The kiss, the ink, and the quill shall be your guarantee that this mission is from God, and that it cannot be corrupted.
I pray for help, for quiet, space, energy, and freedom from distraction. I am the Lord’s humble servant—this all feels so huge, what can I do but say, “Yes, if you help me,” and then humanly, knuckle down?
Holy, holy, holy day, this beginning! There is much to say and I do not know where to start. How to fill pages with the love of God?! He will lead me. All is in his hands.
INTRODUCTION
PEOPLE SOMETIMES REACT AS IF IT WERE strange that God still speaks to us. But why should one Beloved not speak to another? For what could be more natural than that my Creator should speak to my heart, or yours to your own? What could be more expected than that the Word might continue to express himself, as he has done since time dawned by his command?
Do not be alarmed, dear reader, for I do not claim any special relationship with God, nor do I insist that what is contained in this tiny offering plate of a book are locutions, for they were not given dramatically, but softly in the heart of silent prayer. Nor are the words set down here holy; this is not in any way Scripture, and where there is anything that you feel detours from that dear and beloved book, please stick with the Bible.
I am simply receiving and putting wordy flesh on the bones of thoughts that come unbidden in that place of prayerful openness, as mystics are wont to do. I believe all of this is given by God for sharing, but I acknowledge my own capacity for error and foolishness at the same time. Discernment is vital and must be driven by the Holy Spirit.
After each offering, I have placed the Hebrew word selah, which is found mostly in the book of Psalms. It is traditionally held to mean an instruction to pause and reflect, and I feel that it is good to do just this—to stop and savour what we have just read before carrying on—exactly as we might take a moment between mouthfuls of rich food.
Sometimes I refer to God using traditional terms such as Lord, Father, or using male pronouns, sometimes with a female image such as a mother. These are just a matter of convenience, as, of course, the Trinity both encompasses and exceeds all our ideas and definitions of gender and relationship. Please do not let my narrow use of these terms make you feel excluded from hearing that beloved voice.
Likewise, be assured that God never shows us things to condemn us, but rather to help us see more clearly how we might love him, ourselves, and others better. If he speaks to us of hardness of heart, for instance, it is to gift us with an opportunity to come to him and soften.
I give you this small book then, as a voice calling in the wilderness that few visit, and my only claim for it is that these words are dear to my heart as from my Beloved, and kept like love letters to remind me of what love speaks, and to keep that desire aflame.
Light
EVERY SPARK OF LIGHT, every small particle that illuminates, this is the love, the very heart of God, speaking light and joy over the world. The shining of water reveals the true nature of creation, to reflect. We reflect for his glory, both the light that is contained in every piece of air and sky, and the love of the heart that turns to its maker every minute of every day. How such a heart, given to God, will flutter and warm with turning, constant turning, back to him and away from the mire of the world!
For every turning is a manifestation of Grace and is holy and pure. Purity is misunderstood, but it fires like a dart at God’s heart. Whenever a glance, a thought, a longing, aims itself towards God and towards the will and intentions of God’s heart, there is purity, there is holiness. This holiness attracts and receives of itself, like a magnet retrieves metal. Holiness draws the holy and sacred, the good and the glorious, into itself, all returning to the place of its birth. And light is the same, reflecting back to itself over and over again so that it exists in waves as well as particles, always and ever showing the way to God and coming home to him. Let the world fall away.
Selah
Silence
WHEN THE HAILSTONES COME, hot and heavy, the silence falls too, between each orb. The silence of falling air is louder to my ears than the clattering of ice. The silence is white and deep and broad. It covers everything in an avalanche of purity. All is covered, mantled in the glory of silence. Noise especially. For where noise is, there is a covering surround of silence, or the noise would not sound. Where the dark is, the light waits to engulf it. Where the chaos is, the order waits to redeem it. Where the sound is, the silence waits also, patiently to cascade and descend, to flow into every corner and around every obstacle.
Just as there is more air in a jar of marbles than there is glass, or more space in a handful of sand than there is silicon, so there is more silence in a cacophony than there is noise. Listen for it, look for it, let it become the language of your heart: not a strange other tongue, but as natural to you as any speech.
For silence and space is what gives my universe her shape, what defines her, and it would be well for my prophets and people to become acquainted with these things, the building blocks of creation. Make friends therefore, with emptiness, and come to know nothing, and you will be full to bursting with new life and sated by wonder.
Silence is charged with, rings with, the power of the unsaid. It gathers it in, pulls it, condenses around it until it must be unleashed as song—released into creative acts. When empty it begins again, reloading, discharging, like a pupil constantly dilating, or a flower opening and closing. Like the ventricles of a beating heart. Like the very breath of God.
Selah
Seed
SEED IS HOW LIGHT ENTERS THE WORLD. Life is made up of pods and cases, wombs, and soft bellies full of newness. Here is my melting pot of creativity, where tiny fish and elegant gazelles alike, peas and wayward souls are fashioned. All is spiralled into form, by light and texture, home and free, made never to be unmade, created for life through death. For all such casings are finite and limited in time.
All eggshells will be cracked open to let life leak out and be born into the air. Each life must leave its cocooned beginnings and breathe the free air I have provided. There are no exceptions to this in my will. For it is not death that you are created for, though you will all pass through it, but for life—life in all its full abundant richness that you will enter and for which you were destined and designed from the first spark—for the universe of love in its full and whole spectrum, every colour expanding to bursting point, like a proud heart full of daddy-love.
There are no restraints here, no smallness of feeling, no holding back. Tides of emotion run deep and true and allow themselves the liberty of touch and devotion, of expressing the grace of God. There is no stiff upper lip stifling of your true emotions with me. I would rather you stamped and raged, toddler-tantrum fist-pumping frustration explosions than stood before me in a calmly exteriored containment of lava. Pour it out and be done with it.
By the same token, let me in, ask me to inhabit every emotion, every hurt, every tired muscle and aching bone, every weary blood cell that will have me, and I will make my home there too. For nothing can hold my greatness, but I can shine it abroad, like the refraction of light from the purest source. There is nowhere it cannot reach, and all life begins from my shining.
Travesties are places where my light seems thwarted, held back, shut out by the blackout curtains of stubborn hearts. Surround yourselves then with givers of light and not keepers of the dark who will try to persuade you that you can exist cut off from me, from your source, from the Light.
Selah
Triumph
TRIUMPH IS NOT THE WINNING