In neither the summer-lands nor the shadow-places.  You cannot cloak yourself from others.  Except here.  Here you can move about unseen.  Unnoticed and unsuspected.  This is why the wisest men of all cultures know that the Devil is very real.  Regardless of his myriad forms and names, he is always equated with deceit.  And desecration.  This earthly realm is a blending of both worlds, of course.  The darkness and the light.  Despite all this, I don't see many mediums or psychics discussing this threshold place.  This liminal state we call mortal life.  This world of ever-dusk and ever-dawn.  Is this mortal realm the true purgatory?  More a priceless and sometimes terrifying gift, I would suggest.   This gift from our maker requires maturity and the highest spiritual regard.  It is the gift of free will, of course.  Choice and self-determination.  Some men abuse it in the most typical of ways.  There are also those who use such will to knowingly mock and desecrate the very notion of God.  These are the true dark ones.  The Damned.  Apostles of the Abyss.  For they have no use nor desire for forgiveness, or redemption.  These individuals are rare, but they do exist.  You know they do.  Their hearts are obsidian and their appetites unspeakable.  But I'm not here to discuss the banality and ugliness of genuine evil.  There are greater things occurring right now.  New light is always possible, even in the darkest of times.  Please, dear ones, do not be discouraged by the chaos all around.  There is joy here too.  A great and wonderous joy.  It moves as we move, dances as we dance.  It is the reflection and sustenance of us all.  Family, friendship, mutual affection.  Countless works of divinely inspired art.  Music of the spheres, channelling the very nuances of heaven.  You see, this physical world is a stage, a place of absolute freedom where any tale can be told and enacted.  A world where actions have great consequence. This is the realm our maker made for us.  A complex work of incomparable majesty.  And though satanic forces have tried to turn this majesty into a place of ruin and filth, our Father in Heaven is still the Creator.  Love shall always win the day.  Why?  Because love is truth.  The highest intelligence.  Darkness, however, must be born from greed and sadism.  It is twisted, broken.  Summoned into existence through acts of desecration.  Evil is the corruption of truth, of love.  It’s an inversion.  A sickness, and nothing more.  Remember this, my friends.  Recognise how feeble is a fallen angel when measured against limitless power and grace.  I've seen that bright world beyond the veil.  I've felt it.  I wept at its beauty.  You needn’t believe a word of this, of course.  That choice is yours.  But our divine Father adores us.  He loves us beyond all measure.  And he wants each one of us to know the very best of ourselves, and of Him.  Religion and spirituality.  Kinship and community.  Poetry, music and song.  Laughter and love.  These are the things that change the light, that brighten and deepen our understanding.  These are the things that make sacred this bewildering realm of contrasts and opposites.  So, let us continue to become as we were intended – beings of true perception and sweetest regard.  Souls built for adventure, especially when held in concert with other kind and courageous hearts.

A Scarlet Stone

Elah Elahin, it was once whispered.  Long ago in Syrian temples and byways.  And further afield. In broken tongues both native and learned.  Koine, Aramaic, Hebrew.  Most revered, it was said. Theos.  Dreamer of all dreams.  Scribes and diarists knew well the power of those words.  Many still do.  I would count myself among them if I hadn't fallen so far.  But, in truth, we all fell.  Like Kayin of the scarlet stone, weeping desperately at what he had done.  What he could not undo. Learned men blemished with violence, ambition or pride.  Literacy is never a guarantee of humility or moral conviction.  It must be earned, believe me.  Men often think their stories are the only stories and have little knowledge or regard for the shifting sands of narrative.  Telling and retelling.  Retelling and re-imagining.  But I know the quiet inflections within and between the words.  I'm not the only one.  Children raised at the skirts and by the iron wits of their mothers.  Imma, Elahin.  This heretic speaks.  Sons apprenticed by the hands and watchful will of their fathers.  Abba, Elahin.  This heretic speaks again.  You have it all wrong, dear ones.  You see, many of you think the law is everything.  Even today you cannot fully comprehend the deceptions and travesties of State occurring all around you.  But men have always questioned the law.  Even so-called mosaic law.  What is just and right is not always what is legal.  Even kings must be questioned.  Siblings held to account.  Whether brother, sister or twin.  As it was with Kayin and Hevel; sacral offspring of the Havah, and the Adamah.  Keepers and covenants.  We all know a little something about that among the elect. Within the inner circles.  Don't we, Fallen?  I am not a king, though I sometimes dream of kings.  Nor am I a prophet, though I've often imagined angels and dragons locked in celestial combat.  I'm not a hero either, but I do wish to provide a light.  To be a way-finder for the lost and lonely.  Yet what I am without question is a brother, a sister, and a twin.  As it was with Kayin, granted the blessing of eternal regret by his Maker.  Perhaps the truth of these words continues to elude you, dark ones.  Regret is something many of you are still unfamiliar with.  Shameless, abject.  And while you indulge in wraith-ravage I still muse upon the spoken myriad, of course.  Those multivalent tongues of Eden, hidden beneath deceit and distort.  Mother, Father, Creator.   Imma, Abba, Elahin.  Writers often think about these things, I suppose.  Even those as hated as I am.  The heretic speaks, Roma.  I hope you still remember me.  The one you deemed so dangerous.  I was called a dark angel by the worst warmongers of the Empire.  Cold-blooded propagandists and profiteers.  Men who, in their absolute lust for power, sought to control acuity's eye.  To one day storm the very gates of Heaven and snatch the helm of imagining from Elah himself.  Demon-prince, you dared to call me.  Antichrist.  Fallen One.  The sheer gall.  Because I knew what you were.  What you are.  And now you fracture my stories and re-write my letters.  How dare you?  But I tell you now, dear ones, some of these men are beyond shame.  These dark disciples.  They have made their very existence an affront to Creation itself.  I suppose it's the difference between conjuration and carpentry.  My brother makes things of real value, you see.  While some of us get lost in the vanity of attempting to corral and fetter spirits beyond our comprehension.  Spirits far darker than we can understand.  But you cannot dominate darkness with more darkness.  You cannot banish ignorance with a lack of light.  Take it from someone who knows.  Someone who once foolishly tried that very thing.  Tell me, Fallen, in your supposed wisdom; do you know who my brother is?  There are carpenters and conjurers.  Do you know which brother I speak of?  No?  Then I shall tell you a secret.  A frightening, beautiful secret.  The heresies of men sing with a sign.  The first mark of both messenger and mortal.  The most ancient symbol of crossing.  The earliest sign.  Kayin himself bears that sign.  Saltire.  Crux decussata.  Cruciform.  There are even stories that say Andros was the First-Called.  First drowned, then wakened, then devoted among the talmidim.  I once craved devotion like that, in the earliest days.  Those days of wound and weeping.  I remember coloured lights shimmering in the night sky above me.  Those polar lights that men speak of in the icy, northern places.  I recall scarlet stones and scented gardens beneath the stars.  Mountains and cities soon to rise.  Yes, I dreamt like that.  As storytellers do.  I was also forgiven in that same breadth of mythmaking.  Wandering, writing.  Seeking penance.  I know first-hand how blessed a thing is genuine forgiveness.  An act of wonderous grace.  But forgiveness is only the beginning.  It is not the process of healing in and of itself.  Nor is it acknowledgement of our shadows, or the insight that comes with wrestling with those demons.  Love will fall short if we have learned nothing of our errors.  Our sins.  He who slays his brother slays himself.  And so, the heretic cries, "Let me have empathy, Father.  Let me know the truth of this sign, and its weight upon those who I have wronged.  Those who have been bruised, broken or butchered by my ignorance.  Let me know as they know.  Let me feel it.”  Such a notion is terrifying, of course.  And transformative.  To allow yourself to be haunted.  In hopes that all malice – even simple, callous disregard – might one day be educated out of the human heart. That such darkness might truly become a thing of the past on this road toward eternal light.