Simple and Beautiful
The Arctic Summer Sky
One Picture Three Months Long
Closing reflections
on the single event that seals an open link in my
life time; now looking back a short time as it transpired
during my attempted visit to my friend. My friend
is not living with me in this place without night
but eternal sun shine and great lines of undulating
flux gracefully swaying like great curtains reaching
out into space to touch the stars and the sun. What
happened in the twenty intervening years to suddenly
bring us together like two brothers and suddenly leave
us to part so unexpectedly? Expectations, many of
which were not discovered until we passed the point
where a little red button on a piece of communication
software we had so conveniently taken for granted
during our hours of discussion, was gone. My heart
goes out to John and don't blame him a bit for his
hurried departure, because in reality I was asking
him to be part of what he could only view as my death
and final departure from his world where another beautiful
land was presented as a place he prepared so hard
to introduce as a land of equivalent beauty that simply
wasn't my long sought after homeland and place of
convergence. I did spend two week there as he did
with me in Alaska in 1989, but life had changed John's
world into one where he served Monday through Friday
in a city of 1.2 million people compete with cars,
suburbia spread out so far that it looked like an
ocean upon our return from the mountains; however
John was content with looked forward to spending some
hours in natural beauty where I would rather simply
live in natural beauty accessible by stepping outside.
The important thing is I did invest about the same
amount of time in his world as he did in mine and
it proved to be very difficult to remain in a house
everyday waiting for John to come home where I would
disturb him with my incessant chatter. I know it was
difficult for John to deal with my gloomy demeanor
resulting form metal grating on my spinal bones and
I did all I could to make myself scare during those
times.
I was so surprised by John who kept
a meticulous record of every photo and communication
I had sent him since our meeting in 1984, which was
added to by further letters and photos after his 1989
visit to see me in Alaska; he had even kept a small
prism acquired during our time together. I'm sure
the heart break for John was holding so carefully
to all the memorabilia associated with half a life
time of friendship which he so carefully went out
of his way to celebrate by buying gifts that were
fit for honoring the reception of some kind of celestial
being; the experience was simply far more than anyone
could ever hope or dream of. The amount of time and
resources he invested was absolutely unimaginable
and his heart was so set to give these great gifts
to a friend he remembered after so many years.
After some mysteriously providential
delays to my initial departure associated with a missing
passport at a distant intervening airport; this missing
passport which appeared as a gross oversight was actually
providential in nature, as it gave me a chance to
reflect deeply upon the awesome beauty of where I
was in Alaska and why I was there after being gone
more than 10 years, I looked down on a landscape that
few people ever trod, tundra so vast that even the
lowest flight revealed only pure untouched inaccessible
tundra and finally to view something of mysterious
pristine wonder, fulfilling my prayers regarding issues
I struggled with before my plan to visit John were
set. In that final moment before the flight touched
down the reasons and wherefores regarding my trip
to see John came into question. Was not what I was
seeing from the flight back to Fairbanks the actual
threshold and invitation to the place my Father had
prepared for me thirty-one years ago as the actual
invitation to His gateway to my Home eternal? He who
hides "In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of
Days" was showing me that this is the place He
would keep his promise to grant me my single simple
prayer request and that is to follow the flow of His
absolutely unspeakable amazing grace where humanity
as He designed it was meant to go.
I have always marveled with the way
that nature keeps everything beautiful and full of
health and grace; there are no old sick birds or caribou;
even in the one creature I have seen dying in nature,
there is a vicious fight going on against death in
the form of strong currents in a river composed of
waters completely different than the waters of its
long life but not unlike the waters of its birth;
yes the salmon are the only creatures I know who are
born in crystal clear fresh mountain waters to later
let go and follow the flow of their life cycle in
the salty oceans of the world only to return near
the end of their life as adults to the same fresh
water mountain streams of their birth to fight fiercely
against all forms of opposition be it the steep falls
they must jump, opposing currents and various predators
like the bear and eagle.
I was given three days to contemplate
two invitations, one by my Father God of Nature and
the second by a friend from twenty years ago whose
father had died since I last saw him but his mother
in whom he confides lives on to this day. When I was
denied flight permission during my first attempt on
May 26, I was left with no other choice but to fly
back north to the stillness of the sunny eternal days
of Alaska's summer. Upon waking on May 27 to the bright
light shining in from the northern sky I decided to
simply request that my bags be sent back to my place
here in the arctic. I sent the message off and a query
came back asking me if I was sure. Here in is where
the painful slip occurred; I called my friend and
he had found a way to get another flight out three
days later. I made the assumption that I had something
that could help my friend and that my friend’s
invitation was a chance for me to give of what I had.
In all the conversations with my friend it sounded
like he wanted to see me as I did him, not knowing
that I had nothing that he wanted and he had carefully
analyzed my desperately poor status with my life scraping
by in the western culture making surprise preparation
to fill my life with every imaginable gift including
things right down to the particular fruit I enjoy.
During the five intervening days before
the second attempt to fly, I made a decision to fly
to my friend because it sounded like he was earnestly
looking forward to seeing me; with total disregard
for the providential reason for the failed first attempt
on May 26 that my Father had permitted, there remained
a shadow of doubt regarding what was going on, since
unlike my Father's ways, all didn't proceed flawlessly
at the start. However three days later, I made plans
to head south toward my friend’s house. After
spending a winter with 3 months of darkness and another
6 months with subzero temperatures, it seems that
God designed the arctic summer to provide a blessed
recovery in the three months of endless light; giving
this arctic summer up to travel someplace that was
cold and had night seemed as if I were going to be
robbed of the very substance of life that the arctic
provides the winter survivors. The other part seemed
like the growth process where children turn from their
mothers to their fathers for guidance. During the
first flight back to Fairbanks I was given a grand
invitation by God Himself to return to the natural
cycle and recognize my time here was over and it was
now the season and moment to shed the chrysalis in
a secret place and come Home.
Unfortunately the majority of humanity
has become separated from the Creator's original harmonious
plan and in so doing have created that which is unnatural
filled with all manner of filthy involutional factors
all which resemble that which is diseased and dying.
Nature functions in natural harmony with every other
facet of nature and when an element gets disconnected
from that vital flow from The Creator's relationship,
it begins to become a parasitic life form akin to
a virus or cancer.
It's so wonderful how God keeps separating
life from death so that life remains pristine and
radiant
These little notes I post here have
always been intended to indicate to those who may
happen to stumble on this site that there is a reason
for life in this world and it is simply to replicate
the beauty of an eternal invisible world similar in
grandeur to the natural world as seen in Alaska's
wilderness without well marked and manicured trails,
summits without names and seasons that give those
who live here a chance to see a world that is as close
to heaven as one can get on this earth; and if one
learns to endure the winter they gain the strength
to fight against a bit of the darkness of hell itself,
coming out stronger for having found the internal
strength to survive. Alaska like so many other lands
of the far north or south (of 65 degrees latitude)
are worlds of greater beauty showing a small part
of a wonderful more beautiful invisible realm that
has no end.
My times writing here seems to be coming
to an end. Much like a migrating bird senses changes
in seasons signaling it to prepare for travel to other
worlds; I too sense the not so subtle undercurrents
that define my time of migration. One of the unfortunate
things about living among creatures created in the
image of Nature's Creator is the majority have lost
their initial connection of life's Source and the
most painful associations are with those pious religious
church goers who sing the praises of the Creator without
knowing Him in the least way. One of the prime indicators
of this disconnection is their understanding of what
life and death really are is found when seeking to
cling to life, they grasp at a morsel without discerning
the hook. Once they are caught only a reconnection
to the Creator can free them yet as the book of nature
tells, many there be who hear the still small voice
but oh so few who are actually chosen to enter.
As with my precious friend, who said
that my parting reminded him of his father's death
and wanted nothing to do with letting me go to die;
so to does the world misunderstand the face of death.
I know by now that the face of life and death are
very confused in this world that needs to be recreated;
people here cling to what they see as life only to
discover to late that it is taking them to the grave;
yet there are some whose eyes finally open to the
fact that everyday they wake in a living death fearing
to let go. I have grown weary of death as it has been
my portion for too long a time; I'm being nudged to
let go and live life eternally. As John knows, my
body is held together with what is equivalent to metal
nails and rods; most people are familiar with the
way Jesus Christ was tortured by being nailed to a
wooden frame upon which to slowly bleed and suffocate
to death. From the last mountain top that John took
me to by cable car, I was able to look down the long
corridor of my life and see the extremes of suffering
I have endured; all lined up over a period of more
than 25 years; it made me seriously reconsider the
crucifixion on the cross to be far more preferable
if I had to trade a day of intense suffering for half
a life time on going agony that isn't see outside
but exists inside penetrating your spinal bones with
each step or turn in your bed. I have fought and I
have failed, to be forgiven and again to fight on;
in all honesty I have no strength to speak about or
even think of heavenly rewards, I just want to feel
what I felt when John and I last prayed together and
that was God's undivided attention, love and compassion.
If I ever had any heaven rewards or gifts to receive,
I can definitely say that my brother John already
gave these to me upon my arrival so I can now be sure
to be looking for only one thing from this point on
and that is a warm welcoming embrace from my
Father of Lights.
If time permits before my appointment
at the convergence, for what it’s worth I may
give a shot at unmasking the great impostor of death
and the equal counterpart of life in this ephemeral
world.
Oh yes, in parting, the simple photo
above was made possible by the gift my dear friend
John gave me. I would like to have a chance to capture
more beautiful images, write more about the beauty
and majesty of the world I live in, but He who holds
my line of connection to this world is telling me
that I must let go and this is my tough lesson. I
have held to the tools I have been given too tightly.
I must now let all things go and simply relax in the
knowledge that everything good and wonderful will
follow me back to where I came from. I will remember
only what is of the Light for that is what I have
tried to get others to look into but the lies and
fears of this world have blinded them not the Light
of the Son to whom I must return.
∞
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