20 - Los Viente Poemas

Pablo Neruda

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: «La noche está estrellada, y tirian, azules, los astros, a lo lejos.»

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la queiría.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.

Oír la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.

Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.

Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.

La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.

De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Aunque ésta sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.

τετελεσται - The Deed is done

I finally did it! woohoo! I submitted my monster of a thesis last friday to the registrars, a full day ahead of the deadline of 21 august. Simply relieved and thankful for having done so, I'm thankful for all the sweet souls who've put up with my ranting and ravings which the process squeezed out of me.

It sure is something I'll miss- late nights/mornings at the lab, driving home down the empty expressway at 4:30am from a full night's work, sitting in the anechoic chamber, listening to the ringing in my ears and blood gushing through my head with each heart pump. The quiet and stillness. It can be sooo quiet. Too quiet. I'll miss popping by the various labs and making myself a nuisance, asking for diamond paste and vacuum pumps, getting cast iron fixtures fabricated, calling up suppliers for slow-casting resins. Not to mention the exhilaration of making my cash claims from department and waiting months for the bureacratic machine to move its muscle. I'll miss walking to tutorial lessons to give answers away to bored students, as well as crashing lectures for the fun of it. Rummaging through the library and on-line resources to find the english translation of soviet articles written in the height of the coldwar. Amazing grace and provision from above!

"Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, comign down from the Farther of Lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." James 1:17

Lush walks on the rooftops of engineering in the sunset, in the morning mist, in the wee hours under the starlight; the waxing and waning moon, the cold glitter of venus and the reddish speck which is mars. Meditations in the wind, the drizzle, lightning and thunder. Smell of the sea when the breeze picks up. The solitary eagle flying over kent ridge; pigeons cooing in some unseen ledge. Postures of prayer, dance, cartwheels, veneration, worship. Flights of the soul, delighting in the abundance of the House, drinking from the River. Unexpected meeting of lives there; other roof-seekers. The shofar sounds. Declarations of liberty! (jubilee- ywbl, derives from ram- ywbl, an allusion to the ram's horn blown to announce jubilee!)

I'll miss chats with my profs- chats about music, performance practice, comparisons of hebrew and arabic, bits of italian cropping up here and here, xoomij, university policies, and always being offered a banana from a brown envelope. Molto grazi!

With the resources of time and monies on my hand, this was pretty much a highly highly productive time, during which our church started off a new service, and I fronted the main band and raised up another band in the process, while juggling sunday morning service. Lotsa grace and provision from God! Z3 did outreaches and concerts, in addition to weekly services at snl. I was involved weekly with spirit wind jam session at the Y, as well as fortnightly jams at sheryl's; bible studies at KH's every other week. Visited NZ, NY, VA, Tassie, Melb in the process. Hosted friends from germany, ghana, china and puerto rico. Involved through two metamorphosis camps, two YI camps, attempted a mongolia mission trip, a missions conference, Alive! conference, contributed to an album (Burn project), played for shavuot (pentecost) concerts, ministered alongside anointed worship leaders and teachers. Collaborated a session at TAGS with a movement artist, and performed at the NUS museums. God has been sooo faithful, and merciful.

Need all the wisdom in planning my next step. I remember two years ago fresh out of graduation I was praying my next step and this masters-with-a-research-scholarship-on-a-totally-cool-title-that-i-proposed came along. I was reading a book entitled "if you want to walk on water you've got to get out of the boat", which was definitely the longest book title i've seen. How often do you get to study on musical acoustics with a cryogenic slant, and get paid in the process? heh! Its gotta be only God!

Questions, uncertainties and fallacies. Need to stand upon the Rock who is higher than I, whose firm hand surrounds me. He is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing. He makes me to lie down in green pastures, leads me by still waters, always restoring my soul, leading me in paths of righteousness, for His name's sake. I may walk through the valley of the shadow of death (mere shadows!) and will fear no evil because of His company, his presence. His rod and his staff comfort me. He will prepare a table abundantly, yet, in the presence of my enemies (yes, i'm guaranteed, and allowed to keep some!). He has anointed me with oil, his Holy Spirit, and my cup overflows in abundance. Goodness and Love and mercy will hotly pursue me (that's the connotation in the hebrew) all the days of my life and of all those who love Him, and I will dwell in His House forever, Him, who is the person which is Love. Amen!

The Fall of Man

excerpts from The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis

... But God cannot have made us so. The gravitation away from God, 'the journey homeward to habitual self', must, we think, be a product of the Fall. What exactly happened when Men fell, we do not know; but if it is legitimate to guess, I offer the following picture-- a 'myth' in the Socratic sense, a not unlikely tale.

"For long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of Himself. He gave it hands whose thumb could be applied to each of the fingers, jaws and teeth and throat capable of articulation, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated...

"...Then, in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say 'I' and 'me', which could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could make judgements of truth, beauty, and goodness, and which was so far above time that it could perceive time flowing past. This new consciousness ruled and illuminated the whole organism, flooding every part of it with light, and was not, like ours, limited to a selection of the movements going on in one part of the organism, namely the brain. Man was then all consciousness. The modern Yogi claims- whether falsely or truly- to have under control those functions which to us are almost part of the external world, such as digestion and circulation. This power the first man had in eminence. His organic processes obeyed the law of his own will, not the law of nature. His organs sent up appetites to the judgement seat of will not because they had to, but because he chose. Sleep meant to him not the stupor which we undergo, but willed and conscious repose- he remained awake to enjoy the pleasure and duty of sleep. Since the processes of decay and repari in his tissues were similarly conscious and obedient, it may not be fanciful to suppose that the length of his life was largely at his own discretion. Wholly commanding himself, he commanded all lower lives with which he came into contact. Even now, we meet rare individuals who have a mysterious power of taming beasts. This power the Paradisal man enjoyed in eminence. The old picture of the brutes sporting before Adam and fawning upon him may not be wholly unsymbolical. Even now more animals than you might expect are ready to adore man if they are given a reasonable opportunity: for man was made to be the priest and even, in one sense, the Christ, of the animals- the mediator through whom they apprehend so much of the Divine splendour as their irrational nature allows. And God was to such a man no slippery, inclined plane. The new consciousness had been made to repose on its Creator, and repose it did. However rich and varied man's experience of his fellows (or fellow) in charity and friendship or sexual love, or of the beasts, or of the surrounding world then first recognised as beautiful and awful, God came first in his love and in his thought, and that without painful effort. In perfect cyclic movemnet, being, power and joy descended from God to man in the form of gift and returned from man to God in the form of obedient love and ecstatic adoration: and in this sense, though not in all, man was then truly the son of God, the prototype of Christ, perfectly enacting in joy and ease of all the faculties and all the senses that filial self-surrender which Our Lord enacted in the agonies of the crucifixion...

"...But sooner or later they fell. Someone or something whispered that they could become as gods- that they could cease directing their lives to their Creator and taking all their delights as uncovenanted mercies, as 'accidents' (in the logical sense) which arose int the course of a life directed not to those delights but to the adoration of God.... so they desired to be on their own, to take care for their own future, to plan for pleasure and for security, to have a meum from which, no doubt, they would pay some reasonable tribute to God in the way of time, attention, and love, but which, nevertheless, was theirs not His. They wanted, as we say, to 'call their souls their own'. But that means to live a lie, for our souls are not, in fact, our own. They wanted some corner in the universe of which they could say to God, 'This is our business, not yours.' But there is no such corner. They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives. We have no idea in what particular act, or series of acts, the self-contradictory, impossible wish found expression. For all I can see, it might have concerned the literal eating of a fruit, but the question is of no consequence.

"This act of self-will on the part of the creature, which constitutes an utter falseness to its true creaturely position, is the only sin that can be conceived as the Fall... The turning from God to self fulfils both conditions. It is a sin possible even to Paradisal man, because the mere existence of a self- the mere fact that we call it 'me'- includes, from the first, the danger of self-idolatory. Since I am I, I must make an act of self-surrender, however small or however easy, in living to God rather than to myself. This is, if you like, the 'weak spot' in the very nature of creation, the risk which God apparently thinks worth taking...

"Up to that moment the human spirit had been in full control of the human organism. It doubtless expected that it would retain this control when it had ceased to obey God. But its authority over the organism was a delegated authority which it lost as it ceased to be God's delegate. Having cut itself off, as far as it could, from the source of its being, it had cut itself off from the source of power...I doubt whether it would have been intrinsically possible for God to continue to rule the organism through the human spirit when the human spirit was in revolt against Him. At any rate He did not. He began to rule the organism in a more external way, not by the laws of spirit, but by those of nature.* Thus the organs, no longer governed by man's will, fell under the control of ordinary biochemical laws and suffered whatever the interworkings of those laws might bring about in the way of pain, senility and death. And desires began to come up into the mind of man, not as his reason chose, but just as the biochemical and environmental facts happened to cause them. And the mind itself fell under the psychological laws of association and the like which God had made to rule the psychology of higher anthropoids. And the will, caught in the tidal wave of mere nature, had no resource but to forceback some of the new thoughts and desires by main strength, and these uneasy rebels became the subconscious as we now know it. The process was not, I conceive, comparable to mere deterioration as it may now occur in a human individual; it was a loss of status as a species. What man lost by the Fall was his original specific nature. 'Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.' The total organism which had been taken up into his spiritual life was allowed to fall back into the merely natural condition from which, at his making, it had been raised- just as, far earlier in the story of creation, God raised vegetable life to become the vehicle of animality, and chemical process to be the vehicle of vegetation, and physical process to be the vehicle of chemical. Thus human spirit from being the master of human nature became a mere lodger in its own house, or even a prisoner; rational consciousness became what it now is- a fitful spotlight resting on a small part of the cerebral motions. But this limitation of the spirit's powers was a lesser evil than the corruption of the spirit itself. It had turned from God and become its own idol, so that though it could still turn back to God, it could do so only by painful effort, and its inclination was self-ward. Hence pride and ambition, the desire to be lovely in its own eyes and to depress and to humiliate all rivals, envy, and restless search for more, and still more, security, were now the attitudes that came easiest to it. It was not only a weak king over its own nature, but a bad one: it sent down into the psycho-physical organism desires far worse than the organism sent up into it. This condition was transmitted by hereditary to all later generations, for it was not simply what biologists call an acquired variation; it was the emergence of a new kind of man- a new species, never made by God, had sinned itself into existence. The change which man had undergone was not parallel to the development of a new habit; it was a radical alteration of his constitution, a disturbance of the relation between his component parts, and an internal perversion of one of them."

*This is a development of Hooker's conception of Law. To disobey your proper law (i.e., the law God makes for a being such as you) means to find yourself obeying one of God's lower laws: e.g., if, when walking on a slippery pavement, you neglect the law of Prudence, you suddenly find yourself obeying the law of gravitation

Serendipity

Main Entry: ser·en·dip·i·ty
Pronunciation: sěr'ən-dĭp'ĭ-tē
Function: noun
Etymology: from its possession by the heroes of the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip

: the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for

Today was an unexpectedly delightful day! Its one of those glorious days that bring relief and joy and catharsis to months of solitude.

I woke up at 11am this morning... wondering pretty much what i should be doing today... Having submitted my thesis draft to my sups for revision, I'm enjoying a few days of respite from my main occupation of the last 3 intense months. So today was the first day in a while I did not have an agenda with writing! What a relief! And the remainder of yesterday (after I submitted) was decidedly devoid of purpose and aim, and slept it away (which is undeniable therapeutic).

Anyhoo, I got up this morning bright and cheery with no agenda much for the day, and made me a nice hot cuppa of darjeeling... lovely darjeeling (from Zabar's... if anyone's in NYC, you could help me drop by Zabar's- 2245 Broadway@ 80th Street). Its one of the nice, simple delights that warm and perk you up. You sit back on a nice old couch and, closing your eyes, you sniff the morning air and let the warm tea drift up in wafts, letting your olfactory senses take over. And you Rest. Usually just sitting there, I get to talk with God about the simple things for the day and the things close to my heart. My [rare] morning ritual. Its good for the soul...

Well, met johnk and gabi up for lunch today... finally- considering she's flying tomorrow. They really are a kooky couple. Hmm oh well, guess its good for them. So we (+kiong) hung out, had lunch, and then had ice cream. Kinda decadent. But that's about the only time I'll be seeing them soon. Chatted abit about plans down the road, obligations, liabilities, that kinda stuff. Well, at least honest, simple stuff. I do hope something clicks within the both of them, and the light will go ON. Until then, we'll just have to talk about things, stuff... or worse- fast cars, degrees, paychecks, vacation spots. Two brilliantly smart lives. Thanks for lunch today guys if you happen to chance on this entry! And think about it.

Got the car today, so after Holland V, drove down to church, and had service. Interesting service today, because sorta people who "have regularly been not going" (sic, johnk) SNL for other services all kinda converged and showed up! haha. What a time we had! Got to pray with three dear old friends I haven't seen in a while; people whom at one time i've invested time and life into. Kinda neat to see seeds growing and witness life at work, and an honor to be able (without fuss) to share into them, even after all this distance of time, busyness and ministry.

Hung out after service and went over to killiney for dinner- in the meantime, I got to return the car, receive a lift (thx!) and pick up a book from the printers. And wonder of wonders- killiney kopitiam is serving BORSCH on its menu! whaha. Thanks to chloe for pointing it out and saving me from boring char-bee-hoon. Russian borsch in a kopitiam? Amazing ain't it? I was floored.

Ordered the borsch- nothing else will do, haha. It did arrive kinda in an unexpected fashion. Served in a claypot (!), the borsch was clear (?!) and definitely lacked sour cream (!?!). Later I found out from the boss (who's a really nice, friendly, chatty fella, and particularly proud of his borsch too!) he din have beetroot, so he substituted w radish, and lettuce for cabbage, as well as some missing caramelized onions. Otherwise, it was really nice, as beef soup go. Holger commented it was authentic enough. Guess that qualifies things doesn't it? Rich, hot, aromatic beef- sides, tendons, stomache, the works! Love it! The next time I'm planning to go down, i'll give him a call first so he has time to prepare the borsch in the proper Ukrainian style. Miss carnegie deli; but killiney kopitiam now has blown my stereotype of local coffeeshops. It really has.

[on a side note: zb mentioned its been a year since we were in NYC... its odd, but I do somehow miss that insane, hectic place. Most urban settings I've been seem to sap me... NYC however, has this quirky balance of soul-less jaded city-ness with splashes of art, and life, and hope, and nice pockets of rest and reprieve. Not to mention the freedom and vibrancy of the city. It cuts both ways, doesn't it? You have nuts and then you have nuts. Wall street, Brooklyn Tabernacle, east village, time square. I'd love to be able to study or work there or just simply visit sometime. james however, is concerned i'll get sucked into oblivion by the voracity of the big apple and somehow lose myself there. Some stuff to sit on and think about huh.]

Spent post-dinner in town, due to some curious turn of events, thanks to qy =). While at borders, bumped variously into old crusade friends, all my contemporaries- one's a staff, one just went on staff, the other finished his stint and is back in school for his masters. Nice, friendly people. You can stand in the middle of borders for 10 minutes w them, and you can have the nicest, most unpretentious conversation possible. You can pick their brains and probe their hearts, and you feel safe to bare yourself too. I dunno, but this doesn't come easily nowadays. Hard to hold guarded conversations. You see grace and love and trust to share. Ha, and i also bumped into my music junior... he's a big time soloist in the local scene now, performing at president's charity concerts and other big-name events. Oh well.

In all, its been quite a day. I sit here, simply amazed at the variety and the wisdom of God's grace. Nothing planned, everything unexpected. It comes down to this- love shared truthfully, building trust. Happier than I could ever have schemed or planned, His Grace abounds in the smallest and greatest things- our thoughts, our conversations, our actions, strangers, friends, community- a Fellowship of the Burning Heart.

Now for a nice cuppa darjeeling to round off the day and to sit back on the couch to meditate on His faithfulness, my smallness, and His greatness residing in my frail frame. His grace is sufficient for me, for His power is made perfect in weakness.

Veritas, Αληθεια, Правда, אמן

(veritas, alethea, pravda, amen)
Reflections on Truth and its Power for Freedom

"What is truth?" Pilate asked. (John 18:38)

That question rings throughout history with an uneasy silence. Uttered by the representative agent with all the might of imperial Rome, appointed to be that pivot of reason in a testy, illogical province bordering on insanity, the Roman prefect questioned a flogged Prisoner betrayed by his own countrymen the singularly hardest question the wisest could have asked. How do you even frame the basis for all reason? Can you use a falling apple to explain gravity?

"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:32)

We understand facts by our intellect. Firing neurons and synapses billions of times a second. Quadrillion bits of information processed and accessed and regressed in a blink. Truth, however, relates to the heart. Truth is essential to breaking and softening the heart, just as the lack of truth (unbelief) hardens and deadens the heart. It is with our hearts that we truly worship, when Christ tells the samaritan woman, "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 4:24) True (truthFUL) worship resonates at the spiritual and heart level; to record, from latin recordare, to commit to the heart. Mi corazon! My Heart! the Core, or Coeur. That basal level of consciousness, the seat of the soul, the source of human imagination- that's what truth is about, and the source of life and true freedom.

But what of truth? Why do we even ask about truth? It sometimes seems better to live without truth. Sometimes better to leave things to irrational acts of random and suffer no consequence of irresponsibility. A fable or a myth? But there is an uneasy undergirding of Truth that nothing, yea, no one, can escape from, like gravity; the basis, the very framework of existence. You do not know, because you do not ask.

Truth sustains order in the universe; it gives our very existance a basis for construct. And Christ (Truth) is before all things, and by him all things consist (Col 1:17). All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. (John 1:3) The very uniqueness about Truth is it needs nothing but itself to exist; it needs no prior cause.

Transcending logic, Truth, is that key to unlocking the meaning of life, to give direction to mindless wanderings of the soul and the idle languish of intellect. It fuels our conscience and gives reprieve to tossy emotions, anchoring it. While it holds us in place, it also serves as a ballast, lifting us off the quagmire of fallen humanity.

5Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" 6Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." (John 14)

If we walk in Truth, and have Truth as guiding principals for our actions, thoughts and words, then there is no fear- no fear in the unknown, the untruth, no fear from slandering lies, no fear from the Accuser, who daily seeks to defeat us by our own untruthfulness. Lies and slander have no hold in the face of righteousness, and the purveyors of shadow cannot stand in the sunlight of Truth when it shines in our souls (John 12:35).

Jesus, You are truth! You are Way and You are Life! You hold all things true, and your promises are Yes and Amen! You cannot be unfaithful because you cannot deny yourself- Truth; truth holds for eternity- it needs nothing but itself to sustain. It is not dependant on time or space- Truth Is. Help us to cling to Truth! Jesus, who else can we go to? You have the Words of Eternal Life! (John 6:68) Truth gives us temporal creatures a glimpse into the eternal, when time ceases to exist. We are creatures of another Kingdom.

16They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. 18As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. (John 17)

36Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place." 37"You are a king, then!" said Pilate. Jesus answered, "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me." 38"What is truth?" Pilate asked. (John 18)

dicit ei Iesus
ego sum Via et Veritas et Vita,
nemo venit ad Patrem nisi per me (John 14:6)

Home

Meditations on the Book of Revelations and CS Lewis from the wee morning hours.

Home... we all long for home. From the avid traveller to those who work day jobs, from the hoboes to the homeys. Home is that place, at the end of the day where we find that familiar familial safety. It is not a building or even people. It is a place in our hearts where the body, soul and spirit can find peace and rest.

For while here in this temporal realm, we build our hopes of home from images of stick and stones, verbiage and personage. Home is that reference from which we set off daily to seek battle with the the wild woods of the day, to the hot, sweaty marketplace of humanity and the endless toils of our fields. Each morning we leave the safety and comfort of home to engage in the risky and unforgiving enterprise which is life in a fallen world, only to return it beset, worn and broken.

For the traveller, home is where we set off from on a quest and mission. What draws us out from our realm of familiarity is that sense of the unknown, danger, risk and possible gain of experience, of treasures and of spoil from the hunt. Many times, however, we are robbed of our senses and inundated by the weary jading of the world. The path that leads us is convoluted, twisting and confusing. Our senses are dulled and our hearts are worn. Hope is but a memory, and friends are an illusion of doubt and haze. That is when arriving home is a reward- we leave just to return to all that is familiar, warm and safe. We travel so that we can find our home again. We travel so home may be a point of reference.

Did anyone tell you that this world is not our home? Nay, we are mere pilgrims passing through hostile, unforgiving and barren lands full of endless toil, seas of drowning snares and desert islands of nightmares. The zone between dusk and dawn, where the sun never really sets, nor really rises; the drought between waking and sleeping. We are caught in that soulish unsettling of experience we call Reality, the fear of the temporal, with no real hopes of eternity nor permanence. Our hearts are held ransom by the clichés of fashion and fads and fast fading passion. We are beset by fear, unbelief and hurt on all sides, at all time. At best, we are dulled to the pain through self administered lies and narcotics.

Thankfully, we have a greater Hope, than that which all the world affords nor could time itself out-run nor contain. That Hope is Christ, our Eternal home and Rest. He is our Shelter and our Keeper. More than the unfathomable reach of eternity and timelessness, He is our immediate Home here in this life. The Shepherd and the Gate, whom we are invited to pass through to find refuge and rest from the menace of the world's wolves and the harshness of rocky, waterless terrain with which we choose to struggle and stife through. His hand holds and encompasses our entire existence, more than from before birth, well into what is past death, more than in the minds of those who think of us, and more than in the mouths of those who speak of us.

He is More than our entire Existence, however passing and vapid the world makes us out to be. In Him, we have Significance and Meaning. And that counts more than anything- that we have Richness of Meaning to the Infinite, than poverty of insignificance to that which is passing.

Finally, the Hope of Home for us who are in Christ is this: the promise of our true Home; where pilgrimage ends and we arrive at gates of the Holy City, welcome by a thousand fanfares, and greeted by Reepicheep and a cloud of faithful witnesses cheering us in.

"Further up and Further in!" the saints chorus!

Oh, we are drawn in to our Home. Everything is deep-er, real-er, rich-er than ALL of what we have experienced in the poverty that is earth. Above all, there is an eternal sense of Familiarity- we have been here before... in fact, we do know this place; we have known this place all our lives, and have infact, been searching for it in our hearts. And now we finally see it, live it and breath it. We are led in by faces familiar but now rested and refreshed. People we've been longing to chat and laugh with all our lives. There is a richness in the familiarity of colors and form, but now everything is sharper, deeper and more infinite. Every blade of grass sharper and greener, each breeze cooler and fresher, each stream more musical, deeper, sweeter and each laughter happier and fuller. The mountains are more majestic and magnificent, each valley more radiant and verdant. In contrast, all the glories we have seen in our fallen world is drab insipid mere-ness.

In the New Jerusalem, the Home of Peace, we are ushered into the audience of SarShalom, VladiMir, the Prince of Peace, our Magnificent Obsession. We come before the Great White Throne, the Throne of Grace, the Mercy Seat, and as our eyes meet that of our Savior's, we are immediately drawn to say, "I know You... in fact, I have known You all my life... and Your strong Hand, the tender smell of that embrace... its been there all along, hasn't it?"

To arrive Home is to say, "Why! I've been Home along!"