Amen Hallelujah Quotes

We're going to knock those demons out and slay them with the power of Jesus. Hallelujah, can I get an amen?- Timmie

That’s right, Justina!' he said more than once. 'We’re going to knock those demons out and slay them with the power of Jesus. Hallelujah, can I get an amen?

Yes, it’s tough, it’s tough, that goes without saying. But isn’t waiting itself and longing a wonder, being played on by wind, sun, and shade?

This is what I had come for, just this, and nothing more. A fling of leafy motion on the cliffs, the assault of real things, living and still, with shapes and powers under the sky- this is my city, my culture, and all the world I need.

I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.

A man walks down the street. It's a street in a strange world. Maybe it's the third world. Maybe it's his first time around. He doesn't speak the language. He holds no currency. He is a foreign man. He is surrounded by the sound, sound of cattle in the marketplace, scatterlings and orphanages. He looks around, around he sees angels in the architecture spinning in infinity and he says, "Amen" and "Hallelujah!

I want to think about trees. Trees have a curious relationship to the subject of the present moment. There are many created things in the universe that outlive us, that outlive the sun, even, but I can’t think about them. I live with trees. There are creatures under our feet, creatures that live over our heads, but trees live quite convincingly in the same filament of air we inhabit, and in addition, they extend impressively in both directions, up and down, shearing rock and fanning air, doing their real business just out of reach.

Today Means Amen Dear you, whoever you are, however you got here, this is exactly where you are supposed to be. This moment has waited its whole life for you. This moment is your lover and you are a soldier. Come home, baby, it's over. You don't need to suffer anymore. Dear you, this moment is your surprise party. You are both hiding in the dark and walking through the door. This moment is a hallelujah. This moment is your permission slip to finally open that love letter you've been hiding from yourself, the one you wrote when you were little when you still danced like a sparkler at dusk. Do you remember the moment you realized they were watching? When you became ashamed of how much light you were holding? When you first learned how to unlove yourself? Dear you, the word today means amen in every language. Today, we made it. Today, I'm going to love you. Today, I'm going to love myself. Today, the boxcutter will rust in the garbage. The noose will forget how to hold you, today, today-- Dear you, and I have always meant you, nothing would be the same if you did not exist. You, whose voice is someone's favorite voice, someone's favorite face to wake up to. Nothing would be the same if you did not exist. You, the teacher, the starter's gun, the lantern in the night who offers not a way home, but the courage to travel farther into the dark. You, the lover, who worships the taste of her body, who is the largest tree ring in his heart, who does not let fear ration your love. You, the friend, the sacred chorus of how can I help. You, who have felt more numb than holy, more cracked than mosaic. Who have known the tiles of a bathroom by heart, who have forgotten what makes you worth it. You, the forgiven, the forgiver, who belongs right here in this moment. You, this clump of cells, this happy explosion that happened to start breathing, and by the grace of whatever is up there, you got here. You made it this whole way: through the nights that swallowed you whole, the mornings that arrived in pieces. The scabs, the gravel, the doubt, the hurt, the hurt, the hurt is over. Today, you made it. You made it. You made it here.

Hell says hallelujah when fools say amen without understanding or applying truth to their lives.

Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. Last night Orion vaulted and spread all over the sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready-for what? I won’t see this year again, not again so innocent; and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf. “For the Heavenly Father desires that we should see,” says Ruysbroeck, “and that is why He is ever saying to our inmost spirit one deep unfathomable word and nothing else.” But what is the word? Is this mystery or coyness? A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage; when I stirred, it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn’t make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn’t catch the consonant that shaped it into sense.

All the world is God,' McVries said, and giggled hysterically. 'We're walking on the Lord, and back there the flies are crawling on the Lord, in fact the flies are also the Lord, so blessed be the fruit of thy womb Percy. Amen, hallelujah, chunky peanut butter. Our father, which art in tinfoil, hallow'd be thy name.

A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek towards that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky’s stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles. I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off. At the seashore you often see a shell, or fragment of a shell, that sharp sands and surf have thinned to a wisp. There is no way you can tell what kind of shell it had been, what creature it had housed; it could have been a whelk or a scallop, a cowrie, limpet, or conch. The animal is long since dissolved, and its blood spread and thinned in the general sea. All you hold in your hand is a cool shred of shell, an inch long, pared so thin that it passes a faint pink light. It is an essence, a smooth condensation of the air, a curve. I long for the North where unimpeded winds would hone me to such a pure slip of bone. But I’ll not go northing this year. I’ll stalk that floating pole and frigid air by waiting here. I wait on bridges; I wait, struck, on forest paths and meadow’s fringes, hilltops and banksides, day in and day out, and I receive a southing as a gift. The North washes down the mountains like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, and pours across the valley; it comes to me. It sweetens the persimmons and numbs the last of the crickets and hornets; it fans the flames of the forest maples, bows the meadow’s seeded grasses and pokes it chilling fingers under the leaf litter, thrusting the springtails and the earthworms deeper into the earth. The sun heaves to the south by day, and at night wild Orion emerges looming like the Specter over Dead Man Mountain. Something is already here, and more is coming.

Holding the lamb in his arms, Jesus watched the people file past, some coming, some going, some carrying animals to be sacrificed, some returning without them, looking joyful and exclaiming, Alleluia, Hosanna, Amen, or saying none of these things, feeling it was inappropriate to walk around shouting Hallelujah or Hip hip hurrah, because there is really not much difference between the two expressions, we use them enthusiastically until with the passage of time and by dint of repetition we finally ask ourselves, What does it mean, only to find there is no answer.

Satan & Adam are States Created into Twenty-seven Churches And thou O Milton art a state about to be created Called Eternal Annihilation that none but the Living shall Dare to enter: & they shall enter triumphant over Death And Hell & the Grave: States that are not, but ah! Seem to be. Judge then of thy Own Self: thy Eternal Lineaments explore What is Eternal & what Changeable & what Annihilable: The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself Affection or Love becomes a State, when divided from Imagination The Memory is a State always, & the Reason is a State Created to be Annihilated & a new Ratio Created Whatever can be Created can be Annihilated Forms cannot The Oak is cut down by the Ax, the Lamb falls by the knife But their Forms Eternal Exist, For-ever. Amen Hallelujah

It looked as though the leaves of the autumn forest had taken flight, and were pouring down the valley like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, all the leaves of the hardwoods from here to Hudson’s Bay. It was as if the season’s colors were draining away like lifeblood, as if the year were molting and shedding. The year was rolling down, and a vital curve had been reached, the tilt that gives way to headlong rush. And when the monarch butterflies had passed and were gone, the skies were vacant, the air poised. The dark night into which the year was plunging was not a sleep but an awakening, a new and necessary austerity, the sparer climate for which I longed. The shed trees were brittle and still, the creek light and cold, and my spirit holding its breath.

Let us pray: Most gracious and heavenly Father, we thank You, Lord God, for Your goodness. We celebrate life today, right where we are. Father, we acknowledge that nothing compares to You. There is nobody greater than You, O God. You and You alone are worthy of our praise. Thank You for this time of testing. Thank You for perfecting that which concerns us. Thank You for promising to complete that which You have started. Thank You for allowing us to trade in our spirits of heaviness for garments of praise. Hallelujah! We have prayed. Amen.

The one true Church is composed of all believers in the Lord Jesus. It is made up of all Gods elect-of all converted men and women-of all true Christians. It is a Church of which all the members have the same marks. They are born of the Spirit; they all possess "repentance towards God, faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ", and holiness of life and conversation. They all hate sin, and they all love Christ. They all worship with one heart. They are all led by one Spirit; they all build upon one foundation; they all draw their religion from one single Book-that is the Bible. They are all joined to one great center-that is Jesus Christ. They all, even now, can say with one heart, “Hallelujah"; and they can all respond with one heart and voice, “Amen and Amen”. It is a Church which is dependent upon no ministers upon earth, however much it values those who preach the Gospel to its members.

Say you could view a time-lapse film of our planet: what would you see? Transparent images moving through light, “an infinite storm of beauty.” The beginning is swaddled in mists, blasted by random blinding flashes. Lava pours and cools; seas boil and flood. Clouds materialize and shift; now you can see the earth’s face through only random patches of clarity. The land shudders and splits, like pack ice rent by a widening lead. Mountains burst up, jutting and dull and soften before your eyes, clothed in forests like felt. The ice rolls up, grinding green land under water forever; the ice rolls back. Forests erupt and disappear like fairy rings. The ice rolls up-mountains are mowed into lakes, land rises wet from the sea like a surfacing whale- the ice rolls back. A blue-green streaks the highest ridges, a yellow-green spreads from the south like a wave up a strand. A red dye seems to leak from the north down the ridges and into the valleys, seeping south; a white follows the red, then yellow-green washes north, then red spreads again, then white, over and over, making patterns of color too swift and intricate to follow. Slow the film. You see dust storms, locusts, floods, in dizzying flash frames. Zero in on a well-watered shore and see smoke from fires drifting. Stone cities rise, spread, and then crumble, like patches of alpine blossoms that flourish for a day an inch above the permafrost, that iced earth no root can suck, and wither in a hour. New cities appear, and rivers sift silt onto their rooftops; more cities emerge and spread in lobes like lichen on rock. The great human figures of history, those intricate, spirited tissues that roamed the earth’s surface, are a wavering blur whose split second in the light was too brief an exposure to yield any images. The great herds of caribou pour into the valleys and trickle back, and pour, a brown fluid. Slow it down more, come closer still. A dot appears, like a flesh-flake. It swells like a balloon; it moves, circles, slows, and vanishes. This is your life.

And under the cicadas, deeper down that the longest taproot, between and beneath the rounded black rocks and slanting slabs of sandstone in the earth, ground water is creeping. Ground water seeps and slides, across and down, across and down, leaking from here to there, minutely at a rate of a mile a year. What a tug of waters goes on! There are flings and pulls in every direction at every moment. The world is a wild wrestle under the grass; earth shall be moved. What else is going on right this minute while ground water creeps under my feet? The galaxy is careening in a slow, muffled widening. If a million solar systems are born every hour, then surely hundreds burst into being as I shift my weight to the other elbow. The sun’s surface is now exploding; other stars implode and vanish, heavy and black, out of sight. Meteorites are arcing to earth invisibly all day long. On the planet, the winds are blowing: the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades. Somewhere, someone under full sail is becalmed, in the horse latitudes, in the doldrums; in the northland, a trapper is maddened, crazed, by the eerie scent of the chinook, the sweater, a wind that can melt two feet of snow in a day. The pampero blows, and the tramontane, and the Boro, sirocco, levanter, mistral. Lick a finger; feel the now. Spring is seeping north, towards me and away from me, at sixteen miles a day. Along estuary banks of tidal rivers all over the world, snails in black clusters like currants are gliding up and down the stems of reed and sedge, migrating every moment with the dip and swing of tides. Behind me, Tinker Mountain is eroding one thousandth of an inch a year. The sharks I saw are roving up and down the coast. If the sharks cease roving, if they still their twist and rest for a moment, they die. They need new water pushed into their gills; they need dance. Somewhere east of me, on another continent, it is sunset, and starlings in breathtaking bands are winding high in the sky to their evening roost. The mantis egg cases are tied to the mock-orange hedge; within each case, within each egg, cells elongate, narrow, and split; cells bubble and curve inward, align, harden or hollow or stretch. And where are you now?

In the forty minutes I watched the muskrat, he never saw me, smelled me, or heard me at all. When he was in full view of course I never moved except to breathe. My eyes would move, too, following his, but he never noticed. Only once, when he was feeding from the opposite bank about eight feet away did he suddenly rise upright, all alert- and then he immediately resumed foraging. But he never knew I was there. I never knew I was there, either. For that forty minutes last night I was as purely sensitive and mute as a photographic plate; I received impressions, but I did not print out captions. My own self-awareness had disappeared; it seems now almost as though, had I been wired to electrodes, my EEG would have been flat. I have done this sort of thing so often that I have lost self-consciousness about moving slowly and halting suddenly. And I have often noticed that even a few minutes of this self-forgetfulness is tremendously invigorating. I wonder if we do not waste most of our energy just by spending every waking minute saying hello to ourselves. Martin Buber quotes an old Hasid master who said, “When you walk across the field with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their souls come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.

I was in no tent under leaves, sleepless and glad. There was no moon at all; along the world’s coasts the sea tides would be springing strong. The air itself also has lunar tides; I lay still. Could I feel in the air an invisible sweep and surge, and an answering knock in the lungs? Or could I feel the starlight? Every minute on a square mile of this land one ten thousandth of an ounce of starlight spatters to earth. What percentage of an ounce did that make on my eyes and cheeks and arms, tapping and nudging as particles, pulsing and stroking as waves?

I sat there listening to Pastor John's words, listening to the amens and hallelujahs that rose up in chorus around those words, thinking, *Nana would have hated all of this.* And that knowledge, and that roomful of people who knew my brother but didn't know him, who skirted around the circumstances of his death, talking about him as though only the portion of his life that had taken place before his addiction was worthy of examination and compassion, wrecked me and felled the long-growing tree of my belief. I sat there in that lodge, reduced to a stump, wondering what would become of me.

Lee smiled. “If I were a guy…nothing makes sense until I climax.” “Hallelujah!” Dean exclaimed. Theresa feigned a more feminized tone. “Oh my God! That is good. That is so good! You guys are senseless until you climax.” “Amen to that,” Brenda said. Lee got the heart shot. Dean turned to Brenda. “What you got?” Brenda smiled, held his eyes. “If I were a guy…too much testosterone will probably make me dumb.” The others laughed. Brenda got her shot. “Lyn,” I called and turned to her with a smile. Lyn smiled. “If I were a guy…I’ll put the toilet sit down and flip it back up again just to get the last drop out.

Those people who shoot endless time-lapse films of unfurling roses and tulips have the wrong idea. They should train their cameras instead on the melting of pack ice, the green filling of ponds, the tidal swings…They should film the glaciers of Greenland, some of which creak along at such a fast clip that even the dogs bark at them. They should film the invasion of the southernmost Canadian tundra by the northernmost spruce-fir forest, which is happening right now at the rate of a mile every 10 years. When the last ice sheet receded from the North American continent, the earth rebounded 10 feet. Wouldn’t that have been a sight to see?

Shadow is the blue patch where the light doesn’t hit. It is mystery itself, and mystery is the ancients’ ultima Thule, the modern explorer’s Point of Relative Inaccessibility, that boreal point most distant from all known lands. There the twin oceans of beauty and horror meet. The great glaciers are calving. Ice that sifted to earth as snow in the time of Christ shears from the pack with a roar and crumbles to water. It could be that our instruments have not looked deeply enough. The RNA deep in the mantis’s jaw is a beautiful ribbon. Did the crawling Polyphemus moth have in its watery heart one cell, and in that cell one special molecule, and that molecule one hydrogen atom, and round that atom’s nucleus one wild, distant electron that split showed a forest, swaying?

PRAYER FOR OUR PARENTS Dear God, Please bless my parents. Thank You, thank them for the life they gave me. For the ways they helped me and made me strong, I give thanks. For the ways they stumbled and held me back, please help me to forgive them and receive Your compensation. May their spirits be blessed, their roads forward made easy. Please release them, and release me, from my childhood now gone by. Release us also from any bitterness I still hold. They paved the way, in all that they did, for where I have been has led me here. I surrender my parents to the arms of God. Thank you, dear ones, for your service to me. Bless your souls. May your spirits fly free. May we enter into the relationship God wills for us. Thank You, Lord, for I am free now. Glory, hallelujah. Amen.

The color-patches of vision part, shift, and reform as I move through space in time. The present is the object of vision, and what I see before me at any given second is a full field of color patches scattered just so. The configuration will never be repeated. Living is moving; time is a live creek bearing changing lights. As I move, or as the world moves around me, the fullness of what I see shatters. “Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying; it is a canvas, nevertheless. But there is more to the present than a series of snapshots. We are not merely sensitized film; we have feelings, a memory for information and an eidetic memory for the imagery of our pasts. Our layered consciousness is a tiered track for an unmatched assortment of concentrically wound reels. Each one plays out for all of life its dazzle and blur of translucent shadow-pictures; each one hums at every moment its own secret melody in its own unique key. We tune in and out. But moments are not lost. Time out of mind is time nevertheless, cumulative, informing the present. From even the deepest slumber you wake with a jolt- older, closer to death, and wiser, grateful for breath. But time is the one thing we have been given, and we have been given to time. Time gives us a whirl. We keep waking from a dream we can’t recall, looking around in surprise, and lapsing back, for years on end. All I want to do is stay awake, keep my head up, prop my eyes open, with toothpicks, with trees.

Were the earth as smooth as a ball bearing, it might be beautiful seen from another planet, as the rings of Saturn are. But here we live and move; we wander up and down the banks of the creek, we ride a railway through the Alps, and the landscape shifts and changes. Were the earth smooth, our brains would be smooth as well; we would wake, blink, walk two steps to get the whole picture and lapse into dreamless sleep. Because we are living people, and because we are on the receiving end of beauty, another element necessarily enters the question. The texture of space is a condition of time. Time is the warp and matter the weft of woven texture of beauty in space, and death is the hurtling shuttle… What I want to do, then, is add time to the texture, paint the landscape on an unrolling scroll, and set the giant relief globe spinning on it stand.

All at once, something wonderful happened, although at first, it seemed perfectly ordinary. A female goldfinch suddenly hove into view. She lighted weightlessly on the head of a bankside purple thistle and began emptying the seedcase, sowing the air with down. The lighted frame of my window filled. The down rose and spread in all directions, wafting over the dam’s waterfall and wavering between the tulip trunks and into the meadow. It vaulted towards the orchard in a puff; it hovered over the ripening pawpaw fruit and staggered up the steep faced terrace. It jerked, floated, rolled, veered, swayed. The thistle down faltered down toward the cottage and gusted clear to the woods; it rose and entered the shaggy arms of pecans. At last it strayed like snow, blind and sweet, into the pool of the creek upstream, and into the race of the creek over rocks down. It shuddered onto the tips of growing grasses, where it poised, light, still wracked by errant quivers. I was holding my breath. Is this where we live, I thought, in this place in this moment, with the air so light and wild? The same fixity that collapses stars and drives the mantis to devour her mate eased these creatures together before my eyes: the thick adept bill of the goldfinch, and the feathery coded down. How could anything be amiss? If I myself were lighter and frayed, I could ride these small winds, too, taking my chances, for the pleasure of being so purely played. The thistle is part of Adam’s curse. “Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” A terrible curse: But does the goldfinch eat thorny sorrow with the thistle or do I? If this furling air is fallen, then the fall was happy indeed. If this creekside garden is sorrow, then I seek martyrdom. I was weightless; my bones were taut skins blown with buoyant gas; it seemed that if I inhaled too deeply, my shoulders and head would waft off. Alleluia.

Xerxes, I read, ‘halted his unwieldy army for days that he might contemplate to his satisfaction’ the beauty of a single sycamore. You are Xerxes in Persia. Your army spreads on a vast and arid peneplain…you call to you all your sad captains, and give the order to halt. You have seen the tree with the lights in it, haven’t you? You must have. Xerxes buffeted on a plain, ambition drained in a puff. Your men are bewildered…there is nothing to catch the eye in this flatness, nothing but a hollow, hammering sky, a waste of sedge in the lee of windblown rocks, a meager ribbon of scrub willow tracing a slumbering watercourse…and that sycamore. You saw it; you will stand rapt and mute, exalted, remembering or not remembering over a period of days to shade your head with your robe. “He had its form wrought upon a medal of gold to help him remember it the rest of his life.” We all ought to have a goldsmith following us around. But it goes without saying, doesn’t it, Xerxes, that no gold medal worn around your neck will bring back the glad hour, keep those lights kindled so long as you live, forever present? Pascal saw it; he grabbed pen and paper and scrawled the one word, and wore it sewn in his shirt the rest of his life. I don’t know what Pascal saw. I saw a cedar. Xerxes saw a sycamore.

You are God. You want to make a forest, something to hold the soil, lock up energy, and give off oxygen. Wouldn’t it be simpler just to rough in a slab of chemicals, a green acre of goo? You are a man, a retired railroad worker who makes replicas as a hobby. You decide to make a replica of one tree, the longleaf pine your great-grandfather planted- just a replica- it doesn’t have to work. How are you going to do it? How long do you think you might live, how good is your glue? For one thing, you are going to have to dig a hole and stick your replica trunk halfway to China if you want the thing to stand up. Because you will have to work fairly big; if your replica is too small, you’ll be unable to handle the slender, three-sided needles, affix them in clusters of three in fascicles, and attach those laden fascicles to flexible twigs. The twigs themselves must be covered by “many silvery-white, fringed, long-spreading scales.” Are your pine cones’ scales “thin, flat, rounded at the apex?” When you loose the lashed copper wire trussing the limbs to the trunk, the whole tree collapses like an umbrella. You are a sculptor. You climb a great ladder; you pour grease all over a growing longleaf pine. Next, you build a hollow cylinder around the entire pine…and pour wet plaster over and inside the pine. Now open the walls, split the plaster, saw down the tree, remove it, discard, and your intricate sculpture is ready: this is the shape of part of the air. You are a chloroplast moving in water heaved one hundred feet above ground. Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen in a ring around magnesium…you are evolution; you have only begun to make trees. You are god- are you tired? Finished?

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep blank space high up above many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of dots. At length I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at that very moment with great emotion, in intricate, detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which wholly worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water. I saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in creeks. I saw May apples in forests, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided, and apples grew spotted and striped in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remember the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “yes, that’s how it was then, that part there was called France.” I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes. We all ought to be able to conjure up sights like these at will, so that we can keep in mind the scope of texture’s motion in time.

Do not worry about tomorrow—He is the God of tomorrow, He sees the end from the beginning. Do not worry about the necessities of life—He is there to supply and provide. A true victorious Christian is one who, in spite of worries, inner conflicts, and tensions, is confident that God is in control and will be victorious in the end. In reliance on the Holy Spirit, we will find that many of our physical and mental ailments will disappear along with many worries, inner conflicts, and tensions. Whatever our difficulties, whatever our circumstances, we must remember, as Corrie ten Boom used to say, “Jesus is victor!” Our Father and our God, I praise Your glorious name for sending Jesus Christ, who is the Victor eternal. He is the mighty One; He is the holy One; He is the King of kings and Lord of lords. He is the Master of my soul and the Guide for my life. And He shall reign forever and ever. Hallelujah! Praise the name of Jesus! In Him I pray. Amen.

There’s no such thing as a timid fighter,” Henry parroted. “That’s what Tag says. And he says Amelie fights every damn day.” “Hallelujah and praise the Lord for that,” Georgia said, sounding just like my great-grandma Kathleen. They were both small-town Levan girls who had spent a good deal of their lives as neighbors. So I guess it wasn’t surprising. “Amen,” I agreed. “Muhammad Amelie,” Georgia joked. “Floats like a butterfly . . .” “Stings like a bee,” Henry and I finished.

Sweet Jesus, thank you for the love you give. Thank you for teaching us to laugh, to cry. Thank you for teaching us to dance, to kneel. Thank you for teaching us to shout, to be silent. Thank you for teaching us to say Hallelujah, to say help. Thank you for teaching us to be bold, to be calm. Most of all thank you for your love, and teaching us to accept and share love. Praise the Lord!!! Amen

Ephesians 6 talks about God's armor. You will see that it is not yet a perfect victory, the final victory. We still need armor, but God's armor is so strong. When you read closely you will see that the Lord Jesus Himself is our armor. He is peace. He is truth. He is in you; you are in Him. It might be a battle, but this time it is in a blessed circle. It is the Devil attacking you; you are falling, but you are lifted up, forgiven, cleansed. That road takes you upward. It becomes increasingly victorious. The Lord Jesus will make you victorious, and you will be more than a conqueror. Thank You, Lord Jesus, that You lift us out of this vicious circle of sin and failure and that You have brought us into that wonderful blessed circle of forgiveness, redemption, and holiness. Hallelujah, what a Savior. Amen.

Hallelujah! Thine the glory. Hallelujah! Amen. Hallelujah! Thine the glory. Revive us again.

Make a normal chocolate cake from a box. (Amen and hallelujah. Ain’t nobody got time for homemade cake.) After it cools completely, slice it into one-by-four-inch strips, around the

The man continued. “So Jesus put them all outside, and took me and Mary,” he looked down at his wife and hugged her, “and several others of you.” He looked around the room at several people. “You were there. You saw it.” They nodded their heads. “He took Rebecca’s hand and said, ‘Little girl, I say to you, arise.’” The man stopped. He choked up again, and could barely continue. But he pushed through. “And Rebecca got up. Jesus brought her back to us.” The brothers heard a peppering of “hallelujahs” from the people in the crowded room. One said, “Yahweh saves!” followed by amens. “Yahweh saves” was the meaning of the name Yeshua, which was Jesus’s Hebrew name.

God is Light. God is a Sun. Paul says,“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”...the LIGHT of the Glory of God, in Christ Jesus. Amen and Hallelujah!!!

September 9 A Prayer about Wisdom If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. (James 1:5) Heavenly Father, how I praise you for free and full access into your presence, all the time, all because you have declared all your children to be perfectly righteous in your Son, Jesus. And I praise you that as I come today seeking wisdom, I’m kissed by your welcome and inundated with your generosity. Indeed, I really need your wisdom, Father, about a few matters that currently confuse me, all of them centering on who I am as a relational person. However you wish to inform my heart, the peace I have is that you will always do so in concert with the gift of your Word. Father, I need you to show me the difference between a healthy costly investment in people’s lives versus an unhealthy entanglement and enmeshment. I know the gospel is always calling me and giving me the resources to love as Jesus loves me, but sometimes I don’t really know what that looks like. Help me, Father; help me. I need wisdom to discern the difference between rightly validating the emotions of those I love versus wrongly taking responsibility for their emotions. My broken default mode will probably always be to try to “fix” people, but I confess yet again that you are not calling me to fix anyone but to love everyone. Grant me wisdom, dear Father; grant me wisdom. I need wisdom, Father, about my own emotional world. The emotion of anger has always confused and threatened me. Help me to know when the anger I feel is nothing more than the response of a little boy not getting his way. Help me to know when the anger I swallow should be expressed appropriately, not swallowed. Help me to get angry in the face of injustice, that I might love redemptively in the face of evil. Help me to listen and seek to understand the emotion of anger in others and not rush to judgment or rush out of their story too fast. Father, just praying this prayer stirs up so many other thoughts and feelings inside my heart. My joy is in knowing that we can keep this conversation going throughout the day. My great joy is in knowing that you will give me and my friends the wisdom we need, and you will do so generously. You gave all our fault to Jesus on the cross that we might live in your permanent world of all your favor. We cry hallelujah as in your name we pray. Amen.

I am sitting here, you are sitting there. Say even that you are sitting across the kitchen table from me right now. Our eyes meet; a consciousness snaps back and forth. What we know, at least for starters, is: here we- so incontrovertibly- are. This is our life, these are our lighted seasons, and then we die. In the meantime, in between time, we can see. The scales are fallen from our eyes, the cataracts are cut away, and we can work at making sense of the color-patches we see in an effort to discover where we so incontrovertibly are. I am as passionately interested in where I am as is a lone sailor sans sextant in a ketch on an open ocean. I have at the moment a situation which allows me to devote considerable hunks of time to seeing what I can see, and trying to piece it together. I’ve learned the name of some color-patches, but not the meanings. I’ve read books; I’ve gathered statistics feverishly: the average temperature of our planet is 57 degrees F…The average size of all living animals, including man, is almost that of a housefly. The earth is mostly granite, which is mostly oxygen…In these Appalachians we have found a coal bed with 120 seams, meaning 120 forests that just happened to fall into water…I would like to see it all, to understand it, but I must start somewhere, so I try to deal with the giant water bug in Tinker Creek and the flight of three hundred redwings from an Osage orange and let those who dare worry about the birthrate and population explosion among solar systems. So I think about the valley. And it occurs to me more and more that everything I have seen is wholly gratuitous. The giant water bug’s predations, the frog’s croak, the tree with the lights in it are not in any real sense necessary per se to the world or its creator. Nor am I. The creation in the first place, being itself, is the only necessity for which I would die, and I shall. The point about that being, as I know it here and see it, is that as I think about it, it accumulates in my mind as an extravagance of minutiae. The sheer fringe and network of detail assumes primary importance. That there are so many details seems to be the most important and visible fact about creation. If you can’t see the forest for the trees, then look at the trees; when you’ve looked at enough trees, you’ve seen a forest, you’ve got it. If the world is gratuitous, then the fringe of a goldfish’s fin is a million times more so. The first question- the one crucial one- of the creation of the universe and the existence of something as a sign and an affront to nothing is a blank one… The old Kabbalistic phrase is “the Mystery of the Splintering of the Vessels.” The words refer to the shrinking or imprisonment of essences within the various husk-covered forms of emanation or time. The Vessels splintered and solar systems spun; ciliated rotifers whirled in still water, and newts laid tracks in the silt-bottomed creek. Not only did the Vessels splinter; they splintered exceeding fine. Intricacy then is the subject, the intricacy of the created world.

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery. The surface of mystery is not smooth, any more than the planet is smooth; not even a single hydrogen atom is smooth, let alone a pine. Nor does it fit together; not even the chlorophyll and hemoglobin molecules are a perfect match, for, even after the atom of iron replaces the magnesium, long streamers of disparate atoms trail disjointedly from the rims of the molecule’s loops. Freedom cuts both ways. Mystery itself is as fringed and intricate at the shape of the air at times. Forays into mystery cut bays and fine fjords, but the forested mainland itself is implacable both in its bulk and in its most filigreed fringe of detail.

Aum Amen Assalaam (The Interfaith Sonnet) Jo bole so nihal - honest, brave 'n nondual! Ain't no human run by divisionism. You may say Merhaba, or Hallelujah, Smiling I respond, Walaikum Assalam. Every human greeting is an act of peace, Language differs, not the emotion. Yet we keep bickering over language, Overlooking all loving unison. Chag sameach say some of us, Some say happy holidays! Across the words, into the heart, We'll find the flame of happiness. Underneath every version of felicidad, there is a sense of illumination. Aim of all Aum and Amen - is unification.

Parents and schools are teaching children how not to think, but how to be good little groupthinkers and people of faith, how to be liberal, multicultural, and politically correct. The idea of quality, excellence, glory, is anathema. It’s the love that dare not speak its name. The exceptional make the mediocre feel bad about themselves, so the mediocre use their force of numbers to demonize the exceptional. The mediocre cannot and will not be made to feel inadequate. Instead of making themselves adequate – God forbid! – they kill the exceptional and then no one notices their inadequacy. Hallelujah! Job done. Amen, Namaste, Brother!

Oh joy! oh delight! should we go without dying, No sickness, no sadness, no dread and no crying. Caught up through the clouds with our Lord into glory, When Jesus receives “His own.” O Lord Jesus, how long, how long Ere we shout the glad song, Christ returneth! Hallelujah! hallelujah! Amen, Halleljah! Amen. “Christ Returneth” —H. L. Thrner

Or maybe they were spy stations, saying things in code—every fourth Hallelujah could mean the coup d’etat is one step closer; every Amen another reformer in shackles, being led down urinated hallways in the night.

According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Ooh, black and yellow! Let's shake it up a little. Barry! Breakfast is ready! Coming! Hang on a second. Hello? - Barry? - Adam? - Can you believe this is happening? - I can't. I'll pick you up. Looking sharp. Use the stairs. Your father paid good money for those. Sorry. I'm excited. Here's the graduate. We're very proud of you, son. A perfect report card, all B's. Very proud. Ma! I got a thing going here. - You got lint on your fuzz. - Ow! That's me! - Wave to us! We'll be in row 118,000. - Bye! Barry, I told you, stop flying in the house! - Hey, Adam. - Hey, Barry. - Is that fuzz gel? - A little. Special day, graduation. Never thought I'd make it. Three days grade school, three days high school. Those were awkward. Three days college. I'm glad I took a day and hitchhiked around the hive. You did come back different. - Hi, Barry. - Artie, growing a mustache? Looks good. - Hear about Frankie? - Yeah. - You going to the funeral? - No, I'm not going. Everybody knows, sting someone, you die. Don't waste it on a squirrel. Such a hothead. I guess he could have just gotten out of the way. I love this incorporating an amusement park into our day. That's why we don't need vacations. Boy, quite a bit of pomp... under the circumstances. - Well, Adam, today we are men. - We are! - Bee-men. - Amen! Hallelujah! Students, faculty, distinguished bees, please welcome Dean Buzzwell. Welcome, New Hive City graduating class of... ...9:15. That concludes our ceremonies. And begins your career at Honex Industries! Will we pick our job today? I heard it's just orientation. Heads up! Here we go. Keep your hands and antennas inside the tram at all times. - Wonder what it'll be like? - A little scary. Welcome to Honex, a division of Honesco and a part of the Hexagon Group. This is it! Wow. Wow. We know that you, as a bee, have worked your whole life to get to the point where you can work for your whole life. Honey begins when our valiant Pollen Jocks bring the nectar to the hive. Our top-secret formula is automatically color-corrected, scent-adjusted and bubble-contoured into this soothing sweet syrup with its distinctive golden glow you know as... Honey! - That girl was hot. - She's my cousin! - She is? - Yes, we're all cousins. - Right. You're right. - At Honex, we constantly strive to improve every aspect of bee existence. These bees are stress-testing a new helmet technology. - What do you think he makes? - Not enough. Here we have our latest advancement, the Krelman. - What does that do? - Catches that little strand of honey that hangs after you pour it. Saves us millions. Can anyone work on the Krelman? Of course. Most bee jobs are small ones. But bees know that every small job, if it's done well, means a lot. But choose carefully because you'll stay in the job you pick for the rest of your life. The same job the rest of your life? I didn't know that. What's the difference? You'll be happy to know that bees, as a species, haven't had one day off in 27 million years. So you'll just work us to death? We'll sure try. Wow! That blew my mind! "What's the difference?" How can you say that? One job forever? That's an insane choice to have to make. I'm relieved. Now we only have to make one decision in life. But, Adam, how could they never have told us that? Why would you question anything? We're bees. We're the most perfectly functioning society on Earth. You ever think maybe things work a little too well here? Like what? Give me one example. I don't know. But you know what I'm talking about. Please clear the gate. Royal Nectar Force on approach. Wait a second. Check it out. - Hey, those are Pollen Jocks! - Wow. I've never seen them this close. They know

say amen, thank you, brotha! Now listen because this is America’s time of TESTING and America is FAILING her TEST! This country needs a BOMB, not a new-kew-lar one but a GAWD-BOMB, can you say hallelujah?

see you!” Pete forced a smile.  See, it’d been forever since he’d even set foot inside a church, so he had no clue how he should act.  “Uh---Hallelujah!  Jesus saves!” The greeter’s smile looked like it wanted to fade, but stayed frozen there for the sake of being polite.  Then he reached up patted Pete on the shoulder.  “Right on, bro.  Right on.  Welcome!” “Amen.”  Pete’s

He could never get used to sitting next to men who sang the hymns of love and forgiveness knowing what they'd done and knowing they were getting their redemption. Taking advantage of grace while those they had done it to were probably up at night walking back and forth across worn carpet or fumbling in the medicine cabinet searching for the pills to help them sleep. He didn't like the part of the service when these same men left their seats and stood at the pulpit and gave testimony. It was the same story over and over. Yes, I raped. Yes, I took another life. Yes, I stole. Yes, I raised a fist to my fellow man. But now I have found the love of God. Now I can see the light. Now I am found and on and on to a smattering of amens and hallelujahs and praise the Lords until Russell couldn't take it anymore and so he gave up. He didn't believe it worked that way and if it did then something didn't seem right.

Here’s a prayer that I journaled last year and if God leads you, pray this for yourself! Hallelujah!!! It’s working! Declare it’s working for me hallelujah! Let’s pray! Prayer Against Lack: Doors Are Opening Now Scripture Anchor: “And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 4:19 (NKJV) Dear Heavenly Father, I thank You that You are the God of abundance, the God of overflow, the God who never fails. Your Word declares that You will supply all my needs—not some, not a few, but all—according to Your riches in glory. That means lack has no legal right in my life. I reject scarcity, I rebuke insufficiency, and I declare that every need—spiritual, emotional, financial, relational—is met in full. You are not a man that You should lie, nor the son of man that You should change Your mind. What You have spoken, You will perform. What You have promised, You will fulfill. Your Word does not return void—it accomplishes what You sent it to do. So I stand on Your Word, I trust Your timing, and I praise You in advance. I will be a faithful steward of what You’re about to release. I will honor You with the increase. I will testify of Your goodness. I give You glory before the breakthrough, because I know the doors are already swinging open. Favor is finding me. Provision is locating me. Miracles are moving toward me. I declare: No more lack. No more delay. No more doubt. I believe. I trust. I receive. In Jesus’ mighty name, amen. Let’s GO!!!

Great morning! Hallelujah! We got another one y’all! I’m so grateful hallelujah! Let’s pray: I decree and declare that this is: The Day of Divine Recovery Dear Heavenly Father, We awaken grateful for Your mercy, Clothed in the promise of newness. This day is not ordinary—it is anointed. We declare it holy ground, Where miracles walk and wonders whisper. We thank You for the breath in our lungs, For the chance to rise again, To forgive again, To believe again. You are the God who never gets tired of loving us. You specialize in second chances— And today, we receive ours with joy. Lord, we lift up those whose hearts are heavy with loss. Let Your comfort be tangible, Like warm oil over weary souls. Let strength rise in the silence, And let Your nearness be undeniable. You are the Resurrection and the Life— Even in grief, You are still good. Even in sorrow, You are still sovereign. We release yesterday’s weight. We silence the voice of shame. We step into this day with holy boldness, Expecting divine reversals, Unexpected favor, And supernatural encounters. Let laughter return to dry places. Let creativity erupt like a fountain. Let healing flow like a river. And let this day be marked by Your glory. We are not forgotten. We are not behind. We are chosen—again. In Jesus’ mighty name, Amen!