City Of God 1

Yesterday I was enjoying a walk in Stanley Park, when something rather extraordinary happened. I didn't notice much at first. I had just left the forest and was coming out to Lost Lagoon by way of the arched bridge. Then I saw the sun in the foliage of the trees just ahead of me. I was transfixed and felt transported into another realm. I hardly even noticed the fellow riding his bike ahead of me over the bridge. Bikes are prohibited from that bridge because it's for pedestrians only, and cyclists who ride in pedestrian zones are a bête noir of mine. But the way the light displayed itself in the leaves of those trees was enough to keep me from noticing nor from becoming even vaguely annoyed. I knew that, if ever so briefly, I was in another place, in a realm that held little regard for our petty little world, and even after the sense of splendour had passed, I found myself walking the rest of the way in a state of quiet but empowering joy. It's been a while since this has happened for me last, perhaps a few months. I always know, when this is happening, that I am suddenly in another place. This is neither hallucinatory, nor delusional, because I always maintain a strong and rooted awareness of the here and now. Only the here and now has been somehow transfigured. As I continued to walk I thought of the children of God and of the City of God. Who are they? Where is it? These glimpses that occur to me, sometimes with an unabashed frequency, are experiences I can never replicate or synthesize at my whim. This is a visitation, a divine visitation bringing together the two worlds, the two realities of heaven and earth. And these visitations always carry with them a kind of message or portent. Sometimes of things to come, whether of good or ill omen. Sometimes as a manifestation of the divine will in my life. Sometimes to simply comfort and console. I remember the days leading up to September 11 2001. I would be taking long walks in the late afternoon and early evening sun, transfixed in this other realm, this sense of visitation. Then that grand disaster hit the World Trade Centre and all pandemonium broke loose. I knew I was being prepared and that those were indeed holy visitations. This can occur anywhere, at any time. I have no control over these experiences, nor do I want to control them, because these are visitations from God, and it is God who decides and chooses the hour and day. I have come to believe that this divine presence is always here, always implicit, though we don't see or sense this. Few of us anyway. I think that, rather than God wanting only to reveal his presence to a chosen few, that the paucity of these sacred encounters speaks rather of how dense and preoccupied most of us are with things that don't really matter, or of how bowed down we often are with sorrow, regret, anger, and fear. Of how many of us have become reservoirs full of unwept tears. I don't know what it takes for most of us to make ourselves ready and available for these meetings with the Holy One. There seems to be with many of us an obstinate fear of the light, the interpenetrating light of truth and divine love that leaves no stone unturned. Here we live in a world that many of us think is lost, beyond hope and quickly going to hell, but we seldom, if ever, have the eyes to see the sacred and eternal reality that flows beneath and through this material existence, that really has created and sustains this material existence. We live at the very portals, on the threshold of the City of God, and so few of us are ever going to know this!