What Has God Wrought;
or, Out of the Belly of Hell
Well.
As I sat here, having said a prayer,
giving it over to God, as you might say, and not knowing
what to say, a couple lines came to mind:
Sitting here in the belly of the beast…
And…
“From Hell’s heart I stab at thee!”
Why, exactly and in full, I’ll keep to myself, nourishing my allusiveness in my bosom as the slow fire by which I’ll simmer this medicinal meal for you…
But it’s enough to say…
First, that I sit in an ephemeral moment of stillness in Jian’s Ark – an
augenblicklich dilation, both in the eye of the storm of external physical activity which has externalized the vision into a concretized reality, and in the tempestuous waves of internal suffering which have battered my holey hermit’s-hut hunched on a small patch of mountain-desert, nestled high in a cold iron range far from men’s sight…
Second, that it’s
raining outside – a slow, soaking rain, undulating in dilating and contracting waves of subtly sinuous intensity – a rain of a qualitatively different kind than the few other rains we’ve had the last few months, tinged by the tang of the creeping cold slithering hither from the near northern horizon…
And third, that it’s both
been on my mind and
only seems right, in light of this last writing:
I said there,
until another day.
Who knew then that that day would be this one, and so soon?
But as the scripture has it:
“But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”
Yes.
And I keep the fullness of my meaning to myself, giving you my allusiveness instead; but who receives the sweetness of the medicine and who its bitterness, we shall see.
And as I sat here, thinking of what to say and hearing the echoes of those first lines above in the subtle inner ears of my mind, the name of
Jonah came to mind.
And having read his story in Scripture to refresh my understanding, it seemed all the more appropriate to me, and wondrous, to hear what was written there:
“Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.
“But the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep. So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not...
“Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous. And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest
is upon you. Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring
it to the land; but they could not: for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them. Wherefore they cried unto the LORD, and said, We beseech thee, O LORD, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for thou, O LORD, hast done as it pleased thee.
“So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging. Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the LORD, and made vows.
“Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
“Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly,
“And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I,
and thou heardest my voice.
“For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.
“Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.
“The waters compassed me about,
even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.
“I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars
was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.
“When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.
“They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.
“But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay
that that I have vowed. Salvation
is of the LORD.
“And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry
land.”
...
A tear comes to my eye –
tears to my eyes, in fact – and I wonder,
What has God wrought?
In the reflection of the tears that sit in my eyes but do not fall, I look, and ask, and say,
“What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God!”
Indeed,
“I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I,
and thou heardest my voice.”
I keep the fullness of my meaning to myself, giving you my allusiveness instead; who receives the sweetness of the medicine and who its bitterness, we shall see, but already I taste the answer on my tongue.
...
Well.
Did you know, when I sat down to write this, having dimly envisioned its doing in the light of my mind’s eye, illumined by my heart’s slow-simmering fire, I had no idea any of this would come up?
What has God wrought? And what is he working?
I should shudder to know, for fear of the terror and the glory!
Well...
I will trust, as ever, that that was the preamble that was needed, though it wasn’t what I set out to share today.
I’m guessing, if you’ve read this much, or if perchance you’ve wandered the graven halls of this growing gallery, my
many-grottoed Menegroth as I called it elsewhere...
you’ll know that I’m a writer.
But let’s leave aside,
if you would, whether anyone
else knows it, or will ever
pay me for it –
as if such measures were ever just!
They were crooked from the first, and so shall they ever be.
But, you may not know that I’ve also always been a
letter-writer.
Yes.
As long as I can remember, down even to earliest childhood – longhand, both cursive and print, often in multiple meticulous drafts, made always with an eye towards beauty of form and content.
Never mind that it’s been years since I’ve made a habit of it consistently, speaking of the concretized material form of the thing; though there was a day long ago, clear in my mind’s eye, when I recall hating with a vehemence the cold impersonality of computers and the internet, refusing to corrupt my calling with them…
… with age, at least in my case, comes breadth, vision, wisdom, and flexibility, so that it seems to me, as I consider the emptiness and impermanence of all earthly things, this small concession and sacrifice might bring about a greater good, for myself and for others, than a rigid and masochistic adherence to a short-sighted, cross-eyed, misguided doctrine of “absolute purity” would.
Yes.
Still awake?
Well.
Be that as it may, y’Honor, we’ll let the great sage and esteemed philosopher Chief Clancy Wiggum have the final word on the foregoing matter before we move on to the proverbial and much-anticipated point:
Yes.
I’ve always been a letter-writer.
I alluded,
elsewhere, to the thousands of unique and colorful pieces of correspondence I shared,
off the top of the dome, mind you, with hundreds of clients at the Spring Forest Qigong Healing Center.
That took things to a whole new level for me.
But, even since
extracting myself from the slaughterhouse, with its blood-gummed floors bridging the swollen sewers of seething offal flowing under it, and
forswearing the eating of such meat as it offers for mass-consumption (so to speak)... I’ve kept up the correspondence, if on a smaller scale and with a different “clientele,” though ever with the selfsame savor.
Yes.
Savor?
Oh, yeah.
Even while at SFQ, I wrote a lot like I do here –
sometimes sawin’ on them strangs high, sometimes low, always pepperin’ the correspondence with a unique and savory blend of music, memes, personal anecdotes, and foolish-wise non-sequiturs.
Sometimes clients (and co-workers) wondered at this, astonished that I not only
wrote the way that I did, but both
got away with it for years
and
seemed to obtain good results therewith.
What can I say?
The fundamental essence-vibration
beneath, behind, and
within the many-colored fanfare of all that I wrote was
love, sincerity, and
truth.
Therefore those who ingested it, irrespective of their digestive capacities, almost uniformly extracted and derived some good from it.
So.
All that having been said, at length and by way of a thoroughly perambulatory preamble (or two), I’m gonna share some recent correspondence with you.
I’ll only share my side of the conversation in each case.
As needed, I’ll share a word or two of contextualizing explanation; but otherwise, I think it’s not needed.
And as someone who’s enjoyed reading the one-sided correspondence of some literary heavyweights that preceded me, I can say, with some authority and confidence, that it’s not only not
necessary to see the other half of the equation, but that this sort of thing
constitutes its own kind of satisfying literary genre.
Taste and see.
15 October 2026
Elsewhere, and, most relevantly to this current flow of associations passing between us,
here in particular, I’ve alluded to a friend, a lifelong propagandist, who readers might be surprised – well,
is my friend.
Well, he is.
Or, he
was; I’m not sure he appreciates my correspondence, though he keeps soliciting (or eliciting) it.
Well, when I say he’s a
propagandist, which he
is, I’m
oversimplifying.
As far as his
written work goes, I’d actually say it takes two forms:
hypnotic propaganda, and something more along the lines of
heartfelt autobiographical reminiscences.
Underneath it all, he’s got a heart of gold, and for that I love him; it’s that that shines through in that latter kind of writing.
Just before Christmas of last year, he’d written a reflective piece
on Christmas, literature, the true spirit of the season, his longings, his regrets, and his ongoing dread of mortality.
If I shared that here, not only would you appreciate its art, but you’d see what a work of poetry, in response
to it, my
own response truly is.
Ah, well; I’ll leave it to your imagination.
If you see “----” in what follows, it shows that I’ve omitted something, specifically my friend’s name.
+ + +
Wes thu, ----, hal!
Every cup has its bitter dregs; but a good doctor will know that that’s where the medicine is.
In Chinese medicine they say,
the best medicine is the most bitter; I say
the effervescence is evanescent, and
the tipsiness is the whiskey on the pacifier, so to speak.
That’s the balance, and you’ll find it everywhere, though
I wouldn’t call myself a Manichean.
Gurdjieff spoke of Holy Affirming, Holy Denying, Holy Reconciling — in all things, polarity.
But what reconciles them?
Your talk of Dickens brought to mind St. Basil, Fool for Christ, one of my favorite saints, and the first I connected with, many years ago:
Not quite a bootblack — a poor cobbler -- but the resonance is there, especially for a perpetual cobbler, in the Shakespearean sense, like me:
Speaking of liturgical worship, I listened to a recording of Greek Orthodox monks recently, and have listened to it a lot since. I was surprised to see the person who made the video had, apparently, put a recording of liturgical services to the audio, and it moved me, even to tears.
It brought so much to mind, I couldn’t write it all.
But I’d say, it really “drove home” the place of beauty in sacredness, in worship.
The Orthodox would say,
this is how God wants to be worshipped, and it’s a continuation of the tradition going back to the early days of the Temple.
What went to my heart, so to speak, was to see that all that beauty, even the crowns and chains and gold and jewels and robes —
the monks and priests had no attachment to them!
Look at the humility and simple innocence on their faces. Look at the reverence with which they kiss the holy icons, or the hands of the priest.
All that beauty, to glorify God, or the Virgin; but underneath it all, they wear black —
dead to the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkMcWuCzBGU
The stuff they play in stores is crass in comparison; silence, indeed, is holier, as any Fool for Christ will tell you.
Jian
Here, I don’t believe I’ll elaborate too much.
What I’ll share is dated
January 8th of 2026 – a few weeks after the last thing I shared.
The same friend had written something like a poem, which a friend of his –
big-time music producer – had enjoyed and made a song out of… using AI.
Ho, boy.
Me no rikey, and if you’re not a stranger in these halls,
why won’t need explanation.
Naturally, this led to a friendly exchange of a series of emails, chiefly on the subject of
what AI even is, what the human soul and heart and being are, and whether there’s any bridging of the dread
Ginnungagap between them.
No need to share all those emails here, just the last of my replies in that series.
+ + +
Thank you, ----!
Well, it touched me to see your example at the bookstore, for sure.
I’m doing my best.
I’d say... experiencing what I’m experiencing is both amazing and wonderful, in truer or fuller senses of the words than the usual, but also very tiring and endlessly surprising (and not always in a fun way).
I am learning, more and more, to ask for divine help, and I mean
really asking, with tears and humility, which isn’t always easy, but is getting easier. I just cry and cry, and it’s not bad — I like it. Because... I have seen so many times how prayers have been answered.
What’s the psalm about weeping so much the couch was wet?
If you believe these things, that’s the type of prayer God likes best — a broken heart.
And I've reflected on this —
that the poet and musician, God loves best and makes a king — he loves the beauty, the feeling:
sweet to his ears, so to speak.
But so often, it seems, I find myself in a life-situation that just defies understanding — I don’t even realize what’s the deeper significance till later — and then I’m like,
I definitely need help, because how can I possibly understand all the chess-pieces moving around me, or what game is even being played?
Do you know what I mean?
Real humility is to say,
I really have no idea what I’m even supposed to be doing, where I’m even supposed to be going, what’s going on around me, or how I’m going to do what I need to do.
This is a prayer, this sort of thing, and it makes me think of the Qigong teacher I like best, Jim Nance, who’d say things like, “Every question is a prayer, and every prayer is answered.”
Anyway — living experience of divinity, even a small glimpse or whiff of it, in my beginner’s experience, really ... gives meaning to
trembling before the Lord, but also things like
glory and
majesty.
It’s both the most simple and mundane thing, and the most uncanny, in a positive sense.
Jian
More correspondence between me and the same friend, begun
January 26th, 2026, spanning a couple days.
To be honest, “the ball got rolling” on this flow of associations between us, based on an event I don’t even remember – I don’t keep up with what’s called “The News,” holding with Thoreau that “I am sure that I never read any memorable news.”
Anyway.
Some straw-spun fools’-gold, more propaganda about something supposedly happening in Minnesota, no doubt, a calculated emotional-irritant injected into the main-stream to rouse the rabble’s passions, shaking and stirring them well, the better to satisfy their leech-like overlords’ gustatory predilections in depredating them.
Anyway.
This friend sent me an email about it all, titled “Thinking of your state” and simply containing the lines, “Must be hard to be in Minnesota now. Terrible.”
Of course, many things, including something like the above, passed through my mind.
I also wondered whether my friend was being serious or not –
lifelong propagandist, dontcha know, and if you read Vonnegut’s
Mother Night, as I know he did (and told him) you’ll be aware that full commitment to that role comes with the unique peril of… starting to believe your own lies.
Anyway.
I’ll share my initial reply, then my reply to his (laconic, cynical, and sarcastic) reply to
that, which alluded to some of the wilder, more
outré aspirations of the Flower Power generation.
I trust your mind can hopscotch the gaps in the narrative, chalking them in
ex post facto as your fingers see fit.
+ + +
Hey ----,
It’s good to hear from you — I was wondering how you were doing.
You know — thank you for thinking of me!
Well, it’s hard out here for a G, but not cause of anything
Teevee toldja, lemme tell ya:
Hyah!
I’m still trying to rustle up a gainful living while wrangling this old house. Life’s got me under its rolling-pin, and I have to trust I’m in a good baker’s kitchen. Time will tell how things turn out.
Anyway, I got a couple real long replies to you going, and finally thought, “No one wants this.” So much explaining, bordering on the pedantic-didactic.
I don’t know.
The years of Qigong practice mount.
I find myself drawn deeper, by way of Christianity (such as I know it so far), into what only
started with Qigong.
All, to find myself more and more — already a perpetual “innocent abroad” and “stranger in a strange land” — more and more...
dazed and confused by what passes for reality, or human being, around me.
On top of that, I really do think the whole world is undergoing changes on many levels, unseen levels maybe, and maybe that’s why the various... phenomena-eruptions of various kinds: even taken as theater, fever-dreams of overheated minds, they are still symptomatic of deep imbalance, pushed upward and outward as grotesque growths, full of purulent congealed miasmata.
What am I saying?
I think of one of the Qigong healers I worked with saying that when he used to do healing among infectious people — flu, colds, etc. — he’d get scared at first, and when he did, he got sick, too: his Qi-Field weakened, making him susceptible.
We live in a world of Qi Fields, whose bounds are fluid and changeable.
When he let go of fear, he stopped getting sick.
So, innocent abroad, stranger in a strange land, hapless hobo waiting for the train that will take me home — while I’m
here, I seek refuge in a perfect love that casts out all fear, focusing meanwhile on what is directly pertinent to me, whether in the form of the immediately sensible life around my body, or else in the subtle messages from unseen realms, felt in my heart, and which form a coherent and sensible life within me.
I trust both as accurate transmitters of information, and both already give me more than enough to think about!
Anyway, good night! Sorry I went on and on, after all.
Jian
+ + +
That’s funny.
Well!
I’ll only say that the evidence of my own senses, gross and subtle, in my little life, inner and outer, shows forth the truth of my perspective, whatever the Pentagon may or may not have done.
If you follow the half-hidden thread woven throughout this ongoing conversation, I think you have to admit... if you like the story of Christ, without going further into whether it’s more than “just a story” or not, then you have to accept that “failure” has no bearing on rightness, or even on ultimate success, though that might seem contradictory.
Some things play out on vaster time-scales than we can comprehend, certainly in ways a limited, “worldly,” all-too-human perspective cannot comprehend.
Again, I see that in my own little life — all the frustrations and failures and being lost in wildernesses — always seem to come to something good, in a more objective sense.
That’s little consolation to me, as I suffer and flounder without a clue what’s next, but yet it seems to keep being true.
Confronted with that truth, to my mind, one simply has to decide how to act, then try to act that way; as the bhakti-yogis say,
you are entitled to your actions, but not to the fruits of your actions.
Anyway.
See ya!
Jian
Continuing the last conversation-thread, woven in relation to the straw-spun fools’-gold propaganda-narrative featuring Minnesota, on
January 28th my friend sent me a link to some silly propaganda-anthem, a YouTube music video, that was then “making the rounds” (or rather, swirling feverishly and fruitlessly in frothing eddies far from my life’s course).
To my ears’ taste, besides being propaganda, it had the sickly savor of AI-slop, trough-trash barely fit for sotted swine.
Here’s what I wrote in reply.
+ + +
Well, sir! I could say so, so much —
but to what end?
Lately, I’ve been taking more time to enjoy silence —
no talking, little thinking, no wi-fi, no music, no podcasts — just coming back to the present, to myself, and my surroundings.
I think now of a metaphor I made in the Qigong context, not entirely my own —
the process of healing and enlightenment involved in the practice being like the clarifying process of lakewater stilling.
All is turbulent, muddy, full of debris.
How to clarify?
Simply wait, be still. In time all settles, and clarity shines forth again.
I have been taking a little time, within my silence, to read, an on-again off-again love: it has its limitations, and its frustrations.
Lord of the Rings, a long favorite.
Last night I read of Minas Morgul, ghastly, corrupt city inhabited by beast-men, demons, and wraith-kings, a place of misery and torture and degradation:
“All was dark about it, earth and sky, but it was lit with light. Not the imprisoned moonlight welling through the marble walls of Minas Ithil long ago, Tower of the Moon, fair and radiant in the hollow of the hills. Paler indeed than the moon ailing in some slow eclipse was the light of it now, wavering and blowing like a noisome exhalation of decay, a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing.”
I’ve likened myself to a hapless, shoeless hobo;
how like a hapless, shoeless hobbit!
So vulnerable, so foolish, so hopeless, so clueless, walking with open eyes and open hearts into the mouth of death!
But yet, these least of beings,
hapless, hopeless, shoeless — somehow, they came to a good end —
objectively good, though it entailed their suffering to their limit, and maybe
subjectively not good.
How?
The story's been told.
So.
As for me?
I set down, refuse, and spit up the tainted flesh the Media offer me in a mockery of authentic communion, letting myself be filled and satisfied with the dew that only arises in an empty vessel.
I don’t look to corpse-lights or corpse-candles for illumination, but cling to the little Phial of incorruptible light by my breast when I fear darkness.
I look farther back in time for my inspiring anthems —
Hail, Ephraim — bless!
“I was hungry so many times
for my human nature desired to eat.
However, I stopped and did not eat,
that I may become worthy of the blessing
reserved for those who fast.
My muddy nature
demands a splash of water,
but I let it dry out,
so that it is washed
by the dew of Paradise.
My mind became an altar
and my will became a priest
and like a pure lamb
I slaughtered myself
and offered sacrifice.”
And, you know, an afterthought occurs to me, as I read this all over before sharing it with the world of Readers-Who-Aren’t-But-Who-Yet-May-Be.
This thread of correspondence ends January 28th of this year.
Since then, I’ve heard little from my friend.
Since then, I’ve spent little time writing, having spent the nine months intervening between then and nwo, almost to the day, laboring almost ceaselessly, and not without suffering, in the material realm, bringing something tangible into being.
Nine months… matter… labor… bringing into being.
Into the waters, and out of the belly of the great beast.
What, indeed, has God wrought, and what is he working?
I should tremble and weep, for the fear and the glory.
16 October 2026
