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Love and Life: Tree, She

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Love is the anchor of mental well-being. To be loved – for someone else to conform themselves in service of your fulfilment – is to know that you exist. To love – for the beloved to testify “Thank-you for loving me” – is to know that you have meaning. In this circulation, we secure the conviction that we will not be alone in the struggles that life forces upon us.

Thus, in the afternoon of the events of Co-Creation, I was emotionally overcome by her observation, “How can they say that you are not working, when you spent all day in therapy with me?” To provide space for integration, I turned to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and a Tchaikovsky violin concerto.

Somewhere in the recitation, the Tree of Life interposed.

In my conception, the Tree represents the interdependency of organic existence, anchored at the trunk by the green things, raising up through the invertebrates until the branches spread to support vertebrate classes that leaf into species. In Five-Rhythms dance celebrations, the Tree reveals itself in my meditations. In the container most often frequented, I eventually realized that I was navigating through the throng, pausing at each cluster of women to raise my hands, projecting the Tree for inspection.

The only obvious response was from a young member of the Sisterhood, who gestured authoritatively at the ground. The Tree bloomed, raising over the gathering until, in the foliage, I perceived the loving saints wounded by rejection. With three agonized cries, the vision dissolved.

When I completed my exegesis of John’s Revelation, I understood the association. The Tree of Life of Revelation 22 is the Bride. The twelve fruits are the stars in the crown worn by the Sacred Mother in Revelation 12. The leaves “heal the nations.”

Consistently, then, when receiving authentic witness of my virtue from women – usually in the form of sexual invitation – over the last decade, I have presented my vision of the Tree, waiting for someone to engage with it.

In the meditation with Lauren, this advanced further. Visualizing its manifestation through her, I raised my palms from the ground to the heaven. Her toes stretched downwards into the earth. Legs drew power upwards. Arms stretched as branches. The mane of hair floated upwards as foliage. All of this was possible through her surrender to healing intentions.

But it wasn’t the culmination.

I woke in the early hours of the morning. Something was moving over her. Starting in the chest, our muscles flexed in waves. The sensations were not sexual or even sensual. I felt heat rising in my core. There was no sense of threat, just implacability. After fifteen or so of these, confusion took hold. In response to her wordless plea, I babbled aloud “You’re doing something new. You’re doing something new.”

The Tree entered the field of our struggle. Keeping her mind in the shelter of my heart, she extended her crotch towards the trunk. Momentarily dumb-founded, I recovered to announce, “It wants to come inside.”

She accepted. It inverted, ascending through her womanhood, rising up through her torso, filled by the trunk. Then the branches stretched down her arms and up through the pathways of her mind. Twigs budded into leaves, stretching from her fingers and through her hair.

A brief pause as the energies harmonized with her personality, broken by the entry of the root system, stretching through the cauda equina down into the legs. Sensitive toes spread gracefully as the flow entered the subterranean realms.

Bearing witness to the integrity of her personality, I held space during her spiritual expansion before drifting into sleep.

Then waking to silence.

Mystery had what she wanted. A barrier had been established. Lauren no longer needed me.

Ok. How to respond? The morning hours were a feeling for a way out of the cave.

“You know, the Tree is a conception of my mind. I can reclaim it.”

Lauren found a toehold in the thread of her intentions. This was her choice, originating in hopes that were incompatible with royal privilege. All of life deserved love. All of it.

“What do I tell them?”

“Invite them to participate in the manifestation of your intentions.”

Bride captures queen.

Love and Life: Co-Creation

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In navigating towards the redemption of Creation – a daunting prospect, among all others proposed – we pass through barriers of fear, secure only in the belief of others that a way must be found.

One such encounter was with Pope John Paul II, who came to me in a vision at midnight to promise “I am your Father. I will die and leave all [my] power to you.” A year later, as I was entering the bookstore, a man blocked my way to announce, “You know, the Pope is looking for someone.” After Karol’s death, I played a requiem that included the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth, a counterbalance to the brutality of the Third Reich. I fell back through the decades to find him in a Warsaw stone quarry, encouraging him to “Come find me.”

Another incident occurred on my seven-of-sevens birthday visit to Taos. Unexpectedly, I found myself at the pow-wow. The edge of the arena was encircled by drummers from the attending tribes. An elder circled the fence, inviting the drummers nearest me to initiate the proceedings. As I was absorbed in the rhythms, I fell through a red veil to encounter Tecumseh, imprisoned in Washington, D.C. He pled, “Is there any justice?” Offered the testimony of Barack Obama’s presidency, the great chief found solace.

The temporal discontinuity of these events reflects the power available to those who desperately seek a way. To the spiritually sensitive, this desperation is rooted in the psychology of pain. In its origin, pain is simply a signal that something is broken. Along with that awareness, however, comes a compulsion to DO SOMETHING.

Pain relief does not necessarily involve logical proof of efficacy. That toddler presents an owie so that mother may “kiss and make it better.” The mystic, feeling the pain of a community fearing love’s abandonment, may “render unto Christ.”

In Lauren’s case, her work revealed to me her struggle with this compulsion. Sensitive and profoundly feminine, she not only was conscious of the pain projected by others but internalized it organically, a process that may have factored in her long, debilitating illness in high school. Her debut album is full of pleas for Christ to enter in and heal: “I Will Trust in You,” “Here’s My Heart, Lord,” and, most profoundly, “Once and for All” – the last offering the surrender, “Oh let this be, where I die. My Lord with thee, crucified.”

As a public figure, however, the projection of pain from her constituency must have been unremitting. “Rendering unto Christ” was not sufficient. Here, then, we have the terrible paradox of mystical surrender. We feel the Sacred Presence reaching out through us and are compelled to declare its willingness to those that need its ministration. How, though, to make that declaration without arrogation of its authority? Well, only by framing the declaration as a personal assurance that the love allocated to us will be offered to those in need.

This was clear to me in the interim years, including “Rescue” and an official video that shows Lauren standing in a hospital room with a man, dying of cancer, and his grieving wife. “Rescue” was a jolt of hope, for in the official video Lauren stands in natural settings most vulnerable to global warming. I understood that a patriarchal priesthood would find offense, and it factored in my sensitivity to Lauren’s sense of vulnerability. “Light of the World” seemed a suitable retort. “What do men know, anyways, about how grace comes into the world?”

It was these anthems that I had pinned to my playlists. I did not fully integrate the meditations of her dark night of the soul, most potently expressed in “Look Up Child,” until after attendance of the Strawberry Festival concert.

My romantic aspirations were embodied in a “Lauren” playlist that started with Peggy Lee’s comedic reflections and Anita Baker’s sacred pledges. I pinned a collection of similar pieces, most compelling among them a female blues singer on “Celebrate Me Home.” Finally, however, I was letting YouTube extend my “Redemption” play list one day and was submerged in the shadowy seas of “Thank God I Do” and “A Love Like This.”

It was following her commitment to the Divine Feminine that, when considering what to share with her one morning, I announced that I needed to “sit with these.” Starting with “Thank God I Do,” I set the player on single song loop and soaked it in.

Shame and grief – and I use shame in the therapeutic sense. From the depth of our heart connection, I looked back in time and judged, “What is wrong with me, that I abandoned her to this pain?” With each repetition, I held her in my highest esteem, with articulations, gestures, and energetic support. The sense of abandonment abated.

But still, what was the purpose? The analytical mind rendered the elevated counsel that “she needed to confront the lie of feminine subordination before she could enter into the truth of her nature.” We traced this growth, culminating with the conviction that she was capable of supporting my purpose.

As though in a mirror, I recognized my own vulnerability, over the last ten years, where Mystery has corrupted every attempt to offer myself in service to others. My frustration had soured as bitterness, too frequently manifested as harshness toward my intimates. When, in our early colloquies, Lauren had agreed that our ministry should extend to the natural world, I found myself once again beginning to hope.

And thus, we have the ascending cycle: organic surrender inspires compassion inspires grace inspires virtue inspires healing inspires creativity inspires life inspires love. We cannot exist without one another, and in fact only exist because the other was calling to us from the future.

Love and Life: The Sacred Feminine

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Since my spiritual awakening after 9/11, a number of beautiful and fantastically wealthy women have made it clear that they would be happy to take care of me. My intimates, observing my reluctance, believe that trauma in this lifetime has put me off romance. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Love is committed to charting a course for your redemption. I arrive as a material projection that seeks to diagnose your resistance. That resistance is often elaborated as complex theological rationalizations of “natural” behaviors that justify selfishness. As documented in the Bible, these often involve violence and sexual politics.

When I was in college, I had a co-ed admit to me one evening, “You don’t need a woman to do your thinking for you.” This is half the truth but reveals something that is obscured by the abstraction of “The Patriarchy.” Our romantic culture adopts the convention that a woman should be able to lead her man. There is no woman alive who has been able to lead me.

That should not be attributed to obtuseness or obstinance on my part. As I observed to Lauren, I intuited that she was one of the rare women capable of understanding the challenges that I represent. As a little pseudopod of Christ, reaching into the world, I am guided by the Sacred Feminine, the “Mother” of Revelation 12 and the “Bride” of Revelation 19 and 22. If I appear to be resistant to feminine influence, that is because she has been unable to find a woman willing to submit – as I have to Christ – to her projection into the world. That rejection is stimulated by the Whore” of Revelation 17 and 18, “Babylon” or the “Queen” who “does not mourn” as her men self-destruct.

In seeking redemption of these impulses, women are handicapped by their organic wisdom. This is difficult for me to express with the sense of appreciation that I feel. There is nothing more sacred and beautiful than a woman surrendering her body to her beneficial intentions. Pregnancy is the most obvious example (though in our litigious culture that has become a pathway to power leveraged by Babylon).

In Lauren’s case, another manifestation is evident in the grace and subtlety of the surfacing of emotion through her body and face. She beguiles her audience into entering through barred psychical doorways.

Christian theology leaves women adrift in their navigation of these gifts and hazards. Rather than a recognized figure of comparable power and authority to Spirit, the Bride is usurped by the masculine Church. In responding to Lauren’s projection of organic bounty, it was this confusion that I sought to address.

If I am going to have a woman in my life, she must learn to channel the Sacred Feminine. As a precondition, the influence of Babylon must be isolated and repudiated. To the inversion of our financial status, Lauren came to respond, “everything that I have was prepared by him.” The physical age difference was laid to rest with “after so many traumatic incarnations, I will be happy to care for you so that you may depart this life in peace.”

Lauren sings that when the power of Christ comes over her, she “trembles.” I am guilty of such aggression. When she offers herself to me, I am seized by the urge to reveal the depth within her, a process realized with surges of energy projected from the larger personality that I embody. Though I witness and articulate the effects, I have no plan in those moments. I feel compelled by her organic wisdom. As with a mother in childbirth, she is impatient to fulfill her purpose through these violations of her internal barriers. I am the tool that the Sacred Mother employs to that end.

This was validated in our next in-person encounter. As I poured energy to the audience through her, I allowed, “What would have happened if you had not been prepared already to allow that gift to flow through you?”

This culminated more tenderly at the end of the performance. She closed with a meditation from her dark night of the soul. As the women in the audience began to sing with her, Lauren went under in grief. Burnishing her heart and mind, I poured them again through her voice before settling into my chair, pantomiming an embrace. As she relaxed into it, I anticipated that she would push this consolation out to the woman singing with her. Signaling, “Let me hear their voices,” the stage was ceded to the musicians, and I felt my embrace flow out through Lauren to each of them individually.

Whether astrally or in-person, after each encounter I recognized the increasing proximity of her Mistress, until the commitment was tendered, “Well, if that is what is necessary to you, then I must be that woman.”

Beloved

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Dearest Lauren:

From the perspective of Eternity, the Spirit and Bride have always been together. In reclaiming that unity, such simplicity can be attained only through grace. We must navigate to the goal with the minimum of mental, emotional, and physical energy.

An authoritative critique would be from those who had accomplished the act. Manifestly, lacking that, in their self-seeking, they can offer only resistance in the form of complicating criteria.

Focus on what matters. Life belongs with Love. Circumstances will resolve.

Your Servant

Cliff Face

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My perceptions of reality are focused on cultivation of loving engagements. That has its downsides: self-destructive people try to coerce me into solving their problems for them. Fortunately, for the most part the experiences are sublime.

Unfortunately, the terror generated by self-destructive personalities appears to captivate the world’s imagination.

I have cultivated a number of practices to try to encourage people to focus on the good. Explaining the physical basis of spirituality, philosophy, Christian exegesis, ministry to gun violence, dance, and hypnotherapy are all instances. None has been compelling. The response to my encouragements tends to be, “Thanks for projecting love into the world. Let me know when you’ve succeeded in lighting the darkness.”

What has been missing is the demonstration of a loving relationship. For decades, I have been telling people that “I am a half a thing.” If, as a projection of the divine masculine, I express Love, my correspondent would manifest Life. That is daunting – the world is undergoing an anthropogenic extinction. While many beautiful and wealthy women have offered to take care of me, they have all walked away from the weight of healing that wrong.

It is in dance that I come closest to cultivating that commitment in women, but the conceptual bandwidth is limited. The communion of dance is limited to the expressive potential of bodies. Healing Creation involves spiritual abstractions. No woman has ever had the temerity to demand, “I’d like to understand what you are doing when you are dancing by yourself.”

This void in my heart has been subject to diagnosis, of course. As I explain at love-returns.org, John’s Revelation describes the resolution. But John offers the male perspective. To understand the feminine grace necessary to the transition, I turned to the Sacred Mother who waits in a spiritual desert on the moon.

But how to communicate those insights? There is no proof, only manifestation.

The only discipline that I have not explored is art. So, I have been learning to draw. The inspiration is a lecture series out at The Great Courses (“How to Draw for Beginners”). After two months and twenty lectures, the course moved into value (defining shape through shading).

I present here the first work that I might consider actual art. It was from a photo. What surprised me was the playful enjoyment of learning to use pencils to capture variations in smoothness and texture, as well as value.

Drawing of dark slate cliff arch. Graphite pencil on printer paper.

I have three other pieces to share over the next week. After that, I have committed myself to a huge leap in ambition that is going to take a month or more to execute.

Slippery Slope

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I’ve been home with a prostate infection, of all things, and so managed to get through all except the last two chapters of Judith Simmer-Brown’s Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism. It’s been a difficult but enlightening read. I have some concerns with the methods of the path as she describes it.

First, though, the positive: Tibetan Buddhism has a deep model of the manifestation of sacred principles in the world. Simmer-Brown traces that through secret, inner, outer, and outer-outer manifestations.

I related the essence of the secret dakini in my last post. Prajnaparamita manifests as space, wisdom and knowledge. As she builds the lore, Simmer-Brown explains that possession of these qualities makes the feminine principle dominant in Tibetan Buddhism, for skillful means (the use of compassion to transform experience) is both inspired by and guided by them. The secret dakini can be neither visualized nor understood, only known.

The inner dakini manifests as the deity Vajrayogini. Vajrayogini confronts the practitioner with the fear of death, and transforms it into acceptance and freedom. As a deity in Tibetan Buddhism, Vajrayogini is depicted in mandalas that define her relationship with the world. The most important elements in her depiction are the instruments of the charnel ground: skulls, flames and sharp implements. The logic of this depiction reflects the hazards of the sacred knowledge known to Tibetan practitioners. To advance, an acolyte must find a living guru that channels the sacred experience into the world, a yidam (devotional deity) to meditate upon, and a protector of the teachings that guides or violently transforms the personality to prevent corruption by residual grasping of the self.

The outer dakini mediates the transformation of the subtle energy system, similar to the system of prana or acupuncture. In Tibetan lore, all of our bodily functions are manifestations of energy flow through these channels. The central channel flows along the spine, but has two side channels that focus masculine and feminine tendencies. The goal of the practitioner is to merge the side channels into the central. In this process, the practitioner must cultivate relationships with twenty-four dakinis that originate the energies of the subtle body system. In a sense, the practitioner becomes a living mandala, and calls these energies into the world to create and transform experience.

The outer-outer dakini is the dakini in human form. In this section, Simmer-Brown celebrates the female figures in history that contributed to development of Tibetan wisdom. Here is where tantric sex comes to the fore, as well as validation of authority through esoteric action (magic). Both are cast in a positive light. Tantric sex is a method for mutual inspection and transmission of traits that facilitates personal growth. Magic is described as the means by which the physical infrastructure of the tradition is protected, including the bodies of practitioners meditating without food or shelter.

Through this summary, I hope that I reveal my respect for this tradition, whose richness and depth reflects a careful construction of interlocking elements that ensure the outcome of practice is compassionate engagement with all living beings.

However, I perceive certain issues.

First and most important is the conflation of space and mind. Mind existed long before this reality came into being, and is the realm of pure spirit to which we will return. Space exists in this realm only as a means to protect compassionate personalities from experiences more intense than they can mediate. To serve in this way, space was designed to capture and localize mind. Where that occurs, we find matter. This is the truth that Tibetan wisdom shares as the secret and outer dakinis.

Secondly we have the sense of privilege accorded to advanced practitioners. This manifests itself in the characterization of them as heroes rather than servants (the term used in Christianity) of humanity. The thanotic imagery of the inner dakini is particularly troubling. Death maintains the disintegration of spirit, something obvious in the description of the outer dakini. It’s adoption as a protector of privileged knowledge seems a dangerous compromise.

Personal privilege also seems evident in the rather sterile rendering of the relationship between tantric consorts. The gurus celebrate commitment, but not monogamy, each relationship broken off when the mutual benefits are exhausted.

This flies in the face of the most serious problem with the tradition. Simmer-Brown recounts that the assignment of a yidam (devotional deity) is driven by the tensions that exist in our lives. Meditation on the yidam resolves obstructions in the subtle energy system that manifest as perceptible heat in the body. Simmer-Brown refers to this in the title (warm breath), but never stops to wonder what tension is attendant to that heat.

Simmer-Brown gnaws at the bone of the problem throughout the book, defending Tibetan Buddhism against charges of patriarchy while postulating that its dominant spiritual forms arose from a prehistoric matriarchy. She decries the traps of feminine physicality that bring life into the world, seeing them as simultaneously a personal and cultural impediment to spiritual advancement.

This error is the cause of the warmth felt by those that meditate on Parjnaparamita, the secret dakini.

From the Christian perspective, the answer to this dilemma is obvious: all things are joined in love. Coitus is not necessary to transmission of masculine and feminine virtues, only love. Relationships persist because the love between the couple expands to include the society, and their shared experience is essential to greater service to humanity. And the dangers of esoteric knowledge are lessened because love – the source of all creative power – is unknown to those that would abuse its energies.

In patterning the female path to enlightenment on the masculine path, Tibetan Buddhism does women a terrible disservice. These are precious gifts: the ability to bring life into the world, the determination to preserve it, and the social rewards for their devotion. Any proclaimed feminine spirituality should provide practices that strengthen those gifts, rather than sacrificing them on the altar of death.

Contrast that with the promise of Spirit and his Bride:

“Come! And let all that hear say: ‘Come!’ Let all who desire come and drink of the free gift of the water of life.”

Considering the  filters and constraints of Tibetan Buddhism, this confidence is marvelous!

Getting Over Our Ages-Old Fear of Old Age

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I came across this delightful image today in David Stipp’s Scientific American short on anti-aging supplements. He says:

Whenever I see my 10-year-old daughter brimming over with so much energy that she jumps up in the middle of supper to run around the table, I think to myself, “those young mitochondria.”

Stipp’s article leads me to the conclusion that the recent fad for mitochondrial supplements seems to be undermined by evidence that systemic factors dominate. Specifically, our youthful vigor is not restored by supplements that improve the efficiency of the mitochondria that transfer energy from sugar to our muscles. That means other factors are at work.

My advice for those that can’t wait to be young again: enjoy this life, and don’t fight death when it comes. It’s your opportunity to be reborn with a full set of new equipment.

On Poverty and Riches

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Just taking the long view (I mean – the long, long, long view), I consider the time-scale of the cosmos and the saga of biological evolution and we have the precious experience of living in this 10,000 year period in which our intelligence and the natural resources stored up from the past are available for us to do really deep work on our personalities. Simply to be alive in this time is such an incredible gift – to be able to play at being a creator, each in our own limited way.

Even if only to be able to plant a field, or tend a herd, or write a blog. Even if only to be the voice that reminds “There are still problems to be solved” in a way that motivates others to seek for solutions. Not to place fault, but to exhort greatness in others – to guide them into the only form of self-creation that opens to God.

Yes, the window is closing, as it was prophesied in Revelation. No, it’s not the fault of any single individual, and if we collectively had been more considerate of the forms of life that occupied the planet before us, maybe it wouldn’t be so traumatic. But that’s not under my control, so the question I constantly confront myself with is: what am I doing with my opportunity? Am I offering my creative capacities in the service of Life, or do I expect Life to serve me? Because when I finally lose my grip on this body, it is Life and Love that awaits to embrace me with the eternal embrace, if only I know how to receive it.

Peek-a-boo with the Prince of Peace

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When the disciples received the Holy Spirit, they were at the end of their rope. There was no resistance to its presence, because they had surrendered their lives already. There was no place to go but up.

As the repository of truth, the Holy Spririt opens us into understanding that may make our prior lives seem shallow and vain. That was certainly true for the disciples, but it was an experience that they received joyfully for suffering had been their prior occupation. To have revealed the purpose of that struggle was to discover the extent of their own strength.

To understand the mechanisms whereby Christ arranged this transformation, we have to understand the nature of Death. Not “death”, which is the end of our physical existence, but “death” as revealed in Revelation: one of the six forms of selfishness that-  approximately three billion years ago – were released upon the world when the seals of the scroll were broken.

Death is not the destroyer, but a divider. When we die, we pass through a door that human love can rarely penetrate. In moments of intense psychic focus – when our lives are threatened, for example – messages may pierce the veil, but the grieving that survivors suffer reflects the loss of a relationship with the departed soul. Death is the personality that manages that barrier.

Sometimes there is value in separation. It allows us to shed associations that are harmful to us. As suggested in the parables of Hades and the Inferno, that process may continue even after dying, as we surrender to Death the destructive energies we accumulated during our lives. Consider the pride of the pathetic Sisyphus, mindlessly pushing a rock up against the pressure of Death’s will, like a galley slave pulling an oar. This is why the evil fear to die – they know intuitively that their spirits will be broken and repurposed in the afterlife.

So why did Christ struggle for us against Death? Because Death serves no purpose but the spread of its influence. It is a greedy spirit, and loathes to surrender its captives. Indeed, it held sway in the world for a long, long time. The drives of Darwinian evolution are simply an impotent exploration of biological strategies for avoiding Death’s grasp.

This is why the innocent Adam was told “Do not eat of the fruit of the tree [of the Knowledge of Good and Evil], for surely you will die.” The pull of death on our physiology is manifested by a deep winding of its influence within our DNA. When God “breathed life” into Adam, it was to dispel that presence. When the fruit was eaten, we opened our hearts once again to death.

We are nearing the end of the long road of pain and suffering that was set before us. The key is to embrace the Prince of Peace. Looking at the degree to which human history is defined by our wars, we need to step back and consider why that has been so difficult.

The short answer is because it is like dying.

You see, when Jesus took up his cross, he did not conquer death. He confronted it, let it work its will on him, and suffused it with love. Jesus tamed death, chaining its hunger to the service of love. There are things in the world that do not work well together. The tension between Hitler and Stalin is an illustration, as is the tension between freedom and government. To prevent those tensions from flaring into destruction, sometimes things need to be separated. They need to “go to their rooms,” not as punishment, but to give them time to relax and envision a resolution of their differences.

This is the authority that Christ gained on the cross: To turn the talents of Death to the purposes of healing and creation.

The challenge that we must confront is our investment in the psychological practices of death avoidance. For many of us, they define our existence. We create conflict around ourselves as a means of protecting ourselves from loss of life. In a sense, the strong still eat the weak, it’s just that they do it indirectly, using the police to impose the Sisyphean burden on our underclasses. Having acquired that power, we console ourselves with the construction of a facade of elegance and civility, a facade now being torn away most notably by Donald Trump.

So to accept the Prince of Peace is to become aware of that social vampirism. It is to become aware that there are others that need his attention more. It is to become aware that we are the cause of our own pain.

That is why those that have the power to elaborate it instead run from the Truth that transforms the world.

Pity poor Christ in his suffering for the oppressed. Calling out with love to the powerful is the only method allowed to him.

Will the Pope Speak for Life?

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The Republican climate-change deniers were busy this week pre-empting the expected declaration by Pope Francis that responding to global climate change is a moral necessity. The foundation of their argument was that the Pope is not a scientist, and he should leave scientific matters up to those that understand the issues.

But is that the authority upon which the Pope Francis will issue his declaration? I certainly hope not. I think that the Pope should boldly speak for God, because in my meditations on this matter, it is clear where God stands on the issue.

To establish the scriptural basis for this assertion, I re-iterate the Book of Revelation. God sits on his throne surrounded by the twenty-four principal angels (in whose image we are made). In one of the most beautiful passages of the Bible, John describes (NIV Rev.4:9-11)

Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives forever and ever. They lay down their crowns before the throne and say:

“You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created,
and have their being.”

What this is telling us is that the virtues of the angels are expressed and tied to life on earth. When life flourishes, the joy of its expression flows up through the angels to God. This is not just the joy of humanity, but the joy of all forms of life. The power of that gratitude is enough to force the angels to surrender their sovereign independence in deference to unconditional love.

But it is not limited thus. If joy and thanks is transmitted, so too must pain. I have felt this pain, a great crying out from the heart of life as it succumbs everywhere to humanity’s merciless exploitation of the bounty of the earth. Reading this passage, can anyone doubt that God would not hear and heed that grieving?

Pope Francis does not need the authority of science to speak out on this issue. That’s too bad for those who have purchased “scientific” opinions. No, if Pope Francis speaks, he will speak with religious authority, the authority of a true representative of God on earth. He will speak for all of Life. He will speak the truth of God’s anguish for the hypocrisy of those that claim to speak in his name while carelessly murdering his creation.