Dangerous Saying...

Sometimes, I see the world as one standing on a grassy hill among ancient manicured burial mounds. The sun is high overhead & a breeze lightly caresses my face. In those moments, I stand content & sure as the stream meandering through lush green fields of ancient battle below me. There is continuity in it, that speaks as surely as the flow of river waters, glinting all the way to the sea.  
 
Yet what if a lone red doorway suddenly breaks in on my peripheral ?  What if in my boundless curiosity I walk over, turn the handle and step through it ?
 
‘You may open any door in the garden but this one... if you open this particular door, you will surely die !’

In that moment of dawning knowledge, I see the world as one standing on the same grassy hill. The sun is still overhead & the breeze lightly bracing my face. Again I am lulled into contentment… until I am not ! I am anxious. I have a jarring sense of discontinuity. I scan those green fields of suffering & the fallen then out on the edge of perception I see it. It is the river. It has changed its course. Now it rushes back to meet me.
 
Facing such eruption, instinctively I turn towards the safety of home. But I stop ! Through the door, in my home, within my hearing… unbidden - a deafening roar is rushing to meet me. I see that in that once sure place, far off on the edge of the boundless, the mountains are skipping like rams, the ancient hill is trembling and the glinting river has burst its banks. A battle again rages in an overflowing torrent that reaches up to the neck !  
 
Behind me, a surge of words thunders… “Do not walk in the way of this people or believe in what they call a good outcome. Do not fear what they fear or be in dread. See it is the Name of the Lord coming from far away, his nostrils burning, thick clouds arising, his lips boiling with rage… His tongue is like a devouring fire & his breath – his breath is like an overwhelming stream reaching up to the neck”.
 
I stand as one between two blast furnaces – betwixt & between and waiting. Waiting till the Truly Other comes & breaks open the Empire of the Same.