My spiritual companion and I have talked about the prophet as someone who feels they have to challenge the status quo or maybe even fix what’s wrong. That sort of fits because I used to speak up in high school but grew quiet in the years following. I learned how to be subversive by the time I taught first year composition at a university. Since I was free to choose texts, I taught what I believed would best help my students, even though my boss preferred something closer to high school level. On Facebook, I learned quickly that I don’t have a mind for arguments that go on for days. I don’t hold onto details that I’ve read. I’ve learned that friendships are more important than spouting opinions.
So if I’m supposed to be that kind of prophet, nope, nope and again nope.
Though I’m not sure I should say nope because one day I might be called to speak up because it hurts not to. Now that I think about it, I did speak up when I joined an activist group to urge our county to put limits on wind turbines as well as solar “farms” and “gardens” on prime farmland. This worked because I was in a group who carefully planned our approach and who supported each other. Also, I was given a role, what I call a cup, when I gave three minute talks to the county board. We were fairly successful in helping them shape sane ordinances.
Chris Green has talked about how we can respond to the craziness in our world by being healing presences, another sort of prophet. This too has felt like a call, but my oh my, I’ve made a hash of that as well. I have had some training in listening and in integration prayer, a kind of prayer that takes people to the Lord’s presence and asks Him what he thinks. I was uneasy when we were asked to practice this prayer with friends because I am not a counselor or pastor or spiritual director. Other than asking people to write and imagine the Lord’s presence, I don’t feel right going there. I don’t have a formal role aside from being a friend. And my gosh, I need to rein in my advice giving.
But my spiritual companion is relentless in trying to shine a light on my nature. She sent “Prophets and Poets” an excerpt from Luci Shaw’s book Eye of the Beholder. Shaw writes about a different kind of prophet than I imagined. She says, “We, earth-bound mortals, with a cultivated consciousness may have access to possibilities, or invisible realities. We have a connection with the seen and unseen by way of spiritual insight and our words suggest that like John the Revelator we ‘write what we see.’”
Well, all right. Maybe that might possibly be true of me, though I think it’s true of most writers. I have wondered lately if some of the mystical visions of people like Julian of Norwich were simply visions seeping through their imagination. My call to write came when I wanted to do for others what CS Lewis did for me, offer a vision of glory, the kind like you see thrown out by the sun as it rises and sets. These days my pictures show this better than my words. Increasingly I wonder at the noise on Substack and Facebook. Seems like none of us know when to shut up. I am saturated with content. I crave silence. I do not want to impose my words on my readers. But I also crave the noise, so I don’t have to hear my secrets and shame.
But I don’t like looking in the mirror or putting on a jacket that isn’t mine, so I’m not sure of any of this.
My spiritual companion has said if the call to be a prophet is on my life, I’d better find some ravens to feed me like they did Elijah when the brook Kidron dried up. My ravens are Morgen with her kind eye, who I have ducked and avoided, even though she stands at the fence longing for me to pay her some mind. I am beloved to her, though maybe it’s the hay cubes I feed as treats. I have been her person since she was a coming yearling. This farm is her ground, her range.
At the Symbolic World Summit, Martin Shaw told the Russian fairy tale about a boy who discovers a crimson feather in the path. His horse says, “Don’t pick it up.” But of course, the boy picks it up. Throughout the whole story, the horse offers wise advice to the boy. The horse grounds him. The story calls me back to my horse, who has been lonely. Her eyes run. But there has been this wide river between the house and the barn. Other than chores, I have not been able to cross the river I mentioned last week, that I think is the river where I took Tessie’s bridle off and let her go to God. It’s painful to get close to a creature with whom I will part company. It’s easier than to go out and be present to this affectionate horse and the sky and fields.
I told my spiritual companion I felt sorry for God because He has tried to reach us all kinds of ways—the last of which was through his son’s death and the sending of his Holy Spirit. The veil has been split. We can walk into the Holy of Holies, praying anytime we want. The Spirit has come to dwell in us. The church is his beautiful bride. These days we have sex and financial abuse scandals in the church but back in the day for a few centuries, the church thought goodness was to burn people at the stake, that the temporary burning would keep them from damnation. At times they killed gleefully.
We’re supposed to be the kingdom of God, a kingdom based on the poor in spirit, going the extra mile, giving to the poor, visiting those in prison, nonviolence. And yet the church couldn’t have been more cruel to people who saw things differently. I too am a heretic. I dropped the pressure to figure out my faith years ago because there is so much mystery. I do know Christ died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. I don’t think we’re required to have all the right beliefs. I do think we need to love God and our neighbor. So would I have been burned at the stake a thousand years ago?
“But what’s underneath this?” She asked. “There’s more to this passion.”
“I feel sorry for God,” I repeated.
But later I realized I’m sliding down a slope and I can’t stop it. It’s that thing Paul talks about—the good that I want to do I don’t do. It’s that river, that vulnerability of loving something mortal as well as overwhelm. I am hurting Morgen because I feed her too much even though horses are made eat all day. They are made to travel long distances browsing suboptimal forage. It’s good to see her eat and then stop, cock her leg, and then eat again. She has been fat for years, but her insulin level has moved to the metabolic syndrome level. This makes her feet vulnerable to falling apart. My vet shakes his head at me. He’s prescribed two scoops of thyroid medication. Walking her is a good way to push against this. When the fields dry we will drive her.
I think about the horse in the Russian folk tale. How the horse gave the boy all the right advice even unto the end, when he told the boy to jump into the cauldron, and not look at anyone, his parents, his family, anyone. At the end the boy jumps in and rises up radiant and golden.
I am not a prophet even though Jeremiah is my favorite, and I think about how the ravens coming to feed me is this horse, a horse I bought because her name was DF Paske Morgen. Easter Morning. My resurrection horse. And so I go out to the barn again, put on her gear, play my music and ask her to walk. I turn up my energy and she will trot, even canter. I can sigh deeply and she comes back down to a walk. If I lose focus, she’ll flip around and face me. This mare is so much more honest than Tessie, who could set her head and bolt, yanking my arm. The lunge line often dragging the ground. I can feel her happiness and mine too. When I’ve pulled off her gear, given one last hay cube as thanks, she will drop to the ground and roll, scratching the stink of work off her back.
The other day, Bruce called me to the big kitchen window. “Look. Deer. I was wondering what Morgen was looking at.”
I looked and saw two shiny, well fed deer, one larger than the other.
“A buck and a doe,” Bruce said.
They had into south our pasture and stopped at the fence. Waited. I worried they might be caught by wire because it’s high. Nope. They sprang up and over from a standstill. Then bounced across the wide field on the other side of the road.
When I was a girl I longed to scare up deer when I walked in the woods, but I never did. They were much more rare then than they are now. I wondered were they ordinary white tails in our south field or stags appearing from another world? Or both?
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