Month: February 2025

All of creation groans and is in pain from the beginning until the present moment. Yes. I ran over a beautiful raccoon with my truck this afternoon. One ran out in front of me and I had time to swerve but then another came over the bank, up out of the roadside ditch and I felt and heard it hit the back wheel, twirl up and hit the side of the truck a second time, and in the side mirror I saw its large sable body spin and slump in a heap at the side of the highway. I couldn’t stop for the large semi-truck directly on my tail. I might have tried more evasive maneuvers but for that truck, and not wanting to cause an even larger tragedy. I destroyed that little creature’s life; I ended it. And I caused grief to others. I’ve seen animals mourn their dead. I expect the other, or others if there were more, went to see their dead friend, or their dying friend and they were helpless to do anything for him. I know that feeling. I’ve been there myself with the dead that I have loved. I won’t go into the details of how life drained out of me the rest of the day, but it did, and I became very numb, and I yearned to leave this world myself, but for those I’d leave behind and the sadness that might cause. Life feels like a warzone, each passing moment taking one or another of us randomly, leaving some of us to fight another day. Some people go out of their minds in war, some turn to anything to dull the pain, some go all in and become mercenaries, killers for hire. I understand them all.

But I found a little chapel at the edge of the woods, metaphorically, and I crawled inside and prayed: Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me. I said this many times, quietly to myself, as I mourned the raccoon. I cried, and I survived another day. In younger years I would have returned to help that little creature, or to bury him. But now I cannot bring myself to see what I’ve done. I can’t see another dead animal, or human, I am reaching my limit. I’m only fifty-five; what shall become of me? It doesn’t matter, the same as will happen to us all, death will find me randomly on the battlefield, tomorrow or next year, or in ten years, but it will happen; and in the meantime all of creation mourns and cries in pain, and I am witness to all their suffering, with nothing but duct tape and baling wire to use to fix the monumental problems that only God himself can fix. But he is acting at leisure. Which I understand, though I don’t, but who am I to argue?

I find it remarkable that living is both clinging to this world and yearning for the next at the same time. Loving life and wanting death. Enduring and fighting for another day, hoping to see the sun rise, desiring to live a little longer, and the next moment reeling from “the terror of knowing what this world’s all about” and wishing we’d never been born. Maybe that’s just me. But to some degree I imagine we all have some similar feelings about our exile here. Lord Jesus have mercy on me. I crouch in my metaphorical chapel, saying my prayers, grateful that night has fallen finally, sorry for the little raccoon, and determined to stay in here and not go outside again. I’ll watch the sun rise through the window and pretend there is a way out, but knowing there isn’t. There is only the way through, as they say; there is nowhere to run. But God is in control, Jesus Christ is risen, and ultimately there is a resurrection. Every story ends in death, but every story also ends in new life. I don’t know this, but I believe it.

~FS

It is easy to eat from the tree of knowledge. It is easy to let the mind run wild; chasing across mental fields. Imagining that our mind operates freely and independently. Forgetting that our mind is always in service to something. The mind, the brain is a tool that is not its own master. It is obedient to our will, and goes to work as it is directed by the spirit. Our mind serves invisible masters, subtle and hovering hidden upon, or just below, the surface of consciousness; our brain is able to rationalize any position that suits us, and we almost always believe what we think, and take it as true.

Our human pride likes to imagine that we don’t need any guardrails or any guidance or any rules to limit and organize our mental processes, but our mind only works under these conditions, only within some type of system can it operate properly. A good operating system allows our mind to work beneficially, and a bad system leads us to think in damaging ways towards our self and others. God said that we may eat of any tree in the garden, but of the fruit of the tree of knowledge we may not eat. The serpent tells us that it will be okay to try that forbidden fruit. We’ve been making excuses and explanations for our bad decisions ever since.

It is easy not to be aware of what system we are operating within, in fact, it is more common for people not to be aware of the system that is guiding or ruling their thinking processes than to know it. We just think. We just think the way we’ve always thought. We imagine that we simply think in the correct way, or the best way, of course, because it is how we think. Changing our operating system is no easy task. For one, we have to become aware that we have one, and this implies that we are not our own masters. This humbling reality is antithetical to our human pride. This first stumbling block is enough to keep most of us from getting any further in our journey to psychological and spiritual health.

“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” This verse and many other scriptural references give us the perfect code for rebooting our mental system according to Godly wisdom.

Finally, turning the system off entirely is often the most beneficial. Giving it a rest. I for one have a brain that is too active and prone to despair. Always reaching, striving, whirring, and pumped up on adrenaline, cortisol, coffee, ambition and frustration. Searching and not finding. Yearning and not satisfied. Praying in solitude. Often, there is nothing better for me than to have the snow falling, so to speak, in the midst of my never-ending thoughts, covering my neurons with a soft white muted silence, a comfortable numbness. A desire unfulfilled makes the heart sick and the mind uptight. Often when I can’t find God, when I don’t experience closeness with Him in church or in the woods, or in prayer, I turn to television or a glass of wine, and hope for death. Such is the terrible strangeness of life in this world: outcast, and waiting for the future. I understand choosing dissipation, distraction, entertainment and trying to forget the promises of better things; in the meantime, these all ease the pain of separation from the one we love. Though there is nothing better than to know God, sometimes there is nothing more blessed than to be too busy in this world to try.

As one who has been cast out of the garden yet believes in the promises of Christ’s salvation, these are the tiresome ups and downs of life in this world. Glimmers of understanding trade places with moments of despair which yield to epiphanies of spiritual experience, which give way to emptiness which draw one into relationship with our Lord which become tests of endurance and then perhaps a fall from grace, and then a moment of humility that lifts us back again into the presence of God, and then another fall. This is the roller-coaster of life. Remembering, forgetting, crying in anguish, breathing a sigh of relief, deep gratitude, terrible anger, acceptance, sorrow, suffering, joy, a bit of peace, hope for more peace, hope to escape from loss, some anguish, around and around, up and down, and up again, and then back down again. Polishing, wearing us out, and building us back up. Isn’t it funny? Isn’t it terrible? Are we like mice being whacked by a cat before being devoured? No. Maybe. It depends on how you look at it. What operating system are you using? Be joyful always. It is possible. Pray for help. Be helped. Be forgotten. Try again. Give up. Cry out. Try again. Hope. Isn’t it interesting? It sure is something. Isn’t it something?

~FS

When I was a child I sometimes had a very strange sensation when I was in bed falling asleep. It was as though the entire room, the space that it occupied, were compressed into a point directly before my eyes. It was both a visual and a visceral sensation: perspective collapsed onto this one point, so that the corners and the angles of the room all converged, originating and ending on this dot, and at the same time the density which the room normally occupied compressed onto this point so that I felt a very great weight and pressure hovering just beyond my eyeballs. Everything about the room was still there, every detail, I could see, but it all fit on the point of a pin. Sometimes I even imagined that it was all literally on the eye of a needle. But it was the strange density that bothered me. It was an unnatural and unpleasant experience. It was a fascinating sensation, that frightened me, and I remember more than once running to find my mother for comfort, and when I tried to explain to her what was happening, she couldn’t understand me. Eventually the sensation went away and the room would return to normal.

Memory shares this quality. Time is compressed into a single moment. Everything I ever did shares the same place in my mind: what I did this morning, when I remember it, is like what I did as a child long ago. The shape of my experiences, the entirety of my life, like the room in which I used to fall asleep, all originate and end in this same place within me. Some memories are clear, others are in a mist, but they all are right there, somewhere, hovering just behind my eyes, somewhere in here.

Just below the surface of the water, where it is still clear, just above where it darkens and fades into obscurity, a jellyfish is pulsing and moving slowly through space. I watch it from the dock, mesmerized by its rhythmic dance, jerky and smooth, catapulting forward below me. I see my own face reflected in the water, superimposed upon the jellyfish, the sky behind me and the clouds passing by. I was on that dock watching that jellyfish forty years ago; I see it in my mind’s eye, just like I saw my face in the window earlier this morning, as the snow began to fall. Behind the cloudy glass of the dilapidated blue building I see my dad. He waves. I wave back from the dock. The jellyfish has gone. I’m all alone. I untether the dinghy and push off from the dock. I’ll go for a little row around the cove while I wait. I remember what dad told me, don’t row out beyond the point; stay in the cove and you’ll be safe.

There is plenty to explore within the limits dad set for me, and I’m a good rower. I can go fast, and far very quickly. I spent hours pulling the oars through the water, exploring that cove on the eastern edge of Tomales Bay. Today, I live on a different cove in Washington State, on the western edge of the Puget Sound. Looking out at the sunlight as it dances upon the waves I’d like to go rowing here. It calls to me. I’d like to go rowing later today with my dad. He died almost thirty years ago. Maybe he’ll come back. Wouldn’t that be nice? I’d like to have him back, so we could row together today. The beach is quiet. The dock is quiet. I see a seal poke his head above the water not far from shore, and he glides silently past me as I smile. It is a cold day, and windy, but I’ve got a good jacket on, and the sun is shining through the clouds.

We are not far apart, dad and me; separated by thirty-odd years, separated by death. We share a point in memory, in a strange place within: a gateway, like an eye, a place that has always been, perhaps, where the angel with a flaming sword also stands. And Christ draws everything to himself. In Him we originate and come to an end, and a new beginning. This idea doesn’t scare me like it did when I was a child. Now, it is hopeful and light. It doesn’t compress in on itself with a dreadful gravity as it once did; it expands outward like an eternal promise.

~FS

The sun rises in the sky but I can’t see it behind the thick cloud cover and the mist that hangs in the air. The day brightens and I see the seagulls soaring overhead, searching for shelter inland from a coming storm. The wind brings with it the smell of salt and freshness from the ocean water, not more than a half-mile from my home. At the beach I stand looking out over the waves, dark and white-capped. Across the turbulent waters, in the sky above the mountains the sun breaks through, brilliantly illuminating the surrounding clouds and making the surface of the water far away from shore much too bright to stare at. I look away. The wave tips are bright and silvery, contrasting sharply with the deep shadows within the water troughs. The wind is blowing strongly now and it is exhilarating, and it makes me sleepy at the same time. The clouds are darkening, the mountains are deep velvety gray, the ocean is a green slate, broken and thrown about, and the sun is far too bright to look into. It is the type of morning one imagines that God might call out from the heavens, or Christ might descend from the clouds and walk across the waters.

A small sailboat ploughs through the waves. Its sail is full and pulling hard. In my mind’s eye I see my father at the tiller and he has a serious expression on his face. Wind tosses the wisps of hair above his ears, and at the back of his head, and sends ocean spray into his face, speckling the surface of his aviator sunglasses, and causes the windbreaker he is wearing to billow and flutter. I don’t recall what he was like in church, but in his sailboat he was a devout man.

We sailed on Tomales Bay, north of San Francisco. We always had the bay to ourselves. I don’t recall another boat on the water when we sailed. It was a lonely, windswept place, beautiful, and unencumbered. It was wild and untamed. As a child this is how I remember it. I didn’t enjoy my time there, but I loved being with my dad, and it felt like we were the only people on earth. Fishermen had caught an enormous great white shark at the mouth of the bay earlier that year, or the year before. I couldn’t get that idea out of my mind. Maybe there were even larger sharks in the bay with us too. Being swallowed by a great white shark seemed likely in that wild place at the end of the world. It would be fitting. I wished that I could have seen that huge shark, strung up by ropes and hanging from a crane. Boldly I dipped my hand over the side of the boat and let the cold pacific water rush through my fingers, tempting the sharks to bite.

I admired my dad. He was a Coast Guard Captain. There was nobody better than a captain. I’d never heard of an admiral; in my mind they didn’t exist. There were only captains, if you were at the top, and that was what my dad was. I felt honored that he invited me to sail with him, even if I didn’t really like it. He scared me a little too. I didn’t want to do the wrong thing when I was with him. It was very possible to do the wrong thing, and that was never pleasant. Sailing was a serious affair; it wasn’t funny if you did the wrong thing. Sometimes I thought it was funny when I did the wrong thing, but usually that made it even less funny. My dad and I didn’t have the same sense of humor when I was a kid. But when I got older we laughed together more, and life became a little funnier. I’m glad that happened eventually.

Our sailboat was moored at a little marina on the east side of the bay. It was tethered to a buoy a few hundred yards off shore. We used a little wooden dingy to row out to it. The marina was a short drive off the highway, down a dirt and gravel rutted road that ended in a muddy parking lot near the water. There was a small dock with a few old fishing boats. Fishing paraphernalia was strewn about the site everywhere: crab pots stacked to the sky, nets, motors, boat carcasses, rusted bric-a-brac and oyster shells littering the corners of everything. A small, dilapidated wood building with cloudy windows stood at the edge of the dock. Faded blue paint clung to the old wood in some places, the rest was rotting wood, and it appeared as though mud held the boards together. A strong smell of grease, salt and creosote hung in the air, and cigarette smoke floated out from the open door. An old guy in greasy overalls always sat in there, or came out and greeted my dad. They always had business together before we went sailing.

~FS

There is an angel standing at the gates of paradise, who holds a double-edged sword and prevents any of us mortals from entering. God himself stationed the angel there long, long ago as a consequence of mankind’s fall from grace. I think about this angel a lot now, even in the daylight when I’m normally concerned about the terrestrial problems and issues of this world; but especially I find myself thinking about this angel during the night, when my thoughts and my emotions are not so affected by this world’s gravity.

At night I see him standing at the gates impenetrable to my advances; he stands there like towering flames of fire, flashing his swords this way and that. Those blades cutting through the air with violent crashing. They sound like helicopter blades punching the air. They do their job. I’d like to return. I’d like to enter again. But who am I? It seems a lost cause, I wonder…how can I get past him? How can I get back inside?

There is nothing that matters to me quite so much as this; no question, no issue nearly as important to me as getting back inside those gates. However, truth be told, I have more than a passing suspicion that it is a good thing I’m not allowed back in there, in my present condition. How would I respond to that perfection; to that sublime purity, that absence of sin which permeates that world? How could I live again in Eden? I am so far from that perfection. My thoughts are not pure. My own sinfulness might incinerate me—justly—before I could take my first full stride through the gates.

But even if I were somehow allowed to enter for a moment—as a cosmic test, or as a joke—how might a conversation with a passing angel go? It would be an embarrassing affair, at the least: trying clumsily to elevate myself to his level of virtue, to match his integrity and blessedness; attempting to hide my pettiness; pretending to understand the purity of his perception; and trying to comment upon eternal truths with him, but from my narrowly circumscribed perspective. I fear that I couldn’t hold up my end of the conversation. It would become quickly evident that I didn’t belong there, not yet anyway, not as I am today.

So, it is very likely a good thing that I can’t get past that angel. God only knows. Still, I greatly desire to do it. But I’m distracted from these thoughts by the sound of the rain hitting the window pane, and the faint gray light gathering beyond the trees, slowly revealing their shapes and networks of branches in the brightening dawn, reaching towards the sky and each other. What if I could travel through the air like a bird and dance between the leaves, laughing like the winter wind? A group of tiny birds gather to eat the suet hanging outside my window pane. Ten, fifteen, twenty, coming and going from the nearby branches. Gliding across invisible waves which carry them lightly through the air to their food, disappearing again into the dense forest silhouettes. Some see me through the window watching them. Their tiny black shining eyes reflect awareness. We’re alive, little birds, you and me. We are close enough to whisper. They tweet and twitter; they flap and flutter. I hold my breath and hope. I could touch them but for the glass between us. The suet cage sways back and forth from its thin metal chain, as the last of them vanishes into the neighboring woods.

I close my eyes now. I was so near to something just then. There was a chance in that moment. I had felt it. I could taste it in my soul, the taste of a possibility. The warm air of the room fills my lungs as I inhale, while searching myself deep within, searching to find something special which is true, which resembles what exists behind the gates. I strain to find it and am unable, so I open my eyes again and glance at the television. It was the morning news. The anchors moved their lips seriously, but I could hear nothing. I had muted the sound. I usually mute the sound. I don’t like what they have to say. I smiled because I couldn’t hear them. I don’t think they understand the stories they are telling; they are too preoccupied to even begin looking for that gate.

~FS