Into Thy Calm (a fragmentary liturgy)

 
[folio begins]

...seek the Lord while He may be found.

Call upon Him while He is near.

Let the wicked forsake his ways,

And the unrighteous man his thoughts.

Let him return to the Lord, that He may have compassion on him,

And to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.

For My thoughts are not your thoughts,

Neither are your ways My ways, declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

So are My ways higher than your ways,

And My thoughts than your thoughts.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven

And do not return there but water the earth

Making it bring forth and sprout,

Giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

So shall My word be that goes out from My mouth:

It shall not return to me empty-handed,

But it shall accomplish that which I purpose

And shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out in joy

And be lead forth in peace.

The mountains and the hills before you

Shall break forth into singing,

And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands...

[folio breaks off]

 

[manuscript begins]

...so if I had one chance to tell you something, then I would tell you that it is all true. Everything. Everything that God has purposed. It is all true, all real, all happening and going to happen. Even the wildest, craziest promise is going to happen. You will go through the dark night and walk into the sun of a far, green country. You will walk into it with joy, led forth with peace, and all the mountains and hills and trees will break forth into singing, and everything sad will be made untrue, and everything wicked will be unmade, and we shall all be remade and are being remade in every moment and every inch of our lives. You who are the children of God: right where you are, wherever you are sitting are standing, you are caught up into the whirlwind of God's will, a wind blowing in one unstoppable direction, towards an end that will be the beginning of all your deepest desires and the resurrection of all good things in a splendor so thick and sweet that your soul will drown in light inaccessible, joy indescribable, and peace passing beyond the smallness of your thoughts and dreams and...

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...by now the thing must have passed together out of the region of sight as we understand it. For he says that the whole solid figure of these enamored and inter-inanimated circlings was suddenly revealed as the mere superficies of a far vaster pattern in four dimensions, and that figure was the boundary of yet others in other worlds: till suddenly---as the movement grew yet swifter, the interweaving yet more ecstatic, the relevance of all to all yet more intense, as dimension was added to dimension and that part of him which could reason and remember was dropped farther and farther behind that part of him which saw---even this, at the zenith of complexity, complexity itself was eaten up and faded, as a thin white cloud fades into the hard blue burning of the sky, and a simplicity beyond all comprehension, ancient and young as spring, illimitable, pellucid, drew him with cords of infinite desire into its own stillness. He went up into such a quietness, a privacy, and a freshness that at the very moment when he stood farthest from our ordinary mode of being he had the sense of stripping off encumbrances and awakening from trance and coming to himself. With a gesture of relaxation, he looked about him...

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Selah. Amen. Again...

-Jon Vowell, et. al. (c) 2013