Let us sing a song of six-pence, pockets full
of fear. The God is in his counting rooms.
Outside, sheep writhe as shepherds shear their wool.
Inside, four and twenty naughty boys entombed
and baked inside a savory pie burst forth
to flutter bob and strut as mourning doves
about the dining hall. They coo remorse.
God chuckles, shattering shallow show-loves.
Let us sing a song of six-pence, shoulders bowed
in shame. The God is in her parlour, stretched
on velvet sofa soft and damp as cloud.
Whose honey drips along whose chin? Who fetched
the maid out hanging clothes? Who snipped her nose?
Who flew it off? Who says where a nose goes
when thieved for whimsy, rhyme and salvation?
Please God remove harness, belt, and underclothes.
Please God forgive hard hearts cruel impatience.

I heard You to do everything possible forever.
I heard we only bear witness — faithful or unfaithful.

To the degree we bear witness faithfully; we are one with Love, one with You.
And You, being the first cause (caused only by Yourself, and not influenced by anything else), are free.
Nothing is free to not follow its nature. You follow your own nature a hundred percent and are perfectly free. The rest follows the push and pull of the tumble — which is either You at the outset (as first, indwelling cause and sustenance) or You (insofar as we are wise / oned to You) as the inward-dwelling free-choice.

But how can it be that the nature of Love could give rise to and ultimately be this world, where so much is awful?
I heard human sin is as nothing, so little in comparison to the majesty of Love.
And so we’re off the hook and are free to relax and rejoice in Your grace, which is an infinite eternal overflowing joy.

But then I also heard we are interconnected and freedom lies in taking responsibility for all we say and do and how our actions affect ourselves, others, and the whole flowing-together life-and-death.

How to square these two rumors, both of which seem wiser than the listener, whoever he or she may be?
God is all; we’re off the hook and free to sit back and enjoy the ride.
We are all interconnected and must take responsibility for our actions.

How? How both?
God is Love. Love is infinite joyful giving/supporting/nurturing. God is All. God’s nature is Love and God’s freedom is to follow Love perfectly.

Human minds and bodies and outer-souls flow along with creation; the cores of their souls are one with God. Humans are their truest selves to the degree they think, feel, and act in accordance with the cores of their souls. Human nature’s essence is God’s nature. Humans are free to the degree they sync up their feeling/thinking/acting with the Love that shines through everything — with the cores of their souls, which are oned to God. Human freedom makes themselves, their actions, interactions, neighbors, communities, organizations, and the interconnected whole more connected to the immediate will of God and thus more holy: this insofar as humans live their freedom.

How does Love create this imperfect world?
How can we speak of human freedom when God does everything (either as the creator and sustainer of the tumbling-together of all creation; or as the inward-dwelling free-choice of creatures insofar as they are wise / oned-to-God) and we can’t choose whether or not we follow Love better or worse (ie: whether or not and to what degree we are wise)?

Human freedom is a seed hatching growing spreading overtaking, turning our hearts and minds towards the Love that we most essentially are. Human freedom is the ever-overtaking victory of life-overflowing, of God overflowing all creation.

But, well, of course, you hear such funny rumors down here, vaporing in the groggeries and in the dispensaries of Pure Love tainted with wild hopes and desperate fears. And woeful-mishearing is a common problem among us sinners.
Still, let us turn away from drunken folly of youthful nihilistic ambition (“Give me an immediate and infinitely sexy and immaculately cool salvation, or give me death!”) Let us try to open our hearts and minds to the Way of the Light that shines in and through everything — including each conscious moment.

I don’t know how to play it.
Can we plead to our outer souls to heed our inner souls?
Perhaps we cannot ultimately choose what our outer souls do, but if that is so, there is a nuance here that we as quickened creatures will never catch; and so we’re best off not pretending we catch it — we’re best off pressing on towards the Love with which all is well and without which nothing is.

And yet, what are we really to make of Julian’s claim that God has predestined everything and all is and always will be well? How are we to digest that in this world where we’ve seen man and nature alike commit such horrible cruelties and wanton wastes?

If we try to grab a nuance we do not have the fingers for, we will just fall and snag the Christmas lights on our impatient forward-falling shoulder, bringing the whole down, breaking ornaments and spilling the water in the rounded metal base with those screws twisted into the innocent soft flesh, through the flaking skin-like bark.

But if we ignore a fundamental insight of Julian’s shewings, we miss out on a chance to get a little jumpstart on wisdom.

I don’t now.
I can’t say.
Let us waltz together, up and down, round and round the Christmas tree, in time with the pompous, plodding, all-too-human beat. We’ll keep it in our gaze even as we catch and cherish each other’s eyes. What shall we do? The sun is climbing. The summer solstice must break the yolk once again. What should we say? Time is sprinting and we’re tied behind like the slain Hector to the chariot of the vaunting Achilles — himself fated soon to die.

Why didn’t Achilles just stay home?
He wouldn’t have had to die.
The Greeks would’ve spent a little while breaking their heads against the Trojan walls and then gone home.
Hector and many more men would’ve been allowed to live on into a full adulthood, seen their children grow up and found families of their own.
Julian says in all this we should praise God, rather than blame Achilles.
Right?
Isn’t that what she is saying?
No.
How not?
What is she saying?
And next time, Achilles, please give us all a break and keep your violent majesty from full bloom. Some gifts are better off left aside, that we might all seek a newer world — one where creation outpaces destruction, where shared collaborative joy displaces trouble.

Author: BW/AW
Editor: AW/BW
Copyright: AM Watson