WE ARE IN THE THICK OF IT!

You will remember that the title of my first novel invokes the “Tower Card” from the Tarot deck. The lead character in the novel draws the “tower” and proceeds to lose everything he thinks matters, only to discover that loss is the prerequisite for being reborn into something transcendent. It is his story and it is my story.

My work on the novel required me to study and contemplate the “tower” archetypes at length and in depth. And although I have lived the “tower” experience, I had never literally drawn the “tower” for myself . . . UNTIL TODAY! This is one more wave of an energetic ocean I have been immersed in for the past several weeks, and it feels just right.

When I drew the card, I laughed out loud and then I flashed on the advice given by Mark Pope during the class where I first started learning about the Tarot. He said if you draw the Tower Card, “Immediately – get on your knees.” I did. I set my heart to receive, and very quickly got a piece of scripture from II Corinthians: “Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.”

I got off my knees and looked up the verse in my father’s tattered old King James. He had portions underlined, and the page was book marked by a 1960’s mimeographed bulletin for the Quincy Baptist church where he was pastor. I had an overwhelming feeling of a “presence” across my shoulders and down my back, causing goose-bumps to pop out on my arms and legs.

The bulletin announced the coming of Christmas and the promise of the birth of the Christ. I was six years old when it was printed. 

We are in the thick of it. Nothing old can stand against the awakening of spirit. I called my good friend and co-journeyer, Meredith, to tell her about my latest renewal, only to hear that she had also drawn the “tower” for herself this morning. I hear Walter Cronkite saying, “And that’s the way it is.” This cycle of death to the old and diving into newness has become “ordinary”.  It looks like the nature of our existence from now on.

Later on this morning I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I looked harder to see if I could detect the latest change; or the abundant changes that have washed over me this year. I looked to see if this really was the character in my book which has to lose everything in order to save his life. I heard this: “You don’t have to lose everything.” I repeated the phrase and felt a presence that I have experienced only a few times, but is now rapidly becoming the everyday.

We are integrating what we have known and what we have experienced into this journey. We open our arms and our hearts to the thrust of grace. We accept the gifts and we bring them into our lives, our work, and our walk.

I have had another piece of scripture floating through my awareness, one I have carried around for decades. My friend reminds me that the prophet, Jeremiah is the author of “Lamentations” which is a long commiseration about being abandoned by God. The one high point speaks to me now. It says, God’s love never ceases; it is reborn at every sunrise and never ends. The verse concludes with the well known phrase, “Great is thy faithfulness.”  Hear this with your new ears: God is faithful to us!