My thoughts on this topic...
Report from the Dreamscape
I dream a dream in which I make the following statement to a group of spiritual friends, including one I recognize or believe to be Jesus, with whom I am walking:
“You know how we think of God as something, an entity or consciousness that doesn’t need anything outside of itself to feel satisfied or fulfilled? Maybe that’s wrong, and this is His/Her way of getting it.”
When I am finished speaking I wonder to myself if I will continue to possess the equanimity I enjoy when making this comment to my friends if it is ultimately my fate, or the fate of someone I care about, to be sickened by this awful plague loosed by God upon the earth, this wretched curse that I believe God - for whatever reason sent. For yes, make no mistake, I do not accept the idea that it was merely a stroke of bad luck, a random event which brought the world once again, because it has been here before, to its knees. An apocalypse called forth by the eating of bats, though the eating of bats may have been the instrument of something greater. As it is said "God makes luck." Luck that is good and luck that facilitates the death of thousands. But I digress…
When I am finished speaking I wonder to myself if I will continue to possess the equanimity I enjoy when making this comment to my friends if it is ultimately my fate or the fate of someone I care about to end up on the altar of God’s “fulfillment,” of God’s “satisfaction.” If it is my fate or the fate of someone I care about to end up just another sacrificial lamb in a world where the Master Gamesman practices a sometimes brutal strategy, the motive and purpose of which we may never know for sure.
Indeed, it is difficult to comprehend in a direct way the mind of God. Mystics, poets and theosophists from the dawn of human consciousness have struggled to unlock the puzzle and the paradox of divine thought. They have looked to the model of nature, they have looked to the practice of meditation, they have wandered in the desert and waited for visions, they have reclined at length under the Bodhi tree hoping for enlightenment. As for me, like Jacob, Joseph and Daniel, I am one who follows the way of the dream. Only the dream inspires me to sing the purple song, the song that flows from the purple mouth. Only the dream presents a window that seems worthy of my trust, into the unseen, a sacred, secret window that allows me to know in as much as the unknowable can be known, the Supernal Mind. Only the dream inspires, at least for me, a faith in the divine.
And it is the voice of the dream which told me this:
"When the Lord makes us suffer it is because or when He is more concerned with the end than the means, with the product than the people."
If it is thus, if it is as the voice of the dream instructs, I wonder, what is the end that God desires now? What is the "product" that alone will satisfy and fulfill Him? Her? It? Them?
What is so important to God that He/She is willing to sacrifice the innocent as well as the guilty, the good as well as the evil? What kind of God, what kind of mother, what kind of father, what kind of creator would sacrifice their own creation to get what they want? Not the New Age God of the unoffending smile… Not the mainstream Christian deity of unconditional love, mercy and forgiveness in whom, as the Bible instructs, "…there is no darkness at all." Neither of these answer the question prompted by the dream.
Maybe it is a God who, in order to be satisfied, in order to be fulfilled, in order to be content needs the world or at least the human component of the world, to stop destroying itself. Maybe it is a God who needs humanity to act as if it had a soul, to practice love and pursue justice. Maybe it is a God who is tired of selfishness, cruelty and hate carrying the day. Maybe it is a God who, after sending forth Her messengers one by one and seeing them rejected, crucified and stoned sees no other way of getting what He/She wants. Maybe it is a God who, after trying a gentler, kinder approach realized finally that human beings need to learn everything worth learning, the hard way…
I dream a dream in which the idea comes into my mind that the dark plague which has befallen the world may be understood as a “lure” intended to draw forth “a certain kind of hero.”
Which is to say perhaps, that God, the Magister Ludi, the "Master of the Game," is, to pursue the analogy a little further, fishing. In a world where the cruel and the cowardly are gaining more and more power with each passing day, in a world governed by those who would rather poison the planet than sacrifice profit, which ignores, neglects and despises the needy, which treats the vulnerable with contempt, in a world where there is no room for the immigrant or the refugee, no room for the stranger who finds themselves in a strange land, no room for the child except in a cage, no room for the least of these in the proverbial and eternally exclusive inn, God is fishing for a certain kind of hero.
This I believe, is the message of the dream: God brought forth the plague, not, as the preachers of intolerance and hate insist because He wants to punish the environmentalists and the homosexuals (nay, these are the "alternative facts" put forth by those who would twist the sacred into the profane, truth into lie, holy into unholy, God into the servant of man or mans’ agenda) but because the world requires a certain kind of hero and heroes are made from danger. Heroes are born out of peril, urgency and need. Heroes are born in extremis. Where the coward reluctantly follows, it is peril which inspires the hero to lead. Where, in moments of trial, the coward thinks only of themselves (of their political future, of their popularity with the mob), it is peril which inspires the hero to sacrifice for others.
This is why God has made the darkness: because it is the darkness which prompts the light. It is the darkness which forms the "lure."
There are those who will find my thoughts either blasphemous or amusing. Blasphemous because they look at God in a different way, amusing because they simply don’t believe in God, especially a personal God who may whisper to us in our dreams at all. Nevertheless, I will speak my word, I will say my say, I will sing my song:
Shalom
Salom Aleichem
Namaste
Be kind, be brave, be true
The hero God is seeking
Is all of us and you
Daniel David Joseph
