Celestial List
A spiritual directory of mystical experiences and reassurances of the goodness of God. A repository for ideas and questions about spirituality.
For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. —Acts 4:20
Prologue
I saw him sitting there, stunned and in a daze from hours, if not days, of being trapped in a nearly lightless room. It was clear that he had been seeking his way out for a while. But none was to be found. There was no open window, no door he could open on his own. The air was humid and sweltering, and although he valiantly tried looking for an exit, at times he seemed to relinquish the fight, alighting for a moment on a marble surface and simply sitting still. It was clear that if left this way, he would soon die. And it would not be a pleasant death; slowly he would feel his life force subside, the little light within him going out. He had somehow wandered into environs that were inhospitable to his survival. A creature of nature, there was now no nature to be found around him.
I sat on the wooden bench, wondering if I was crazy for wanting to help him. Surely there was something I could do. I had been at the gym for an hour, and now sat diligently in the sauna, letting my muscles unravel from their exertion. I looked around me: I was the only one down here. I can do something, I thought. Usually in these kind of situations, I try to find a cup and a postcard, and trap the insect within before setting it free, but no such objects were to be found. I thought about how I would feel in his situation. I pictured his death. He sat outside of the sauna, near the sink where people fill their water bottles. I am the only one down here, I thought again. I can do something. I went into the ladies’ locker room and fished an empty plastic bag out of the bottom of a trash can. I had resolved to somehow usher him into the bag, but wasn’t sure it would be possible. If his vital forces had dimmed enough to allow me to have my way with him, there was a real chance of his ultimate survival and escape.
I walked up to him again. His little black wings did not beat, did not flutter. He was docile, silent. He had probably accepted that there was no way out for him. This lowliest of God’s creatures, of the sort reviled by so many, was in the process of humbly accepting his fate. And yet, still, he waited. And trusted. I enclosed the bag over him. He did not resist. Slowly I made sure he was within, before sealing the other end gently, so as not to crush him. I made my way out of the gym basement and up the stairs, plastic bag in hand. Act normal, act normal, I thought. Act like you’re just throwing something away. I exited the building and found the nearest tree. This would be an excellent place for him, I thought. There was a small patch of earth beneath the tree, although we were still on the sidewalk. Here he would be able to fly away, to go where he needed. I carefully opened the bag. My friend did not immediately come out. For a moment I was fearful that he had not been captured at all, that my receptacle for saving his life was empty. But then I saw him. A black smudge, fuzzily making its way out of the plastic, and — all of a sudden! — he’s on the nearby tree. He sits on it for a moment, free and grateful, before flying out onto the street in front of us. From there, I can see him no longer, but I know he is alive.
When I think of all that God has done for me, the situations He has saved me from, it is the least I can do to save one of His creatures. When I think of the circumstances I have been in — similar to those of the dwindling life of a fly trapped in a gym basement — and that God in His infinite mercy has reached down and helped me to find a way out when there seemed to be none — it is the least I can do to value the life of someone else He has made, no matter how insignificant or disgusting that being may be to others. For everything that lives is holy, wrote William Blake.
The universe is one long ongoing orgasm, with instances of pain constantly turning into joy.
The original meaning of the Latin word “sacer,” meaning “sacred,” was “taboo.”
Almost ten years ago I took a career quiz and the result was “clergy.” I called a friend and told her and we died laughing because at that point I was the Antichrist and a whore.
When I was sixteen, I lived with a family in Italy on a foreign exchange for six months. Every day I used to ride my bicycle on a small path that led to an area outside of town. The trail took me past what had been a hunting palace for a long-dead ruler, constructed in the early 18th century. It was surrounded on all sides by fields of crops and dirt roads. One afternoon as I was riding on one of these dirt roads, I slowly began to feel that I had entered another realm. The air was still around me. I felt a preternatural calm. The warmth of the sun seemed to penetrate my skin, as though my whole body temperature had been lifted several degrees. The horizon was before me and I felt as one with it. Everything was silence and I had an eternal sense that all things are exactly as they should be, that all is exactly as God had envisioned it and desired it and we are living inside of His plan. I stood on the side of the road, holding the bicycle handles, and soaked in the deep knowledge of God’s goodness. After a time — I do not know whether seconds or half an hour — I became aware that a truck was approaching. It was huge and black in the distance, and roared enormously. It came closer and closer, very near to where I was standing, and I did not move. If I had not been in the state I was in, I would have quickly gotten out of the way. The truck did nothing to avoid me either. It barreled toward me, rumbling and kicking up an enormous amount of dust. It must have passed within inches of my nose, and all I did was stand there. I couldn’t move. It was as though God had wanted to show me that no matter what happens, no matter what threatens or approaches me or any of us, if I am in touch with that first energy (the energy of the warmth on the road) there is nothing that can truly hurt me. As long as I allow the heat, the fire of God, to suffuse my veins and illuminate me from within, there is nothing in existence, no matter how dangerous, that can ever affect me.
Some years later, in the midst of my adult life, I had gotten into a difficult situation. I did not see a way out and somehow knew it was beyond my power to find the solution. I started seeing a counselor at a women’s center. She was a young woman who had lost her father at a young age and grown up in a tough neighborhood. Several months into my meetings with her, based on a remark I had made, she began to speak to me of Scripture. At that point I was not a practicing Christian. The first verse she quoted to me was Jeremiah 29:11 (For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future). According to her bosses, she was not allowed to speak of faith or “push religion” on her clients. But she went beyond her job description and the words she spoke to me saved my life. I later asked her if she had been afraid she would lose her job. “I don’t care if I get fired,” she said. “I work for God, not my boss.”
Is a Libertine Christianity possible?
There is nothing ultimately disgusting about the human body. Even shit is sensual.
It was the same woman at the counseling center who taught me to recognize the difference between the voice of God and the voice of the Enemy. I had heard the voice of God for a long time, through placid and calm whisperings and encouragement, but often would hear a second voice which was threatening and discouraging. (For example: if I saw an apartment I liked and felt it was God’s will for me to take it, I would soon thereafter hear a critical voice saying, “Don’t take it.”) My counselor helped me to understand that the Enemy often attacks after a revelation of God’s will, and that it is nothing to be deterred by. In fact it is a sign one is moving in the right direction.
There is a kind of punk fundamentalism among adherents of alternative media, myself included. I am mistaken. The idea is to write for whomever God wills my words to, even a publication I revile, rather than succumb to rigidity about which publications are “pure” enough.
The longing to be free from the bondage of sexual desire is a kind of erotic longing in itself.
The erotic is most powerful in its ethereality, not its consummation.
The softness of the female body is a refuge from technology.
To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare to fail … failure is his world and the shrink from it desertion. —Marcel Proust
The essential freedom is freedom of religion. For it means the freedom to choose how to deal with the essential fact that we are not free at all: we are born against our will, and we all must die.
I feel ashamed, ashamed of how I have “hated” the other “side,” ashamed of the class resentments that have haunted me.
Risk everything for Christ.