Old photographs
Every day a new Heavenletter comes. I am not a participant in the receiving of it. My ten fingers seem to type away of their own will while I am rapt but not involved. Perhaps this is witnessing.
Every day I also proof an earlier unpublished Heavenletter and choose a title for it. The Heavenletter I proof was originally written down months before. Certainly, I have forgotten the Heavenletter by this time, as, sooner or later, I seem to forget them all as if I had never seen them before.
It is a different kind of mind that reviews an earlier Heavenletter with the intent to remove any typos than the kind of mind that reads Heavenletters for the joy of it. I suppose it's safe to say that, at proofing time, I am down to business and solidly in my left brain. Heart is not involved. Pure proofing mode of the brain. At proofing Heavenletter-time, I could be reading the encyclopedia, so it has seemed to me.
On the morning I am writing this blog entry, I was objectively proofing a Heavenletter, my mind turned on, my heart turned off, until, abruptly, a sentence made me cry. Not almost bring me to tears. Not make my eyes water but rather the unleashing of a torrent of tears. How unexpected that was.
I am sure I did not cry when the words were originally being written down.
The Heavenletter I proofed on this morning was originally written on July 20 of this year, and it is named Unbelievable as It May Seem.
Here is the paragraph that did me in, and I bold the four words that opened my heart so suddenly and deeply:
You want things to be as they were in an old photograph. Your parents live in your heart forever, and yet they have absented themselves as if they drifted away from you. Of course, they have not. They are no longer in the fore of the photo, and yet their picture was taken and hung in your heart. Those who have died, as the world speaks of death, cannot be resurrected, for there is no death. The surface of life is not everything. It is nowhere near the whole story of life. It is only the surface.
It was the four words hung in your heart that made me weep for my parents and the temporariness of life on Earth. I guess I am saying I wept for the past which God consistently says to let go of.
But why did those words affect me so strongly?
And now, once again, the words have become just words and affect me not at all, and how can that be?
Comments
Speaking only for myself, dear Gloria, I feel that such a moment of sudden tears is a moment of closeness to some very deep realization, much deeper than what I believe is the reason for my tears, much deeper than the obvious-looking interpretation I find the next moment.
Any conclusion whatsoever is already part of a defense reaction, recoiling from something I subconsciously suspect is too deep and too vast for me right now. I might lose myself in it. So I cut myself off from it, numbing myself, and, naturally, the next moment those very same words that affected me so deeply are just words. This is not a deliberate act, of course.
I believe we can safely assume this is about love that knows no bounds at all and is therefore not reached by thoughts or words.
We can intend for that momentary slip into Oneness to stay alive a little longer next time.
Maybe the words "hung in your heart" would imply that you drove a nail into the wall of your heart to hang them on. Or the nail was driven by someone else.
I don't think God means that we aren't meant to have memories, but rather than permanent pictures hung on a nail perhaps they are meant to be more like the now old fashioned film slide show projected on the screen of your heart when appropriate and then stored in a box. Or like the new fashioned computer slide show stored on your hard drive when you are done viewing.
I think you are right, beloved Charles.
Dear Gloria, I think that there must be two kinds of memories. There is the memory of the mind who can arouse emotions that come from the past.
But there is also the memory of the heart, which put our dear lost ones in the real present tense. Nobody is dead, everybody is here, here in One. That is the picture that was taken, in the Eternal Present, and hung into our heart.
Beautiful.
Gloria, Those words you speak of affected me as well and brought tears instantaneously. Actually, the entire message had a profound effect on me. Yet, now they are just words for me too. They are beautiful words nonetheless.
Carol, your words reawakened the emotion. Was it my feeling I felt, or was it yours?
Gloria, Maybe you felt both of our feelings. Now that wouldn't surprise me at all. Especially since we have connected so recently.