Art by Norman E. Masters

An elderly grandmother wrote me (we are friends of 14 years thru the local writer's group). She's a lifelong believing Christian (Quaker, by upbringing) whose body has been severely deteriorating for the past 11 years. Her life is so much pain (backbone, hips...) that Jack Kevorkian can be seen as an Angel of Mercy to her. She has to take an allergy shot before even eating anything because she is allergic to all food -- which immediately swells her throat shut when she tries to eat... Her detailing of what she's gone thru the past 11 years is a genuine Horror Story... She prays to die...

She wrote, in part, "...for the last 11 years I have put up with more pain than I ever thought I could and have managed to survive; but now I am just plain tired and would welcome some instantaneous waft into Heaven. Nobody wants to hear that..." (referring to her children, grandchildren & friends...)

For her, & those like her...

Friend~~

There does come that time when Death is to be welcomed, to be warmly embraced, when Death is the Divine's Dark Face of Mercy...

If, indeed, the deepest prayer in our heart is for mercy (whatever form that mercy takes -- for ourselves, too) may the Goodness That Is and ever Divinely Shall Be answer your heart's deepest prayer -- mercifully.

Blessed Be. And may Eternity smile the good Blessing you most deep-heartedly SEEk...

There is that which you have prayed for, and the Promise will be fulfilled...

The Seed of the Promise grows as the core of our lives -- & the Seed is the Essence of Divine Love, itself...

The holy flame of life never dies; it just takes new residence elsewHere...

These words are but a shadow of the flickering flame of a candle, not even a foretaste of the delicate, absolute sweetness & the sublime Radiance that will be yours -- as the sacred fire uplifts your aspiring soul out of this body of dust & pain... to sing again, holy, holy, holy, wholly at one with the pure essence of Divinity permeating your existence...

Into the boundlessness of forever... immense new immensitudes which -- just the seeing of -- in unending love -- is a sacrament of wonder...

In deepest tenderness, to be embraced, clasped closer-than-close to the Living Bosom wherein beats the Heart of Eternity, the Divine Heart of Christ, while your own heart sings everjoy joy! JOY! in a surging awareness of the ultimate meaning that is behind the mystery of life, itself...

O golden luminescence, to linger in this Heart of hearts -- Love's sacred shrine, love-glad, heart quivering in a bliss of laughter & swelling/upwelling/overwhelming joy... & you will feel the Fountains of Paradise flowing thru you... & overflowing... o exquisite ecstasies -- unimagined before -- & in earthly flesh & mind, still unimaginable!

Vast musics... the Canticle of Eternity... & the very songs the stars, themselves are singing -- in vibrations of Higher Light... & you will be able to hear & feel & see & kithe those sounds, those celestial songs, in the heightening wonder!

Here we get but briefest glimpses of mere fragments of forever... like a shadow of a shadow of the splendor... For a moment, yet, the transitory imaginings that are but a shadow of the Divine Reality to come...

But the Deepest Dreams of the Divine-into-time (& each of us is one of those Divine Dreams-into-flesh, ascending with the sacred fire out of the flesh into a Larger Reality) are made wholly & holily real -- in Vastnesses Beyond the imaginings of Time, in the StarFields of the Infinitely Eternal...

Endless creativity is possible, tHere, in these energy fields of Heaven, & each pure Child of Divine Generativity becomes a co*creator with Divinity... blending & shifting, shimmering & rippling, corruscating, iridescent, eternally dynamic, joyously creatively playing the *psychon* flux, the ever-generative energy fields of Heaven...

You will fully SEE! ...& it will all BE!

And you will press your lips to the Eternal Fountain & the tingle of the sacred kiss of the Eternal will shiver-quiver thru the Light of your essential being like the ecstasy that births the worlds!

And you will delight in the Living Truth of Forever & you will first walk, & then you will rise, & then you will soar in the Eternal Light shining as warmly bright as

Evermore...