Envisioning God

She's got the whole world in her hands.

In the year of the great earthquakes, I saw the earth, high and lifted up, resting on the palms of God.

I saw the hands of God, many armed, each hand framing, supporting, blessing this fragile, tearing, earth island. Our Mother is a fierce Protectrix.

I saw myself curled and resting in her hand, on foot dangling from her fingers, swinging over the edge of the abyss. I was safely unaware of anything outside of her hand.

I looked and saw other souls safe in her embrace: on her forearm, shoulder and lap. Where first I saw one, I saw a thousand and then a number without counting. A world of people, kept safe in the divine embrace. 

And I went back to sleep.
May that peace envelope all the homeless, frightened, shaken souls crying out in pain.

Inner Visions

2 Corinthians 12:2 I know a woman in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows.

Our contemporary world is much less comfortable with visions and people who have them than the ancient world. Even in the world of religious belief and practice, mystics and visionaries are often executed first and canonized later.

But that doesn't stop the dreams, or their telling.

I know a woman who has seen visions of God and saints in heaven. And I know from the ordination boards on which I have served and with which I have worked that this would have rendered her unfit for ordination in the eyes of many. In the eyes of some, psychological evaluation and medication may have been deemed essential.

But the dreams, ah the visions!

A waterfall of molten metal, flashing gold and silver and reflecting a light dazzling and warm as far as the eye could see, from straight up and to each side. The sound of thunder and crashing waves. She knew it was speech yet could not understand the words. And behind the curtain of undulating metal there was... The dizzying assaults of visual and auditory stimuli stilled just enough to interpret them. Not a curtain, but a hem. And above and behind the hem...

I saw the Living God sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of God's gown filled the temple of my sight.