17. Ezekiel: God strengthens.
Awake! Awake O sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! Expand!
I Am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine.
I felt a strange prompting to read Jerusalem by William Blake recently. The prompting came because I had a Songs of Praise earworm for about a week. I kept catching myself humming England’s green and pleasant lands, and dark satanic mills. The latter being thematic for my twenty plus years in a northern city. I looked it up online, and accidently began to read the longer poem: Jerusalem and the Emmanation of the giant Albion. It was so trippy my mind could only comprehend about ten percent. I soon stopped trying to comprehend but carried on reading. There was something in these words and I needed to listen. As I read, I began to understand Blake as a prophet, intercessor, heaven-walker. Friend. And my imagination heard him loudly:
“Awake O sleeper”.
William Blake saw. He prayed, wrote, and wrestled hoping humanity’s imagination would wake up. That we would see. That when we awoke, we would begin to create and build our imaginings on the earth we had inherited. I don’t fully understand his words, but I love the Spirit in him.
It’s not enough just to see. Seeing can destroy you and destroy others. We need our seeing to be infused with truth. We need hope to sustain us.
I need hope to sustain me today.
I see the four-fold man. The humanity in deadly sleep
And its fallen emanation. The Spectre and its cruel Shadow.
I see the past, present and future, existing all at once
Before me; O Divine Spirit sustain me on thy wings!
I stumbled my way through the fifty-three, yes fifty-three, pages of the poem. The more I read the more I remembered Ezekiel. His book is epic too, and only familiarity with him as a person, gives me the discipline to make it to the end. My mind turned to memories of him. The Spirit said:
Cassie. Your imagination only works in one direction. Set your face towards me.
Time is being reset right now. I see Jesus with the winnowing fork (Matthew 3:12) in his hand. It’s a kind hand but a painful process. As the ugliness that remains, in me, and around me, is exposed, I feel overwhelmed. It is tempting at times to set my face towards the stories, the warnings, the devastation, the fear. I can get lost there.
That’s when I heard “Cassie“.
“Let’s take a peek into Ezekiel“, He said. Just a peek, because He’s kind and He knows my head is too busy for forty-eight chapters of prophet-speak. So I peeked, or like Ezekiel:
I looked…
…I saw an immense dust storm come from the north. (1:4)
The dust storm enveloped the strangest vehicle ever described. The image is immortalised in language just as trippy as Blake’s. My attention is drawn to the direction the dust storm came from: the chariot, the presence, the throne, They come from the North. Remember, He says, what the north represented to my people: a dark place; a place where evil resides and advances from. But the first thing Ezekiel is shown is that this is the direction God’s flying universe-and-presence-holding vehicle comes from.
My imagination needs this truth: darkness is not an indication that God is absent. There is nowhere He does not go or is not present. The vehicle Ezekiel saw is forever etched in my mind. Travelling round the world, through skies, streets, setting down on our roads and gardens. The whole universe is cradled inside its spinning wheels.
On the banks of a foreign river Ezekiel saw this living chariot. In exile. In a place known for deep darkness the Spirit entered him and set him on his feet. (Ez 1:28) I’m sure in exile, in a land that represented all things evil, he needed to be reminded he wasn’t exiled from God. He wasn’t far away from the activity of the Divine. On those banks his imagination is reset. His eyes are refocused.
God is in Babylon.
I close my eyes to try and imagine the riverbanks, the solitary man, the spinning gyroscopes covered with eyes. Suddenly I’m in Jerusalem. I recognise the land from a thousand photos and films I’ve seen. I see ruins and rebuilding and I feel the weariness. I remember the Spirit took Ezekiel back here, and I move forward through his book, through ch 8. I remember. I close my eyes and feel his longing to be home, to see home. Home wasn’t perfect, but it’s a good old distance from the deeper darkness. When he was taken away, he had no idea if he would ever return. I look round with him, eager, remembering. Suddenly we are inside some buildings. These aren’t small homes but the places the leaders gather in. The leaders are hidden away. They are not hidden taking time to imagine restoration. They are hidden indulging themselves with abomination. Ezekiel saw. He had to endure seeing. Ugly, repulsive, dark, twisted things. He had to endure seeing it in people and places he loved and in a measure he was shocked by. (Ch8)
Is God here in Israel?
I wonder how Ezekiel processed what he saw in those dark rooms. If the images lingered. If they burnt as deep into his mind as the memory of the chariot he saw on the river bank. I wonder if he cried out for the Spirit to sustain him on his wings, just as Blake did.
Ezekiel was prepared for some of the things he would see. He knew how close to home the ugliness was. He was warned that the scorpions might be in his bed. (ch 2:6) He was told not to be afraid, and I’m grateful we get to see him wrestle with this instruction. He was bitter at times, and didn’t want to walk the path in front of him (ch 3 ) Yet he kept on walking. I wonder what truth he built his resilience on. I wonder how he kept setting his face toward hope. As I wonder I read ch 2:9-3:3 and I start to see the door set in front of Ezekiel:
Eat the scroll
A scroll is a book, a slice of time. Sometimes it contains a lifetime or more. It’s a lot of detail, a lot to take in. The words on this scroll were loaded with sorrow. Sorrow when eaten hits the gut with sweetness. I wonder how sorrow can be sweet to our stomachs. I wonder if, once it’s passed your initial recoil, then your gag reflex, you’ve actually swallowed your fear. You’ve partaken of the worst and found the best. This helps me understand what Jesus meant when he said:
Blissed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. (Matthew ch 5:4)
Engaging with sorrow, lament and mourning. That is the doorway to comfort. Comfort brings connection, engagement, a knowing of Him in a way no other door does. And knowing is union with God. And union with the 3God is bliss. We learn to leave fear at the door when we engage with sorrow. Like Ezekiel, we might wrestle at times with reluctance, even with bitterness. But we recognise we’ve faced worse.
My imagination only works in one direction. I turn it toward the One who is present in both Israel and Babylon. Toward the One who lavishes His creativity on restoring riverbanks and the hidden places, where darkness proliferates.
I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend;
Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me:
Lo! We are One; forgiving all Evil; not seeking recompense!
We are Mutual in love divine. Me in you and you in Him. Together we live toward the promise that the 3God is making all things new. (Rev 21:5) I think this is what Blake wanted us to know. It’s what I needed to know today.
Leave a Reply