Bird song morning

Awakened by bird song and a soft rustling of the leaves in the tree overhanging my treehouse apartment deck, I checked the clock: 4:40 a.m. "awhile before sunrise," I thought. For a moment, I laid there trying to decide if I wanted to get up and do some writing or if I wanted to go back to sleep for another hour or so. It felt like something extra was in the morning air, a subtle kind of electricity, which wakened me further. I got up.

The cats were circling like sharks, watching me carefully to be sure I’d open their can before I started the coffee. They were delighted, as they are always delighted, to hear the can pop and their portions divided onto their large dinner plate on the floor. As I made the coffee ideas were competing for my attention.
 
I turned on the desk lamp, deliberately avoiding the temptation to check on the morning news.   I felt like I was hiding from the violence, news of searing heat in the southeast, forest fires from California to Washington State, terrible floods in Pakistan and China. All those and even more natural and unnatural disasters worse than anything I’ve ever heard of in my life seemed to engulf my consciousness when I let them. The gun shots that rang out in the street outside my apartment a couple nights ago were beginning to be the regular sounds of the night, followed by sirens, loud fighting, some in foreign languages, in the street. On other nights there was the strange singing from someone who was either drunk of high on meth. He kept us all awake. Even if you could fall asleep despite his singing, there was also the occasional yelling from another neighbor to him to shut up as he also announced the time. 

"It's 12:30, SHUT UP!!"  

All night, every hour or so, I learned what time it was. I saw my neighborhood changing, becoming more violent, criminal. The guy next door was arrested one day. The sheriff came, showed me a picture and asked me to identify the person, and then banged on the door until the young man, barely out of his teens and covered with tatoos, was handcuffed and led away.

I had hoped my writing would be a voice among many in the vast universe of the web for a real and lasting inner peace, leading to an outer peace. It was a call to listen to the heart, to shift the brain from its mean me-ness, its self centered pursuit of pleasure and profit, and tune in to the soft, subtle longing of the heart, which, for me, had too often  lately been leading me to tears. I cry for my children’s future. I cry for my world. I am homesick for my home and yet know I can’t go back. My home town was the site of a drive by shooting which killed four young people outside a restaurant this weekend.

I don’t understand violence. I only ever wanted for there to be peace – first in my home as a child, then in school, then at work. As a fifth grader, in a Buffalo public school, I remember being shocked when I learned about apartheid in South Africa and then later at home when I became aware the church was subdivided into various factions none of which agreed. I am acutely aware now that I have always known that this is a very scary world. 

I am afraid to turn on the news. I can’t bear to see the scenes of people struggling to survive as the raging flood waters drag them down stream, most certainly drowning them. I worry about the children I know who were hungry, whose parents don’t have jobs. The children will be the ones who won’t understand why they are going to bed hungry. I am heartbroken over the children who are abducted, hurt and even killed, brutally, by human monsters. Many of the mothers wait with hearts full of longing and hope for their little ones to come home or be returned.  And then, when and if they are, their souls are broken and wounded beyond human ability to heal them. The terrible times have been underway for some time. 

I wanted to write words of hope this morning. I wanted to write that if we open our hearts, let go of our selfishness, if we truly love ourselves, we can love each other. I wanted to help people, through my writing, to find a moment of enlightenment, even if it's just for the few moments it takes to read my blog. I was grateful for my own peace of mind, for the love that bubbles up within my own heart these days, for the great pervasive expansion and depth of peace I experience now. I long to experience a real encounter with Christ. All the other stuff that used to occupy my mind has now long left my life. My greatest wish this morning, as in all mornings lately, is to experience Christ.

I looked at the clock. It was 5 a.m. and still dark. No sunrise yet, but the birds were singing even louder, some landing on the balcony of my deck. The cats were at the large glass sliding door, which was open, allowing the early morning breezes in through the screen.
 
An unusual energy permeated the air, something different, in the way it gets just before a rain storm. I thought the sunrise was beginning since the birds were singing louder and then the squirrels were on the deck now, also. The odd thing about the sunrise was that it seemed to start too quickly, not that slow orb of golden light rising gently and majestically in the eastern sky. And, this light wasn’t coming from the eastern sky. It was in the southern sky. It didn’t seem to rise either. It seemed to emerge slowly out of the black canopy of night.

It grew from a pin size to a golf ball, a softball, to a basketball, and then, within a minute, it burst into the most glorious radiant flash of light, brighter than the sun, white light, silently expanding over the entire horizon, filling the sky with a brightness that would make noon time in the summer look dark. I didn’t know what it was. It was beautiful, it was peaceful. I don’t know how to describe such a brilliant light that suddenly filled the sky, illuminating the predawn with a nuclear sunlight. Moments later, I heard some people down in the street. They were probably early morning runners who were startled by the sudden bright light, I thought.

I ran downstairs and out into the street. A kind of magnetic pull seemed to lead me down the street, along with a growing number of other people. They seemed excited and frightened. Some were lingering there, looking up at the sky. Some were standing in the doorways to their homes, others were in the street in their nightclothes. I just kept on walking. I wanted to break into a run. My heart was beating faster and faster. The excitement rose in my mind and heart.  Everyone was focused on the sky. I didn’t’ know where I was going. It was like an invisible force was drawing me.

I rounded the corner, started running down the next street and the next, and then I realized I was being led deep into the inner city.  People were streaming into the streets near me. I would have said there was a crowd, but it was like a massive river of humanity flowing in the same direction I was going. There were also people up on the roof tops. One man, in a long white robe, was shouting, “Allah,” and pointing. Another was crying, "It's the end of days." We were all experiencing something spectacular, something ineffable in light, sound and energy.

As I got into an area that I knew was a hot bed of drug gang warfare, the brilliant light began to withdraw, again slowly forming into a mass from the outer horizon perimeters, then into a beach ball, basketball until it became a small dot in the sky and then blinked out. In the time that the area was blinded by the ball of light, the sun had risen and now was streaming golden rays over the mountains. On any other morning, I would be quietly typing away at my computer, pausing to sip my coffee and admire a beautiful sunrise. This morning, I was moving in a crowd of people through the inner city drawn by a mysterious magnetic force to an uncertain destination.

I kept up my pace, and with each step the energy and incandescent power within me seemed to grow stronger. I felt as if I was being pulled by a force of such power and love.

As I came around the corner of an old deli, with its windows protected with rod iron bars, I noticed whiskey bottles along the curb, cigarette butts casually tossed, all kinds of litter on the street. Children in the dirtiest of clothes, stood in the doorways in bare feet.

And, then, there he was.

A young man who looked in his late 20s, long dark hair, wet with sweat, his face dirty and tear streaked, carrying the limp body of a young child whose blood was streaming down his right arm which swayed as the man strode up the street. He looked tired. He looked sad. He looked at the masses of people that were crowding around him, but none too close. The sunrise cast a halo around him and he slowly walked illuminated by a light that was from nowhere. He seemed almost to be a shadow himself, and yet he was real.

He looked at me and in that glance we met silently soul to soul. I knelt down in the street, bowing to him. My heart was bursting with so much love and yet I saw this tragedy. A child had been shot by a gang leader – not because the child got in the way – but because the gang leader wanted to show his power, his cruel power to take life into his hands.

The young man knelt down in front of me and placed the child in my arms. He stood up. Looking at the people, who were silently watching, he said,

“I asked you to bring the children to me, but not this way. I asked you to seek the kingdom of God within your hearts and there you will meet the child who will lead you to my father’s kingdom. I am bitterly grieved that you have sold your soul to the evil one and killed one of my children as payment. I didn’t want to come to you this way or this time. But, I have come and I am taking with me all the children of this earth. As of this moment, all the children will leave with me and you will be left alone with your decision.”

As he looked at me, my heart filled with love.The little boy who I thought was dead, began to move slightly, weeping softly. I hugged him close to me and together we were enveloped by a beautiful white cloud, radiant in the kind of light we’d seen earlier, only this was only a cloud. It wasn’t the great light that had brought the man here.

It seemed awhile that we were in that cloud. When it cleared, I realized I was kneeling on a lovely grassy mound, flowers and birds were all around me. The little boy looked up at me and snuggled closer. In a moment, he was up and out of my arms and dancing around on the grass. Then, the young man, now clean and fresh looking radiant and beautiful, was walking toward me with a small group of people. He was smiling and walked with a strong stride in his pace. While he walked with authority he also had a friendly lightness in his step. The little boy ran to him. He stooped to lift the boy up, swinging him up into the air, laughing and then playfully setting the boy back down. The people who were with him gathered around the little boy and began playing with him, some sitting on the ground, some bending over. The little boy seemed happy.

The young man walked up to me. He wrapped his arms around me.  I felt wrapped in a blanket of the purest most beautiful love, unlike anything I’d ever felt before.



“Tell your people that it is not through their good works that they will find me. If everyone were to enter their hearts, seek love of their true self and others, and wait for me, quietly in prayer or in meditation, I would come to them. All  violence will cease when people open their hearts to each other and to heaven.  Then they will find the peace that passes all understanding. And, then, they will all find all they are seeking.

Please return and tell them this. They must do this. They must stop the violence and hate, the competition, the ego-driven selfishness, that has poisoned the earth and the souls of the people.

I will return soon. Until them, I will come in meditations and prayers. "

He was still holding me as the grassy place began to fade as the cloud gathered around me. In moments, I was back on the street, kneeling there, in a blood soaked shirt. The people were weeping. Some were kneeling near me. One woman, possibly the little boy’s mother, was sitting in the street rocking writhing with inconsolable weeping.

I stood up and looked around at all the faces. They didn’t really even know what had just happened. All that remained from his presence was a piece of white cloth that had been torn from his shirt by a parked car antennae. The street looked dim and erie as if a storm had ripped through it.

The light had dimmed there, but shone brightly in my heart. I walked away and never looked back.