Whispers of Mystery

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

The Laser Beam

There are objectives within the Cosmos
that can only be accomplished in the darkness
~ whisper, October 3, 2024, 9:11 am

My own petty thoughts were once again interrupted. I had the day off, had just pulled out my kindle, cozied in my recliner, and was about to read. What did this mean? Was it really from my whispers of mystery, those gentle, profound, and often witty voices from a mysterious and beautiful realm beyond me?

The whisper was brief and ambiguous. Having just settled into my recliner, I wished to cozy up, read, and drink my coffee. I turned on my kindle, noticed the charge was low, retrieved my charger, plugged it in, and grumbled that the cord was too short to reach my recliner. I’d have to move to a chair close to the charger. Meanwhile, my mind kept repeating the whisper: There are objectives within the Cosmos that can only be accomplished in the darkness. I glanced at the clock. 9:11. Did my whispers wish to confirm they really had sent the message? I shuddered. Was it foreboding?

As I picked up the tray with my coffee to move it to the chair, another whisper encouraged me to set it aside and return to the recliner. We have a message for you.

This message was neither foreboding nor witty, yet stunning in its reply to some of my life-long questions. Using the metaphor of a laser beam, my whispers shared a special role we humans play in the Universe and why it carries trauma, as our role and our problems are intricately intertwined through our laser beam consciousness.

The Enigma

Since the message was, in part, a reply to life-long questions of mine, I should first share this cluster of questions, which I call the Enigma: the human condition of widespread, significant, and unnecessary suffering and God’s role in in it. Despite our abundant planet fully capable of nourishing everyone on Earth, widespread poverty and suffering, often at the cruelty of other humans, has gripped humanity throughout its history. Why? And why does “God” allow it?

As a toddler and preschooler, I lived across the street from a slum in São Paulo, Brazil. A few years later, as I was just entering kindergarten, my family moved into a large three-story house in a wealthy neighborhood in San Jose, CA. You can read about this childhood of paradox here and its influence into my battle with the Enigma.

Then, in school, I also learned history: slavery, war, and unthinkable atrocities like the Holocaust and others, then recent, in our own country that led to the Civil Rights Movement.

In high school, I joined what I now call Churchianity because I was drawn to the sage I now call Yeshua. His compassion, wisdom, teachings, miracles for the poor and humiliations to the powerful resonated with me. Mine was a true conversion. With delight, I welcomed this savior-sage into my heart and shifted from near-suicidal to vitality. Many of my prayers were honored with miracles and added blessings I hadn't even requested.

Wishing to learn as much as I could, I soaked in this savior-sage's teachings. The church also taught about the divinity translated into English as “God,” who, I was told, created us humans “in sin” and inspired the Bible, which I was told was literally true. I was also encouraged to read the Bible, which I made the mistake to do. I read of God commanding genocide, of flooding the entire world except for one family and some animals, of condemning the first humans for appropriately wanting moral understanding, and of sending plagues and death to the Egyptian people because their king was stubborn, even though the same story told of God himself, multiple times, saying he would harden the king’s heart. Wasn’t the king’s cruelty, then, on God?

This God also showed mercy, particularly to me and to my friends who prayed to him. But in the Bible, I noticed mercy often shown to his favorites, but not always to their neighbors. When his favorites got into fights with their neighbors, this God rarely taught them to get along with each other. Sometimes, he even joined the fight and commanded his favorites to kill their neighbors.

Moreover, if this God created humans “in sin,” wasn’t the human cruelty and injustice I saw and learned about in history also on God? Doesn’t the buck stop with him? Churchianity claimed a “solution”: the torture, death, and resurrection of the one perfect person God created. This was the very sage who had drawn me into Churchianity. His torturous death was God’s solution?

I was only a peon human, but I often told God I could come up with better solutions. Why not create humans with warm hearts? And minds that can see their way out of suffering? And compassion to minimize the suffering of others?

For many years, I tried to reconcile this God, but I could not. Through a journey especially of my own intimacy with the divine, I became thankfully certain Churchianity’s God is not the true divine. Today, I perceive the divine as a harmonious Spirit which we can access through our eternal self and our angels, whose character is more like Yeshua’s Father. I scratch my head that neither I could trust my own insight nor Churchianity admit that Yeshua’s Father is not at all the same divinity as the literal figure translated into English in the Bible as "God."

Although I no longer blame Churchianity’s God, the Enigma of widespread, unnecessary suffering persistently nags at me. The Laser Beam message surprised me with some answers.

The Metaphors of Life

The Laser Beam was the first of a series of messages in the fall of 2024 I call the Metaphors of Life. Like a bridge from the type of messages I had previously received, it began familiar, with verbal “whispers of mystery.” Then it added something new: a visual. The following four messages, already posted here, were mostly visual, presented like videos. Although the laser beam was the first, I saved it for last because it is the most involved and calls for more than a single post.

The other four Metaphors of Life messages described what my angels whispered to be the mysterious “eternal self” within us, connected to what they call the “human self.” These four placed their emphasis upon a description of the eternal self, while the Laser Beam emphasized the human self. This is the self we know, the one we identify with, the one we call “myself.” It is our physical self, attuned to the material realm and generally unaware of our eternal self.

The Laser Beam

I returned to my recliner and my angels repeated their attention-getting whisper and continued,

There are objectives within the Cosmos
that can only be accomplished in the darkness.
In the heavenly places of perfection, there is much that is unknown:
courage, perseverance, love in spite of pain, forgiveness, gratitude,
and the seeking and finding of beauty within a sea of ugliness.
Endurance through despair: perfection knows not that.

This whisper somewhat mirrored the clichés I had heard in Churchianity that an omniscient deity cannot know joy without sorrow, but it added beauty without ugliness, love in spite of pain, and qualities impossible for an omnipotent power like courage and perseverance. Still, as the clichés had never worked for me, I was left unsatisfied. My whispers continued,

Only in physical places can single-minded focus be achieved.
In all other places, omniscience and connectedness exclude any capacity
to focus intently into a single direction and within a single, isolated being.

I paused and was given a flash of another metaphor: a microscope. I perceived we humans are designed with a purpose to look into minute details. After some silence, they continued:

Those who enter the darkest of dark places are intimately involved in those objectives.
This is true of all involved: the victims, the perpetrators, and the eye-witnesses.
In the heavenly realms, they all work together on these objectives,
and they physically live them out together on Earth.

Working together on objectives of darkness? The victims and the perpetrators work together? With eye-witnesses too? Then physically live out the darkness? Baffling. Why?

Neither my family’s western scientific way of thinking nor Churchianity had ever suggested that any of us, in spirit form, choose the life we enter. By this time, however, I had read stories of people who had had near-death experiences and of those who had been hypnotized into their between life state in the spirit world. These reports consistently reveal that we humans pre-plan the likelihood of some of the most important events in the lives we are about to live. I hoped this to be true, but doubted it. In my mind, no one could have chosen such horrors as the Holocaust.

The whispers continued . . .

We each have our own roles.
Some who head to the deepest, darkest places are among the brightest of the Universe,
and yet they head to the darkest places,
where they learn courage, endurance, strength, perseverance, hope,
and the ability to see light even in the darkest of dark.

I thought of and shuddered over those imprisoned in hard labor camps. "Among the brightest of the Universe"? "Head to the darkest places"? Likely not all, I thought, but some, such as Elie Wiesel, Anne Frank, and Viktor Frankl. How could they, in spirit form, sign up for the potential of suffering so unthinkable? I considered removing this part of the message, in case it could discourage any who have not cried out over the Enigma to do what I advocate: to stop the cruelty and show compassion. Trusting my readers to assist victims, I kept it in.

Although these victims confound me, another group stymies me even more: the perpetrators. What drives them? What do they learn?

Single-minded focus.

My angels began their reply and presented a vision of a person standing on a laser beam of bright white light. The background was dark as if the person was floating in the night sky standing with one foot in front of another on this bright beam. His eyes were looking ahead intently along the path of his laser beam. He could see only to its narrow width, about as wide as a balance beam.

Then a great many laser beams of various widths, some wide, some narrow, some in-between, all popped up before me, each with a single person standing on the beam. Most could easily stand with both feet beside one another. Many appeared to be surfing along the beam, some unstable. Only a few were looking intently ahead, while most were drearily looking downward letting their beam take them wherever it wished. Many appeared not to be following their beam, but instead floating away into a cloudy mist.

Six months later, on Easter Sunday, I was surprised with another message about these many floating into the cloudy mist. On this October day, however, they directed my attention to one on the narrowest beam, so narrow it was like a tight rope. I saw him to be Hitler. My angels whispered,

Powerful perpetrators are like laser beams, destined toward a single, passionate focus,
unable to see anything beyond or around their single-minded laser focus.
They neither see, nor hear, nor think, nor feel anything apart from this single beam.
But on this beam, they think and feel intensely.
This beam is their compass, their life, their path, and their moral code.
They comprehend nothing that is off the beam.

Their “moral code”? I shook my head. My angels could not be serious.

They continued,

Not all laser beams become perpetrators of violent crimes.
Many become great artists or specialized scientists
or obsessed with some particular thing or other.
But some, as you have observed, can also perpetrate very violent acts.

. If single-minded focus is so necessary to learn – Really? Why? – and if it can be learned by those who become great artists, then why are perpetrators of great violence needed?

After a period of silence, my whispers resumed:

Without the perpetrators, courage lacks its full training.
Without the perpetrators, so do strength, endurance, perseverance, and forgiveness.
Without the perpetrators,
the ability to see light in even the darkest of places is left wanting.

More silence. Then –

The violence caused by the perpetrators comes as an effect of the laser beam.
When the single-minded person is distracted from the laser beam,
the single-minded person gets agitated, angry, and then becomes violent.
It is not that the person is made violent;
it is that the person is made single-minded,
and violence is the outcome.

Violence is the outcome of the person’s obsession? This was a new idea. For so long, I had been brainwashed into the notion that we humans had been created “in sin.” From this, I had unconsciously inferred that violent people were made violent.

Here, my angels challenged that notion. If they stood on especially narrow laser beams, they were made highly single-minded and violence was an outcome. Hitler's obsession was Germany. Did these not intend violence, but were obsessed with something else, even something good, and the result of their obsession was violence?

Already, I had much to contemplate. I wondered about other perpetrators who were not minutely focused on especially narrow beams, but these were to be described six months later. Some violence, at least, might be an unintended effect. My angels had still additional surprises. Their whispers continued, beginning with this one:

All things call for a single-minded focus,
a laser beam and a microscope,
and then all things are celebrated.

“Then all things are celebrated.” This, too, was a fresh idea. My angels had more to say. To be continued . . .

Other Metaphors of Life

Saturday, March 15, 2025

The Bumblebee and the Hawk

The bumblebee and the hawk is the fourth in a succession of these in October and November. Each came about a week apart in the same manner as my whispers: as flashes that interrupt my own mundane thoughts, those petty thoughts of my “human self.” Prior to those five last fall, I heard “whispers,” but rarely saw visions. Since then, I have not seen a single one. My own imagination is too dull to conjure these; they come from a source of mystery much more wise and clever than I am.

Each of these seemed to me to be what I call a “metaphor of life” and they expressed messages to clarify the sense I’ve perceived, mostly in thanks to my whispers, of the parts of our human creation shown to me as the “human self” and the “eternal self” in Adam’s creation in Genesis 2:7. The “human self” is the part formed by the dust of the earth and the “eternal self” is the one formed by the divine breath. Unlike the convoluted logic of Augustine, still tragically taught by some churches, we are not made “in sin.” The scriptures consistently present us in duality: the dust part – our “human self” and the breath part – our “eternal self.”

Each vision expressed a different metaphor with its own facet of these selves within us. I posted the first, the Smorgasbord, in November; then came Artificial Sweetener, posted in January, and then the Deep-end Diver and the Backstroke Swimmers, posted in February. Now for the Bumblebee and the Hawk:

This vision began with a bumblebee buzzing and flying about in a garden. I watched it land on a yellow flower, suck it, and pollinate it. Then it buzzed to another flower, repeating its movements.

The bumblebee is like a healthy human self.

My whispers of mystery had just interjected. Here was a healthy bumblebee doing its job, serving its purpose. My whispers had likened it to the human self, demonstrating, in contrast to traditions that have looked critically upon what they call the “lower self” or the “ego.” If this bumblebee is healthy and serving its purpose, then certainly what has been shown to me as the “human self” is not at all to be despised. It is natural, serves a purpose, and when healthy, contributes to its community, even perhaps to the world.

I watched the bumblebee continue to move about quickly, every which way. I, his observer, did not know where he was going or where he would land next, though I presumed to another flower. Wherever it was to be, he had a destination, he had a purpose, and he was fulfilling it.

Next, I saw a housefly, buzzing about loudly, jerking in its movements; smashing into a window; randomly buzzing up, down, diagonal; again smashing into the window.

This housefly is like the subconscious part of the human self.

My whispers had returned. I hadn’t anticipated this mystery. Shifting to the fly from the bee, I had expected the fly to represent an “unhealthy” human self. But, as I’ve said, my whispers are smarter than me, and they like to surprise me with riddles.

Its movements adhere to rules you don’t understand. He seems to you to be unpredictable, random, uncontrolled.

Certainly. Ever try to swat a housefly?

His eyes are mysteriously constructed, but they follow a structure. So does the subconscious part of the human self, though, it too can often take you into directions that baffle you.

I thought of what Paul said in Romans 7 that the flesh within him does what he doesn’t want to do and doesn’t do what he does want to do.

The deep-end diver, however, learns to control the housefly.

My whispers then replayed the part of my previous vision showing the deep-end diver diving toward the bottom of the swimming pool. My whispers were getting more sophisticated; they were bringing in the previous vision. In that one, I had reflected that the water symbolized emotion and cleansing, that diving into our emotions is terrifying, but also cleansing. Now my whispers seemed to suggest the water also represents our subconscious self and that diving into it helps us to control what otherwise appears to us to be uncontrollable.

Next I was shown a hawk soaring high through the sky, beautiful, glorious, with wings outstretched, showing no movement of his own at all. He was perfectly gliding, letting the breeze carry him.

The hawk is like the eternal self.

This time, my whispers spoke what I had anticipated. Sometimes, I can be smart, or maybe just when it’s really obvious.

I sensed that the hawk’s glide represented the energy the eternal self can manifest when it is set free to do so. Like the hawk, the eternal self can rely upon strength of its wings and the breeze of the air to carry it to its destination.

The bumblebee can become the hawk.

Huh, another riddle. My whispers opened the vision to a great many flying creatures, starting with insects like butterflies, dragonflies, and praying mantises. Then I was shown many birds of all types, shapes, sizes and colors, beginning with tiny mockingbirds rapidly fluttering their little wings to robins, blue jays, toucans, and birds of such variety I know not their names.

Many permutations through many insects and many birds will take place along the way. Keep your eyes on the hawk and the permutations will come.

This time, I thought of the words of Lao Tzu, who said “great acts are made up of small deeds” (Tao Te Ching, stanza 63). He’s also the one who made famous, in the following stanza, “the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step” (or, in many translations, “beneath your feet”). The bumblebee doesn’t just magically become the hawk; many steps are taken along the way.

Remember the vision of the Smorgasbord. If you enter the spaces between the delights, you will learn to glide like the hawk.

Now they brought in the first vision they had given to me a month earlier. I sat stunned by their brilliance to connect these visions. In that vision, they showed a great buffet table of delights, not only of delicious foods, but also of tempting material possessions, toys and cars, and so forth. After showing the smorgasbord of delights, they had whispered that they greatest treasures were in the spaces between the delights.

My whispers then returned the vision to the hawk. As I sat in awe and envy of him, gliding so high, so effortlessly, my whispers relayed their closing message:

To sail the winds like the hawk, the human self must slow down and let go. Let the winds carry you. Trust the winds. While learning, the human self will doubt, and if those doubts stay too strong or for too long, you will descend. The wind carries only the hawk who trusts. The eternal self in training will glide for a bit, then descend, then buzz like the bumblebee once again. As long you don’t give up, but persevere, committed to glide like the hawk, the eternal self will emerge and the hawk will glide, even soar to great distances using very little energy.

Other Metaphors of Life

The Laser Beam

Monday, February 24, 2025

The Deep-end Diver and the Backstroke Swimmers

Last fall, a succession of visions about a week apart unexpectedly appeared. I perceived them as metaphors of life and they arrived as my whispers of mystery do: as flashes that interrupt my own mundane thoughts, those petty thoughts of my “human self.” Since messages to me have been auditory, these visual images playing like a video were a new surprise.

Each one presented a different metaphor from a different facet fitting into my reflections of the “human self” and the “eternal self.” I posted the first, the Smorgasbord, in November, where I also introduced these distinct parts within ourselves. Quite unlike Augustine’s convoluted logic, still mysteriously taught by some churches, we are not made “in sin.” The creation of Adam is shown clearly in Genesis 2:7 in two parts: from the dust of the earth (the human self) and from the divine breath (the eternal self). Both are natural and neither part should be despised. They are often in conflict, however, and since the human part is physical, tangible, it is the part we identify with, leaving the eternal part elusive.

This vision began with a single female diving into the deep-end of an outdoor pool and swimming underwater. The pool was shaped like an upside-down capital “L,” with the deep end off to the upper right of the swim lanes. I watched the diver swim downward toward the bottom of the pool like a graceful dolphin, down, then forward, then down, then sometimes up, then forward, then down again. It seemed she was attempting to touch the bottom of the pool. I held my breath for her, and I worried for her, mentally encouraging her to rise up for a breath.

You want to see swimmers breathe?

My whispers had finally spoken during my otherwise silent vision. They shifted the vision to the main part of the pool, to the swim lanes. There, I saw the lanes filled with swimmers, appearing as adults as if at a swim team warm-up, all swimming backstroke, about four or five per lane about two swimmer lengths apart from one another. Then I heard another voice in the background, muffled and quite distinct from my whispers’ voices or from my own mental chatter, apparently the swimmers’ coach. He instructed them to flip over to swim freestyle.

But the swimmers kept swimming backstroke. None had flipped over. I waited for the coach to repeat his instruction, but the vision remained silent. The swimmers remained on their backs, swimming at the same pace, in the same rhythm, with the same movements, with neither a twitch nor a startle. Had they heard their coach?

I watched the swimmers mechanically lift their arms for their strokes and kick their feet to rudder themselves forward. None was fast, but none slow, and they swam sufficiently straight, a feat which takes some level of skill for backstroke, though their form lacked the power of the pros. The vision continued in silence, with the backstroke swimmers mechanical and the coach apparently now absent.

I wondered over these swimmers ignoring their coach. I had not seen him, only heard his voice, somewhat muffled in the background, only once. Had he tried to instruct them before I arrived at the vision, and he had thrown up his arms and left? Given up on them? Or had he instructed them only once to flip to freestyle? Had they heard him? Why had they not flipped over?

After an extended silence, my whispers finally spoke again.

They would have to put their head under water.

“Yes, soooo?” I asked, puzzled.

They are afraid to immerse their heads into the water.

Thinking too logically, I asked, “Then why do they look like they’re on a swim team?!”

My whispers didn’t reply. Instead, they returned the vision to the deep-end diver. While the backstroke swimmers appeared to still be mastering the skill of swimming, even of their obvious preference for backstroke, this swimmer was graceful, elegant and quick, moving through the water like a mermaid. Continuing downward, her destination to the bottom of the pool was unchanged, and by this time, she had almost reached it, almost able touch it, but not quite.

My whispers entered once more.

She’s seeking her eternal self.

The deeper she swam, the greater the pressure of the water resisted her movements. Swimming is easier at the surface than it is further down. Just as the air is thin at a high altitude, water is denser at a deeper level. I watched her struggle against the density.

Once again, I held my breath for her and encouraged her to rise to the top to catch a breath. She must have heard me, as just then I watched her lift herself upright, take a grand scissor kick, then shoot her two arms up and quickly pull them down to her waist, rocketing herself up, and rising to the surface in quick frog-like movements. She reached the surface, pulled her head out of the water, took a deep breath, then slowly swam breast stroke to the edge of the pool. I felt within her both triumph and agony. She had swum deep and far, but had not reached bottom. Might she touch bottom the next time?

Unlike the Smorgasbord vision, which my whispers narrated along the way, this vision was largely silent. Messages from the world beyond have come to me auditory, hence my blog title: “whispers of mystery.” The silence of this vision felt powerful to because it was so different, and the vision left me with many questions.

If the deep end swimmer was seeking her eternal self, were the backstroke swimmers ignoring theirs? Did their coach represent this eternal self? Had they heard him and ignored him? Or, were they so mechanically established they couldn’t hear him?

To these questions, my whispers did not reply. As often, they tossed out a riddle. They said the deep-end diver was seeking her eternal self, and they presented a diver who was not flying up into the sky, but down into the water. Curious.

The ones who were looking up to the sky, where we might expect to seek an eternal self, were the backstroke swimmers. They could also breathe and were not struggling. But, they were mechanical, not graceful. Grace doesn’t come easily; it comes after much struggle.

Water, according to many spiritual traditions, represents emotion. I felt that the deep waters of the deep-end swimmer represented the waters of our heart. I reflected that our human self is made up both of our conscious, mental self -- like that chatterbox in my head who complains too much, but also tries to be nice – and also of our inner child, the vulnerable one in our subconscious who feels emotion, gets afraid, and guards its traumas.

Could the vision suggest the swimmers’ fear to dunk their heads in the water was fear of facing their traumas? This may be why water also represents cleansing. We may need to cleanse from trauma, but fear doing so. To dive into the water of our inner child to face these emotions, fears, and especially the traumas, is frightening, as it exposes the trauma to our conscious self. This calls for much endurance, patience, strength, and courage.

How much more we would like to reach the stars than to dive into our traumas. And how much more do we like to mechanically breathe than struggle in dense waters. So we ignore the call or let ourselves not hear it, as the swimmers heard not their coach. Was the coach, then, to the backstroke swimmers like my whispers are to me?

Once we do begin to listen and to glimpse this elusive eternal self, we long for nothing more than to meet it, to touch it like the deep-end diver was attempting to do. We find in this eternal self one quite unlike the moralist of Freud’s superego or the mixture of positive and negative of the Jungian Collective Unconscious. No, this eternal self, this part shown by the divine breath in Adam’s creation, is gentle and wise, sometimes teasing, but loving.

While many spiritual traditions affirm a High Self akin to what I call the eternal self, few western psychologists do. Could it be the western psychologists are like the backstroke swimmers? They can’t hear their inner “coach,” their own eternal self?

I suspect many of them do, but don’t say. Carl Jung practically did in an interview, but he didn’t publish it as he may have been scorned by his colleagues. Still, once we glimpse this eternal self, there is no denying this self, more real to us than anything else, and there is no going back.

Other Metaphors of Life Visions

The Laser Beam

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Artificial Sweetener

One morning in early November, I woke with an image, unexpected, like my whispers, but visual – not my gift.

The animated image began with a little pink package that slowly zoomed in toward me to reveal itself as artificial sweetener. The scene zoomed back out and I watched the pink package rise up toward the sky. It then multiplied into a fan of packages, which then opened themselves up, then turned themselves upside down, and then package by package, like a wave in the stands of a football game, starting with the left-most package and ending with the right-most, they each sprinkled down their sweetener.

Next I was shown what stood below the sweeteners: a church. I saw the artificial sweetener sprinkle down like gentle snow upon the church. This image appeared like a nostalgic Norman Rockwell scene.

Then the scene zoomed out to show both the church and a second fan of packages in the sky. Additional fans of packages began to emerge like ripples, with each fan positioning itself behind the one before. Row by row, starting with the front row, the packages opened themselves, turned themselves upside down, and then sent down their sweetener, this time not package by package, but fan by fan. As full fans of artificial sweetener rained down, this scene was more dramatic, like thick snow raining heavily upon the church. Norman Rockwell would not have drawn this scene.

Then a whisper arrived:

The church is getting baptized with artificial sweetener.

The animated vision receded and my whispers said no more.

I laid in bed pondering the vision, first that I had had one at all. For nineteen years, I have received auditory messages from a world beyond ours, usually by surprise, off my radar, and so much more profound than any of my own petty thoughts. But, other than a few during my “summer in the twilight zone” in 2005, visual messages I have not seen, nor, for that matter, asked for. This one was the second over the course of about five weeks of visions I’m calling Metaphors of Life.

Like my whispers, this one also arrived by surprise and quite distinct from the chattering in my head of the things I needed to do that day. A few days later, I shared it with my dietician friend, the same one who shared the story that began my Traps of Life post about the client to whom she suggested switching from Coke to Diet Coke and his resistance at a change so mild. I asked her what she thought of the vision and any meaning she, as a dietician, might attribute to artificial sweetener. She said what came to her was “empty calories,” the dietician way of saying “no nutritional benefit.”

Together we lamented the sadness of this message. In various ways, both of us have seen it play out in the church, which I no longer attend. I tried for quite some time to be the Evangelical and the Mystic, but I can no longer straddle those identities. Tragically, mystics don’t fit into today’s churches. Is it because they are getting baptized with artificial sweetener?

As I reflected on the meaning, I considered the nature of artificial sweetener: too sweet, not natural, man-made, temporary, and addicting.

I then pondered what the church is called to be: salt. The distinction is striking. They might look alike, but one is sweet and the other is bitter, one gives nutrition and the other takes it away, one is temporary and the other is a preservative. Artificial sweetener delights us for the moment, but salt preserves us for the long term.

Finally, I connected this vision to the previous one, already posted, The Smorgasbord, and I saw the artificial sweetener as one of the “delights” of the smorgasbord. The salt we are called upon to be could be like one of those spaces between the delights. These are those little seen open spaces between the many delights toward which we draw ourselves.

Ah, those spaces! At first, they seem bitter, like salt, but then we discover how they preserve us, and then they become sweet, like natural sugar. I find myself encouraged to take the time to draw from those spaces between the smorgasbord delights and choose what has long-lasting nutritional benefit. To do so is not easy: the delights and the artificial sweetener are so tempting, so pleasing. May I have the strength and the patience to wait for what is better.

Other Metaphors of Life