His wife said that on two other occasions, Dick had recalled what this apparition had said but had been interrupted, once by a ringing telephone and once by a terrific crash in the streets, after which he could no longer remember. Of course these interruptions were not at all meaningful, not like this massive stroke, which proved for poor Dick to be fatal.
64. I Pity the Fool
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from prison:
“The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us.
Before God and with God, we live without God.”
65. Dull
Temporal lobe epilepsy often causes changes in behavior and thinking even when the patient is not having seizures. These changes include hypergraphia (voluminous writing), an intensification but also a narrowing of emotional response, and an obsessive interest in religion and philosophy.
Dostoevsky often wrote of the rapture he felt during a seizure when he was in the frightful presence of the universal harmony.
A Carmelite nun whose visions during her epileptic seizures caused many to view her as a spiritual master feared that her gifts were symptoms of illness rather than grace and submitted to surgery, which was successful.
Life without epilepsy was quite dull, she discovered.
It was as though she had tumbled from a sacred mountain into a ruined village, she said.
66. Rebirth
Three strange beings called angels visit Abraham to tell him and his wife, Sarah, that they will have a child. They are both ninety years old.
Sarah laughs at the angels and then denies that she did and is not quite forgiven.
Nay, but thou didst laugh, one of the angels says to her.
Why was Sarah given the opportunity for understanding, for evolution and transformation, the chance to kick herself up to the next level, when she was so dim-witted? She thought they meant an actual child, a baby!
They did not mean an actual child, a baby.
Still, anyway, if you take it literally, as you might, as well as morally, allegorically and mystically, why did God want to exact that dreadful sacrifice once the child was born?
It was Abraham’s idea to make the poor, unsuspecting kid, Isaac — whose name may or may not mean laughter actually — carry wood, the very wood that would incinerate him, up to the altar. That was Abraham’s rather unnecessary contribution to the story, not God’s.
Finally, God stepped in and said, No, you don’t have to do it, and just in time.
67. Forgiveness
In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel was poised to launch nuclear warheads — the Temple Weapons — rather than suffer defeat at the hands of the Arabs. At the time, Israel had at least thirteen twenty-kiloton atomic bombs — the Hiroshima bomb was sixteen kilotons. Armageddon was avoided only when the U.S. secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, acting in the vacuum left by the travails of his “drunken friend,” President Richard Nixon, authorized an emergency resupply of high-tech, though conventional, weaponry to the Israelis.
Prime Minister Golda Meir said:
“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”
68.) (
Jakob Boehme was a German mystic to whom God revealed himself in a ray of light being reflected in a tin plate. Some describe it as a pewter plate, though after all pewter is merely a number of alloys, including lead, of which tin is the main component.
So it was light striking a tin plate and Boehme saw God. In an instant he experienced the total mystery of God.
This was the revelation upon which all his writings are based. For years he did nothing but painstakingly attempt to translate this vision’s shattering significance into language.
Boehme had a wife and six children and they lived in poverty. His wife was not terribly supportive of his fantasizing about God, preferring that he provide for his family and put food on the table. Fill those tin plates with food.
Perhaps it was the very fact that the plates were empty that allowed Boehme to witness God so clearly.
After his first book was published, a wealthy man, believing Boehme to be a genius, became his patron, taking care of all his financial difficulties, totally supporting all those children and the complaining wife.
This act of generosity destroyed Boehme. His later writings are full of resentments and puzzlements. They became dull, slack, and repetitive. He no longer had to struggle with the tedious outward realities that opposed his inner experience of a manifesting God.
On his tomb is an image of God expressed like this:
) (
which is sad, after all he strived to do.
69. Inoculum
The Lord was in line at the pharmacy counter waiting to get His shingles shot.
When His turn came, the pharmacist didn’t want to give it to Him.
This is not right, the pharmacist said.
In what way? the Lord inquired.
In so many ways, the pharmacist said. I scarcely know where to begin.
Just give it to him, a woman behind the Lord said. My ice cream’s melting.
It only works 60 to 70 percent of the time anyway, the pharmacist said.
Do you want to ask me some questions? the Lord said.
You’re not afraid of shingles, are you? It’s not so bad.
I am not afraid, the Lord said.
Just give Him the shot for Pete’s sake, the woman said.
Have you ever had chicken pox?
Of course, the Lord said.
How did you hear about us? the pharmacist said.
70. Driveshaft
The Lord had always wanted to participate in a Demolition Derby. Year after year he would attend the one-day summer event on a particular small island where junked cars, gutted and refitted for the challenge, would compete. He studied the drivers’ techniques carefully. It was mayhem! Usually the drivers would prepare their wrecks themselves, but there was also a raffle where a neophyte could win the chance to drive a donated wreck. A hundred raffle tickets were available each summer. They cost ten dollars each.
Once the Lord bought ninety-nine tickets but his name wasn’t drawn. If He hadn’t been the Lord, He would have suspected someone was trying to tell Him something.
He persisted, however, and one year he won.
You should wear long pants and boots and a long-sleeved shirt, you got that stuff? He was asked.
I do, the Lord said.
A helmet’s always a good idea too, He was told.
The Lord’s vehicle was a pink Wagoneer. The Wagoneer recognized the Lord immediately and couldn’t fathom what this could possibly mean. In terms of herself, that is, the Wagoneer.
She had once had a happy life of dogs and children, surfboards and fishing rods. Oh the picnics! The driftwood fires! Then it had all been taken away.
And now this.
71. Fog
A child was walking with a lion through a great fog.
“I’ve experienced death many times,” the lion said.
“Impossible,” the child said.
“It’s true, my experience of death does not include my own.”
“I’m glad.”
“I’ve had near-death experiences, however.”
“Quite a different matter,” the child said.