Monday, September 27, 2010 5:24:32 PM
 
x x x x x

"Perfect Actions"

Convergence

Chapter 14

Over the River Two Months Later

Just yesterday after leaving a school where first graders made fish for an art project, this

rainbow was seen reaching over the river where this story began and ends.

 

Convergence
Chapters
 

As the last bell rang for the day the second grade students began to get ready to go home. One little girl who had been enraptured in awe as she listened to the shorten version of the story where the dark waters are portrayed with their dark curling slurping tongues, graveyard of trees under water, sharp knife like branches waiting to cut legs and boat hulls all surrounding an island of light and wonder. I made clear how dangerous this dark river was and never to go near it without holding your daddies hands tightly. I told them about the light appearing right where I needed a camp site and the amazing and sudden clearing of the sky to let through warming sun light just at the moment I stuck my foot in the chilling waters. It was amazing to hear so many children say it was God that did all these things. I had only spent less than ten minutes telling how I was saved from the waters and the amazing events on the island, and the children quickly concluded it was God that saved me and helped me.

In school teachers are not permitted to talk about religion at all for which I'm very thankful; however, on the other hand teachers are not permitted to violate a child's freedom to speak about concepts that mention God or are related to God. This is very strange since every day we begin by pledging allegiance to a flag that mentions one nation under a God we are not permitted to discuss; which I guess is my "State of the Union Address."

The long and short of the children's story was the question I asked at the end. After telling the children all about the powerful dark muddy waters, floating dead trees and a place that will not let anything stay alive including small islands that can be washed away if it rains on the glaciers a lot; I did say that I found an island where the most amazing Light and Love helped save my life and held me like I was a new born baby on the second day. I told them that there was a kind of door way on the island that opened in the spring and closes in the fall and it's all related to the movement of water which can't happen in the winter when everything is frozen under a lot of snow. So I asked the all important question, "Do you think I should go back?" Some children said no it's too dangerous but the one little girl who had quickly said it was God that held me and took care of me told me that I should go back quickly. Wise counsel I would say.

On this day when I should be teaching I have had the rare opportunity to try and finish this story. Granted there is much to be reorganized and a lot to be elaborated upon especially the terms related to nautical expressions. However the fact remains, when I was on that island I was safely in the protective care of my Father who was getting me ready for departure. In my usual haste and foolishness, I acted to do the dangerous and deadly; instead of rest and quietly wait on my Father while I was separated from all pain, I acted to eat food when I had no desire. I forced my body to gain strength which I now realize was not unlike trying to force a broken machine to go another hundred miles. I was in complete care and safety on the island and any attempt to leave would place me in danger.

This day marks the exact day the journey ended two month ago. During the two months I have been given an opportunity to see what is happening. I came back to help the children and when I'm doing this, my Father draws nearer and my strength returns. However, there are people here who are working hard to inhibit or block my ability to work as a teacher.

Canada Geese Stopping for a flight transfer snack at the famous Cramer's Field

Even as I write, traveling south over head I can hear with their busy quacking coming from the skies.

This is not my battle. I'm tired and in my body I have the marks that my Father has. I believe the advice of the little second grade girl is wise advice. She said, "Teacher go back to the island quick." Like the Canadian geese that now stop near the school where I teach occasionally, they are on their way to safe haven, perhaps the little girl is very right and I should return to the island.

I must stop and carefully remember that the beauty of what I left behind is well protected within a multi faceted death trap; can I return and hold my position carefully so the current pulls me in the right direction? The one major concern is the unavoidable reality of the entry river at the convergence; the force and power of this river is very similar to trying to paddle up a water fall. This entry to the convergence is where my kayak became entangled in the dead root base stuck fast in the heavy current flow. There is no other way to get through this torrential onslaught of cold dark waves with their heavy forceful current; on the way back it brought me to a jolting halt as the twisted roots grabbed my rudder lines. As I mentioned earlier in the previous chapters, I wouldn't understand how serious this event was until I reached the boat launch and began taking my kayak out of the waters. As I hauled it ashore I went to secure the rudder and found the solid metal rudder had been bent over like the top of a cereal box. I wasn't sure if it could be bent back without damage. My kayak has never encountered such a beating in all the years I have had it. Later I found many scratches on the hyperlon surface of the hull as well as blood. The blood could be washed from the wooden frame but not the canvas.

There is another very real issue I need to consider, "Is the island still there?" This is a real concern because as I mentioned in the story, it was being eroded and the forest of its south side had slid off to lay down in the powerful currents; this is what I was struggling with under water before tossing my gear away and making a Kamikaze run for the strong current heading for the south shore.

Truly, I would just like to find a simple peaceful little island where I can go camping before the snow begins to fall; this was my original intention but now it has become the end of a life long dream. My reason for going back is motivated by the weariness I feel fighting against the forces that now help me understand what happen to the country I once knew back before I left in 1998? Darkness can't be understood and those who try become like what they study. My simple efforts to try and go for a camping trip turned into an encounter with an incredibly benevolent loving personality in nature. Because much of my life has been spent out side, I have discovered a rhythm to nature that dictates a wonderful dance. When man began to modify his world to accommodate rhythms different than nature, he became a slave to a system without life. If people lived in harmony with nature they would find that all of life moves in a dance like the seasons. All of humanity used to have seasons but now people "exist" rather than live apart from that beautiful rhythm. When I go out far from man's tinkering with electricity and powered lights, where he lost his sensitivity to the dance of night and day, I quickly discover that I have past my timing and step in the dance of nature. As soon as I return I discover that nature is in a hurry to set me straight with the original rhythm. From my calculations, I missed this step back in 2005-2007 when efforts were made to surgically correct a broken spine. Hey, we're made of the stuff of stars and all stars are born and all stars die but they do so in a way that makes the heavens beautiful.

I need to catch a shooting star as I told my friend John. He knows all about this and made an effort to accommodate the process but the process is dependant upon living in nature rather than making occasional visits. I kind of chuckle now as I remember asking him many times over and over about a percentage ratio of 78%/21%, He had collected so many wonderful photographs from his hikes into nature and he sent me these very tempting images from areas around the famous Banff National Park. I knew that these wonderful images were collected during the twenty one percent of the time he had free to travel there but my concern was what would I be doing for the other seventy-eight percent of the time; it was during the larger percentage that I found we were living in a vast suburban expanse that spread across the prairies appearing to my eyes like an ocean. During that larger percentage of time, I felt cut off from the rhythms of nature which can be felt very easily right here in down town Fairbanks where the below image show how much traffic and people are out and about even at the busiest time of the evening in the fall

Fairbanks Alaska on early Friday evening. As you can view, it's bumper to bumper traffic as far as the eye can see and people are out in hoards wearing out the sidewalks with carousing, shopping and bar hopping ;-)

All credit for the recent photos on these web pages are due to John's absolutely wonderful gift of hospitality and gift giving. I knew once we met on the Internet and his gifts began to come in with numbers greater than I could count, something major was happening in my life, either it was my birthday or death day; since it wasn't the former it must be the latter. I have no idea what happens to this reality after death but my epistemology supports a solipsist view of the universe; which holds that the reality experienced by the imminentist observer is a dispensable heuristic device created by God to conform the neophyte to His perfect image; once conformation has taken place the heuristic device is no longer needed thus allowing its dispensability. A simple way to state this is, after this life is over only what is like God will be remembered; meaning there will be a lot of people in the lives of children I won't remember but the children I will remember.

Alaska is the only land I know where a person can experience a real bit of heaven during the endless days of summer and a real bit of hell in the endless frozen darkness of winter. I must keep my eyes on the aurora if there is anything after the island.

Beautiful Farm In Fairbanks

Image caught just as the sun came out to shine only on the farm.

Special thanks to My Father!

It may be time for me to say, "I bought the farm."

This may be the end of the story, but if it is, it will be the beginning of a new and far more beautiful story for me.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

February 8, 2016

Now six years later reflecting upon the foregoing story, nothing has changed regarding what I believe happened to me that day in the Convergence.  For six years I have lived in a world reminiscent of a cemetery, a world devoid of life and everything that made my experience in the Convergence so unspeakably awesome.  My life has been one of sullen silence and darkening shadows, lacking in joy or meaning which brought me to act to escape last summer.

During the summer of 2015 efforts were made to return to the experience of the Convergence when I set out on a sixty mile trip down the very same river of my story.  Hoping to once again enter the rest, peace and separation I knew in June of 2010, my first night of sleep came while camping on an island but woke in pain and hunger totally unlike the Convergence. What happened to cause the failure to return?  Was it the timing? Was it my failure to wait patiently for the Lord’s salvation? Was it the very real error of leaning on cell phone technology as a “life line” when it was the very line to death six years before? In these days of somber silence it’s hard to not figure it was a combination of all the foregoing reasons. 

Honestly, I do not believe that seeking my Loving Father in heaven is wrong for nothing in the Bible indicates that efforts to depart into the wilderness to seek intimate communion with God is wrong. Just because my desire is to seek my Lord out in a world where His handiwork is most evident is not wrong; this being justified by His Gospel as revealed in Nature (Romans 1:20) which if read carefully reveals His way of Deliverance, Mercy and Salvation.

Even now six years later I’m left with the persistent belief that I need to seek my Heavenly Father though He be so close to our lives each day; I need to persist in earnest prayer and NOT give up until the fullness of His grace descends once more.  There are definite factors that have lead to my failure to abandon all obstacles in the way of my effort to lean totally upon faith and NOT the subtle deceptive factor connected to the arm of the flesh.

My eagerness grows to the point of abandoning much that indicates my preparations that betray dependance upon physical comfort. It’s a delicate balance to make plans to seek communion in a world clearly of God’s making without deliberately placing one’s self in harms way and there by “testing God” which is very wrong.  Lord willing, return to Him totally is what I believe He desires. 

For Now

The End

� �

 


 

 
 

 

English Lessons

From the Days When

Meaning Was Conveyed Gracefully

 

 

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.--MATT. v. 6

 

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Grant us Thy peace, down from Thy presence falling,
As on the thirsty earth cool night-dews sweet;
Grant us Thy peace, to Thy pure paths recalling,
From devious ways, our worn and wandering feet.

E. SCUDDER.

 

 

O God, who art Peace everlasting, whose chosen reward is the gift of peace, and who hast taught us that the peacemakers are Thy children, pour Thy sweet peace into our souls, that everything discordant may utterly vanish, and all that makes for peace be sweet to us forever. Amen.

GELASIAN SACRAMENTARY, A. D. 492

Have you ever thought seriously of the meaning of that blessing given to the peacemakers? People are always expecting to get peace in heaven; but you know whatever peace they get there will be ready-made. Whatever making of peace _they_ can be blest for, must be on the earth here: not the taking of arms against, but the building of nests amidst, its "sea of troubles" [like the halcyons]. Difficult enough, you think? Perhaps so, but I do not see that any of us try. We complain of the want of many things--we want votes, we want liberty, we want amusement, we want money. Which of us feels or knows that he wants peace?

J. RUSKIN.

 

   

 

 

 

 

� Bill Watterson

Gotta Have Happy Memories

 

 

This One Has To Be The Best Yet!! Ha


Thank You Bill Watterson; Live Forever and continue to Prosper !!!

 

 

 

My E-mail: al7mi@yahoo.com

 

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