Back in the Wilderness: the Rough Places, Plain

  Din and Chesed:

The Church at Sardis

 Take my yoke upon thee, and learn of me.

 And to the angel of the church in Sardis, write: these things saith he that hath the sevens, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before Elohim. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.

Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy. He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and l will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

The small, but full, brown pea rolled out of the prayer wheel's open gate, from the right towards the left, and stopped a little distance away from its cage, directly beneath the sleeping man. Its embryo was not damaged in the least.

It was thankful for this sign of health; for it had much work to do before the morning and would need all its strength. It must grow to full maturity within the man and multiply exceedingly; for tomorrow was a day the man would walk among the people. His every word and deed would be judged by the Watchers according to their proofs of this, his night's work.

The man's mind would be the seed's sunlight; his life experience would be its soil; and it would drink of the man's reservoirs of compassion. Every seed knows the parable of the sower, and this seed knew it would survive the night to grow in beauty and in strength: the light in the man was bright; his soil, rich; and his compassion, deep. The collective memory of the seed's kind was clear in its understanding, and it was content that he could follow his ancestors' best example. The Vine would be well served by morning.

The light in many men is weak because they imagine many centers in which to focus their souls' energies. They wonder whether they should focus their consciousness upon or against a thing, or whether they should be in fear or in hope concerning any development that might occur. The ancients Aharon and Moshe had warned of the folly of this manner of focus; but a later king had sorely tested the people by fashioning convincing images of aspects of the True Light and placing them far apart, one from the other. Confusion followed.

The distance between these images and the true image of the Light at Jerusalem made it difficult for the people to see how the lesser lights were lacking in comparison with the True. The idols of judgment and of mercy could never convey the unity of the Elohim of judgment and mercy.

The people were careless in their life before such calves of fire; and so, they were deceived, and their lives became vain. They would build a while at this center, then at another; then they would abandon their labors entirely for uncertain lengths of time, only to build anew at yet some other unsuitable location when the True Light would momentarily reappear to their minds, convicting them of the impropriety of a previous focus.

The young vine knew well the true significance of those images made by Yavram: it could feel its proof in its first branches. Every vine is fashioned to focus only upon the True Light, which is as the center pillar of its growth. It consumes that pillar inch by inch, moment by moment, as it grows. Without the center pillar of light, the vine would surely languish; but without the supportive pillars of left and right, the vine would sprawl aimlessly upon the ground. Even this parable, however, had been more truly stated in the temple of Light established in Yahrushaliem.

The growing vine's ancestors had taught him that the pillar on the left hand, as vines look into the sky, represents the services of tillage; the right-hand pillar, the services of irrigation. These two functions are essential to the process of growth, but the beginning of growth comes only in response to the warmth of the central pillar's light. Moreover, as the pillars at the sides stand by to assist the vine in its season of growth, it is surely the True Light's crossings in the sky that answer need, enabling the branches of the vine to lean somewhat on the lesser pillars in the breathtaking process of maturation.

The man's focus was strong; for the left and right functions in him were fully dedicated to their services in the Earth. When the downward thrust of these functions reached the man's foundational center, they willingly turned of themselves to channel their full energies upwards along the center path in the man, thus uniting every faculty in the service of the single Light in him.

It is told among the vines of Earth that the three pillars are universal in all things. A growing thing that imagines itself as containing only one of the three knows little of himself. Such a one is searching his soul as from without-- from the right or from the left. If one should rise by such means, such means there is no strength to contend with the forces of life. A house divided so cannot stand.

All things have their own, proper center in the single Light of creation. Focused therein, all things are both clean and supportive of life. It is prophesied that when this knowledge spreads upon the Earth from the greatest to the least, that Earth will reel under the weight of its own productivity; for all life will then unite in knowledgeable cooperation, as One in One.

Tomorrow's increase would serve that day. Already, the vine's blossoms had opened. Already, they had been pollinated in the interchange between form and function. Already, the young kernels were nearing completion. If the man should also be blessed in his slumbers as he had been blessed in the evening sacrifice, the morning would provide him abundant seed to take to the marketplace to exchange for garments and to give as alms for the renewal of friendships.

As the vine began to wither in its full age, it was content. The night had been one that would be remembered among the ancients of the peas. It is not that this particular specimen would be celebrated in the stories of the species, but that the True Vine had been faithfully served by the life of one of its brethren in the service of One.

The monk stirred from his sleep. He had been dreaming of a herd of deer standing quietly by the window and looking in at him. Morning had come upon Earth, and he understood that the deer were waiting to be fed. He smiled at the Watchers and untangled his long arms and legs from around the Lotus. As he stretched into the Light of another new beginning, his hands were filled with seed.