Once you make up your mind never to stand waiting and hesitating when your conscience tells you what you ought to do, and you have got the key to every blessing that a sinner can reasonably hope for.

i breathe like it were my first, and my last, and i wonder
dreams pour over me like waters that flow into time and silence
the outer world calls me, a distant rumble, remembering

Fire is no mystery to what is being burned.

By manner of signs and sigils have I conducted my science. For I never had the illusion that anything truly incredible came from anywhere but by or from what is higher than myself. If ever there were a genius stroke in any of my dabblings, I could explain forever just why I let the ink fall like that, but I will not be telling the truth of it: all of it would merely be rationalization after the fact, when what need be said of it was that it was where God touched me, a hint of the mysterium tremendum. Or perhaps it is not even that, perhaps only did I misunderstand the purpose of what is above, and could only askew report the path of the light; that what is possible is too wonderful for me to conceive, and I only can concoct a shadow of a shadow of such brilliance. I will not say that there is no logic to it, for it is science; let me say merely that the purest of any science is as dirty as the grimiest archeology, and it is up to the chance of winds where we dig that we come upon treasure. Or we keep on digging… and that is most likely the best we of ourselves can do.

The hope rested somehow, the hope of all creatures that ever had been, and were, and were ever to be, on one small, huddled form: what small hands where rested the fate of the world. And this would be the only one who would keep it all, the pure innocence of birth, all the way to his dying day, that all his values would be of infinite worth, therefore, tested and proven true. But that was all yet to be, and one could only wonder what rested behind those little eyes, of which they were said did not shed any tear that night, nor did his lips utter any cry: what mysterious love could be behind such a simple face. That mighty God was born so tiny a figure, to be as we were, except that here would not fall short of the glory. Christmas: the hope of it we can still feel, when we believed there were none who could not be saved; not a soul overlooked; God with us, forevermore.

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’,
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’,
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

– Bob Dylan

Hans Baldung Grien: Nativity

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2.

a hush of awe at the unspeakable fire, my outer senses are ablaze, still
within me untouchable is my smallest soul, far and away the closest thing
there is purpose here that scavenges below dawn, taller than known space
(i have seen such a light as to wither all darkness in singlest epiphany)
my mind stretches past the starlight depths in the contemplation of night
and there is a flicker of remembrance above the heights of all wind
i suddenly breathe, like an angel blinked into existence out of nothing
(i have been haunted by that dream, you know the one, where you…)
for i am nowhere but in the presence of that which burns me into being
i am inside a perception of the impossible, and see myself believing
now, as time stands on edge: hearken to the silent call of light: let go

If we are to accept the teaching of Jesus at all, then the only test of the reality of a man’s religion is his attitude to his fellow men. The only possible proof that a man loves God is the demonstrated fact that he loves his fellow men.

In the dreaming, fire lit all my whispers, leaves of light scattering.

In the dreaming, night crept into my voice, till I spoke only moonlight.

In the dreaming, I tasted the void of space, like ice ground into nothing.

In the dreaming, I sliced open the belly of the sun, the glowing blood.

In the dreaming, hands all joined in an unknown spell, and rainfall.

In the dreaming, vision crossed into myth, and believed for a moment.

In the dreaming, death stood over me my whole life, watching, winking.

I have seen things go wrong, and perhaps it was a blessing. For now, when things align, when things smoothly run their course, it is to me the subject of amazement. And these who have never had it so that the work could not be done, that water would not run, nor the gears grind without turning — these for whom the world has always been aright: they do not see with eyes that spot the remarkable in the everyday happenstances. For I have seen the shadow of a world that never was, where one cannot carry without it all spilling, where machines cannot roll the smallest length without malfunction, where life is horribly misshapen and inexplicably halted. Be ye thankful, in true spirit, for the smallest boredoms, therefore: for such times of the slowest functioning are all miracles. Blessed is he who can see what he has without it have been taken away.

We of the Kingdom know that we live here in yesterday.

I have driven through these lands with my eyes shut, wondering;
I have thought that nothing comes of dreaming if he merely dreams;
this place where I am — gone so far as to begin again, here.

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways,
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

– Bob Dylan

Charles Sheeler
Ford Plant-Criss-Crossed Conveyors

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When a man really gives up trying to make something out of himself — a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman, a righteous or unrighteous man, ... when in the fullness of tasks, questions, success or ill-hap, experiences and perplexities, a man throws himself into the arms of God… then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, and it is thus that he becomes a man and Christian.

I want to fall head over heels in love. I want to drown in it. I don’t want to be able to tell which way is up, dizzy to the point where I forget my own name. It’s been so long since I staked out such a territory in my heartspace, opened all the doors inside me to expose those inner depths. I am afraid of it, too, I must admit, for to leave oneself open like that invites so much the more injury if one is suddenly dropped, however high you have risen suddenly to fall that height. One wonders if I still remember how to do it, to let down one’s guard like that, to make oneself vulnerable to someone who is more stranger than not. Even if the chemistry makes it seem as if you’ve known each other forever and a day. But who is to say what comes of what? Where would poetry be without the hurt? Better to fall than never have been aloft, n’est-ce pas? And who knows, there is that chance it’ll work out, however miniscule it seems — miniscule unless it happens, and what you have then would it be to seem that the whole wide world is at your fingertips.