Well.

It’s been on my mind to share something here.

It’s not so much that I have some profound revelations to impart to my Readers-Who-Aren’t, or that there’s a fire under my feet to prick me to quick creative leaps.

Maybe it’s something humbler, but also farther-sighted than that – let’s say, like a sharp pebble between a hard boot-sole and a raw foot-sole: it ain’t much taken in itself, but in view of the many miles ahead (and behind), you might say the entire rest of the way rests on wresting out this least (and loudest) of all stones.

Yes.

And, of course, you’ll forgive me, above and below, my allusiveness, my metaphor, and my hopping in medias multas res (and my plopping you into them with me); I speak to mountain-climbers, and “in the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak.”

Yes.

I feel myself in between seasons, across many senses.

Here, winter begins to move and settle in in earnest.

I stand between many inn-keepers’ gates, walking many roads, and even when the homeliest home happens to open its door to me, I find Procrustes stands as every ward, handles every till, and sits at every table’s head.

Now, I taste the sweetness of the bitter medicine of fasting, walking the extra mile, and entering into my closet and shutting my door.

All seasons have a rhythm, a cycle, and an end, and so I know spring and sun and coursing life aren’t too far ahead on the horizon, though I should walk many roads, or sleep on them.

And I don’t just know; I feel it in an untaught, untainted part of me.

Seeing things in the light of Christ – this phrase has been on my mind a lot lately.

More than that, it’s been my experience more lately, and let me tell you – it’s more than a metaphor; and when you really start to see in that light, it can take your breath away, or bring tears to your eyes.

All seasons have a rhythm, a cycle, and an end.

Here, I alluded to it a bit, but for the Readers-Who-Aren’t Who Also Won’t, I’d say – the astrologers will go on about this all day, in endless detail – seasons, cycles, and so on.

And in a sense, they’re right – what is our experience of reality on this plane (or planet) but a play of light and its influences across all gradations of being?

But in both a grander and a humbler sense, they’re missing what’s right in front of them, all the time, endlessly revealing itself – the Light of Lights that lets us see things as they are in their perfect uniqueness, as they ought to be at their very best, and as they are across the whole, broader spectrum of being.

Once, I wrote about a memory from kindergarten – a lived experience serving as a metaphor-bridge to a then-current, experientially-resonant life-experience. No need to share all that here.

But one day during kindergarten nap-time – let’s say a half-hour or hour of sleep mid-day, on semi-firm mats – I woke up!

I don’t know why.

But it was dark, and quiet, and all the other children were snoozing away, still.

An experience, innocent, that a child can’t quite formulate in thought, but something like: “Whoa, what’s going on? Why am I awake? Why is it dark? What time is it? Why are they all asleep?”

Of course, a kindergartner falls back asleep, but an old mountain-climber and peak-hopper lives in perpetual wakefulness, so – don’t worry about this crusty old hard-hooved ram.

Even my wool is woven so thick and shell-like, a tumble would only serve to take off some hard edges and give me a shine.

Yes.

What I’m saying is, I can’t shake the feeling that, though I’m in a really significant season of change – significant not least because it’s a season nested within many broader, concentrically-nested seasons of change – not only is it not bad, it’s good; and not only is it good, it’s inevitable.

I’m the kindergartner that woke up before the mandatory nap-time ended; and this time, I’m seeing other kids are sitting up, too.

It’s inevitable.

A new day is dawning, and the light is going to wake every sleeper up.

I’ve been thinking about that, too – and about what it means to be healed, to see truth, and to experience the fullness of God’s being, through a lived experience of the person of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit.

It’s helped me to reconcile Heaven, Hell, and God.

I didn’t come up with this idea or assertion – that God’s love is experienced as a fire. 

But as I said – seasons within seasons, cycles and rhythms, and many children sitting up in naptime – what I’m seeing, feeling, experiencing, intuiting, and extrapolating is…

Well.

If you’ve been doing your homework, and your exercise, and keeping your house clean and your affairs in order… the light of God and his presence is the sweetest, warmest fire you could ever wish for on a cold winter’s night.

If you haven’t – well, let’s skip the metaphor.

If you really, really felt the fullness of the presence of Holiness and saw the fullness of Truth in the light of your fully-resurrected Conscience, and you still had the blood of many lifetimes on your hands and lips… the fire would be an agony that might consume your very flesh from the inside out.

And, strangest of all – it wouldn’t be a punishment, but simply a natural consequence of the full revelation of your actions in the light of purest truth.

I say that that Light is on the horizon – and it’s dawning, not setting.

But I am long-sighted, a peak-leaping mountain-scaler; to those further down, duller-eyed, or weaker-kneed, things may seem different.

Either way… the light is in my eye, and Qigong has taught me what it means to nurture fire over time. A spark is all you need to start.

All this is to say, as an entryway to what I’d planned to share – the fingers to reach into the boot for the pebble – I have a friend who – well, is a lifelong propagandist.

I see this more clearly over time as my eyes open to receive more and more of a fuller and richer light.

I shouldn’t say more, because I’m hoping and praying for him to wake up, too.

Sometimes he sends me propaganda he writes, and I often wonder – why​?

Because he knows that I know what it is.

I’m reminded of Mr Burns, in a sense: