Monday, September 27, 2010 4:53:53 PM
 
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"Perfect Actions"

Convergence

Chapter 11

Morning Of The Third Day

Convergence
Chapters

From deep sleep the sound of my phone alarm clock woke me right at three in the morning with the ambient sky light making my tent walls glow with their usual golden color. I lay quietly for a moment again listening for sound that might give me a hint as to what kind of world would greet me outside my tent on this third day. As I lay in my warm sleeping bag, I noticed I still had peace but it was qualitatively different than the experience on the morning of the second day; on this morning of the third day, I was aware of my body and the strength it had. I was able to move my body freely once again. Time was short as I thought about the job interview I was suppose to make in eight hours; just thinking of this goal and realizing where I was, made me understand that strength or no strength, it was going to require miracles to escape the currents, deep and shallow waters that hid submerged trees and sand bars. I quickly moved to unzip the screen door on my tent where I gazed out on an overcast day without rain. Upon brief inspection I noticed some items had dried like those made of synthetic material but others were still damp like the summer sleeping bag.

The weather conditions of the day spoke to me just as the weather conditions that brought me there. Considering the ways perfect Love arranged for there to be no rain upon my arrival, which would have been the proverbial “straw that broke the camels back” as rain on my arrival would have caused everything to become highly slippery which would have made all efforts to hold to such things as the branches and my kayak rope difficult; the fact that upon my arrival there was intermittent sunshine creating conditions where surfaces were dry, allowed for environmental conditions which defined a very thin line permitting my survival when death was so close many times. The rain on the second day was the perfect weather condition compelling me to stay inside and enter the depth of a peace and condition of spirit or soul I have never before experienced in this life. Everything had been in tune with a very powerful all knowing Love, giving me a chance to fully enter the warmth and safety of His loving embrace; how could I leave such Love? As I looked out upon the grey overcast day, I slowly realized once again that I could never leave my Father’s powerful loving care and company; as a matter of fact, if I ever hoped to make it out of the convergence it would take a literal act of supernatural power to free me from the hold that death has on me as I attempted to re-enter the churning dark currents that hid the waters depth, trees, rocks, currents and direction of flow.

In the tent, getting dressed wasn’t difficult and once complete the screen door was unzipped; as usual it was easy to get up and out of a tent while keeping it clean by making sure shoes where just outside the front door under the rain fly. After opening the door it was a simple matter to just lift my feet and one by one slip them into the waiting camp shoes outside the door. Once outside, a pot of water was quickly set to boil so making cereal would be easy before trying to leave. While the water was warming up, I went over to my kayak now cleaned by yesterday’s rain and flipped it up right to find that it was totally dry inside. Gathering all items that were immediately nearby to stow in the kayak’s rear storage compartment, steam was seen rising from the pot on the stove. All packing efforts stopped as a nourishing pan of hot oatmeal was prepared on that very early overcast morning. In the quiet before the most awesome Love in the universe, expressing gratitude for the breakfast and yesterday’s somewhat unusual beef stew which had given strength to a body given as a gift so many years ago. Saying that this river side breakfast time on the little island was full of joy is difficult, because it is a kind of last meal in many ways. There was no joy or celebration no more than someone with a death sentence celebrated his final day.

During the three days on the island, all of what I believed about life had been changed making this morning’s meal a somber event associated with a decision to leave the island and delay the mystical warm embrace my Father gave me as I entered the fullness of true life in His presence. I’m sure this may be hard to understand, but making a decision to try and leave the island would surely require entering a death trap with full knowledge of the risks and dangers associated with the attempt. Here on this island I mysteriously entered the joy, peace and Love of my Father in a world that has no end, yet beyond the little island was a world devoid of life being filled with many dangers; to knowingly enter this dark world with its many hidden death traps would be insane unless the motive to risk one’s life was sufficiently valid.

Is there any place in nature where creatures act to risk their life by entering the jaws of death? During my time in Alaska I have witnessed this many times in nature, most frequently witnessed when a weaker animal violently tries to attack another creature’s off spring as a duck will do for it’s ducklings when a moose accidentally trods toward the nesting area. In Korea I noticed this many times when a mother acts to protect her child; but in the west I have actually seen the reverse when a mother will act to become the predator of her own child by killing her off spring during the weakest most vulnerable point before her child has even had a chance to take a breath; a world where mothers and fathers can be seen frequently leaving their children behind like unwanted strangers or even attacking them and becoming the most formidable predator in the child’s life. What compels me to risk my physical life is the same natural instinct that compels nature’s creatures to protect their offspring but the unusual fact is, I’m a man and I have never had children of my own. As a teacher, I am blessed to have met more children than I could ever hope for. In the East my life was pure joy as I worked in a world where parents sacrifice everything for their children, where society works together to insure each child's success and safety.

My Father is not mocked, He gave me a very special gift and with that gift an opportunity to enter into His rest. He knows how hard the world in the west has fought against His Love for His little children and in so doing have cut every line that held me to their world. I didn’t wind up on this island in a glacial flood plain by accident but rather by special design and invitation by He who creates and controls everything on earth and in the worlds beyond. Only by a miracle could the One who could possibly arrange everything did so, and on this morning of the third day by providing permission to return to the world I once knew I prepared to enter the death trap around the island. I can say that it was by permission and not what He had perfectly planned; for His perfect plan was revealed on the morning of the second day as He began the separation process. If it had not been for a message on a cell phone, I’m sure I would be home now. If it were possible to make it out of the death trap, it would be a true miracle because it was the watery grave of the convergence that sought to take my life when I entered, and it would be in the same watery grave that marked the passage back to where I had a chance to prove the truth of my Father’s all powerful Love and then finally return to His Loving embrace.

Who needs proof of an all powerful Father of Light and Love? Everyone in the world needs proof but that proof was already given long ago and yet I find it so amazing that on the third day a chance is given to rise out of a watery grave to meet all those caught inside the makeshift facade of a world designed to obfuscate the dangers of a different convergence, one which few escape from. Eating the hot breakfast in peace made the weather seem just right as the warmth received made the chill of the overcast day a welcome comfort.

After finishing my breakfast, my pan was once again washed off in the convenient abrasive clay of the river sand, rinsed off once again with what was now recognized as an over abundance of fresh water that would have to be haul from the island. How amazing everything fit together; out of the dirt life was formed and now used to make things clean by the washing of waters. The first death came by water with a promise that it would never happen again.

Step by step with systematic speed I rolled up my sleeping bag and stowed my clothing once again in the double wrapped vinyl bags. Unlike my original departure three days before, I packed my gear in the kayak while it was sitting on the dry sandy area near my tent rather than trying to pack the kayak while it was floating in water that was moving rapidly, unstable and surrounded by mud and quicksand. Everything went much quicker with packing for the attempted return than my original departure. In a little less than an hour I had most of my gear stowed away in the kayak. I turned to survey the camp area for last items I needed to consider and found the clothes line still tied up with the fresh water supply still hanging from a tree branch. I took these down and used the clothes line to secure the items to the back of my kayak as I should have on the day I began; I wasn’t going to take any chances with gear slipping off the back of the kayak from one side or the other to make a dangerous departure attempt fatal as it could get snagged in tree branches making my effort to paddle futile.

By the time things were set for departure, it was almost four in the morning. I donned my cold wet dive suit with a momentary shock, after which my body heat made it feel warm and comfortable. One of the most difficult tasks was before me and that was trying to lift a loaded kayak from the surface of the island and get it into the river. I first took the tow line and secured it to a nearby tree stump. Knowing the critically and sensitivity of the screws and rods that held my spine together, I carefully lifted the stern of the kayak with rudder in the stowed up position. Since the kayak was on the island which was about three feet higher than the river’s surface, I pulled the kayak off the island until like a seesaw it teetered so the stern tipped down toward the nearby river surface. I let go and the kayak stern touched the river water. I began to pull more of the kayak off the island and as I did the weight of the kayak began to push the stern under water due to the steep angle and weight. I had to walk out into the mud and quicksand where I rapidly became mired but pulled the kayak out far enough so it gained buoyancy at the stern. My kayak was partially floating with the tip of the bow still hanging on the island’s edge. I went to move but couldn’t because I had sunk in the quicksand too deeply. I had to stop and try and get one foot free; after a while at the expense of causing my other foot to sink deeper, I had freed one foot. I placed the free foot on the solid sand on the shoreline while holding the kayak and spent a while trying to get my other foot out of the mud and quick sand. It took time but I finally pulled my foot out of the quicksand with a loud deep suction sound. I rinsed my feet off in the muddy water and pulled the rest of my kayak off the island’s raised shoreline; as the stern became more buoyant the kayak gracefully slid out into the river water where I steadied it next to the shoreline.

I check the kayak over carefully making sure all was in place securely. The tow rope was still secured to the island’s tree stump so I paused there on the shore line to once again survey what lay before me. As I had done so many times before, I surveyed the river’s surface over and over trying to find a place where the current wasn’t so strong but there simply wasn’t any area of calm waters. No matter how I plotted a course, it would have to take me through an area of dangerous currents that couldn’t be over come by paddling. I looked across the river and there was one area with fairly calm waters but the waters were made calm by a huge tree stuck in the river bank which protruded out into the river inhibiting part of the current flow; the problem with heading for the calm waters was it would place me behind a very large floating tree with an enormous root system about eight feet wide and five feet high at the end where the current was strongest (top image of river with downed tree and root base); it was a formidable obstacle blocking my path out. At the end of the huge root system making up the bulk of the barrier was the river water with churning waves that betrayed powerful currents. No matter how I looked at it, there was no way to get through, no way to avoid the forces that took me down so many times on the day I arrived. Then it dawned on me; I was so focused on what my eyes could see that I had forgotten so soon the far more powerful unseen world which my Father had full control of, a world He brought me into on the morning of the second day. Now came the question; was what happened to me on the island all an illusion created from my exhaustion and dehydration? Events that happened like the timing of the sunshine which came out revealing an heretofore unseen area for my camp site, or the sudden brilliant sunlight that just happened to come out when my need for warmth was the greatest as I was taking a river bath, or the most awesome of all when I experienced separation from a pain fill body; were all these a fluke or truly an act of an all Loving Father who watches over me and helps me?

As it was so many years ago when the Mafia threatened to take me apart and I called out to Him for help, or the time I ran out of water in the desert while walking across the United States on foot and cried out for water, or the many times on the highways of the US and Canada when I needed help or food to find that truck drivers and non-church people helped me so kindly but all but one “Christian” left me out of the highway thumping their Bibles and telling me “God bless you and be filled”, was this time any different? Could I depend upon the Love that held me so close for three days in a death trap to see me back to a world truly caught in death? As so many times before, I had nothing to lose by simply asking for help to get out, and that I did. I paused and expressed my fear and frustration with being faced with the world of death traps again and my personal weakness, fears and doubts asking my Father to help me find a way to escape. I made and continued to make my request which grew more intense while stepping into my kayak making sure all seating was secure with the all essential paddle leash that locked my paddle to my kayak.. I pull the cord that released the stowed rudder and it flipped down and into the murky waters. I paused one more time as if waiting for some kind of indication I should go but no words or magic flag appeared. Looking at the waves of the current and the deceptive calm beyond, I pushed off from shore and began paddling as fast as possible, where soon the bow of my kayak hit the powerful current suddenly being swept down stream, only this time there was no fear and it seemed that it was just perfect that I be swept down stream. I continued to paddle through the current finding I had been swept down stream several hundred feet as I entered the calm waters on the far side of the river. Once I was in the calm waters I found that I could easily paddle back up the river, but now I was on the other side of the rapid current. I was also behind the huge tree that blocked the river holding the most powerful part of the current as it swept by the end of its root system in the deeps of the current.

I paused in the calm waters looking at the heavy current sweeping by the partially submerged root system and backed down the river a short ways. I turned my kayak bow toward the end of the root system where the strongest current rapidly flowed by and began to paddle with all my might. In the calm waters I gained speed as I paddled then suddenly I hit the current as I continued to paddle. I kept the bow straight into the current and kept paddling as my kayak slowly went by the root system and after a time it was finally behind me. I was right in the midst of the strongest current paddling with all my might becoming exhausted and losing forward momentum; I hit my rudder to shift the bow to the right out of the current into the slower on coming waters in front of the submerged tree I had just passed. I was out! I continued to paddle as hard as I could where my kayak entered the broad expanse of waters that made up what looked like an ocean. I was exhausted and stopped paddling for a moment. All seemed peaceful with the familiar debris of floating bits of wood and bark everywhere. I thought I was in a motionless lake but as I looked at the distant shoreline I noticed it was moving slowly eastward which meant I was being carried on unseen currents westward. The momentary rest was over; I needed to keep paddling toward the east until I could figure out where I was and how to find the tundra river at the convergence. Like being in the midst of a vast ocean of muddy debris filled waters I had only the position of the sun and flow of the waters for hints as to which way to go. I was lost and I had been lost when I was in the desert, when I was on highways, when I was in the big cities of Korea, when I skied into the wilderness at night but each time I asked my Father for help, I felt as it were a very subtle tug or pull defined by a direction to go that was less difficult than other ways. I was now looking for that One Way that I should follow and it became apparent in a mysterious flow in the waters. I followed the giant pull of the waters current when in the distance I saw mysterious white object rise out of the waters to the north. I had no idea what it was or where it came from. How did this elongated white object appear on the waters in the distance? What was the purpose and meaning of this very vivid shape that suddenly appeared?

 

Continued in Chapter 12

© ®

 
 

 

English Lessons

From the Days When

Meaning Was Conveyed Gracefully

 

And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares, and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.--LUKE viii. 14.

 

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Preserve me from my calling's snare,
And hide my simple heart above,
Above the thorns of choking care,
The gilded baits of worldly love.

C. WESLEY.

 

Anything allowed in the heart which is contrary to the will of God, let it seem ever so insignificant, or be ever so deeply hidden, will cause us to fall before our enemies. Any root of bitterness cherished towards another, any self-seeking, any harsh judgments indulged in, any slackness in obeying the voice of the Lord, any doubtful habits or surroundings, any one of these things will effectually cripple and paralyze our spiritual life. I believe our blessed Guide, the indwelling Holy Spirit, is always secretly discovering these things to us by continual little twinges and pangs of conscience, so that we are left without excuse,

H. W. SMITH

 

   

 

 

© 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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