It is my Lord who sees me up in
the apple tree I've climbed. He sees me resting on a limb surrounded by red and
green apples growing on the tree branches. It is Jesus, I realize, who's
watching me from the loftiness of the clouds, and I look up to him.
Blue jays and robins dart about in
the orchard around me as a quiet breeze meets my skin. I can hear a gurgling
creek nearby when I suddenly realize, I know something new. God is taking me on
a journey today toward the setting sun, me and Jesus, who's presence I know.
We begin walking in the clouds,
high in the sky, somewhere above endless valleys, in the mysteries unknown of
the unknown. I can peer down at creation moving toward the setting sunset and
then my eyes are unexpectedly opened.
"I am now going to open your
heart to love" an unusual voice speaks. "You will be free to love
without injury. This is a fairer way I'm showing you. The path I lead you on
will eliminate your doubts and take away all your fear and uncertainty."
I'm going somewhere new I realize
as we begin moving through the sky. The place I'm going has never been seen
before but somehow, I know I have always belonged there. I can see the rings of
Saturn and then there appears a sight previously unimagined in all my
speculative thought.
"Where is this place?"
I call out. "Where am I going? Why does my heart sing so happily? Why am I
crying tears of joy? Jesus you're here with me! It's you Jesus, I know you! You
spoke to me and counselled me so many times and now I see you! I see you, my
Lord! I see you!"
As I call out to my Lord joyfully
lightening suddenly streaks across the sky. I feel joyful and at ease and then
look and see suddenly a sky more brilliant then nature on earth at its finest.
It occurs to me that God created everything while noticing unexpectedly unusual
mountains rising tens of millions of miles high. There are immense valleys
carved into their formations teeming with unusual life. I realize God is an
architect I don't begin to understand. I don't understand his plans because his
ways are larger then what my mind can conceptualize. I see only how he has made
the oceans, the continents, the rivers, the birds, fish, and animals and now I
glimpse a bit farther and see other created order numerous and varied but I
still don't understand who God really is in size.
My mind try’s now to grapple with
the design of existence but I realize God only starts with what I see here.
There is more to God then these designs and the ideas he allows human beings to
conceive of and understand within our minds. There is more to external reality
then the natural world and more to God and his plans for human beings then we
realize.
Then suddenly I find myself
kneeling on the earth where I've forgotten strangely to breath. The earths soil
is cold; my skin is pale. In a state of decay, I stand up and hear my skeletal
bones rattle together. I then notice a lamp light ahead, through the fog, and I
whisper unclear words to someone standing between the elms of the cemetery. An
illumination suddenly appears in white garments in front of me allowing me to
recognize I'm not alone and that I was never alone in this world at any time.
It was after having this vision
that I realized I wasn't going to be here in the world much longer.
The clear thoughts of God as I
imperfect Donald Carter received them
First clear thoughts: Explained
as received but not quoted directly.
After lying down in my bed
tonight next to a manger scene I have in my room God explained some of the
mystery of death more clearly to me. For people, God explained through clear
thoughts, death looks irreversible and final but for God our bodily decay is
not the end we're led to believe it is. Listening carefully to God he explained
that he doesn't just observe human beings in the present but sees all parts of
our existence in the past, present, and future. He knows us at all these points
of reality and because of this omniscience has awareness of our intricate
selves at all times which he is able to see and could replicate at any instance
if it was even necessary to do so.
God's ways surpass our grasp of
time transcending the reaches of what we understand. He can introduce our past
self into a new future state located somewhere else other then here and this
can happen in the future long after we die. We don't yet understand the record
and footprints we leave behind us in nature as our voices reverberate with
sound, and our bodily system moves through the world. Our brains are busy
thinking thoughts and having conversations with other people using ideas and
sending chemical signals through the brain God designed and nothing in these
processes and who they make us is ever lost. We haven't yet reached the
scientific advancement in understanding to recognize all the fingerprints left
behind by the living creatures through our movements, thoughts, actions, and
behavior in the world. All that we are now as a living person, especially as conscious
life, is powerful beyond our recognition and meaningful far beyond our
understanding of death and the uncertainty that lies beyond that unknown.
This world is understood by God
in intricate and complex ways. The journey we're on is one involving continues discovery
of ideas waiting in nature that are deliberately preplanned and intended for us
to happen upon to lead us to gradual maturity through life's preplanning by God
as life’s architect. Death was always intended by God to be a stumbling block
for us. The uncertainty of death inspires us to hope, to shoot at its buriers
with poetry, creativity, that shapes our beliefs about reality; this wrestling
match has deep and significant underpinnings that involve reasons related to
the complex design and preplanning of the world. As human generations struggle
for autonomy to question freely the mystery of life, we attempt to explore
reality unoppressed by different kinds of authoritarianism. Previously planned
concepts, originating many billions of years before the world existed, wait in
nature to be recognized and explored. These discoveries, some technological,
hide in reality to be invented and discovered along with other new ideas that continue
to inspire debate about morality and values placed meticulously in the planning
and order of existence to deliberately wait for us. We approach these mysteries
realities while every living creatures worth, God will reveal clearly, is
secure and valued in this life we're remarkably a part of.
The clear thoughts of God written
down as imperfect Donald Carter received them.
1) Who has lived to see an end.
Who has tamed uncertainty or tested possibility with any thorough reach; who
has looked into the sky and seen far enough to be wise; who knows himself well
or knows if life is one way or another; where do uncertainties secrets hide;
who owns them; who hides behind the curtain; where in the reaches does
possibility extend to; what are truly the loftiest fairest ways, are its
unknowns discoverable, why wonder, why look, why be open to observe.
2) What I observe in me, in every
human being with an ego, is an opinion structured on the organization of ideas,
about life, its meaning, it's terms. What I see is imperfect understanding into
reality, some observations scientific, some philosophical, some theological,
others spiritual, with minds grasping hold of ideas and then making lofty
pronouncements like they know God well, or know for certain that God is
nonexistent, or that they know what the unknown is about, that remains
unapproached.
3) The mystery is not just a
vacuous empty expanse but an endless frontier and hiding in its reach are
story's, world's, discoveries, ways we haven't seen, answers we don't have,
clarity we aren't close to perceiving to understand the depth, mystery,
possibility, evil, good. The unknown isn't made known to us as we scramble
around in our environment because our answers are limited to what we now know,
or come steeped in anchorless lore, or claim to know God's ways well
prematurely, as we align to this group or that, old moralizing, or atheist
gibberish.
None of us knows the real mystery
not the highest ecclesiastical clerics, not the elite of universities, none of
us knows realities depth; none of us sees where the unknown points; if we could
travel ten trillion times ten trillion infinite times, where in the
vacancy of the interstellar depth would we be; why presume new beginnings
aren't there, minds exhibiting high reaching thoughts, descriptions of being,
knowledge of all existence, or glimpses into the unending, on wonders so large
no mind, no matter how large, has approached its quant harbors. Sail your vessel
into peaceful harborages, stare back at death, wink at him, and catch the
breeze in your sails, watch the gulls in the sky soar over the alien town,
listen to the sounds of strange foreign drums; listen as wise voices speak,
take note of what they say; they also live disillusioned while thinking they
know, but how, by what evidence; what do they gather in their barns; what
documents do they recite; has any of us really got to know God fully.
4) On a plateau nearby this world
perhaps watches an imperfect observer, and from that elevation he knows our
imperfections more discernably then we do; but perhaps what everything in
existence is really about is beyond his awareness too; as he watches the error
and conflicts of men, as he observes man's cruelty and sees our absurd
determination to say with supposed authority what reality is and isn't, they
perhaps realize more wisely that none of us here has come close to the real
foundations of ultimate truth and understanding.
5) In the absence of
understanding are estimates but not real truth so I'm weary of truth tellers. I
have listened to them speak for too long. I now look upon reality through a
different window. My hope does not find reassurance from the imperfect heart
and understanding of man. He doesn't understand life's mystery, and I know how
eager he/she is to divide humanity and find solidarity in a narrow sect while
losing sight of universal possibilities of hope which to me now seem more
reasonable and fairer then his ways.
6) Maybe I'm weary here in this
world because what surrounds me in others is not complete love. The environment
professes love but the prescribed antidote, the terms people understand reality
by, are terms that separate communities and find harmony in like-mindedness
ways that are difficult to adapt too when you believe God and his love are more
far reaching. When I observe ideas spoken by man to really be mixed with
poison; when the beliefs demand of people in an uncertain home, somewhere we
don't know where everything we’re part of is, that we know what existence is
about, by this they mean for us to conform to myth and obey archaic words; such
thinking asks us to believe ourselves right for any hope, a desperation we face
to secure for ourselves a future in this environment; but love shouldn't behave
so irrationally that man must believe what seems questionable; requiring us to
adapt as true statements that come spoken in claims of what seems impossible in
nature; to find safe passage we must accept, by this dogma, the downfall and
destruction of most other people; because this is supposed to be the only hope
for us in existence and where love is really found.
7) In the absence of friendship,
light, love, hope, meaning, is always the rumored obliterating state of total
nonexistence where all consciousness gets extinguished and meaning and purpose
become irrelevant. There peace might prevail in a final irony. One meets
uncertainty with desperation to be met with the cold hand of indifference
living amidst what might have revealed more otherness then we realize but that
is impossible for us ever to know of it.
8) The furniture is set out, a
view awaits from the sitting cushions, the company is said to be good, as the
hour of the gathering closes in. This will be a day I haven't seen I will see
new people, ponder new thoughts, and peer farther then I've ever seen before. I
will surpass my prior understanding, if all goes well, but what will I then
know; what is it I'll see? Who knows anything far reaching here. Who has pulled
the clouds and stars back and peered honestly into what we're part of, only
those who harbor illusions of certainty, and paint canvasses describing life's
beauty that say they understand life.
9) As I walk into the unknown,
I now doubt my human guide. He is like others; he has heard things; he has
amassed ideas and interpreted beliefs from them; he has had his mind shaped by
unsubstantiated claims; he has listened to claims and bought into them; but
what is the proof of that which he thinks is true; who amongst us has evidence
of these ultimate truth claims; I don't see truth; there is no transparency, no
obvious answers; to assume such is naive; who understands well God; who
understand the Lord fully what man or woman?
10) Don't pretend the sky is
empty and only you can comprehend existence. This isn't an anomalous and rare
sequence of events. we aren't in the midst of meaninglessness. We're looking
right in the eyes of open-endedness. I don't care what identity you ascribe to;
what your foolish dogma asserts; you haven't gauged hardly anything. You
profess understanding but what have you really learned.
Why wouldn't real wisdom be
fairer then we are. When has devious waring man ever been fair. Who amongst us
has ever looked at all people in all places in all periods of time and asked
kindly with empathy what is it cruel minded people expect you to know? Where is
the great sign in the sky? What does that sign say so clearly about anything?
Your signs are divisive and their suspicious to me. You say they are certain
beyond question, but we know your ways and what anchors you to real
understanding, which is absolutely nothing; you have no real grasp on
certainty.
Yes God is fair, but you can't
trust a human person to speak with real fairness or understanding; you can only
trust him/her so far; they will always revert to speaking what is inherently
human; this rational defines good in a way that abandons a great multitude of
humanity; defining love as a perilous discovery that requires adherence to
fanciful ideas in a tradition who's ideas are imperfect; God perhaps is not
understood by the human person when the claims of his love separate one person
from any other member of the human family.
11) When I meet God, I will
experience fairness; I will understand imperfection more clearly. I think I
will see human understanding for what I now suspect it is, which is thought littered
with imperfection, an effort by us to weigh in and say, "this is what is
true", "this is the way that matters", “this is where everything
leads to and who gets there". I know what my heart now tells me, that such
council, such ideas, devised by multitudes of people across time, that limit
universal reach, that hide from humanity greater possibility, that these are
only the thoughts of imperfect people harnessed into a force of persuasion and
influence that arbitrarily abandons the future worth of multitudes of other
imperfect people; this is not for certain a plan predestined by God.
12) When I observe the unknown
for what it really is, if I then come back here and claim to you, "Listen
this is how things really are!" are you going to be fair with me? Are you
going to bother to listen to what I say? You who thinks you know so much. You
and your systematic interpretations, your chronology of texts, your entrenched
beliefs about reality. I have heard a voice in the wilderness cry out in a loud
holler; this voice has not succumb to the world's certainty; the reach of where
this voices arguments point transcend me and you; the voice of clarity is a
voice of hope, a sound that resonates with the weary, clarifies uncertainty for
the confused, opens the imagination to the possible, that suggests love is real
and reaches a scale of good no human ear has ever approached fully hearing;
this possibility of hope lies beyond the dullness of doubt, it hides in the
unknown and waits for all the weary.
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