It is to be feared that the most of us know not how much glory may be in present grace, nor how much of heaven may be obtained in holiness on the earth.

I have in dreams at times imagined that I was better than I am, and sometimes, those dreams came true. No, it was not like how I thought it would go, and there was always a lot more pain involved than I believed was absolutely necessary, but there it was: I became what I believed I could be. It took a lot of prayer along the way, and before I could chance to begin, it took a dose of complete honesty, that I needed first to see how completely deficient I was in the virtues I had thought I subscribed to. I think it has something to do with what JC had said about the truth setting you free: when you can stop making excuses for yourself, especially to yourself, you have a genuine ground from which you might start your climb. But it is possible. People can change. Progress is taking it one day at a time, with a lot of miscalculations along the way, but breakthroughs come. Perchance arrives the time when you look at yourself in the mirror and recognize this new person is you — and believe, if just for a second, in miracles.

We are shaped by forces unseen. They work for the profit not measured in gold, for the weight of souls spread throughout the world. We have all imagined that we have glimpsed the underlying order, usually a brief “aha!” when the forces of fate join and what unfolds sounds the bells that it was meant to be, when such coincidence seems that no such coincidence could be so well thought out, so speaking of higher hands invisibly guiding the waking world. We have all had strange dreams, where perhaps we are closer to the eternal world, the hidden world. Dreams that tell us things. And what would tell us that we have met an angel? For to give accommodations to strangers means there is a chance we give lodging to such creatures. One thing is clear, that when they reveal their true selves, the first thing they invariably say is, “Fear not.” And perhaps this is why that world stays unseen: this is middle ground, where it is solid, and what is above and below are heights and depths too great for mortal eyes. Perhaps, sometimes, even just to know that they are there.

Turn on a dime at least once in your life.

drunk with hoary knowledge, where the world tree grows in the frost
yet how you divide me into a thousand smoldering desires
stranded on bifrost, between middle earth and some deep purpose

No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
It’s not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there’ll be
No more turning away?

– Pink Floyd

Mordecai Ardon: Tammuz

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God is not disillusioned with us. He never had any illusions to begin with.

How time can seem endless for an hour and then we wonder where the hour went. This is the condition of man: full of sound and paradox, lost in himself, lost to the time that flows over and through him. We shelter our hearts like they were precious candle flames, then casually topple them when the time comes to act upon their light…. Look, up in the sky: a million stars that were never meant to care of how we come and go, but how they can inspire us if we let them. Long after we are gone, they will still shine their constant light: and this is not what is meant for us to be, our constant flickering. In our search to be human, let us not count the hours, for we know not when the clock strikes that we are finished. The endless hour will pass, remember, and remember that we were there for it, not matter how lost we seemed to be to the going.

I am lost in dreaming for a time, thinking only in riddles.

Within me somewhere still is a rebellious heart, though quiet.

There is fire in me, some new, some that was before I was.

If we do not touch, a distance will grow with our neglect.

Finding purpose in life is merely to understand this: love.

Listen to others: you might just find yourself in their words.

I have withstood what I could, and I let the other things pass.

You are what you dream.

the stand

we were mute here standing at the turning of the tide
the doomsayer died, and no one was left to foretell of the end
we walked on, forgetting, until we no longer had faces
till our feet bled what we had dreamed, out in the wilderness

bald with pride we stood against the rushing of the river
fierce in longing we prayed for the rains to recognize our pain
we wondered if to bathe in light would wash us our sins
here beyond the limits of the imaginary city, the dream of home

and standing alone, we kept watch over the infant visions
none to know except that he were the conduit of the electric fate
we burned in wonder, and lit a million candles, and hoped
drenched in dreaming, to find our way back to the word of life

would we stand in the path of the great wave of time?
inflicted with a thousand deaths as the yawn of eons boomed?
yet the architecture of night will crack, dawn glimmer
we remember the dream, the tip of forever in that single kiss

Love is the impossible made possible. This is what we, the faithful, must believe. This Easter season, let us remember that we are asked to believe the impossible made possible, one who was dead raised to life — wholly from within His own self, not by the hand of anyone else did this happen. Myself, let me say that I am a scientist, if one were to ask my personality. I do not go to this belief blindly. It comes again to say that those who do not believe in any of this “quaint” tradition, that these were merely not called, as yet. For I held it in my heart that it was only superstition, this whole bit about the resurrection — but then I was Called. I will not go into details, for these things are tailored specifically to the individual in question, it would seem (in other words, it may not seem a lot to you what happens, right up until it happens to you, too). But in my case, I now believe that this impossible thing was made possible: the God in man’s form came back to life after a horrible death. This is Easter. This is what we believe.

I’ll sing my song to the wide open spaces
I’ll sing my heart out to the infinite sea
I’ll sing my visions to the sky high mountains
I’ll sing my song to the free, to the free

– The Who

Max Ernst: The World of the Naïve

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I have hoped, and oftentimes, that has been enough. It is a silver thing, easily bent, and precious enough, beautiful and shining when it is pure. Look in a child’s eye and you will know of what power I speak when I speak of hope. Do you really have the idea of what it is, truly? It is not even to believe something will be, as ethereal as that is; yet it is more than a mere desire, which is at the mercy of the barest whim or can drive men mad. What is hope? Where waking imagination and dreaming mix, a pool of wondering “if” that the heart drinks of. You know that coolness of what I speak. That feeds a soul through deserts. That speaks in silence so profound.