I found myself overseeing (or in some position of authority over) a railway or rail-transit system. The entire system needed repair or restoration, as it was dirty, run-down, poorly running and people didn’t like to use it. Worse, no one trusted the system; it was obvious to me in the dream that neither the people working with all the trains, nor the riding public trusted those who had been ‘in charge’ of it for so long.
As I stepped forward, the “management” (that is, the existing un-trustworthy ones) were on my left and behind me, over my left shoulder. They were saying to me “we don’t want any major changes, you understand, we just want you to make all the workers work harder and be more efficient.”
But as I walked away from them and into the train stations and train yards, I spent all my time talking with everyone who worked with the trains, everyone who cleaned, fixed and maintained all the equipment and stations. When they knew there was someone listening carefully, from the heart, passengers began to come forward as well, and collectively, they knew exactly what to do.
I could no longer even hear or see the original managers – they had simply faded into the background. Now there was a wonderful sense of purpose and direction as the individual trains and stations began to be clean and safe and smoothly running. The whole system took on a happy atmosphere, with greetings and ‘hellos’ ringing out across the platforms, the conductors recognizing regular riders, and helping those who needed assistance.
Suddenly, though, when the trains began to run freely again, some dark forces again began to insert themselves. I was taken from an outdoor station to one of the major hubs, and there, cameras had been installed on every lamppost, on every overhead support. I was taken into a dark, enclosed ‘control room’ so they could show me how each individual person on any of the train platforms would be identified. There were large monitors showing people being surveilled, with green boxes around each one, and smaller green text appearing with individual identification.
I heard myself saying calmly: “Stop this right now. Take all those cameras down and stop doing this.” There were dim voices protesting in the background, but one by one the little green boxes began to vanish, and the monitors began to switch off. I could again hear the calling out of the train conductors announcing their leaving or arriving and hear a happy bustle of activity.
There was more work to be done, and I was moved again to a more remote area, where some of the station buildings had been so neglected that walls of the stations had fallen down. Shoulder to shoulder with other people, we raised entire walls up and began to set the stations right again. As the walls were raised, there was cleaning out of weeds and animals that had been living under them. As I began to wake, I could see new construction, and completely new structures being raised again. There was a wonderful sense of ownership and independence.
I was awakened at 430 by birds singing early morning praise songs. Luke and I were on the beach at 515, alone with God, walking to the cadence of waves. My mind begins to race with thoughts of problems and issues and worries, and I know I need to just stop, to return to his presence. I cannot even give word to anything but this: “I love you. Help me hear you, feel you clearly, because I can’t shake all these worries, and they’re making me afraid.”
No sooner have I uttered these words, that I hear Psalm 56 (verses 3 and 4):
3 When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. 4 In God, whose word I praise— in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?
Peace floods over us as we continue walking, the roaring thoughts simply vanish, and in the cool morning breeze, I feel held. “Praise, praise, praise you,” I am quietly singing.
Luke and I return to the truck, but when we get in and I shut the door, I feel an attack of worries and fears. Before I can blink, there are angels around us, outside. A large angel appears directly next to me on the driver’s side, and speaks clearly:
“Do not be afraid, for you are favored.”
There is complete calm and safety again, feelings of love and gratitude wash over me. And then I am dumb-struck with awe and holy fear, because His voice was so still, I thought I’d missed it:
Remember the Parable of the Trees, child.
“Yes, Lord. There are loud, idol-worshipping voices calling for a king. A thorny, bramblebush of a king. It feels like people want to make technology, even AI, into a king to be worshiped. Maybe there are many kings being worshiped.”
Awake at first light, around 4, and on the beach with Luke at 530.
I was considering the power and promise of faith, and thinking about some words we listened to yesterday, that faith is a belief system. The Lord challenged me:
Here is a mystery to you child: Some things you call ‘systems’ have structure that you describe as “input-process-output”. Yet consider this: Your input is the word, and your output is the word, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word.
You input spiritual nourishment by faith, hope and love. You output spiritual authority, delegated to you by the power of Christ.
There was a long period of silence to absorb that, a restful silence that covered the drive home from the beach.
I was so deep in thought that I almost blanked out on all the flags and bunting, on simple preparations being made for a local parade. At the moment I remembered, “It’s Memorial Day,” I heard these words:
I know this is a day of your remembrance and honoring those who fought and died in wars; a remembrance of extreme sacrifices made in the physical. Remember this, child: When they went into battle, they went with only what they could carry, knives, weapons, extra stones, arrows or ammunition. They went one direction, forward, toward the enemy. You will honor them by continuing to fight for freedom, justice, truth, with all the weapons you can carry, going forward with Me.
You war in the Spirit, so commemorate those who have sacrificed in the Spirit.
Music in my ears upon waking: Cher, belting out “It’s in His Kiss!”
“…If you wanna know (shoop, shoop) If he loves you so (shoop, shoop) It’s in his kiss (it’s in his kiss) Oh, that’s where it is (it’s in his kiss)
Having that song in my head while walking the shore, it was easy to hear and see God’s kiss on the earth: the rhythmic caress of waves on the shore, the lines in the sand where tides pushed up seaweed and shells. The Lord had talked to me more than a year ago about his kiss[1]. I asked into the wind: “What are you telling me about all this kissing, Lord?”
Because I made it so, my children experience deep pleasure when they kiss. When parents kiss their children, and children their parents; when husbands and wives embrace and kiss, when love runs electric through you, words and songs are poured out to describe the feelings. I know, for I read your poetry, I hear your love songs.
Consider, child, how much pleasure I built into your sexual union, then consider my pleasure when I am intimate with each of you. For my intimacy with you is beyond and deeper than what you can yet imagine.
I am struck into silence by his words and by my racing thoughts of how easily we equate intimacy with that one act. Yet he knows my thoughts, and compels me to speak:
“You reminded me once that men are inserters and women are receivers, so sometimes we men balk at intimacy that makes us receivers. We act like we don’t know how to receive, when we say we want you to have your way, have your will with us and through us and in us.”
My precious ones, model this in your walk: that you are my first love, and my intimacy is pure and trustworthy, steadfast and unfailing. For I know and recognize the hearts that surrender, and hearts that yearn to love in return, to love in equal measure.
And yes, child, if you want to know if I love you so …
I was awake at first twilight, probably 4am when the skies were lightening; birds were beginning their morning praise reports. Headed out to the beach with Luke at 5:15, walked northward, soaking in the sounds of beautiful relentless waves, the calling of terns.
I tried to empty my thoughts of worldly cares and burdens, but I kept thinking of all the things I had heard the Lord say to stop doing. I didn’t want to be thinking of these things in this absolutely peaceful moment, but the Lord pressed on me to say the word “stop” out loud. Not to yell it or force it but simply say “stop” and then fill in the blank.
“Stop making electronics to track and surveil people, to spy on them.”
“Stop lying to us, about politics, the environment, the economy.”
“Stop poisoning us with vaccines, with artificially created waves of sickness. Stop producing unhealthy foods. Stop poisoning our water.”
“Stop making bioweapons.”
When I said this, the Lord made me stop walking, and I just stood in that statement until it was clear that I needed to finish it this way:
“Stop making bioweapons; stop making them and storing them and releasing them in this nation first. Declare openly what we have done, repent from it, destroy them all, and then do the same in all nations.”
“Yes, Lord, we have been hypocrites here, knowing all the while what has been made and researched and worse, right in our nation. There’s no justification for it, none.”
I continued walking, my head and heart clearing in the cool breeze. I was thinking of all the sounds and frequencies I could hear, when suddenly my spirit was lifted up off the road. In some sort of a visual representation of audible things, I was given the briefest glimpse of spoken and unspoken prayers, flowing upward like a stream, glinting, flickering in the light. Love flooded over me when I heard him speak (and I knew that he was speaking to all of us):
I hear you and you already know deep within you that I hear every prayer, every cry, every song, every plea. You know that I am in control. You know that my word is true, and I will deliver the desires of your hearts. You cry out “Then why not now?” You cry out for understanding of timing – and you know that time is mine – and for justice in your unjust world, and you wonder, where could I be in all this chaos. You cry out loud that if I hear, then why have I not acted.
Softly, somewhere far away, I hear this from Isaiah (55:8-9):
8“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.
9“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
And then he continued:
I know each and every one of you, I know your abilities and your talents, your strengths and weaknesses. I know – I assign – roles and tasks for each of you, and they are not static, but accomplish my will for this time, for this season, and in preparation for seasons to come. Even in your heartache of waiting and not yet receiving, there is purpose and plan. There is order in earth, air, water and Spirit, for there is my love that will never fail.
[music upon waking: “Wooden Ships”; Crosby, Stills, Nash]
For weeks, now running into months, I’ve been vexed about this piece of the technology domain we are calling “artificial intelligence.” (See “The deception of the digital,” 25 November 2022, and “A word about time,” 26 September 2022. Vexed, probably isn’t really the right word, more like confused, angered, frustrated, saddened and deeply troubled. An editorial opinion in the New York Times by Thomas Friedman (May 2, 2023) entitled “We Are Opening the Lids on Two Giant Pandora’s Boxes” eloquently spoke of the very real dangers we are standing in, having ‘released’ AI into the wild, so to speak. Yet many discussions of AI are almost willfully ignoring the very real spiritual dimensions of the technology domain.
This Sunday morning, I had walked with Luke on the beach in the early morning breeze, calling out to God, with all my problems, questions, praise and worship songs, but there was only the sound of waves and seagulls in reply.
In my spirit, on the watery periphery of my vision, I can make out a signal flag:
This stands for the letter “U”, which means: “You are standing into danger.”
After driving home, I was standing in the driveway when the Lord spoke a single sentence:
There is a difference, child, between making tools and making idols.
There was a whisper, a pointer that followed this, a reference to scripture: Habakkuk 2:18-19; a beautiful chapter, Habakkuk has made his complaint to the Lord that the wicked seem to be acting without regard to any judgement or discipline from the Lord. Now, he stands is watch and listens for the Lord’s reply; it is these latter verses that jumped off the page to me, the Lord’s words about idols:
18 “Of what value is an idol carved by a craftsman? Or an image that teaches lies? For the one who makes it trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak. 19 Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Come to life!’ Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’ Can it give guidance? It is covered with gold and silver; there is no breath in it.”
I am covered with a small shiver of Holy fear, because I’ve been talking about “guidance, navigation & control” asking in many technical pages and forums, asking: “Who or what is giving us our guidance, who or what is doing the navigating, and who or what is actually in control?” With all our technology, all our devices, flooding us with ‘information’ daily, it’s impossible not to think of the tiny silver-colored contacts and tiny components in each of our phones.
There is a cross-reference in my bible to Psalm 115, and here is further amplification about our idols (verses 2-8),
2 Why do the nations say, “Where is their God?” 3 Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him. 4 But their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. 5 They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. 6 They have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell. 7 They have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk, nor can they utter a sound with their throats. 8 Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.
It is repeated confirmation, because he has been emphasizing again and again his dimensionless-ness, his very being in more than our five senses (see “More than angry”, 7 April 2023, and “The Trail of Tears”, 19 January 2022). And here is an answer to me directly about the idol we are making of “artificial intelligence”, something which cannot smell of feel or love, something which has no breath in it al all. Lord, thank you so much.
No sooner have I finished writing the scriptures in my notebook than he continues:
It is good that you create, build, make, for you are made in my image, my dream. With all your senses, with all of the workings of your beautiful hands, I want you to use what I have given you, use the abundance of the earth. But use to your good, to the good and service of all, and use in reverence for everything on earth.
(I know in my spirit that the word “use” means “steward, because I know that we have been given a Dominion Covenant, a responsibility to tend and nurture all that we see, have and use.)
Your abilities to imagine and create tools are precious gifts, child. I watch and guide – if you seek me – as you make tools and structures and instruments, which grow and feed and heal. I see you make tools of destruction and warfare. I know that tools made for one purpose have become tools or manipulation and oppression. I know that tools for communication have become something more vicious than many can even recognize or admit. The enchantment cast by the abusers of these tools makes many of my children believe that they are powerless, and the must somehow meekly accept ‘some of the bad to get more of the good.’
Consider that very carefully, child, because the carefully constructed addictive qualities built into some of your tools has made them idols, and I detest idol worship among my people.
What have I told you about tools before, child?
“That your tools have dimensions unknown to us, Father. That your tools are sharper and harder and more precise that we can imagine. That your tools remove lie, hypocrisy, and poison from us.[1]”
I have told you before that so many of your tools and inventions and manufactured things are marvelous. Truly there is much good accomplished by so many. I know how you have used tools to create complex systems, clockworks, mechanisms, and structures. I created in you the abilities to observe, identify and resolve problems and challenges.
I know every word that is written and spoken about your technologies and tools, child. I know all the supposed reasoning and logic that attempts to justify creating and releasing tools and technologies which do not nurture and serve, but dominate, steal and oppress. I know that you will be mocked and ridiculed for saying these things, because I know that my people are quibbling over gnats of definitions while giant creatures run amok through your midst.
You are right to observe that unbridled, unconstrained, un-thought-out creations will crash, as so many of your own experiments and tests have done before. If you, my children, will ask me, I will show you how and what, and at what pace to build and develop. Yet if you ask me, seek me, I require that you listen more than hear, that you see more than look, that you feel and love more than just touch. I require that you then obey as I direct, I require that you build and create for mercy and justice, and to do this for every generation that will follow you. For you know that I lead and rule with transcendent Love and Power.
So much do I love you.
[1] See: “Tools to remove lie hypocrisy poison”, 7 June 2022
It is cold in the early morning while walking Luke, cold enough to make my bare hands tingle. The sun is just beginning to shine through the trees, and I know warmth is coming.
What is this thing in the sky we call the “Sun?” Scientifically we know it as some giant burning ball of hydrogen and helium. Astronomically, it is categorized as an “ordinary star”, the center of our little solar system, around which orbit the “known” planets. We know, with all our God-given abilities to measure and understand, that the sun is massive compared to us, as in this image of comparative size (not distance):
Despite how big our problems and circumstances are to each of us, we are each very small at the scale of our solar system. Yet our earth is so large compared to each of us that we cannot even sense our own rotation, our own orbit through time and space. Instead, our earth, our footing, feels ‘fixed’ to us, so the sun appears to rise, traverse the sky, and set.
Our God-given abilities to measure also inform us that our little earth is about 93 million miles from the sun. That’s so far away that light itself, at the speed which we think it has, takes over 8 minutes to reach us from the sun. The light and heat, the energy we receive from the sun is already in its past.
It is so bright that we can’t look at it directly, yet we are perfectly positioned by God to receive everything the sun has for us without burning up or freezing. The power of the sun drives our ocean currents, tides, weather, and every bit of the food we consume.
I was in a studio or computer laboratory, with banks of monitors everywhere. Standing at the back of the room, I watched and listened as a group of people with bad intent were dissecting audio and video segments, down to the millisecond. They were extracting and manipulating what had been spoken, to identify and exploit it for blackmail or fraud.
They were scrolling through long strings on the screens, looking and listening for exact words, tones, frequencies of what had been spoken.
There, there!” they were saying, as streams of spoken words streamed past. “There! That’s the stuff we can use! Get that!”
I knew I was in a very bad place but in the semi-darkness, could not find the door to leave. I did not want to be seen, and really wanting to get out of there, I forced myself awake.
Two dreams overnight, and calling on Jesus for rescue:
In my first dream, the world had seemingly fallen apart, there was only shadowy light, swirling clouds of smoke from burning, destroyed homes & buildings. The land itself seemed to be burning, and there was little or no food. People were roving everywhere looking for something to eat. I had gone out to look for food and had been swept into a gang or mob that was breaking into buildings to steal money, to buy food.
The gang had set upon a bank; there were glass doors and it still had electricity, so the lights were on inside. The contrast between the clean, well-lit interior, and the gritty dark street, with a dirty gang breaking in was striking.
The doors were breached, and we were inside, taking silver coins from “vaults” that seemed to be zippered leather pouches on the walls and in the floor. I had a handful of coins and just wanted to get out. My hunger was physically painful, and I was remembering the ones who were waiting for me to return with some food. But we were spotted, and the alarm was sounded. Immediately armed guards appeared, and I was being arrested, tied up and taken away.
I was shaking and terrified, and all around me there seemed to be walls of red and black flames. It was not blood-red, but an evil red. In my terror, I recognized the flames were a horrible satanic, demonic entity, and it was all around me.
I forced my eyes open, and the dreams stopped for a moment. I was scared, breathing hard, sweating. The instant I closed my eyes again, the dream-state returned, with red-black fire all around, and people taking me to a horrible place. Terrified, I began to call out the name of Jesus, to say his name over and over again.
I was saying “Jesus, son of David, Jesus Messiah, save me!” I kept saying it over and over, and when I thought I saw the horrible fire start to flicker lower, I forced my eyes open again. I stared out into the dark, asking “Lord, what is this?”
Again, when I closed my eyes, the dream-state returned, and I was back in the terrible place. I returned to chanting “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Messiah,” over and over. I have no concept of how long this battle went on, I just had enough strength to keep saying his name – until He came. Everything shifted, the red-black flames vanished as he saved me.
We went away from the scenes of destruction to some quiet place. He made me sit with my back to a tree while he made a small fire to warm us, and he sat with me by the fire until all the terror and fear left. There was only flickering firelight and Jesus sitting, talking with me.
“You are forgiven; Do not do wrong, for you are meant for something more. Now rest”
I fell into a deep, blessed sleep of safety and total comfort. Rest, as I’d never understood it.
While in this deep restful place, I had a second dream. I was far away from home in a sparkling shop or a sort of apothecary workplace. I had traveled there to get a set of seven essences or liquid spirits for Judith. The shop was low-ceilinged, beautifully illuminated through cut-glass windows, with twinkling, spinning light-catchers hanging down. There was conversation, murmuring in the background as I gathered up the seven crystal bottles, which were tied together by a fine silver chain around the necks of each bottle. They appeared to be a light-blue opalescent glass, with facet lines running through them. Each had a small glass or crystal stopper.
But one of the bottles began to leak, and it emptied out. I went to get help from someone there who showed me how to refill it; the essence was like liquid pearl. It leaked out again, until I was shown that the liquid itself could also help to seal the stopper. I gently daubed it around the stopper and neck of the bottle with my fingers, the essence leaving behind a fine dusting of shining particles. I put the seven bottles in a soft cloth bag, tucked them in inside my jacket, and gave my thanks and good-byes.
As I left the shop, someone was there to meet me, a friend who had some special telephones or radios in a nearby building. He helped me send a message to Judith that ‘all was well’, and I was on my way home.
First written Monday Evening, 26 December 2022 – updated 9 May 2023
For months, the Lord has been instructing me – gently but firmly uplifting my vision – to carefully consider concepts of size, speed, power, precision, scale, and more. He continues to turn all my science and engineering education into equations of the Spirit, and I am more grateful than I can express.
We are visual creatures, by his great and wonderful design. Our unaided optical observation (with any reasonable resolution) ranges from small details at the scale of our skin to identifying aircraft at 30,000 feet. Yet beyond that are infinitesimal and infinite, and concepts like forever and always. If we could gently blink over from the optical to another range or spectrum, what wonders appear: the immensity of molecules in a single drop of water, which rival the stars in the night sky.
In November and December, I heard the word “tsunami” used more and more, particularly describing God’s judgement, rescue and restoration. As Christmas approached with bitter cold and fierce winds, ice forming in the bay, some memories of working in Alaskan waters came to my forefront. I wasn’t (totally) surprised when the Lord pressed on me the story of the Scotch Cap lighthouse. Lighthouses and warning beacons are powerful metaphors for God’s protection and guidance, shining through the darkness and storms, ringing out warnings for safe passage.
The original lighthouse on the very southwest corner of Unimak Island, Alaska, was built in 1903, a wooden structure with a light 45 feet high. It guarded the entrance to Unimak Pass (pictured below), the easternmost open water passage in the Alaskan island chain. It is an extremely remote place, accessible only by sea, fierce, rugged and forbidding.
After many years of service, the wooden structure was replaced in 1940 with a steel-reinforced concrete structure, its light some 90 feet above the sea. Another 100 feet higher on the mountainside the Coast Guard built a radio-direction-finding beacon, along with power generators and crews housing.
During the midnight watch of April 1st, 1946, there was a massive underwater earthquake – at least 8.1 on the scale – 90 miles south of Unimak Island. The earthquake triggered a tsunami, moving 350 miles per hour, which was at least 120 feet high when it struck the rocky coast. The lighthouse was completely destroyed, and four Coastguardsmen were killed instantly.
An artist’s conception of the last moments of the lighthouse, with the tsunami bearing down upon it.
Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave, Who bid’st the mighty ocean deep Its own appointed limits keep; O hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea.
The hymn ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save’ was written in 1860 by William Whiting, who was inspired by Psalm 107 and its reference to ships and the sea.
Lord, help us understand what we cannot even imagine: your power and might which calms the oceans and makes them rise up, making waves that roar along at hundreds of miles an hour. Your power which stills the air or makes tornadoes or hurricanes. Your power which shakes the solid earth into trembling rubble.
Lord, in awe we ask: what will a tsunami of your Spirit look like or feel like?
Help us stand in faith through your tsunami Spirit, unimaginably fast, high and wide, spreading outward from your command like the ringing of a bell. In the peace that will follow, direct us to build again. Holy Spirit, make us each to be lighthouses, guiding and protecting through darkness and storms, our lights powered by your love.
