Sailing aboard the Pneuma (Part One)

The walk to the harbour was not as far as I had envisioned. When inside Mylifehouse the thought of changing and walking down to the sea seemed too much to contemplate. I was not ready for a voyage; I had never been on one. Furthermore, I was not an able sea person, perhaps I should get some training first.

To tell the truth, the decision to move was the most arduous, after that, it was all downhill, literally.

Mylifehouse was a grey building that stood squarely in the centre of an organized garden with a manicured lawn overlooking the coast and the harbour. The curtains, while quality, were heavy and uninspiring. The furniture fitted each room. Mere chance was not trusted; everything was measured off, straightened out and smoothed down. Time came in segments to accommodate prescribed events and organized activities. It was possible to be happy there, fun was there if one could organize it. However, it was systematic and easy to get used to, so easy in fact, that the fun quite quickly deflated. Having said all that, it was a safe place.

In the garden of Mylifehouse was a chapel. Like the house, it too was grey. The wall hangings and curtains were not as grand as the house. In fact, the place seemed furnished by cast-offs and hand-me-downs. In terms of being systematized and organized, it was more so than Mylifehouse.

The events in the chapel seemed to honour the clock. The chapel served carefully apportioned time. Its moments of use were marked with order and predictability. Coming out was more exhilarating than going in.

Then, one day, Shekinah came. We had heard of him in the lessons. When the one who taught spoke of him, it was in organized terms. He seemed great and powerful but altogether predictable. Every lesson spoke in the past tense. Every well-crafted fact left no room for mystery. Shekinah defied all of that ordered framing. He did not arrive in sandels, but was dressed just like any other thirty-something man. His t-shirt had something written on it that I did not understand. All of a sudden, wihtout fanfare or warning, he issued an invite to travel with him. His eyes flashed with excitement and his voice was marked by a boyish enthusiasim. As if to answer the unspoken question of 'where to?' he blew out his cheeks and released a breath of air and said, "wherever that may go." This invite to sail with Shekinah seemed almost frightening and very unsafe, but for me, at least, irresistible.

The morning air was crisp and the new dawn made golden the eastern horizon. The sea, as calm as a millpond, played mirror to the sun stroked clouds that floated overhead. Gulls screamed and squawked above and behind fishing boats returning from a night of harvest.

The quayside was a bustle of activity. Traders stood bartering with boat captains for fish of every description. Light-hearted banter and exuberant horseplay replayed up and down the quay. Dogs barked and the odd cat, hardened by years of dockside scavenging, chanced an act of thievery. What was odd was the fact that those who bustled through my life every day were no where to be seen, I recognized no one from Mylifehouse or the chapel, although I would usually see them most days of the week.

Today, everything was alive and in full colour. Usually ignored sounds now played a symphony in my ears. Life had seemingly begun again. This was a new beginning, I was sure of it. I had never had this awareness of guiltless anticipation before, a positive sense of being unsure. The possibilities seemed endless. I just had to find that boat.

I asked a salt-bitten sailor who seemed as ancient but as alive as the sea. He pointed down to the end of the key with an enthusiastic gesture. There she was, the Pneuma.

As I approached her sleek lines, beautiful sails, and ornate carvings along her prow struck me. I was aware of men working on her deck, but their activity was devoid of stress or burden. She seemed to be at peace amidst the intense bustle and crescendo of the quayside.

Then, the oddest thing, it seemed as if the Pneuma sailed into me, right inside of me. So distinct was the experience I swallowed as if to send food to my stomach. I shook my head like a man escaping the bonds of a trance. There she was, still moored. The peace that seemed to permeate her every plank and rope was now deep inside of me. I did not understand, in fact I could not.

I walked aboard. Those on deck straightened from their tasks and greeted me warmly but without extravagance, as if I were someone to whom respect was due. A young man appeared at my side and gently took my arm. Though his touch was gentle, there was strength in that hand, very great strength or was it more than that? Was it power?

He led me below decks. Down there, if anything, the air was fresher than out in the open, if that were possible. The light was silver; that is the best way to describe it. There were no shadows inside the Pneuma; the silver filled every crook and cranny. Where I expected shadow I only saw the silver light. Everything that I predicted or expected was confounded in this place.

A waterfall voice thundered from above. If a sound could be a colour, that voice would have been golden. As I clambered back onto the deck the Pneuma slipped her moorings and glided out into the open sea. The waterfall spoke, for there was no need to shout, and the sails were trimmed and the morning breeze filled them out and the Pneuma surged on into the adventure.

A rock and a dark place

He was just there. No recollection of how he came to be in that place. There must have been a history to that point, but he could not recall or reconstruct it with any accuracy. No sense of belonging. Just a faltering inner calmness that, though this place was quietly hostile, somehow, he would be safe.

All around him was darkness. Vague patches of shadow darker than their surrounds let Irius know there was something there, out in the dark. Fleeting shadows. Watching. Listening. Waiting.

His inner calm did battle with an unknown outer threat, a vague fear that was seeking fodder upon which to feed. “I cannot see, but I am not blind.” Shadows moved in his peripheral vision.

Suddenly, for the first time, he became aware of something solid beneath his feet. Slowly he crouched down to touch his solid support. “Rock.” The word escaped from his mouth in a whisper but sounded for all the world like a shout. Shadows moving. “Can darkness really weigh like a solid thing?”

Standing upright again, he stretched his arms forward. Feeling. Fingers stretching. Failing to connect with anything at all, he then spread his arms wide. Feeling to the left. Stretching to the right. Nothing. Only rock beneath his feet.

Vague fear, now fed, began to gnaw effectively against calmness. Eyes widened. Extended fingers punching into nothing. Wild thrusting outwards. He became a windmill. No rhythm, just a frantic flailing of a panicked man. His upper limbs whirled, muscles began to twist and tense. Dervish like he spun, then stumbled and spun again. The blackness spun.

He landed, inadvertently, on his knees. He hit the rock hard, jarring his innards, bruising his knees. The rock had not moved. It had not softened. His lungs, like the bellows of an ancient forge, rushed air in and then evicted the same at pace. The bass drum rhythm of his quickened heart echoed in his ears and pounded within his chest.

Still on his knees, he bent forward slowly, Palms down he touched the surface of his only known support. His only constant in that inky wasteland. The bellows began to slow and the drummer eased his beat. The coolness of the rock and its hard immovability somehow reassured him.

Calm. Still. Quiet. The rock seemed to live beneath him. An unfelt pulse of life became evident within, coming from below. His hands were energised. His knees unfelt. The rock was reassuring him in an unspoken language. “How can this be?”

Without light the rock, or so it seemed, saw for him. The shadows, though still there, were no longer feeding, no longer threatening.

Slowly, so slow as to almost defy movement itself, a soft, silver light. A pinhead at first. Growing. This strange silver life grew towards Irius like a shaft. The darkness around it did not falter or fade. The silver shaft pushed through the ink towards the man kneeling upon the rock.

He looked down at his chest as the shaft entered into him leaving no wound and causing no pain. His eyes could see, but this was different. His ability to see was not based on what he had perceived outwardly but on what he was receiving inwardly.

He defied the shaft for a moment, denied its truth. The shadows played with menace. A frenzied feeding began. Panicked, he permitted his eyes to see from within and the hungry throng dispersed into the blindness.

It was difficult to command his mind to allow his eyes to see from the back, from below. As moments unmeasured passed, the shaft wrested control of his sight from his mind. Intermittently at first the darkness flickered and then the light did likewise before steadily firming to be all that was seen.

In that moment, in that light was joy. Like a child playing in the long grass, hope sprung up laughing as peace walked in front as if leading the way. The light all around was so bright, so intense that no shadow could live there.

The Great Event

The call went out across the star strewn heavens. The clarion Voice echoed through the canyons of the Milky Way and star systems not known by mortals millennia after the Great Event.

The call was just that, a call. No explanation, just a command to gather in view of a place called ‘Earth’. A spinning blue and green orb suspended before a great star that the Earth knew as ‘Sun’.

It was beautiful to behold, even for us who had seen much more than the inhabitants of that world could have ever dreamed or imagined. It was a place where life had blossomed, not just a spiritual life but a full blown physical and intellectual life as well. A place of whole creation.

To look upon that place of life made even the strongest of us a little envious of the huge privilege bestowed upon the inhabitants, The Voice’s pinnacle of creative achievement. As we looked upon that world the song that had birthed it came to mind. That glorious creative moment when He, the Voice, sang it into being.

It was that Voice that had summoned us here for this ‘Great Event’. This time it was not a song of creation, or a song of summons. This time the Voice was a solemn and spoken one.

As I looked to my left and right thousands upon ten thousand of my kind were massed. Through light years we stretched encompassing the system in which Earth was orbiting its Sun. The atmosphere of the spirit hummed with power, unimaginable power. Each life around me pondering its present purpose.

The Voice spoke, “Look and see!” The words thundered and echoed through the massed ranks. Even the stars seemed to vibrate. Suns faded momentarily. Earth suddenly came into sharp focus and enlarged as if it were brought close before us in an instant. The stars disappeared and in their place sand, people, animals – a city.

In the street before us was a man, terribly beaten, carrying what seemed to be a large, heavy, roughly hewn piece of wood. A stirring of fearful suspicion rippled around those closest to me who I could no longer see, but knew they were there.

My being tensed, my senses focussed, my strength began to coil. The man managed to briefly look up as if to check his direction. His face was gone, or so it seemed, but the eyes, there was only one pair of eyes like that. Behind the pain burned determined love. It was Him. He who had gone from us, in terms of the time that governed this world, to live as one of them.

Love had left the heavens of the heavens and had gone to the place of hedonism and hate. Determined love had left His throne to serve those who would rule themselves so that they might awaken and see their folly. All they had seen was threat and they were now about to crush it.

Earth spun away. My fellows were once again in view. The Voice, ordered, “Observe.” I squinted in an attempt to focus my vision. A dark mist moved all around the Earth.

Again the earth shot forward. Again it was sand, people, animals – a city.

This time it was different. The shadowy mist was around Determined Love. It seemed to flow off and away from Him towards a gate and a hill beyond. I felt constrained to look upon the mist. It spoke, it laughed, it provoked, it incited. I knew that voice.

My memory spun back through the chapters of timeless eternity. That voice: It laughed, it provoked, it incited. Light went dark around me as some of those with me were provoked, were incited. Every third flame around me went out.

I was again in the city. My fellows began to understand as I had. Hands went for sword hilts. Cries of war began to rise in a trillion throats. Giant wings. Intense light. A command: “Stay your hands, warriors!”

I saw him. Huge. Intense. Warlike. His eyes flashed with contained fury tempered by respect for the Voice. The mist shivered, cowered and then rediscovered its purpose and cackled on through the gate.

Where was Determined Love? I saw His back, if that is what it was. Bloodied, ribs exposed, flesh hanging in strips. My fury was about to break its bonds. Intense Light flashed in my direction, “Steady,” was the unchanged and now restricting and frustrating command.

On the hillside Determined Love looked towards the heavens. Had He seen me? Was He calling me? “Steady.”

I saw a spike go through His wrist, then the other. Determined Love swallowed the pain. Not a sound. I felt the tears upon my face, burning so hot they threatened to scold. “Steady.” A third spike through His feet. Pain was given no voice.

All the while the swirling mist taunted Determined Love. Dividing itself momentarily, the mist came up from below me and hissed its mockery, reminding me of the moment the flames went out. “Steady.”

The sound of a heavy weight falling into a hole refocused my attention. Through my hot tears I saw, suspended, Determined Love. He hung between heaven and earth belonging in that moment in neither. The mist howled its derision. My whole rank took a step forward. Determined to take a second, a third. “Steady.”

Adultery, homosexuality, murder, hatred, gossip. One after another the crimes of the pinnacle of creation were hung around the neck of Determined Love. That body, already destroyed by torture, took on diseases that the pinnacle of creation had allowed to spawn through his rebellion.

The mist was only the smallest distance from the eyes of Determined Love. Derision and mockery flowed like a foul odour. Intense Light seemed to ignore a thousand thousands of hands on sword hilts, but any intended movement forward was quashed with a firm, “steady.”

Darkness. A howl. A cry. Abandonment. A call for Father. No reply. Eternity stopped. Dark.






A cry. Death was under control. Determined Love decided the moment. The mist cowered. Sin fell away. Disease died. It is finished. Light.