Nothing like a little theology to give one a headache.
The book I was advised to purchase is – academically speaking – a beautiful gold mine. It’s also like reading an encyclopedia of BCE stuff.
Stuff I was familiar with, that made my eyes cross when I first encountered it!
Thus, the headaches.
There is plenty of CE stuff thrown in.
For context – and – more headaches. I bet the author got one, too!
Translating Latin wasn’t even like this.
Why Am I Reading This?
After a few pages I understood the Cosmic nudge. It solved a big conundrum I had in regards to the next fiction project.
The dude has had an interest in my writing career for decades so I thanked him for the push and continued on with my reading.
Hey! I’ve Seen That Before!
Several pages later I saw images the author was using as reference. Just one thing. I’d seen them before.
During the NDE!
They are images the dude showed me during the NDE and again in 10th Grade geometry class.
And periodically after as he was teaching me/making a point. Details can be found in Lessons From the Edge: An Author’s Guide to Metatron’s Army.
Throughout the years I’d drawn many of the images to show my EE husband.
A lot of the symbols are related to/drawn from math and physics, something he is brilliant in.
I was stunned to see them on the pages. More so to see that others had seen them long before me.
Centuries ago.
Others who’d drawn and written the stuff down!
Centuries ago.
For the past week as I’ve struggled to push through this grad level text I’ve wondered what the point was.
I honestly couldn’t imagine using any of it – not even in fiction.
I’d walked away from the turmoil of a community – one that included family – that made my young life a living hell because my NDE recounting wasn’t on par with Disney’s Bambi.
Maybe That’s The Point
Yesterday was a good day – because it was peaceful.
A day without chaos is a good day in my book.
After a nice dinner I spent a quiet evening playing Scrabble.
Okay, maybve not so quiet. Aaron kept pulling i’s while I got the X, the Z, etc. He wasn’t happy.
I’d done a bit of reading of the book during the afternoon.
After setting it aside for several days because I really wasn’t intersted in reading a grad level theological encyclopedia no matter how good the author is at presenting his findings.
Before falling asleep last night I spent a bit of time considering I still didn’t understand why the dude wanted me to read this stuff.
Sunrise Brings Clarity
I hadn’t even opened by eyes when a thought occurred. Images aside, there’d been a couple of passages that I related to, because they sounded a lot like what I talked about in the intensive care unit after coming out of the coma.
Words I used to describe what I saw during the NDE.
Within seconds the dude was there.
Well?
OMG!
“Every one of those passages is from the Book of Revelation!”
I didn’t shout to the rafters but I thought it loud!
You mean the 4 Horsemen?
Um no.
I did not view the end of the world during the NDE.
The dude was standing some distance from the bed as I stared up.
Waiting.
While I worked through the puzzle – what it all meant – it occurred to me what I’d just said. The words I spoke were from the Bible!
Well – I used words slightly different but I was 10 and had never read the Book of Revelation.
Whereas John speaks of flaming lanterns, I called them tall flames.
The images of which appear on the back cover of my book.
Let Me Get This Straight
Taking a seat at my desk shortly thereafter, I pulled the book up and did a search on the word Revelation. Sure enough, the quotes closely matched words I’d used to describe certain entities and other images I’d seen. But if that was true…
Why the Hell was I Metaphorically Crucified?
I was a child waking up from a coma. I was blind, paralyzed on the left side. I could barely talk. I could barely make out shadowy shapes. Why was I the bad guy in this?
I grew up in a Catholic family and community.
Went to 7 years of Catholic school, 6 of which were completely miserable.
Why were people threatened by words found in the Bible? No. Why did they tell me they were Satan’s words?
They were from the Bible! St. John.
At 10 I had not been taught nor read Revelation but my parents had gone through 12 years of Catholic school!
My dad did an additional 2 at a Catholc college!
Several members of my family were devout and very familiar with the Bible.
My paternal grandmother – a forced convert – was a Pentacostal who believed the Bible was literal. She read it daily!
And the nuns? The priests? Surely they would have recognized the words I used to describe the angelic beings I saw.
Unless they were too busy hating me for the privelge of the NDE?
The nun who was my 6th grade teacher threw several heavy textbooks at my head about six weeks after the brain surgery. She waited til my head was turned and aimed for the side that was cut open for the operation. A classmate who later became an MD pushed me out of the way of the flying texts.
I probably would have died, consvulsing to death in front of a bunch of 10 – 12 year-olds.
I thought of the woman who told my mother the symbols I’d drawn in 10th grade – symbols associated with Calculus shown to me by the dude – were demon worship.
She told my mother I was practicing Satanic worship because of those Caculus symbols.
Symbols that are part of differential equations.
Math?!
I remembered sitting with my high school physics teacher in the school library after school while he explained the complex symbols I had yet to encounter.
I was in pre-calc, geometry, and physics at the time. Interesting combination in light of what the dude was teaching me.
I came to the conclusion that I suffered for no good reason.
Now you see why I put this in the Cesspit.
I think the dude is trying to help me see something a lot of people – mostly guys as very few women go into math or science or engineering – have been trying to show me for years.
I did nothing wrong.
I can’t help but find it interesting that throughout the years I’ve had amazing conversations with men and women involved in math and science.
Including my former boss at ECD Stan Ovshinsky, our colleague Rick Ito, and a number of college professors.
My conversations with nuns? Not so great.
Go figure.
I am happy to say I finished the damn book!
Personally, I think it was a lot of effort to prove a point.
Then again, The dude has a mind of his own.