There is nothing else to voice here.
There is no Breath with which to.
The stages gone through along this way have been, each of them, chronologically very lengthy.
There is no sense the current plane would not follow the same pattern.
Part of what Jesus did was parry and block.
Then it was time for His hands to come down.
And they did.
"There is a time to live and a time to die...a time to kill and a time to heal...a time to break down and a time to build up...a time to mourn and a time to dance...a time to rend and a time to sew"
A time to publish and advance, and a time to relent.
I have no idea if there will be a time to speak again.
It's not now, and honestly I couldn't care less if there ever is.
If there is, it would be in a different place.
Another place was set up a while back, when resurrection seemed more.
It was set up fully public, not private or requiring permission. Yet it's realized some would not wish to view, and so the name isn't put here openly. It would be easily findable and accessible for any wishing to find it.
If it remains largely void, so be it. If something were to genesis, so be it.
The duration of stages is so unbelievably lethargic.
There are no promises besides.
Jesus had a new body upon resurrection. If resurrection were possible, so would I.
Goodbye.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
death and burial
Have you ever watched someone die?
Not on television, not an instant death, but rather a death that occurred over time?
Do you remember what took place?
Do you remember the person slowly changing? Do you remember as the death took its grip, its toll, the withering which ate away at the person you had known?
As it got closer to the end, they just weren't themselves were they? The them you had always known, their personality, their goodness, their person--just wasn't the same, was it?
As death consumed, they became a shell of who they had been.
Remember the them who made you smile? Remember the them who was full of good things? Remember the them who gave you hope? the them who helped you? the them who loved you? the them who had life and light inside?
That wasn't them toward the end, was it?
Instead, toward the end, they mostly just lie there.
Instead of their normal personality, they were mostly motionlessness. Sometimes in silence. Sometimes with their mouth gaped open, their breath awkward and irregular as a look either of blankness or pain permeated their person.
They were beyond giving to you as they had once given, weren't they? Near the throes of death they were visibly unresponsive to your words, your love, your care.
It reached a point when you squeezed their hand they didn't squeeze back.
They couldn't squeeze back. In their heart and spirit they wished to. They did feel your squeeze, but death was so close and had them so weakened they couldn't do what their heart and spirit wished to do.
It reached a point where they tangibly gave nothing in return. There was no response to your voice, no response to your love, no response to your touches.
I long talked here about being in a season of winter in life. A season of bleakness. A season where there was no fruit.
At some point it was realized that it was not simply a season of winter going on, but rather a death taking place.
It is taking place no more.
This past June, and beyond, I pleaded Father to please end it. To end the death. To consummate it quickly, if it were possible.
He heard me.
He heard me, not because it was quick (in how we think of quick), but because I'm not dying anymore. The death is over.
What you have been reading since November here is someone who has passed from dying to burial. I have tasted firsthand what burial is.
Whatever I may have thought before now was burial, or being in a grave...no way. Not even. There was no way to even begin to fathom.
I know the death is over because I no longer have a spirit. Throughout my whole life, regardless of the expansion or deflation of my soul, I always had a spirit. There is no spirit now. And what you have read here in the past two months is someone who has no spirit. Someone who is buried. Not dying.
I can tell you firsthand, burial is unlike anything humanly imaginable. To be cognizantly aware of existence but without a spirit is...there's just no way to begin to describe.
As for the soul in burial? It's locked into one position, and one position only. I'll try to illustrate.
Every spring, American pro baseball players begin their season either in Florida or Arizona in what is called Spring Training. It's a precursor to the regular season, where they play exhibition games against other teams.
At a spring training game in 1997, a player named Robin Ventura was coming in to home plate during a game to try and score. It had rained either the previous night or that morning, causing what was normally dirt on the infield and around home plate to instead be muddy.
As Robin came in to score, he slid into home to avoid being tagged out. The cleats on his shoe caught firmly in the mud while the inertia and momentum of his running and body weight carried the rest of him forward.
His foot stuck in the mud? It turned sideways and backwards. Completely backwards, to where his toes were facing his chest. His foot and leg were in a V-shape, to where the outside of his foot was essentially touching his lower shin. His heel was pointed where his toes normally would be pointed.
But Robin's foot did not simply turn sideways and backwards for an instant and then turn back to regular position. His foot, rather, remained locked in the V position where his toes were facing...his face.
And that, friend, is the best I can do to describe the condition of the soul in burial. It is locked in one position--a position of gruesome, horrifying and searing grotesqueness, just as Robin Ventura's foot was locked in utter grotesqueness that spring day in 1997.
There's something else about burial. In burial there is, absolutely, no hope.
None. It is just simply, completely, dark.
There is no sun, and the darkness is so thorough that it causes incredible doubt that a sun even exists.
All the things people try to say ("Things will get better", "God is able...", "God can...", etc)? Flatline.
It doesn't matter how much you know God, how much you've walked with Him, how intimately you have heard and been led by the Holy Spirit, how much you've tasted Him or His power or the Life He can give. Those things have no pulse in burial.
Burial is absolute, utter separation: from life, Life and God.
None of the tangible tastings with Him, none of His goodness, none of His attributes, none of His promises, none of the past things He has intimately and personally said specifically, none of His anything, none of His nothing, none of it carries any weight in burial.
The verses and so forth in the bible do not cause any type of ebb or spark whatsoever in burial. This is because what's in the bible speaks to man's spirit. When you have given up your spirit, when your spirit is dead, those things do not cause any kind of blip.
It is so void and destitute that anything you have ever known about the idea of resurrection, honestly, in the mind and soul is indigestable to grasp. No matter how strong or solid your faith, burial vacuums any tastings of God. If you find yourself reading this finding that impossible to believe, I won't banter with you. All I can convey is the vivid, detailed descriptiveness of what it is here.
I have seen through this there is only one place God is not and cannot be. It is in burial.
It's scary. Scary because I'd never tasted this before. Not even remotely come close to imagining it. Any past imaginings, voicings or notions of being dead or in a grave? Ptthhht. Not even...And for someone who has seen a lot and isn't given to be surprised or scared, to say that it is scary is titanic.
For most of the past three years I have thought that the scale of pain in life went from 1 to 5, and I was continuously at 4 or 5 (with a couple of exceptions). In burial the pain scale goes to 8 billion, and there is no fluctuation. Your soul stays pegged at the top. Continuously.
The worst of this is I've never known what it is to exist without a spirit. Even in my most rebellious days against God I still had a spirit. There was still in my deepest core, despite what I was doing or living, a sense of Him.
There is no sense of Him in burial.
That's not an atheistic statement. It's not saying He isn't. It is simply the matter that He is in no form, in no way here. In burial not only are you beyond your own rope, there is likewise none of God's rope. Neither is any of His rope anywhere to be seen, not even within sight. And that is what scared me. For the first time ever...ever...not even a glimmer of the faintest kind whatsoever. Utter void and absence.
God is, but He is not in burial. (because He, Father, cannot be buried). Jesus was buried, but not God the Father.
Burial is being cognitively aware of some type of existence. But it is not life. It is not human existence, because it occurs without a spirit, without a heart, and with the soul locked.
The hollowness, the void. It's never been this. And so, yeah, the things which has been posted here? It took a bit to realize it, but I finally did realize that this was no longer dying. The death pleaded for was done. This was something else.
I can't bring myself to talk about what happened at the very end. What consummated the death.
I just can't.
All I can say is that I was in a winter, then dying, but not anymore.
And so realize something from having read these postings over time and from noticing the change. The turn. The degradation. The nosedive. The slipping. The cynicism. The pessimism. The deterioration.
You have witnessed a death. And just as those who become something other than themselves as death overtakes, so you have seen that here. The "that's not like him", the "what is this", the "oh my", the "I thought he was", the ugliness, the bitterness, the lack of response, the flinches to pain, the seizures, the darkness?
You have seen a death as it took place. And you have also seen glimpses of the utter blackness and hopelessness of burial.
And so I leave you with a picture. Just as the baseball story illustrates the condition of the soul in burial, so this picture partially illustrates what death and burial have been like. One's entire person charred and mangled beyond recognition, then turned inside out and exposed.
It's not pretty. It's gruesome, as life and Life have literally been sucked out, and all that remains near the end is an unresponsive, ugly shell.
During the season of death one said to me, "You will never be able to say that you were abandoned in this place. If you expect me to stand outside, I'll stand outside and wait. I have all the time and patience in the world and it will be well worth seeing you rise out of this death and emerge truly alive from this grave. You see, the women got to see the resurrected Christ first because they didn't run away as he was dying. They stayed through the blood and the beatings while everyone else ran away to hide. They didn't flee and neither shall I." And "I will be here until you are out of this hell. I love you and you have a friend for life...whether you want one or not."
They left.
The bible says Jesus' death was so thorough, so gruesome it made his form beyond recognition. That he couldn't be recognized as a human being.
I know now.
What it is for beating and death to disfigure.
In death I likewise became unrecognizable from who I once was. In more ways than one.
Not on television, not an instant death, but rather a death that occurred over time?
Do you remember what took place?
Do you remember the person slowly changing? Do you remember as the death took its grip, its toll, the withering which ate away at the person you had known?
As it got closer to the end, they just weren't themselves were they? The them you had always known, their personality, their goodness, their person--just wasn't the same, was it?
As death consumed, they became a shell of who they had been.
Remember the them who made you smile? Remember the them who was full of good things? Remember the them who gave you hope? the them who helped you? the them who loved you? the them who had life and light inside?
That wasn't them toward the end, was it?
Instead, toward the end, they mostly just lie there.
Instead of their normal personality, they were mostly motionlessness. Sometimes in silence. Sometimes with their mouth gaped open, their breath awkward and irregular as a look either of blankness or pain permeated their person.
They were beyond giving to you as they had once given, weren't they? Near the throes of death they were visibly unresponsive to your words, your love, your care.
It reached a point when you squeezed their hand they didn't squeeze back.
They couldn't squeeze back. In their heart and spirit they wished to. They did feel your squeeze, but death was so close and had them so weakened they couldn't do what their heart and spirit wished to do.
It reached a point where they tangibly gave nothing in return. There was no response to your voice, no response to your love, no response to your touches.
I long talked here about being in a season of winter in life. A season of bleakness. A season where there was no fruit.
At some point it was realized that it was not simply a season of winter going on, but rather a death taking place.
It is taking place no more.
This past June, and beyond, I pleaded Father to please end it. To end the death. To consummate it quickly, if it were possible.
He heard me.
He heard me, not because it was quick (in how we think of quick), but because I'm not dying anymore. The death is over.
What you have been reading since November here is someone who has passed from dying to burial. I have tasted firsthand what burial is.
Whatever I may have thought before now was burial, or being in a grave...no way. Not even. There was no way to even begin to fathom.
I know the death is over because I no longer have a spirit. Throughout my whole life, regardless of the expansion or deflation of my soul, I always had a spirit. There is no spirit now. And what you have read here in the past two months is someone who has no spirit. Someone who is buried. Not dying.
I can tell you firsthand, burial is unlike anything humanly imaginable. To be cognizantly aware of existence but without a spirit is...there's just no way to begin to describe.
As for the soul in burial? It's locked into one position, and one position only. I'll try to illustrate.
Every spring, American pro baseball players begin their season either in Florida or Arizona in what is called Spring Training. It's a precursor to the regular season, where they play exhibition games against other teams.
At a spring training game in 1997, a player named Robin Ventura was coming in to home plate during a game to try and score. It had rained either the previous night or that morning, causing what was normally dirt on the infield and around home plate to instead be muddy.
As Robin came in to score, he slid into home to avoid being tagged out. The cleats on his shoe caught firmly in the mud while the inertia and momentum of his running and body weight carried the rest of him forward.
His foot stuck in the mud? It turned sideways and backwards. Completely backwards, to where his toes were facing his chest. His foot and leg were in a V-shape, to where the outside of his foot was essentially touching his lower shin. His heel was pointed where his toes normally would be pointed.
But Robin's foot did not simply turn sideways and backwards for an instant and then turn back to regular position. His foot, rather, remained locked in the V position where his toes were facing...his face.
And that, friend, is the best I can do to describe the condition of the soul in burial. It is locked in one position--a position of gruesome, horrifying and searing grotesqueness, just as Robin Ventura's foot was locked in utter grotesqueness that spring day in 1997.
There's something else about burial. In burial there is, absolutely, no hope.
None. It is just simply, completely, dark.
There is no sun, and the darkness is so thorough that it causes incredible doubt that a sun even exists.
All the things people try to say ("Things will get better", "God is able...", "God can...", etc)? Flatline.
It doesn't matter how much you know God, how much you've walked with Him, how intimately you have heard and been led by the Holy Spirit, how much you've tasted Him or His power or the Life He can give. Those things have no pulse in burial.
Burial is absolute, utter separation: from life, Life and God.
None of the tangible tastings with Him, none of His goodness, none of His attributes, none of His promises, none of the past things He has intimately and personally said specifically, none of His anything, none of His nothing, none of it carries any weight in burial.
The verses and so forth in the bible do not cause any type of ebb or spark whatsoever in burial. This is because what's in the bible speaks to man's spirit. When you have given up your spirit, when your spirit is dead, those things do not cause any kind of blip.
It is so void and destitute that anything you have ever known about the idea of resurrection, honestly, in the mind and soul is indigestable to grasp. No matter how strong or solid your faith, burial vacuums any tastings of God. If you find yourself reading this finding that impossible to believe, I won't banter with you. All I can convey is the vivid, detailed descriptiveness of what it is here.
I have seen through this there is only one place God is not and cannot be. It is in burial.
It's scary. Scary because I'd never tasted this before. Not even remotely come close to imagining it. Any past imaginings, voicings or notions of being dead or in a grave? Ptthhht. Not even...And for someone who has seen a lot and isn't given to be surprised or scared, to say that it is scary is titanic.
For most of the past three years I have thought that the scale of pain in life went from 1 to 5, and I was continuously at 4 or 5 (with a couple of exceptions). In burial the pain scale goes to 8 billion, and there is no fluctuation. Your soul stays pegged at the top. Continuously.
The worst of this is I've never known what it is to exist without a spirit. Even in my most rebellious days against God I still had a spirit. There was still in my deepest core, despite what I was doing or living, a sense of Him.
There is no sense of Him in burial.
That's not an atheistic statement. It's not saying He isn't. It is simply the matter that He is in no form, in no way here. In burial not only are you beyond your own rope, there is likewise none of God's rope. Neither is any of His rope anywhere to be seen, not even within sight. And that is what scared me. For the first time ever...ever...not even a glimmer of the faintest kind whatsoever. Utter void and absence.
God is, but He is not in burial. (because He, Father, cannot be buried). Jesus was buried, but not God the Father.
Burial is being cognitively aware of some type of existence. But it is not life. It is not human existence, because it occurs without a spirit, without a heart, and with the soul locked.
The hollowness, the void. It's never been this. And so, yeah, the things which has been posted here? It took a bit to realize it, but I finally did realize that this was no longer dying. The death pleaded for was done. This was something else.
I can't bring myself to talk about what happened at the very end. What consummated the death.
I just can't.
All I can say is that I was in a winter, then dying, but not anymore.
And so realize something from having read these postings over time and from noticing the change. The turn. The degradation. The nosedive. The slipping. The cynicism. The pessimism. The deterioration.
You have witnessed a death. And just as those who become something other than themselves as death overtakes, so you have seen that here. The "that's not like him", the "what is this", the "oh my", the "I thought he was", the ugliness, the bitterness, the lack of response, the flinches to pain, the seizures, the darkness?
You have seen a death as it took place. And you have also seen glimpses of the utter blackness and hopelessness of burial.
And so I leave you with a picture. Just as the baseball story illustrates the condition of the soul in burial, so this picture partially illustrates what death and burial have been like. One's entire person charred and mangled beyond recognition, then turned inside out and exposed.
It's not pretty. It's gruesome, as life and Life have literally been sucked out, and all that remains near the end is an unresponsive, ugly shell.
During the season of death one said to me, "You will never be able to say that you were abandoned in this place. If you expect me to stand outside, I'll stand outside and wait. I have all the time and patience in the world and it will be well worth seeing you rise out of this death and emerge truly alive from this grave. You see, the women got to see the resurrected Christ first because they didn't run away as he was dying. They stayed through the blood and the beatings while everyone else ran away to hide. They didn't flee and neither shall I." And "I will be here until you are out of this hell. I love you and you have a friend for life...whether you want one or not."
They left.
The bible says Jesus' death was so thorough, so gruesome it made his form beyond recognition. That he couldn't be recognized as a human being.
I know now.
What it is for beating and death to disfigure.
In death I likewise became unrecognizable from who I once was. In more ways than one.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
I don't recall
ever coming across anyone who has called any of you cowards, selfish or thoughtless.
Everyone's thoughts were drawn to certain things from that day.
Some to the planes. Some to the rescue personnel.
I was always drawn to you. The hundreds of you.
I have spent many hours through the years wondering what kinds of things went through your hearts, through your minds.
Each time I've thought of it the deepest core of me has been stirred beyond words. The swirl, the utter dichotomy, the indescribable tearing, the turmoil, the agony. Human expression can't even begin...
What ten thousand things raced through you?
What went through your stomach, your mind, your heart?
When you first realized that...?
Right before you...?
So convenient for outsiders to opine. To denigrate. To condemn and slough off.
They can't imagine.
I can.
You weren't cowards. Not pussies. Not self-centered. Not thoughtless.
Not those of you who had children. Not those of you who had someone you loved deeply and passionately. Not those of you who had nothing. Not those of you who had anything in between.
None of you.
I used to wonder what it was like to be you.
I don't wonder anymore.
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