~~* The Weeping Man of Singing Falls *~~
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The ancients have said, “With wisdom comes sorrow”. And thus it is recorded in the sacred writings.
With knowledge comes strength.
I can remember very well my initial escape from inner city life. As I recall it, I was passing through the Colorado Rocky Mountains for the first time. A sense of awe flushed through my mind. The tall stately trees appeared as a canopy of life, a living face for the surface of the earth. I knew there was a God and a spiritual dimension from which this life derived it's origins. Somehow the thick carpet of animated wood and green revealed that to me. But still it was all a mystery. One I had a compulsion to discover and unfold. Inner cities were very ugly to me. The stark reality of life on the streets along with the sordid majesty represented by towering skyscrapers forced an altered state of consciousness upon me. The gruesome visage demanded that somehow I find beauty in it all. I was compelled to search for some inherent value beyond the cold inanimate monoliths before me.
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Asphalt and concrete, glass and steel had to be seen as the matrix in which a sophisticated society would embody itself. Millions of people and hundreds of years of groaning combined in a thrust of effort to become what? Or to do what?
Often, in my youth, I would walk the relatively silent and night time downtown Philadelphia streets. Aimlessly wandering in between the symmetrical mire of overwhelming buildings.
My poetry and art reflected the empty mirage the city and this colossal human effort represented. What was the meaning of this collective striving? Surely it escaped me. But how could so many be wrong? Was this civilization, as it appeared, really needful? Could it house humanity in order for it to survive? And above all, was this collective mystique that I was unable to see, a noble enough cause to justify the pain and injustice I could see? What must I do to my mind; what must happen to my life, for me to see beauty in this? I was forced to think in symbols, color and abstract form, to extricate beauty from where there was none.
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But now among the trees something unfurled within my soul. Ensconced in a metal machine, roaring along an asphalt highway that was plowed through the wilderness, I was unconscious of the ease the disdained asphalt afforded me. Only the ever higher reach of the tree tops and tree tips for sunlight enthralled me. The ease of my travel was eclipsed by being surrounded with the message of life. The sterile substance of clay and steel was now replaced by raw life spiraling upward in a mathematical whirl toward the heavens and anchored downward deep in the earth in fractal symmetries. Life turned the basic elements of existence into something living. The clay which formed the sky scraper formed the tree. The forest was animate and it housed living things. The reality of a tree as a living entity cast down the synthetic dignity of crumbling concrete. Even the empty shell of a dead snail with it's Pythagorean resonance outshown the inanimate husk of a skyscraper. The forest contained a brutal realism that seemed only less intimidating than the over processed carnage of a city's bustle. After all, I had to have my metal machine to survive my passage, didn't I?
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When the city could hold me no more; when the chains of what I knew burst asunder, I ventured my first foray into the wilds. It seemed a sacred event that disdained even the semblance of civility that language presupposes. Somehow in my mind, the God I was seeking, the mystery I was reaching for, could not understand English. So feeble was my concept. So shallow my understanding. On a crude rock outcropping I arranged untooled stones in the form of an altar. Carefully I gathered aromatic pitches from fir and pine. They became riches to me. A little dry guff, needles and bark, became the base for coals. On a piece of paper I drew a series of images that I thought metaphorically represented my burning “prayer”. It was to the God I knew existed but did not know. Would He understand? How barren was my soul?
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This was my first true prayer. It was my way of saying, “Please let me wake up and emerge out my ignorance. I want to know you. I want to see.” I built the bed of coals. Carefully I placed the tree resin. When the incense was rich and full I ignited the paper to co-mingle and merge the images with the incense. It was a most primitive and earnest effort in the sanctuary of the woods. Could the prayer mingled with incense penetrate the invisible? Would my thoughts reach God and how could I know if they did? Would I some day have a reprieve from my desolations, the voids of my inward parts? That feeble event of the mysterious took place in 1968. Now, many years later, I can tell you of a truth that there is a Light which is the light of men. He became a man and passed through death. His name is Yeshua haMashiach. There is a future to behold and a city built by THE God whose name is Yahveh. A city made of gold. Seek and find, ask and receive, knock and the door is opened.
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Too simplistic you say. Have you ever yearned for anything more than survival itself? That is the asking that will cause you to arise from the cacophony of mists that cloud your heart and mind. The blind can see. It requires a brokenness that skyscraper penthouses do not cultivate. It is the one treasure my wantedness had bequeathed me. One I am not willing to relinquish. For many years now in the woodland I have meandered, hunted and deliberated. What I had hoped for lives beyond it. The voice of the tall remote tree and the sparse mountain top is all but muted in human civilization.. And so is mine. Relentlessly I pursue the volume of the sacred writings and wade past the din of earthly opinion. I am not ashamed. My heart is heavy, heavy but free.
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The weeping man of the falls has his heart in the house of mourning. For this he drinks the cup of eternal joy. How can such a one be seated there, having begun in so stark a void? It is done by the One who is seated majestically in the highest of heavens, whose throne is surrounded by a rainbow, in light unapproachable. He looks to the downcast and lifts them up and keeps them steady. The lofty He brings down, that perhaps they may be brought up again. Do not be swayed. Let your yearning become obsessive and your dependence on Him unmitigated. You will see that I am telling the truth. Your path will become the ancient way of Righteousness in Life.
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Please hear this one more thing. Nature has a voice. She has boundaries and laws. Very few can hear what is said by the sun, moon and stars. The truth is proclaimed all around us. Only if you receive the love of the truth can you hear it. Over the years as we have made our way on this pilgrimage we have come to see the great burden nature carries. We groan with it. As clarity comes, so have the depths of the violence against the ancient boundaries of creation become apparent. Yet no violence, no mutilating abuse born of ignorance, no greater destruction or darkness can come upon the creation than to worship it as though it was God. Yes, the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning. Worldly sorrow works death. The sorrow of the wise works life.
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The story of my pilgrimage can be found here: http://www.singingfalls.com/pilgrimage/