The In Between Journal: After The Storm, Winter 2024

TheIn Between

A VISIONARY BABELORD JOURNAL

AFTER THE STORM

Part II of a series of personal journal entries about spiritual and otherworldly encounters.

Yin and Her Word

The Myth of Persephone

God, the Mother

You can’t have the future you want if you don’t clean up the past

Youarenotarrivingatthe conclusionofaconcept. Youaregettingintothe mudwithme.

LetterfromtheEditor More Renaissance; More Revolution

Welcome to the second issue of The In Between Journal

Most of this journal is a continuance from “Reflections of the Fall” - it is a collection of my personal journal entries that serve as the very beginning of a sort of informal, and often messy, dissertation on spiritual themes, cultural myths, and personal reflections. This time I combine my journal with past poetry and vision boards to understand more fully how and why I got here, now.

Unlike a dissertation, my writing is not an accumulation of knowledge or the summation of wisdom You are not arriving at the conclusion of a concept You are getting into the mud with me We are going on a swim together We are traversing corridors of what I do hope and believe is a part of the collective subconscious, and perhaps at times the collective higher conscious. It is rough, milky, neurotic, and unedited. Any enlightenment found is hardly made through me, but in spite of me.

When you agree to parley with a God that seems bigger than or external from you, you are parleying with a profound concerted intelligence. You are agreeing to lose yourself, with the devout faith that you will be found in the Other But these are still very highly personalized meditations, colored by my own perception, delusions and all I just tend to take my experiences just seriously enough and regard my ego just nominally enough to believe that any revelations received are not only for me

I cannot attest that I am attempting to be responsible with my words or art; responsibility would require a kind of mature silence, or at least an editor and honest review. Instead, I am authentic. And as I express the layers of my psyche and experiences as I receive them, I trust that you will detach and discern when necessary. Perhaps I place the burden of responsibility on you.

The same housekeeping applies in this journal as the last:

When I hear words spoken to me or through me that seem to originate from some Other, I write them in italics.

When God speaks, he speaks in bold italics centered to the page.

When Jesus speaks, he speaks in red italics centered to the page.

Yin, and Her Creator

andherWord Yin,

Yin is the nothing that existed as the God you know came to be.

Yin is the nameless form from which all can be named and known.

It is the empty night sky that God painted His vision of the world and humanity against.

It is the invisible canvas that holds together a dream; and the darkness without which the light would not be able to reveal itself.

Yin is the antimatter with which matter will collide & annihilate itself Again and again.

To die and be born again is simply to recede back into the Yin from which all life began.

Your worship of Yahweh Is incomplete

Without the understanding And integration Of Yin.

SUR REND ER When SEIZED

TheInBetween

I was dancing, when I was brought down to my knees again, in child's pose, prostrating without knowing.

And I heard his voice. I felt his love. Again.

Before you speak you must learn to listen.

If you find yourself caught, trapped, or imprisoned by an idea, a society, or even God Himself,

Submit yourself to the capture. Be deeply present and surrendered to your circumstance. Yield. Do not fight. Be still and observe. Find the “I” in the center of the storm. Listen there, and let yourself be transformed.

The revolution will come from within, before it is born without.

And remember, again:

There is a time to surrender, and a time to take a stand.

AFTER THE STORM

A SECOND SERIES OF PERSONAL JOURNAL ENTRIES; A CONTINUANCE FROM “RETURN OF THE FALL”

November 1, 2023

I cross my arms and purse my lips. I am angry about a verse again. I look to argue. I may be arrogant or proud. I may be new to this, a rookie making rookie mistakes. Talking back and arguing with teachers much more experienced than me. One of my complaints of churches used to be that I don’t like being talked at. By a man elevated behind a pulpit. The best learning comes from mutual engagement. A wise teacher guides you to the answers instead of proclaiming them to you. A wise teacher asks you questions. We engage in conversation.

When I see Jesus, he is not a king set upon a throne that I am silent before or begging. He is by my side, sitting next to me at a fire. He is in front of me, telling me to rise and take a stand He holds his forehead to mine; he cups my face in his hands. He has gone before me, to intercede on my behalf. And he has been above me, offering a hand.

When I imagine Jesus as a King, I think he wears robes of the finest silks and linens, but they are the same as ours

And he smells like a breath of heaven - of pure air but also of ocean and of Earth. He does not sit in a lofty castle. He likes to walk and dine among us. He is here to play soccer with the children. We are the people he loves.

The girls and I sit around, well oiled and well bodied, blushing and vital, and we tell stories. We ask each other “When did you know he was the one for you?” We all have a story of how we found him. We blush and giggle at the crazy, trifling things we have done. And we put our hands on each other’s chest, savoring the fire of our hearts. We beam at the recognition of our mutual love. Of our soul’s recognition in the Other. And we cry together, in that radiant joy, of knowing true love… experiencing that true love. When so many voices tried to tell us we were not worthy, but we knew all along.

And he comes along, surprising us at dinner! The whole house dances and bursts with celebration We say “Come, come, teacher! Eat. Let us pour you a glass of wine. We saved this bottle for you. It is our most special one. Why did you take so long, where have you gone? Come, sit here in the middle of us. Tell us a story. Spill some tea.”

I think he comes bearing gifts! Every time he makes an appearance He brings a unique one for each of us. “For you, Madeline, the angel of (insert some other planet or alternative heavenly plane) made you a necklace of pure moonstone In it is a message Listen to it before you sleep. And for you, Eva…”

Then he leaves to visit more family and friends, more lovers past, present, and future Leaving us with a fresh dose of his love, until we are blessed by his presence once again.

We live in peace, in joy, in delight, in love, and in freedom.

I wonder if I am in the circles of virgins in Heaven, that chose God as a lover instead of men. Those that experience rapture and ravishing but only in our prehistoric Earthly lives.

November 5, 2023

Perhaps that is the Jesus I aspire to be.

I let my mind wander to this garden of Eden, made just for me. I see myself bathing and playing deep in the lush green forest, below a waterfall in one of its pools. I am naked and beaming. I wonder if I am in the circles of virgins in Heaven, that chose God as a lover instead of men. Those that experience rapture and ravishing but only in our prehistoric Earthly lives. We must be those promised virgins that those Muslim men committed themselves to suicidal missions of terrorism for. A vision of heaven. Well oiled, pure, ravishing. Pussy tight and quivering from desire and ecstasy experienced within but not given or shared without. Unmarried, yet deeply devoted. Like a choice cowsacred and holy. Reserved for special use.

Pure in their own way; far from my own. I wonder if they earn it with their discipline, righteousness, and chastity With my lips and my hips, I perform my acts of devotion. With their stillness and their reservation, they perform their’s. And thus, the attraction.

I imagine more. I am courted by knightly men. They live in the courts of the Most High. Not lush like our gardens. But pristine, clean.

They come around with their armors of God. Steel and iron, ready to express his justice and veracity. And I skip, dance, and laugh, giving freely of his Love; his divine sacred sovereignty alive in my body. I, of Spirit. Them, of Honor. And perhaps of royal lineage.

I do not wear such heavy armor I move freely, in my light natural linens, barely covering my nips. It is my joy and freedom that is the attraction. The sensuality and sexuality that exudes from under my skin - unburdened by shame or guilt. They come to me, wanting to feel the way I do. What I have received as a birthright, they hope to earn through their service. What are these roles and rites that we have been born into?

They tempt me. I want to undress them. I want to take off their armor. I want to take them on a swim. I want to show them how deeply I live. The heights and depths of my devotion. The pleasure beneath the veil. I wonder if taking them would be a sin.

What is your’s to have, is also yours to give.

The Goddess reminds me.

But is it truly my own? Is my body, my spirit, my love, my heart - my own?

It is my heart in which God’s devotion seeks But is my heart, spirit, and body not connected? They are together, moving in unison. One vehicle, one vessel of devotion.

Perhaps it is the same with them.

They stop me - the strong ones do. They sense something. They withhold themselves, and hold out for something more. They want to do it right. They want to bring me into their King’s court. They want me to come live with them in God’s light, where a bed is prepared for me. Where they are allowed to disarm. They want to preserve this garden of Eden, unsoiled by their desire to obtain before their time.

They tempt me. I want to undress them. I want to take off their armor. I want to take them on a swim. I want to show them how deeply I live. The heights and depths of my devotion. The pleasure beneath the veil. I wonder if taking them would be a sin.

FRESHFRUIT HEAVEN StraightOutta’

The Myth of Persephone

I crave goodness as well as wonder and I am afraid of the price I would have me pay

To keep that wander, that intimacy, and the intensity

I fear safety

Like a chokehold

Like it cannot be

What has cast this fear upon me?

What I fear, I crave

What I crave, I fear

In Greek mythology, Persephone is a young virgin Goddess in a field of flowers. Perhaps she was bored of her friends and strayed too far from home, just past her mother’s watchful gaze. She is naive and feminine to her own detriment. The very innocence that her mother sought to protect, becomes the charm that allures the gazing men. She plays too close to the Earth. Doesn’t she know what lies below? Hades, God of the Underworld, catches her scent. He is aroused by her song; the supple nature of her being; the softness of her breasts. From beneath the Earth, his passion abounds him to her. Breaking through the Earth, he lunges and clutches her by the waist. She screams at the force; at the strength of the God-man; her cries like a moan sitfled by the hand at her throat. Hades drags her back into his kingdom, claiming her as his own. Persephone’s mother, Demeter, heartbroken and vengeful, places a curse of death upon the Earth that she once blessed with bounty and fertility. But she is also persistent. After seeking help from Hecate, the only one to witness Persephone’s taking, the mother Goddess and her daughter are eventually reunited.

a visualization meditation

I close my eyes and and submerge myself into the waters of my subconscious.

Hecate meets me. She is cloaked in the same darkness that surrounds us. The shape of her face is luminous and magnetic, silently calling me forward. Her body is unmoving, but her her gaze is fixed on me. Where her eyes would be are large, dark holes each holding a small galaxy - like portals into another dimension. I limp towards her. A pool of light coalesces around our feet as I approach. It is the only light in the black night. She smiles, and says she has been waiting for me. I come to her confused and broken, angry at my powerlessness. How could I have gotten so lost? And what of myself have I lost along this journey? Where has my vision gone? Of myself and my life I once saw very clearly, now is an abyss.

Why do you worry?

The Goddess asks. She bends down, and from the pool of light picks up a floating lotus. It shines with hues of pink, purple, and green.

What was lost may be restored.

She extends the lotus to me.

Go home, my love.

Persephone, with the help of her mother and Hecate of the Underworld, emerges once again from the hell she descended.

But the once Virgin Goddess had tasted the fruit of the Underworld, thus sealing her fate to return again and again. Upon the descent of the Fall, she would spend the Winter underground. And the Earth, her Mother, shall whither and grieve at this time each year in remembrance of this Maiden Savior; awaiting her return at the first light of Spring. The Maiden would arise again and again, as both Queen of the Underworld and the Goddess of Spring. Reconciling God the Mother and God the Daughter, and restoring the Earth with them.

November 9, 2023

But...

The Devil in my bedroom whispers,

This is not heaven, these are not God’s men, and you are not free.

I scream. I want my body to hold no memory. I want it to know of no man. I want no one to have ever touched me. No muscle or cellular memory. I am angry again. With Christianity - I feel as if this admission, this saving, opens my eyes to a world that I did not want to be a part of. This so-called knowledge of good and evil, this insistence upon the pure and the impure. Get away from me! Get out of my mind, shake off my spirit, get off of my BODY! I am hungry for the natural expression of my primal nature; unburdened by rules and regulations, by definitions of “flesh”... You seek to make my body into a prison, I live in it but it is owned by someone else. Always by something else! When I insist that it is a home, you denigrate me to regulate its desires, its feelings - don’t look, don’t touch, don’t want. Too wild, too sexual, too sensual. What has invaded my thoughts? What has changed the nature of its disposition? What can God as a Father do with me? I am not a child anymore. I have boobs, I have hips, I have desire. What can God as a Father do with me?

I feel the fire in me, I feel the shake of my spirit I remember my own words; my own proclamation. To lesser men, Gods of no thing and no land, I have attempted to submit myself. Submitting my heart and spirit to their influence and evolution. Devoting my sensuality and sexuality Overextending care to my own detriment. Attempting to be God. From whom do I attempt to run from now? Is God man?

November 14, 2023

I need your authentic voice. I need you to wear your values. I need you in the nude. I need your bold statement of what is. I need to see the delusions you battle through I need to see the worst of you; I need to see your holy. To be able to see me, to be able to save me, I need to see you.

God is exposed through wrestling, through convulsing, through separating, through breaking and compressing, through the depths, through living, through dying, through rising, and rising again.

The cracks in the walls allow us to peek through; to perceive through you Do not pave them over.

Do not attempt to purify what I never said was unclean.

You dance with the ravens, you whisper for freedom, giving love notes to the doves. You shatter your wisdom. Trade your identity for nothing again. You become nothing again. You find out what is and always has been.

Empty yourself, my love. Hold on to nothing. Ring out the last of what you have been.

Return to me again. And let me fill you.

Give me the space to fill you again.

You are dying for something new to begin. Be done with it.

Let us be done with it. You are dying, for something new to begin.

Have faith in something else… always something else?

Today I met with Marianne Williamson. The invitation came from a colleague It was a random, last minute request from a departing Campaign Director. I said yes, out of pure curiosity. I have read a few of her books before. I have not at all paid attention to her as a political candidate. I am skeptical and critical, as I am of any politician

Marianne’s books played a pivotal role in my life. Her book, A Return to Love, was one of the first I read 5 years ago that started my journey towards my own spiritual enlightenment A reclaiming of spiritual power An attempt, to understand again, myself and life as an embodiment of love. It offered an alternative way that I was broken and desperate for. I picked up the book again after I received the call from her campaign people.

Interestingly, I find myself in a similar state now, psychically and physically, spiritually and mentally. Brought down to my knees again, desperate for an alternative. Knowing that old beliefs and ways of being are dying. Feeling the drain of the last of my past, and its attempts to keep me from moving on. Unhappy and uncertain about what is to come next. My ambitions and goals are clouded at best, utterly lost at most. My conception of power and love, built upon an aging identity and entirely reliant on myself, has failed me

In states of suffering, we turn to a savior. We call out to God. We say show me a way; I am open to a new way of being. I, in all my grandiose envisioning, have got it wrong. And God responds,

Good.

Let your limited vision be stripped, so you can once again see the stars. Reorient yourself into the Earth.

For too long, you thought you were the Sun.

Basking in your own creation, thinking You are the source of everything.

Filled to the brim, constipated and full,

Overflowing in your own knowledge. Relying on your own gas to sustain you.

.

Have you fallen out of love with the Universe?

Have you stopped gazing at the stars? What answers have you come to, that makes you irreceptive to new?

The answers that you have bludgeoned, have sent you crawling right back to me.

Drenched in your humility. Stinking of defeat…

But you smell like heaven to me.

GOD, TheMother

Do not fear to walk like me or them, for you are the original conception. You are the model that you seek.

November 27, 2023

I think again of my mother. I give all credit to God the Father, and forget to mention my mother. But I believe in God the Mother, as well as God the Daughter I have insisted that she is the unwritten part of the plan.

My mother’s vision holds me when my own has failed me. My mother’s wisdom washes over me, encouraging, driving, and challenging me. And also affirming:

You will not be like me; you will not be like them.

You are here to be something new, and much more powerful. You look around and reject God because you can’t see an example of yourself that you would like to be, dwelling fully alive in him. Do not fear to walk like me or them, for you are the original conception You are the model that you seek.

Without her faith in me, and the profession of it, my own would have failed.

My mother wonders when she will be invited into the study circle at church, when she can learn from themthe church's masters of Word and story. But it is her words and wisdom that are desperately needed. It is her unique, intuitive knowing that I will not stand to have her deny in herself. She is the God that is missing in the circle… in a trinity of men.

She looks around and marvels, wondering what gifts the Holy Spirit will open in her. Not realizing she is the gift herself. She has had it all along. The gifts given, can only be rejected or hidden by the self But she has the healing powers she marvels at. She bears the voice of the spirit that she is looking for. She has the ear upturned to God. She is the Word that she seeks. She needs only to speak to hear them come, and believe fully that the alignment is done; the atonement is done. Here and now, she is exactly what she prayed to be. She has only blinded herself from her own light to keep herself in a state of humility. To keep it about God. She insists that she is not done growing, never can she be perfect. But she is perfect to me. And the more she is expressed, the more she can feel that perfection in herself. Fully embodied. Her Bible says:

Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.

She is not missing out on the lessons of wise men. They are missing out on her.

What can I say of a mother’s love? And of a daughter’s for her? It is my greatest gift. I tend to make it all about men. I tend to unconsciously embody the denial of women that I hate to see in themselves. Let me not make that mistake again. Let‘s begin to honor them... Their glory to live forever and ever, on Earth as it is in Heaven Amen

God is just a woman

That walks around and does what she wants.

She orgasms and brings about the ocean. And some will say it is good, and swim in the seas.

Still others will say ‘No, this is too salty; much too deep for me.’

And she’ll dance around the Earth, carving canyons and valleys. The same that you found love in; the same that you’ll die in.

And with a burst of rage or passion, she’ll raise the Earth or burn it to the ground. And some will call it Science.

Still others will call it Fate.

But God is just a girl at play. Bored, and in love. Jealous, and full of grace.

PAST POETRY

And the devil is some little bitch boy, who cried and said “But what about me?!”

Who hated this God, the way she’d do as she pleased.

“You move your hips and wave your hands. You command life, but without a plan.

You create and destroy, You laugh and you cry.

You can order the world, but you won’t even try.

You’re a tyrant, woman, Why won’t you bow to me?

You have no regard for man, but I shall set them free.”

Worksof Art BOOKS, AND OTHER

A Return to Love literature

Book by Marianne Williamson

If you have wandered too far from home, this book is just one reallyenlightening guide to start the journey home.

Faith is a psychological awareness of an unfolding force for good, constantly at work in all dimensions. Our attempts to direct this force only interferes with it. Our willingness to relax into it allows it to work on our behalf.

podcasts

Transitions: Traversing

Liminal Space

Podcast episode by Communion

The stories we tell ourselves about our transitions... and about who we are when we’re still in the process of becoming. We’re not finished forming - but we judge ourselves when we’re in the middle of the transition.

What is Christian Mysticism?

Podcast episode by A People’s Theology

So here I am in my body - I had this mind-blowing experience of God as infinite love, pure unadulterated compassion and care and regard. And then I’m getting this theology... this story of this punitive, reward / punishment, dualistic model of the angry Father figure. And there was no way to connect them.

January 7 music

Spotify Playlist by freethetigress

A playlist I made last, last winter. “Atmospheric + romantic. Green, blue and icy... like the Earth these days. But also warm & familiar... like lavender and rosemary.”

There She Is Again

Song by Leah Free

Absolute favorite song I found this winter. A heralded return of the Goddess.

It’s a tragedy. I hate girls. I didn’t want to have any daughters.

fil m

Four Daughters

Documentary Film

by Kaouther Ben Hania

Institutions, societies - and even God the Father - seem to not know what to do with the young woman. They do not understand them; they rush them through their initiation process into the more useful and structured roles of wives and mothers. They cover their breasts, their faces, and seal their voices. They cannot be. Oppression breeds subversion and rebellion in all forms. The journey of becoming is constantly manipulated. One hand extends out to the girl in searching with offers of protection and heaven. In the other, behind the back of the gifter, are the very tools for her enslavement. The burden, guilt, shame, and responsibility are a mother’s and daughters’ to share.

JANUARY2023/

Yin is surrender.

Yin is defeat by forces stronger than your own.

Yin is sweet and sexy and willing.

Yin is to Yahweh as Yahweh is to Yin.

There is sweet release in defeat.

In succumbing,

In allowing and acknowledging

Both your absolute weakness, And the absolvent grace

Within the eye of the storm, And the strength of His embrace.