Shattered Glass: Confessions of a Multiple Personality

By Helen Metcalf

The Care and Feeding of Angels is a story so astonishing that it is hard to believe. It is as it was lived. Crossing back and forth through time and space, it describes a journey that goes beyond psychology and beyond religion to present the realities of life and death in the context of the many lives of the soul and the larger life of the Spirit. And, additionally, it is prophecy returning to the world after a long period of silence.

The book describes a journey that spanned more than thirty-seven years, and an epiphany that continues to this day. Much of it happened here, in this world, and much happened in the vast realm where all the memories are stored. It presents the simple songs of a single human soul, sung over thousands of years. And it is a true testament of Salvation as fresh as a newly harvested pearl, as old as time.

The journey begins with the family into which I was born and from which I escaped as soon as I could—the family that quickly shattered my young life and launched me on the other path that I have taken. From that early environment came the many faces I have worn and many lives that I have lived in order to survive. And then there is the person who I never was. Pieces, all in pieces.

Through sharing in this extraordinary tale, it is my hope that you will come closer to your own peace with life, as well as glean a glimpse of what is to come. I bring my story to you as a gift, knowing that you may not understand. But I had to do this. In the end, it is not I alone who wrote this book. The Holy Spirit uses my voice for God’s own purposes. So this book may change you, as it changed me.

Now, as I am gently returned to the world, I am no longer who I was. I come back not really wanting to, but I have this gift for you, and there may be others, too. The clock in the kitchen ticks the time away, moment by moment, telling me that it is time for other voices to tell you what happened to us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 20, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453518090

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Copyright © 2010 by Helen C. Metcalf.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

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Rev. date: 06/15/2022

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Wife

The Dream

Divorce

Courageous Heart

In California

Bonding

Baptism

Child

Mother’s Lament

Hope

The Work of Love

Gifts from an Ancient Sea

The Boy

White Marble Flesh

Gift from Father

Woman’s Courage

Mountain Cloud

The Fisherman

Out of the Muck

Into the Mist

The Seat of Change

The Fawn

Tuning

The Tragedy

Suffer the Child

The White Stag

Suicide

Awakening

Salvation

Child of Tartan

City Woman

The Wanderer

Orphan

The Hunter

Pride and Conquest

Fire

Evolution

The Will of God

The Fiery Furnace

Ascent into Magic

Where the Children Are

Collage

Bluebird

Shattered Glass

Dragonfly

Brownie

The Snake Sleeps Again

Pisces Man

Lord of Illusions

Kings

The Red Pony

Windward Ho!

The Goddess

Circles

Transformation

Silver Star

Autumn Feast

Lady Ellen’s Story

Solstice

A Car for Christmas

Highway

Child-Mother

The Green Ocean

Reversing the Fall

Fate

The Swan

Blue Note

Elephant Walk

White Wings Flying

The Red Train

Harvest

Inspiration

Violation

Temptation

Resolution

The Black Knight

The Experiment

The Tomb

The Moon

The Basement

Grounding

Deliverance

The Cave of the Blue Light

The Angel

The Woman Stands Alone

Family Reunion

Silences

Eternal Tree

Peace

Hell’s Angel

Night Flower

Acts of Love

Amy’s Story

Nuclear Distortion

Woman

Cain and Abel

Knowing

Crystal Star

The Void

Naked Lady

Footsteps

My Father Myself

The Cock Crows

Sisters

The Walking Dead

The Eagle’s Return

Living Room

Execution

Passages

The Seat of Power

Ego Talk

Earth on Fire

The Red Sea

The Warrior

Forever Me

Sea Sculpture

Beyond My Brother

Beyond Birds, Disks and Rings

Watercolor Ice

Breaking Free

A Simple Life

Conversion

Through the Window

To Be Forgotten

Prince of Fire

Understanding

Friends

Dark Star

Unfinished Journey

Fields of Power

Afterward

To Jennifer

In the sharing of our lives

Love and sorrow

Come together

As One.

Introduction

This book was eighteen months in the dictation and exactly twenty-nine years in the living. I thank God for warning me what was coming, or else I would have been utterly lost in the years that followed. It was a shock to encounter so many people in and around me and to remember so many lifetimes—others’ and my own. I was amazed to discover who and what we truly are . . . yes, even you. As co-creators with God, we all have long histories and many stories to tell . . . .

For some reason, God wanted me to go ahead of the rest and pass it on to others in advance of the General Revelation which is fast on its way. There is considerable wisdom here that goes beyond all traditional thought and belief, and thus is worth paying attention to. Most of us see life in the present as though sharply focused through a magnifying glass, while eternal truths dance in the back of our minds as fleeting images glimpsed through a mist, if we see them at all. Yet the mind holds the keys to understanding all the mysteries of time past, present and future. Then there is the Great Plan. And of course through it all there is God.

Wisdom is well worth pursuing on your own, if, that is, you can take thirty or so years out of your life to do it. But, because of the enormity of the project, I recommend rather that you read this book. The path is already laid out for you, and much of the work is accomplished. The rest, that which is privately and wholly yours, will come to you when the mist is swept aside and glass shatters at your feet; when all time comes together as one and it is your time, your turn. Maybe even when you read this book!

So, standing here as you are, my book in your hand, you have arrived, so to speak, at Heaven’s Gate. If you choose to go through, I wish you a thrilling journey and the holy peace which comes in the end.

Wife

The aged reaper drags his scythe across an unsown field. Surreal clocks begin to tick in loud thunks. Behind the applause I hear the church bells falling to the ground . . . . A loud crash breaks the dream.

Mourning is the morning of a new day. Mourning? A wedding is a celebration, and this morning I will become Mrs. Somebody, and I am not even awake yet!

Mother is wonderful in her tradition for getting rid of me. She throws her best party. Spartan in her way, she sends me off with a load of useless gifts and a solid thump on the rump. She doesn’t cry and neither do I. Father opted out of the whole business, looking noble as though I had punched him in the stomach. I wonder if he will ever speak to me again.

It seems that it all happened too quickly, like a ride on a rocket ship to outer space. Outside my parents’ worlds at last, I still feel a little drunk. In the year to come, the roof falls in on my past and buries it beneath a pile of rubble, to be forgotten. And I am not sure whether I wanted out in a hurry or was squeezed out like toothpaste from a tube. But I am in New York, and I am not their child anymore. I have a new family.

Carefully shaping myself into the World’s Most Perfect Wife, I move with a greater freedom than I ever thought was possible, at last doing some of the things that I want. My husband accepts my dominion as I shape it in the years to come. He needs a mother to replace the one he lost, I need a father to replace the one I lost: together, we comply. With three perfect children, graduate schools, teaching, and moving towards a career, I thrive on being Mrs. Somebody, and this becomes a wonderful respite in my life. In the misty cloud that hovers over the City, everything is the way I think that it is meant to be. I blend in, copying others and trying to fit into my husband’s extended family, and for a while, I am successful in everything I do.

For the first time, I can see the possibility of my life extending on like this into the future, but strangely, I shake my head at the image. Visiting with friends one night, sitting in a giddy circle, we play a new game, telling stories from our childhoods. Panicky, I realize that I have nothing to say. I have no memories before the ringing of the bells. None at all! Embarrassed, I awkwardly cover the gap with a lame tale that I invent on the spot, and the moment passes. But never again do I feel quite as sure as I did before.

The Dream

Striking starkly upwards in the hollow light that precedes the dawn, the three crosses stand as fresh memories of the passion that unfolded here only yesterday. The crowds have gone leaving only the dusty prints of foot and horse on the low hillside and empty plain. The early light echoes faintly of tragedy and majesty never to be forgotten or known again.

The woman comes alone. Clutching her garment against the chill air, she moves past the scars lying in the dust and presses bare foot to bare ground, ascending the gentle slope. Her footstep holds neither grief nor anger. My Child, she sighs to the silent dawn. My Child is alive!

With certainty and longing, she presses on to the bloodied markers that crown the hill. And if you could see her face, you would look into the depths of her eyes and ask her why, alone, in this place where maddened crowds screamed their ecstasy at innocent blood shed and lots were drawn for the remnants of a life crucified, why does a woman, a mother now, alone, return to the very place where death ruled so recently? But she would not let you see her face.

At the foot of the taller cross, set between the other two and slightly skewed in the morning’s fragile mist, she moves slowly as if not to trouble some small fragment of life that might remain in this place. Gently, she stirs the dusty ground with her outstretched toes. And if you could, you would cry out to her and send her home to tend her household. But she would not hear your cry.

Now she finds it. Gentle fingers which once knew tiny fingers playfully entwined in union reach down to touch the bright red and living drop of blood on the ground. She smiles, and the radiance of her face brings forth across the barren land the first full light of a new day. Another and another, the living drops of blood become a slender stream which she follows, moving quickly now, out into the world beyond the small world of her homeland. And if you could see her face, you would see a knowing that would make you stop in wonder and want to remember. But she would not let you see her face.

Her sigh becomes a song that drives away the strangled darkness of the dying night. My Child, she cries, My Child is alive!

Divorce

The church bells down the road begin to toll, counting backwards. Fourteen years later, the marriage ends. Something terrifying rises up inside. I set the barrel of the shotgun hard against my chin , and call for my husband. In the hospital bed in the middle of the night, a searing headache is unrelieved by anything they can do. Finally, I surrender into an empty sleep. Early morning, just as the light is beginning to fall through the windows, I wake up suddenly, completely clear-headed in my little bed. A Voice behind me calls my name. I look quickly around the room, but I see no one there. Right away, I know Who it is.

Slowly, the rubble from my childhood begins to move. Time passes. Through the swirling confusion of the years that come, memories come tumbling down like ash and rock and fire from an ancient volcano. An unseen hand moves my life, and events conspire . . . .

Other lives clamor for recognition. In a drugged haze, I begin to remember. My husband leaves with a younger woman, taking everything with him but the children. I don’t know how I’ll feed them, sick and outcast in this tight Lutheran town dominated by his family. The doctors tell me that I only have one year to live, but I put it out of my mind. I don’t know why, but I feel that have to move away. I call my mother. She likes divorces. I sell the house which I had lovingly made into a home, and which I will never have again. And I take the children. I don’t trust them to anyone else.

Different realities attack me: the past, the insanity of time all scrambled up, uncontrollable stirrings in my mind, and different persons emerging. This in the middle of the struggle for survival as a single mother, with three daughters and vague Ivy League diplomas, not able to work much of the time and never enough money. Passion and fear rule my life. Beginning to remember what happened to my childhood, I beg for my father’s help.

Crazily, we move from place to place, seeking support from family. My mother’s alcoholism is out of control, and we leave in the middle of the night. My sisters shut me out and, I don’t know why. And despite at least fifty letters, my father never replies. I don’t understand what is happening to my life. Shocked by my own memories, I am reduced to a state of confusion over who I am. The only guidance I can trust is my dreams.

On my knees, I cry, I reach out to God. Save my life and I will give it to you! In the hospital, I remember, Jesus called my name. This is all I know.

Courageous Heart

My face is bright and shining in a halo formed of a large, dark braid. I roll down to the left. I stand up and walk away from what is there, feeling exultant and victorious. What a Holy time this is, this time!

I made the decision in 1978. There was a cold, wet rain hanging in the air, an unfallen rain. I walked into the rain forest and came to a glacier that the mountain had shed for what must be a thousand years. I thought about the glacier, how it moves, how it grows in the winter and melts in the spring, but is never gone. And how it lifts so much matter from one place and deposits it in another, all the while carving out the gorge that becomes a river of rounded, tumbled stones and icy, gray water. I sat in the rain forest at the foot of Mount Ranier, and saw an image of myself, looking at the mountain with the stories of its many lives written on its face, like my face.

I had been in a high place at Yosemite Park, looking down at the gorge and the river and the mountains rolling away into the distance, and I felt a tremendous emotion choking in my throat. I had no memory of the first twenty years of my life. I knew what the doctors had said and the death sentence they had passed on me, but who would take care of the children? They had no answers for that. Suddenly inspired, I took the first step. I threw all the pills away, standing on the edge of that cliff at Yosemite. They said I would have no more than a month to live without the pills. But I said, No! And I decided to live.

I moved to California to save my life. I feel an appreciation for myself that I haven’t really acknowledged, for what it took to do that. Looking down at the monumental Yosemite Valley, I found a tremendous heart, a large and courageous love for myself and God that made the decision, knowing and not really knowing what the prices would be. Sometimes, I am awed at my woman’s courage.

A box of trash left behind on the East coast, the stuff I threw away, and all the proper options of escape that society offers—I left it all, entirely alone in what I was doing, knowing there was not one person who would understand among the people of my life, and not one who would help—so much is denial the accepted dynamic of life in that place. And so little is our understanding of life and death.

Henry called then. It was strange that Henry should call. Henry has been an odd person in my life. Sometimes I feel that Henry is my real husband, and I am not sure what that means. Possibly something unfulfilled in both our lives. He pops in and out, only briefly, as though someone taps him on the head in his safe, contented place. He comes briefly and does some small thing which is also some enormous thing, and then he fades away into his ordered life until he is called again. And he is so like and so unlike me. I cried out to God for help, and Henry drove me across three thousand miles of tears, with the children and the dog and two cats and a chipmunk in the back of the station wagon. And there in California a different life began.

I feel frightened now. Hands pour out a clear liquid, and I am bathed in a fluid abundance. The woman who is my mother and is also myself hands me loaves of fresh baked bread. The rain releases in the forest, and the water pours down into the valley, as I am given soup and bread and life, born of a courageous heart. And all around is polished silver. It is important to know who you are.

The steel washboard sits in the tub, set aside now. I look back at summer nights in Canada and vacations when the children were small, and I see the woman who is doing what she must. I walk in the woods by the lake, a different me, taller now, and I remember that I knew some small happiness here. I am grateful that the time that I was given, that my courage could grow for what would come.

My last child was delivered by a nurse who shares her name. There was no one else in the room. Nine years later, on my way to the hospital, I saw a rainbow in the sky—a short time before I left New York. The day was cloudy as it so often was, cloaked in a heavy overcast from the river, where you rarely see a rainbow in the sky. But I found in the thick tumbled clouds a chunk of rainbow for myself, as if to remind me of a covenant I had made. And I knew that He was there, waiting. I climb into the clouds, now, and take it down. I can’t leave my rainbow in New York.

I go to the rock garden to find the gold ring that I lost there. I put it on my finger, on my right hand! CHANGE! The young elephant dances in the woods, stamping the ground, growing larger. It raises its trunk and trumpets into the air, Gabriel blowing his horn. Fresh blood flows into me.

Comfort and compassion come to me as to one on whom the light shines.

In California

In New York, I taught school for seven years and was a director in the Medical Center. I wrote and consulted and developed the computer system for the hospital; and my salary rose to thirteen thousand dollars. I wrote and edited manuals, huge tomes to satisfy government standards. I managed all of the intake areas for the medical center. These are my credentials. Not much in my new world. In San Francisco, I hunt for work writing and editing, or doing anything; and in the strangest ways, God provides.

I figure out exactly what I need to support us and the doctor who is now a part of our lives. Then I put on my best red silk suit and interview for a job in San Francisco as the newly chosen president’s assistant, a job I will have to invent because it doesn’t exist. We begin to negotiate. I can’t afford the time for that, so I walk straightway into his office and plant my red silk butt on his desk. I tell him that he needs me. And I will do the job, whatever it turns out to be, twice as fast and twice as well as anyone else, I boldly proclaim. Driven to perfection, I am back in my father’s world. I never escaped it after all!

Not yet awake one morning, early before the alarm goes off, I hear a moaning at my side. I look over and see a child lying there. But she is not alive. Someone hooks up a transfusion to connect us, and my blood begins to flow. She moves a little and moans again.

Terror and a bolt of pain in my temples wake me up. I lurch out of bed and run to the toilet where I vomit yellow bile. Another migraine. Exhausted, I fall back into bed. The alarm goes off, and I have to go to work again.

For five years the children and I live like this. At six-thirty, the alarm breaks into my nightmare-filled sleep. I shower and dress for the city, and make the children’s lunches. I get them up and ready, and drop them at school. Then I drive across the Golden Gate Bridge to work. At work, I carve out a niche for myself, trouble-shooting anything that comes up. At five-thirty I head home again. At six-thirty in the evening, we sit down for dinner together. It’s like a memorial, all we have left of our old family life. We sit around the old dining room table, now squeezed into the kitchen, and we talk, together for a while.

As the years pass, we give up on dinner and home-baked bread and cookies. Teenagers are so busy with their own lives that it’s hard to keep the family together, especially without a father in the house. A daughter takes my place as mother, while I become the family work horse. A lot of the time, the children have to manage on their own, growing up much too fast, it seems to me. At night, I write for long lonely hours and cry for what happened to me until I float away into another world. Then the cycle repeats, with laundry and cleaning and groceries, and me in church on my knees, and not enough money again. We move from rented house to rented house—the ones that are on the market to sell because they rent for less money. I never know when the telephone will ring to tell me that we have thirty days to move.

I tell the doctor what I want. I don’t want your diagnoses and your pills. I don’t have a disease: I have a history. So just shut up and listen!

I begin with my mother and the divorce and how her lies ruined my life. Then the loss of my father, and my sister’s betrayal . . . . In the doctor’s office three times a week, forgotten truth begins to break through. I cry out to my family for help, to remember my childhood and what happened to me. My mother sends my letter back with a torn piece of toilet paper that says, Don’t waste postage on this garbage. The rest of them collaborate on a seven page condemnation of my entire life, and then turn a deaf ear to me—this even though they haven’t known me since I was seventeen. For a long time, I don’t understand. I didn’t do anything! I don’t know why they treat me this way.

As I remember things, I write them down, and as I need to I write to my now estranged family—my father, my mother, my sisters, I write to purge them out of my system. I don’t care what I say anymore. They don’t deserve the courtesy. I am cast out and cut off and I have no family, and no help. Finally I realize that is not a new loss. It all happened a long time ago. And despite their lack of sincere concern, I live in the fear that they will try to take the children away.

Towards the end of five years, I have two dreams that are more real and more powerful than any reality. In the first one, Jesus comes to me at night in a softly glowing light that opens up the darkness in the room. He carries peace like a garment that He wears. I feel as well as see His presence, but I am not afraid. He takes me to a window with a curtain on it. I sense that this will be about the future. He describes my life as it will be, but using the past tense as though it has already happened. I realize that time works differently in His domain.

Through the window, on the other side, a child skips happily down a circular drive in front of a large white house. Jesus speaks. She became a writer and an artist, He says, and everyone knew her because she went bare-breasted in the world. He shows me the face of a man I haven’t met. And this man dedicated his life to serving hers, He says. Then, just as softly as He came, Jesus leaves me to adjust to what I have heard and seen—and to His overwhelming presence.

A week later, He comes again, in another waking-dream like the first. I ask about the bomb.

There will be world peace, He tells me.

How can that happen? I ask.

He shows me a crib full of toddlers. These are the ones who will do it. They will break their parents’ power. He looks me straight in the eyes: I am coming back to the world. It is a pronouncement. He goes on. There will be prophets who will speak of what will come. He holds me straight in front of Him to get all of my attention. His eyes pierce into my soul. I want to use your voice, He says. That is all.

Terrified, I back out of the dream. I tell no one. I don’t know what to say. This was no dream. It was clearer than the day. Why me? I am not a religious person. I don’t know anything about God! Most of all, is this for real? I ask myself that many times over the years that ensue, only gradually understanding the reality of what He has said, as all things come into being. Jesus soon becomes my daily companion as I struggle to survive the tragedy of my lost life. Without Him, I would never make it.

Profoundly suicidal, in 1983 I find that I can go no further. Deep in the night, my blood surges up, again and again and again. I rush to the front door to unlock it. Racing against time, I dial 911 and then collapse on the living room floor. Through a heavy fog, in slow motion I tell the operator something and pass out again. I wake up to the dog barking in my ear, holding off a cadre of firemen, medics and police.

Put him in the bathroom, I gasp and the cloud descends again.

After weeks in and out of the Emergency Room, my doctor finally declares, That’s it. I’m putting you in the hospital. I don’t know what is going on, but you can’t keep doing this.

I am afraid to drive to work, suddenly terrified of bridges and I don’t know why. Nine, ten and a dozen times a day, my blood pressure shoots up until I fall unconscious to my pillow. My pulse pounds double-time. I feel like I have been plugged into a two-twenty circuit, and in a way, I have, as God connects me to a higher energy. After nine weeks, my body adjusts, although my pulse runs double speed for the next eighteen months. A special expert is called out of retirement, a psychiatrist who wrote a little known book about mystical experiences. He is considered very controversial, but my doctors can’t think of anything else. I am fortunate to have someone who knows of this man.

Dr. Lee Sanella comes and gets me. I quickly read his book, Kundalini or Psychosis. It describes exactly what is happening to me—something that is known in the far East but denied in this hemisphere. Like Paul in the Bible, I am helpless and nearly blind, held in a mystical experience, God’s captive. God speaks to me directly, and tells me to stay away from doctors and drugs and all religious influences including the Bible. He will show me what he wants me to know, and He doesn’t want any interference. I am a child in His hands, wide open and innocent.

The doctor takes me to a house where other people will take care of me and record the visions that come. Everything is provided for me and the children. An epiphany, the long healing process, and all of my history—past lives and present—all of this begins to fall into place. All of my mental constructs fall by the wayside, as a new version of reality emerges. This continues for more than twenty-six years, transforming everything that I thought I knew. Transforming even the Bible, until it all—life, death and purgatory, Jesus’ return and what is happening in the world now, how it all works and how it has worked down through history—in the end it all makes perfect sense. I no longer believe. Instead, I know . . . .

Bonding

I last spoke to my father when I was twenty-eight. He told me then that I would never see him again. He told me that I was dead: I didn’t realize then how much he was right. I went to the church on the corner and the minister’s house across the street, feeling a terrified urgency, knowing that everything would change. I was afraid that I wasn’t ready, that I hadn’t been properly baptized. I was telling a friend at a dinner party, and this fellow came over with a martini and said, I will baptize you. And I baptized my children in the bathtub, all three at once. I did it by myself.

I see Christ now, standing there. The message is clear. I sit down heavily and I ask, What are you telling me?

He sits down beside me. He says, I am telling you not to worry. You gave them to me in that moment. I have been with them ever since.

Still, I am upset and I put my hands over my eyes, worried about everything I have done and the consequences to my children’s lives. And I feel I have failed as a mother. He kneels down and takes my hands away. He looks straight at my face, and I see deep into his eyes. They tell me that there are reams and volumes that I do not know. Then he pats me on the head and leaves. I know He holds the children as three who are His.

I have a little silk scarf that my fair child gave to me for Mother’s Day. It is pink and white and blue with musical notes in the center. In it is a message, an acknowledgement, perhaps, that she understood, and maybe even a thank you from her to me. I gave her early to freedom for her life. I heard Jennifer’s voice on the telephone this morning, unhappy with her father and wanting to come home, where the love is, she said. And my little one still looks younger, in her father’s world now. I hope that she will call when it is time for us to be friends again.

When the children were small, I drove for hours through the deep snow, taking them to ski. I drive there easily now in my mind. We come to the ski slope and the lodge, and unload the picnic basket and the skiing gear. I can see the smooth slopes from the balcony on the front of the club chalet, where you can sit in the spring and get a sunburn on your face. The children ski on their own now, getting on the lift to go up the mountain. They wave back at me, and I wonder if they will be all right, on their own like that. I leave, then, accepting that my job is done.

There is a another child with long, dark hair. A strange child, she might be in a religious order of some sort. She sits at a small wooden desk, bent over, writing carefully with a stylus or a feather pen. And, you know, she might be me! A Christmas wreath with a bird in the center rings the bells for my birthday—there is a significance to these things. An arrow points to the right, for me to move on. I follow the switchbacks up the mountain, and the path is steep. I come to the top in a shepherd’s headdress with a shepherd’s staff, a shepherd boy in Jerusalem. I sit and play a simple shepherd’s music on my flute.

The Piscean Age. The words are written on the dome of the heavens with the symbols of the stars, and Christ standing there. I see a star that is mine, and the timing is significant for me. Yet I wonder what this could mean. A color comes as an answer, and I cross over light gray and blue, crossing a mark on the road of my life, and passing through barbed wire shaped like an X stretched between two posts. I continue down into an open field, uncertain what to do. I look up and turn in a circle, and I become a child with golden hair playing with the lambs. Learning about the lambs, I feel as though I were in kindergarten. An ancient symbol fills the sky, a shaft of light crossing it. I do not know where it comes from, but it moves across the heavens faster than light, expanding from a distant point on the horizon with the arm of a cross high overhead, enormous and incredible.

Christ, the Son comes to me. Raise your right hand, He says, and I will teach you how the blessings flow.

I feel awed. He is so close to me, so close. A bond is there and more than that: an agreement and reunion, and something promised is fulfilled. I become larger. The air around me crackles, filling with flames, as illusions and fantasies fall away.

Baptism

I remember when they crucified him, the Man who came in goodness. I was young, girl or boy—it doesn’t matter—a street urchin, scrawny with starvation and dirty from sleeping in the alleys. A child with no home. I heard the noise of the crowd approaching. The people were lining up and down the street to Calvary Hill where the criminals were hanged and nailed to their crosses and stood up for everyone to see. The crowd was screaming insanely, laughing, raging and weeping all at once, surging forward like a tidal wave. I worked my way in to see.

The man was walking heavily, bloodied and bowed over under the weight of the rough wood cross. He was a large man, taller than the rest. He stopped just a few feet away from me to catch His breath, and right away I could tell that this was no ordinary man. Then in a flash, it was just a flash, He looked right at me. I felt his eyes piercing into mine, and suddenly a new light flared up inside of me. I gripped my belly. A warm glow inside took away all of my suffering . . . .

He turned away then and moved slowly past, while the crowd raged on like wild animals, screaming even louder when they stood Him up on his cross. At first, I was transfixed. And then I couldn’t watch. I struggled to get away, shaking in fear. I couldn’t watch that man die. I hid in the village until nightfall. That night, I died of cold and starvation in an alley, but I held onto the light. This was my baptism.

Child

Child, my name is listed with the twelve. Trapped in a cave of frozen whiteness, I feel so sad. Michael, the Archangel, waits with me. The light fills the cave, reflecting off the ice surfaces. I know where the source is. Around behind an ice wall, the light is so bright that it could blind you or give you sight, and scribes wait to write on the windows of time.

Michael calls me to wake up and remember another home. A gentle gray color floats near. I reach up to put it in my pocket. It is mine. Together, we begin the journey through the cave. Looking around at everything, I lose my way for a while. Then I see that he has stopped to wait for me. He reminds me that we are going somewhere important and I must pay attention. We climb step by step up the long side of a pyramid that rises up out of sight. We climb to the top, all the way to God, Himself, to the Source of everything. Side by side we kneel down, sinking softly in the light. I am a child and absolutely pure.

I say goodbye to old friends. There will be new places to go and a work unknown to me. I am taken by the hand and directed to write a book. I am afraid to write it. My attention is drawn to my feet where a monk in a soft gray woolen cowl measures my step and marks places in the dust. He shakes my hand, and I move on.

A long robe like the gown of a priestess is laid across my shoulders, with a purple ribbon falling loosely from my neck to the ground. I go to the right and kneel again. An angel places a halo on my head, and I begin to remember. I made this commitment before. The Son of Man comes to fill my hands with invisible things, while in the misty stillness I hear the cry of the dove that passes overhead. Peace, an unborn child, calls for life.

Mother’s