This week, the essay "Patterns of Paradise" under 'Essays' in the website. 

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          Last week we rode the concrete waves ever eastward to the rocky hills and stony shores of New England via Buffalo, New York and the nearby wine country of the Finger Lakes, a beautiful area that belies the grime of the City to the south. We went to visit the remnants and new members of my family as well as the old campgrounds and sites that have become an integral part of this trip, including the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Mass. Set on a hill overlooking the Berkshire Mts. and the town itself (made famous to the world through Arlo Guthrie’s epic ballad, “Alice’s Restaurant”), it is where a group of priests in the 1940’s rescued proponents and manuscripts of Sr. Faustina from Poland, a task that eventually led to the sanctification of Faustina and the institution of the prayer of Divine Mercy in the Catholic Church. It is a tranquil and holy place splayed over dozens or even hundred acres that make one feel ‘holier than thou’ in spite of one’s real self. I say this because, to visit, we had to first stay the night before in a nearby campsite in a state park, a place set against steep mountains and encumbered with a bunch of pesky East Coast rules that make one feel less than charitable.
 
            One such rule concerned firewood. My wife got out of the car to sign in and surprisingly got into a several minute conversation with the guy manning the entrance booth, something that is normally closed by an 8 PM arrival. At one point he asked, “And we have firewood for sale if you need it,” to which my wife answered, “No, that’s all right, we bought some at that farm just down the road.”  Doh! She got a lecture about transference of firewood and such, which I suppose is OK because the guy would not really know if we got it just down the street or not, but after driving all day, this was just another pain in the butt that was not welcome. The other rule in the campground was even worse: Alcoholic Beverages Prohibited. Of course, having camped most everywhere in these United States, we knew the drill:  open the beer bottle in the camper, pour it into a Solo cup, and sit back at the fire like you’re chugging diabetes-causing soda pop.
 
            And that is exactly what we did, burning verboten firewood all the while, even as we planned on visiting a holy site the following day. Next morning we woke without a felony charge, and after a particularly steep mountain hike, we slid down to Stockbridge as innocent-looking and meek as you please.      
 
            A question came back to me some days later, however, probably when I was knocking back my third cup of coffee while navigating the Jeep and our little trailer back west through the Poconos: was this kind of scofflaw activity a sin? The firewood really was from the nearby farm, and we hadn’t known of this Massachusetts’ law, but the drinking part we knew about all too well from other prohibition-minded states. We long have figured that the content of the law was more important than the letter, and we figured that the content had to do with keeping out raucous parties and preventing littering  and fights, none of which we ever did, at least as far as anyone could notice. But that’s what we have always surmised. Maybe some of the law-makers were members of the Harper Valley PTA and really did believe that the mere presence of alcohol was a sin; maybe they thought they should keep the very possibility of youth being corrupted by the presence of a beer can from ever happening; and/or maybe they believed that “spirits” were evil spirits regardless that would pull campsites into a whirlwind from Hell with the mere twist of a wine bottle screw-top (we do not usually get the best for the woods). What do we really know?
 
            So we were scofflaws who thought we knew better than officialdom, which is a sign of pride, which is the deadliest of sins. Yet I do not feel bad about it in the least.
 
            I think most readers would agree that this is small potatoes and has little to do with any sin that a god who creates universes with a single word would care about. But it does bring in the concept of us mere mortals achieving perfection: at what point can we say before God, “good enough?” At one point does a lenient attitude become a slippery slope, where any rule or law or moral code might become a matter for our personal interpretation? To prevent ourselves from falling into the infinite depths of relativism, where can we feel safe in drawing the line?
 
            It truly is not so easy to decide, for as good as we might want to be, we don’t want to be snarled in the red tape of human bureaucracy for the few years we have on earth. There are rules, after all, and there are rules, something I discovered years ago while fixing a ruined house into which we had sunk our life savings. At that time I was 40 years old, and had lived almost exclusively for 20 years in the world of ideas and concepts cooked up by pot heads and university professors to the delight of us wannabe eggheads. We argued about everything and often sought an agreeable compromise. House fixing, however, was real: a beam poorly placed could cause collapse, and a drywall poorly sanded would look cheesy. The people who had previously lived there were drug-addict renters who had cleaned the place out of copper wiring and tubing after they had been served eviction notices. I had to replace those, and the worst was the tubing: the soldering had to be perfect or it would leak forever. At one point I had asked a carpenter who we hired to do some difficult work, if I could let a particularly difficult spot leak “just a little.” He was horrified. You don’t let pipes leak, just as you don’t cross uninsulated wires or fail to caulk windows. You simply should never argue or conceptualize yourself out of this sort of physical workmanship.
 
            We might say, then, that certain sorts of moral laws are non-negotiable, too. We know the biggies, for they were etched onto rock tablets nearly 5,000 years ago to serve later as THE guiding light for western Asia and all of Europe. But even these we tinker with. Adultery? Sure, many fail sometimes with this, this sin of the flesh being the most human of failings. For some, though, this has become nothing more than a Massachusetts drinking law, easy to dismiss as backward, patriarchal and oppressive. We were also given the law against dissing our mothers and fathers, which has now become par for the course, and taking the Lord’s name in vain, which I admit to doing almost daily. But even as we break one or another of these laws regularly, most still generally agree that such actions are wrong. At least we are trying.
 
            But others have become entirely negotiable, and these laws are not nothing-burgers, either. For instance, some types of genuine theft have now been deemed OK by the law in certain cities as long as the goods are valued at less than $1,000 per visit. In Milwaukee, the mayor has proclaimed that adolescent “joyriders” should be allowed two or three car thefts apiece before they are prosecuted. To say that these get-out-of-jail-free cards are paths on a slippery slope is to say that an Olympic ski-jump is a playground bump. Personal property might create social differences, but it is what makes the world function. Without it, why would anyone work, or at least make something great? Santa Monica, California, is now almost devoid of stores, and the Magnificent Mile in Chicago is now more a mine field of theft and violence than a high-end shopping area. Talk about leaky pipes.
 
            Murder is the heaviest of crimes, and it has not only been legalized but praised in its form of abortion. To say that this isn’t murder is again like letting the pipes leak. It may seem like nothing because the victims can’t speak, but it will swamp and ruin the woodwork of society eventually just as leaky pipes will ruin a house. I say this as one who once was very comfortable with abortion. From a scientific perspective, one that I once had, the fetus is only a clump of barely distinguishable cells. But there is a plan behind the cells, and they inevitably grow. What might not appear to be human will almost certainly become human. We might as well say that, since babies are not capable of rational thought, they are not fully human and can be killed, too. The arguments about this are far too long for this essay, but in the end I believe that this is one moral problem where there really is nothing to argue about. Again, pipes should not leak.
 
            Most distorted by us – and by far the most important - is the first commandment, to “have only one God” before us. This is not part of our human penal code and should not be, but it makes adherence to all the other commandments a breeze. It was designed in its literal meaning for the pagan people of the time who worshipped statues of cows and such, but it was and is also meant figuratively for those of us who might put things of this world ahead of God. This is what most of us do most of the time. It is at the root all crimes, for to put God first, we would love him above all else, and thus would adhere to all those other things that he wants. And, as Jews knew and Jesus made explicit (Mark 12:30-31), if we put love of God first, we would also love our neighbors as ourselves. Obviously, if we did this, there would be no crime. Halleluiah. This barely leaves us any moral wiggle room. Going back to the commandment against adultery, for instance, we can imagine that someone - children, parents, or one of the spouses themselves - is going to be hurt by these actions eventually.     So it is that even a scofflaw like me has to admit that following God’s rules make things better. Leaky pipes might be tolerable for a while, but in time, something will be ruined, if only just the water bill.
 
            Rules. Without God we inevitably get mutable laws given to us by those with ulterior motives. They are subject to constant manipulation and eventually lead to chaos or tyranny. That is why we need sacred law, which can be known as true through both divine revelation and lots of time. Over decades or centuries, have we found that it (the sacred law) does not play favorites? Have we found that it leads to an orderly life that allows for the raising of children and the contemplation of God? Overall, has it proven to be fair and just for all? In the case of our commandments, I believe the answer is obvious.
           
            As for me, I’ll stick to the sacred rules as much as possible but still tiptoe around those manmade ones, especially those made by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  On that bug-filled night, I found that sitting before a fire of local, if not state-approved, wood and drinking a few cold ones after a long day made me happy. This made my family happy, and thus everyone around us happy. There’s love of neighbor in there somewhere, I just know it, hiding behind the drywall among the leaky water pipes. 
 
             
 
               
   
 
   

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          One of the great gifts our recent ancestors have given us is the rails on which to put bicycle trails. Those same people would be dumfounded that we would dismantle rail lines for recreational purposes, as most back then had so much exercise that it often led to early deaths. But we are privileged, and many have found that the steady rhythm and effort of bicycling on flat trails well away from cars and highways not only provides exercise, but an empty space in which the mind can travel.
 
            The ideas that we come upon in those empty spaces might be surprising. One such idea occurred to me out of the blue concerning the vast changes in thought brought on by 19th century scientism – which happened in the same era as the construction of our now-abandoned rail lines. I believe that the three greatest changes in group thought occurred with the popularization of Darwinism, Marxism, and Freudian psychology. Until I sat for an hour peddling under the leafy canopy of a rail- to- trail, however, it never occurred to me that one of these – Darwinism – might fundamentally cancel out another – Marxism. I do not want to belabor this, and so will put it into compressed form:
 
            Darwinism postulates that natural selection, not God with his various means, is the maker and mover of the mortal frame of all living things. We all are aware of this mechanism, encapsulated in the phrase, “survival of the fittest.” The natural process, in this view, is overall a rugged struggle between and among species, where some live to reproduce and others don’t. There is no supernatural element involved in moving species forward in time.
 
            Marx is in total agreement when it comes to the supernatural – or, rather, the lack of it, as shown by his famous quote, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” In his philosophy there is nothing beyond the physical in the universe. However, when this philosophy speaks to the human social situation, it states that Man’s struggle with his fellow man is due only to the unequal relations of classes. Remove that inequality, and life would be paradise. But in a purely material world, how could that be? According to Darwin, life would still, and always has been and always will be, a struggle that inevitably leads to winners and losers. No paradise would be possible in this world except by an intercession of a supernatural source. By giving all power to the mechanics of natural forces, Marxism makes its goal of permanent, unforced peace impossible.
 
            Perhaps that is why there is currently a trend to deny grounded biological facts about such things as gender: the thought being that if we as a race can deny a part of it, then we can deny the whole, including its dog-eat-dog manifestations. In a world without Spirit, only then could a man-made utopia survive.
 
            The seat of a bicycle, I recently found, is also a good place for solving spiritual problems. We have recently discovered U Tube on our TV, and have been drawn to some videos of people who have had near-death experiences or who otherwise believe that they were brought to the ‘other side.’ In all of them – let me repeat, ALL – they experienced a life review, or what writer Christine Watkins calls in her book by the same title, the “illumination of conscience.” This is nothing new: I can recall watching cartoons in the 1960’s that have characters comically recall this review. There is even an old saying among those who have come close to death, “I saw my life flash before my eyes.” The stories told in the accounts, however, go into much greater detail about these life reviews, and for all but a few, the related experiences are not comical or petty. Beyond ordinary time, people see every action they have ever taken in great detail, as well as the reaction of all those around them. For instance, let’s say that a man called a girl “fat face” in 7th grade. In the life review, he might discover that this girl was so hurt by this that she became bulimic, fell into psychological illness, got into drugs, and then died. Horrible stuff. In the review, everyone is shown what great sinners they are, and then are left to their own personal judgement. Most conclude that they should go to hell. Most, however, are given a second chance, and subsequently change the course of their lives for the better. 
 
            My wife and I trembled before this possibility, especially since the accounts seem by their ubiquity to be authentic as well as unavoidable. For myself, I can think of dozens of actions I have taken – or have failed to take – that have hurt others. In a close review, I would probably discover hundreds more. This brought to mind the reason I left the Catholic Church in my late teens: because I was sick and tired of feeling guilty all the time. I wanted to be free and happy, and so rejected the Church as a fraternity of bitter fun-killers who were hopelessly out of step with the times.
 
            But according to these stories, including many by those without religion, the Church had it right. There is no way out of our guilt. We have to face it sooner or later- preferably the sooner- so that we might change for the better before it is too late.
 
            As I pedaled on the shady path that day, then, I was suffering from melancholy over the terrible inevitability of this confrontation with myself. Slumped as I was in this spiritual funk, I began to do what I always do on hikes and bikes these days now that I have reconverted – recite the Rosary. It was then that something very powerful happened. I cannot say that what came to me was a real miraculous vision, but rather an interior one that strongly hinted that the Virgin Mary was present. By those who have experienced her in real, full-blown images, she is spoken of as a presence of indescribable beauty and love. I did not see her like that, but do believe I experienced the love of her presence. This love is not like what we might have for a dog. It is relatable to the love we have for our small children, but still it is different. It is intangible but all-pervasive, like a beautiful smell, and it brings with it a feeling that we have known this love forever but have somehow forgotten it. As tears came to my eyes, I understood why people cry at such experiences: it is as if they have finally returned home after a long and difficult journey. This is often followed by another thought: “My God, why did I leave in the first place?”
 
            And it was in this field of inner vision that the answer to the illumination of our guilt and punishment came. “Don’t let it bother you,” it said; “this is only small potatoes, a hard but necessary lesson. Understand that this love you feel is just a hint of what there is in full. God isn’t there to condemn. He wants you way, way more than you might want him. He is yours just for the asking, just for saying ‘yes.’” That’s it. The rest will be done to bring you there with incomparable wisdom.  
 
            I felt great the rest of the day. This was not a stand-on-the mountain moment, however, but only a moment on a bicycle, nothing (I was told) that was meant to set me apart. This is for everyone. And more; I recalled how the people of Thessalonica (I think) started to party hardy after Paul told them they were saved. “NO!” he said. ‘You do not have the right to do as you please now. Rather, you are given the grace to do as God pleases.’ And so I understood: once it is known that the forces of Spirit are rooting for you, you should make the effort to root for them. The earth-bound side of us will always be there to pull us back, but the cosmic forces will remain to teach us to not be seduced by the laws of the jungle. Somehow, that was how we left home in the first place. But if we continue to say “yes,” we will be brought back.
 
            The road of my past took me far from home in my teens. This is not unusual. But the world turns. Somewhere along our way, we are allowed to discover that the love for the prodigal son or daughter is never exhausted.
 
            As circumstance would have it, this essay has brought us back to Darwin and Marx. Darwin was right and Marx delusional about our reality on Earth. The world as we know it is dog-eat-dog and will never bring us to utopia. In its de-spiritualized guise it will never give us the kind of love that a part of us always seeks. Like every pilgrim that has ever been, we must travel beyond our ordinary world to find what has been hiding within right here at home, forever and ever.   
 
 
             
             
 
            

Today, a new essay, "The Immensity," under Essays in the website.  

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          There is a prayer that goes in part: “Oh God, by the light of the Holy Spirit you have taught the hearts of the faithful/ grant that in the same spirit we may be truly wise…” This recalls the celebration of Pentecost 50 days after the resurrection of Jesus, when the Holy Spirit visited the apostles as they sat huddled and afraid in the Upper Room. Without reading or meditation, they were given an inside vision of God and the truth about existence, so much so that they burst forth from their hide-away to spread the word in spite of every form of persecution. Such is the impact of the knowledge of God that we not only do not fear death, but do not fear a very excruciating death. In the prayer above, we ask for this holy knowledge. Given the worldly fate it brought to the Apostles, we might guess that to ask for such knowledge is insane.   
 
            Still, I have added that prayer to my regimen as one of my favorites.  Knowledge, after all, is what drives us all, whether it be knowledge of engines, of our political opponents, or of cosmic truths. The later has always been my primary objective, and so, like an explorer who must suffer starvation, misery and often death to satiate his desire for discovery, I lightly accepted the possible downside to knowledge. And just as young adventurers must learn, accepting the price should not be taken lightly because someday, sooner or later, it will be exacted.
 
            So the first major payment – I am certain there will be others – was demanded recently in a very curious way. We had just returned from a two-week pilgrimage to Spain and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which had focused nearly all our intentions on the wonders of the Holy. We were slipping back into our routine with a hike in a nearby park when very intense chest pains stopped me in my tracks. After several minutes they began to diminish, which is when my wife went to her iPhone to search for the reason behind the symptoms. With upper center chest pains radiating to arms and shoulders and jaw, the quicky i-doctor said it could only mean one of two similar things: pectoral angina or a full-on heart attack.  In either case, it was a matter of the heart, and one doesn’t mess around with an ailing heart. Even so, I waited nearly one month as the pains continued before contacting the real doctors.
 
            As it goes with older people who have insurance, one thing led to another and then to the nuclear scanning machine that demands an injection of radioactive material and costs a fortune. This was done twice, once at rest and once after a heavy work-out on the treadmill. Oddly, by the time the tests were done, I had already concluded that the pains were not of the heart but from digestion issues. A few days later, I was told that odd irregularities were detected, but nothing of a fatal nature. I was advised to see a cardiologist non-the-less, who will want to do more things no doubt, but I’m done with that. It seems that I can push away the fear of a near-future death from heart failure and perhaps live long enough to discover the joys of dying from stroke or cancer.
 
            But all that is almost exclusively of interest to me. More importantly, what came to me during that month between the onset of pains and the tests was an agony of unexpected emotions. While my conscious self was resigned to the “fact” that I would have to undergo major surgery or perhaps even die and soon, something within myself and beyond my control was not. It worried, it was astonished, it could not believe; it dragged me through a nightmarish twilight of anxiety as weird and uncomfortable as a bad psychotropic trip. How could this happen to ME? How could such horrors ever come to disturb the wonders of ME?
 
            Oddly, these soundings from my interior were the best things that have happened in a long while. They showed how meaningless nearly everything outside of family, Spirit, and life itself was; and more, they proved the shallowness of my faith, and also the potential power that is in faith. I had never questioned the eternal nature of the soul, but the stark contrast of this belief to my animal fear made this belief more pronounced. It also highlighted – in spades – the essential necessity of this belief in our lives. This was an obvious sign that I had more work to do. Still, it showed that gaining higher ground was not only possible but natural, for this higher ‘self’ existed within, around, and beyond the animal fear.  Deep inside I knew, as we all know, that the better part of us shares in the eternal quality of our Maker. To bring this reality time and again to the conscious self is essential for dying a good death. I am certain this can be done. Thus is the value of crises.
 
            A day after the test results, we set out to La Crosse, WI, to participate in what is being called the Eucharistic Revival that will culminate in a huge gathering in Indianapolis this July.  For us, the event began with a walk across a Mississippi River bridge that took us from Minnesota to Wisconsin, moving ever eastward. As we walked and the chest pains came and went, I was told that this day, June 7, was the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. What a coincidence. It also happened to be my birthday, a calendar-driven symbol of birth, continuity, and inevitable death. As we moved closer to the building where the speakers for the event would be, we saw a friend standing on a corner where we were supposed to turn. She said hello and wished me a happy birthday. Behind her was a priest who heard her and exclaimed, “It’s my birthday, too!” Odd as this might be, this was the first person I had ever met in my entire life who shared my birthday. Our friend asked that he give me a blessing, which he did. He first dipped his hand into a small container of holy oil, which is used for blessing both the newly baptized and the dying.
 
            ‘Make for yourself a new heart,’ the Bible tells us again and again. ‘The law shall now be written in your hearts’ Jesus claims. It has always been about the heart, about our deepest self, and how we must come to realize its connection to God and eternity, our deepest reality. To ignore this call to live from the heart is to live in constant disarray, our happiness dependent on every moment that fate and fortune throws our way. Even if we get nothing but the best, there is nothing to stop ultimate defeat, the loss of everything that depends on the charms and things of this world.
 
            To make a new heart, we must experience in full the pain and uncertainty that this world brings. I don’t believe that there is any other way to wake us from the dream -world cocoon we have created from our routines. There is nothing routine about death and dying. We are not safe here, and no routine will save us from the annihilation of our cocoon. But we are made for the eternal, and sometimes we are shown that this is true in the most imaginative ways. Sometimes it happens that we find that our birthdays are linked to a sacred heart that can heal our own; and sometimes we get a surprise visit from an angel who shares our own birth and offers us rebirth into a world without end.
 
 
             
 
           
 

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          I must start with a double-edged apology: One, I may have written part of this story in another essay already, although I looked into the archives and could not find it; and Two, if I did NOT bring that story to you, I apologize all the more. How could I not? What is wrong with me? So forgive me either way.
 
            Ahem. Anyway, this is a story with deep roots, delving into my personal archaeological record way back to 1974 when I was a young, idealistic, and incredibly stupid 20-year-old. I had physically left college – I had already mentally left it a year earlier – to hitchhike up and down and sideways and across America to find some sort of luminous ideal community or heavenly abode (see my book, Dream Weaver, on Amazon and Barnes and Nobel). I did not find it, and I now can readily understand why. To say that I was not worthy of it is an embarrassing understatement, as even now in my harmless old age I could only hope for something of the sort through the infinite mercy and grace of God. But I did have my adventures during that time, and one of them, quite by accident, involved Bigfoot.
 
            In brief – I could go on for a long chapter as I did in the book - I was hitching late at night in central California with a sailor on leave from San Diego on his way home to Walla Walla. We were about to give up and sleep until morning on the side of the highway when we heard a thrashing noise. Looking towards the sound, we saw a large man/ape six to seven feet tall leap from a stand-still over an eight-foot high cyclone fence bordering the road. We heard a high-pitched scream when he landed on the other side, then a bit more thrashing, and then nothing. This memory was made especially clear because the sailor began to insist that we pursue the beast with his jack-knife, because “if we kill it and show it to the world, we’ll be rich and famous!” I was aghast at both the possibility of murder and the risk of being killed ourselves. I was able to talk him down and somehow we went to sleep a bit later and that was the end of it. This story is true, Scout’s honor.
 
            I have never seen or heard Bigfoot again, but just last September or November – I have forgotten which – I heard OF him in a very curious way.
 
            I was staying at our cabin in the UP and drove a few miles north and east to hike the trail to an old, restored lighthouse up from Hurricane River campground. There in the parking lot were two odd – as in dorky or geeky – 40ish- something men milling about their car and a pile of camping and hiking gear. They did not look the outdoor sorts, but what did I know?, and off I went on an hour and a half hike. Much to my puzzlement, the men were still there when I got back, still milling about in what I now understood to be a long moment of confusion. I couldn’t resist, and so put forth the question, “So, you guys going off on the trail? How long you going for?”
 
            They looked at each other in conspiratorial silence, and then one of them offered, “We’re not sure. Maybe this isn’t the best place for us.” The best place for what?, I queried, in what must have been a really sincere manner, because, after a few more looks and a deep breath or two, they ‘fessed up to their motive.
 
            “We’re scouts for a documentary company wanting to do a series on Bigfoot. We’re not sure we hit the right area here.”
 
            “Well,” said I, “what exactly is it that you look for that tells you you’re in Bigfoot country?”
 
            And they knew: “You can see their partial nests under the trees, broken limbs placed in such a way as to mark their territory…and more.”
 
            “Oh,” I probed some more, “and what’s that blow-up rubber canoe you have?”
 
            They grinned. “We’re thinking of paddling our way to Isle Royal. Maybe that’s the best spot.”
 
            Isle Royal was at least a hundred miles away from where we stood, way off in the western portion of Lake Superior, a lake wild enough to sink the Edmond Fitzgerald. I told them with all sincerity and with some considerable intensity that they should absolutely NOT try to canoe to this island unless they wanted to die. I then told them that I fully believed in their quest because I had seen Bigfoot nearly 50 years before in central California. I went on to sketch out the story. They were rapt.
 
            More than rapt. They gave each other that conspiratorial look, and then began to pick up their gear. “We have to get going,” they said before getting back to hoisting their load – including, I could now see, a large camera stand. I understood. In dealings with the mysterious Bigfoot, one goes on such things as coincidence. My story was the nudge from the cosmos that they needed. It was humbling to know that I had been used in such a manner.
 
            Ah yes, coincidence. Less than a year later – only two weeks before this time in which I  write – I was back up that way with my son outside Munising. Lunchtime was near, so we decided to stop at the pasty shop that was becoming a familial haunt. Outside, they had a life-size plastic Bigfoot where we, and everyone else, posed for pictures, one attractive woman even sitting provocatively in his lap. The perks of fame. Afterwards, we picked up some groceries at the local and, for some reason, I asked the checkout girl, “Do you think there are Bigfoot here, or is that just a gimmick?”
 
            Diplomatically keeping a straight face, she said, “There are many things in this world that we don’t understand.”
 
            “Oh, I believe there are Bigfoot. I just don’t know about up here. Way back in 1974 I was hitching in California and saw one very clearly.” I followed with a brief summary of my story.
 
            Her detached look changed. “You’ve given me goosebumps. I’ve never seen one, but a lot of people around her have.” I left as we both gave each other knowing nods, as if we were part of a special club of people who really KNEW.
 
            Days later, lunchtime came around again as we drove through Menominee, the southern gateway to the UP. We stopped at a pasty shop again and again found numerous commemorations to Bigfoot. I told the counter girl that the pasty shop in Munising had the statue and such and she told me, “Yeah, Bigfoot is really big up here. They have a big convention on them in the summer. Place is full of these guys.”
 
            Then I understood: In this part of the country, pasties, or meat and rutabaga and/or cabbage pies, are associated with the Upper Peninsula. The UP is now, or at least wants to be, associated with Bigfoot, for reasons real or commercial or both. Pasties and Bigfoot and woods and mosquitoes and a lake big and bad enough to swallow a huge barge, then, are all conceptually held together like meat and rutabaga in folded dough. All of it comes back to the oddly different and the wild, which all points to the UP, which, by the way, is also an area in desperate need of more tourist dollars.
 
            Of course one wonders…money, geeks, documentaries, the willfully gullible…But I know what I saw. How can I say that others have not? What’s more, no less than many leaders in the Catholic Church DO believe in such things as Bigfoot and aliens (which seem to go together), as well as angels and a whole host of demons and daemons, both evil and otherworldly. Some believe in the possibility of faster-than-light travel and of aliens, but more in the otherworld or worlds, or what we might call different dimensions. They know they exist because the ancients have talked of such things in the Bible and elsewhere, and God is not constrained in his creation and in his knowledge. He may do whatever or however he wants, and he may grant the grace (or curse) of special sight into his creation to anyone he wishes.  
 
            Overall, though, I have come to this point: from psalm 90, “Seventy is the sum of our years, / or eighty if we are strong, / And most of them are fruitless toil, / for they pass quickly and we drift away.” It is all, all of our shared reality, a shiny leaf, a drop of dew, a spider web dross. We have no idea really, and we pass quickly from our bewildered state into another we seem not to know at all. This is so; this is real. This is more real than Bigfoot or this computer, and we won’t know it and don’t live it, almost none of us, almost not at all. We are finally put like geeks into a blow-up rubber canoe to sail an endless lake to an island where the strange and marvelous exist. Unlike our geeks above, though, we will make no documentary, claim no fame, and, most of all, will have no choice.
 
            Finally, I must add: if you go to the UP, have the pasties. Get the ones with both rutabaga and cabbage if you can, or with rutabaga alone rather than cabbage. Take your picture with Bigfoot. And never stop marveling at the great, seemingly endless lake that will stretch before you.
 
             
 

​ 
          I was doing it again, for the third time to be exact, and it was hard to fathom why. The annual Walk to Mary, from the church of St Joseph in Norbert College, Green Bay, to the Shrine of Our Lady of Champion, is stated as being 21 miles. It is really 22.5 – and boy, those extra yards are noted towards the end - and it is broken at mile 14 for a bus ride to get past the highway system on the south end of Green Bay. It is very pretty the first 7 miles along the Fox River, not so pretty the next 7, and wide-open corn country the last 7 (or 8 or so), which can be more challenging because there is no cover, none what-so-ever, those last miles. By then, the toll is made vivid – sun burn, dehydration, muscle cramps and blisters, blisters, blisters. You stare ahead down the long road and see no end in sight. It will never end. You cannot believe you are doing it and vow that this will be the last time.
 
            That was me, fer sher. It was worse this time because I was walking with injuries: a healing Achilles tendon, a bad knee from rock jumping in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a touch of sciatica in the left hip, and, worst of all, age. I had recently experienced heart-attack like symptoms which may have been gas but were suspicious enough to cause worry, and I was still recovering ever-so-slowly from the effects of two weeks of bad sleep with travel and inconsistent food.
 
            Oh, we had fun the night before: the barbecue house served great stuff and had a splendid choice of ice-cold drafts. I had two large ones and life couldn’t be better. It was all bon-vivant, even at 5:30 the next morning as we hustled to get in on the preliminaries at St Norbert’s. But at about, oh, mile 7 the reality started to kick in. The rejuvenating energy of the morning coffee was now showing its teeth by turning into jitters, and each mile got longer and longer. Fun became an inconceivable concept. An unwelcome sense of annoyance crept in, old-man stuff that couldn’t be sloughed off. Mild to middling pain, not enough to end the epic but enough to make it miserable, gave me a limp that would drag on for hours. By mile 17, all I could think of was that cold beer; by mile 20, all I could think about was ending the misery before the gathering thunderclouds turned into driving rain and deadly lightning bolts.
 
            At that point, thoughts became different. I really believed that I if I had been struck by lightning, it would be directly from the hand of God, and I would either be given super powers or would rise up, up, up to a martyr’s heavenly reward.
 
            Alas, there was no such luck. Rather, we ended up under the vast tent canopy that had been placed adjacent to the church so that the several thousand walkers could all join in on late-day Saturday mass. We had gotten there so late that there was no time to go to the bathroom or rest on the abundant grass that surrounded the small, unassuming Shrine of Our Lady of Champion. Besides, within 5 minutes of our arrival, the rain began in earnest, coming down in such torrents that at times we could not hear the (very good) singing from within the church. 
 
            The wind picked up. It got cold. The mass went on and on as we were made to stand endlessly even as our legs ached, our bodies shivered, and our feet screamed. Then something very odd happened. As I would learn later, I was not the only one affected.
 
            I will not go into the special nature of Our Lady of Champion here in detail, but only relate briefly why this place is special enough to get thousands of people to punish themselves with this long walk.
 
            Adele Brise moved with her family from Belgium to Champion in the mid 1800’s when she was just a child. Shortly after, in 1859, she received a vision of the Virgin and a message telling her to go out and become a teacher to children so that they might read the Gospel. She did, becoming a nun and forming with others a group that educated the immigrant youngsters in the area. With funds gathered by them, they had a chapel and dormitory built on 5 acres of land in rural Champion (ie, the middle of nowhere, which it still is). On October 8th of 1871, the lumbered-over area on the other side of the bay caught fire (at the same time as the infamous Chicago fire). The fire was so large and hot that coals flew across the bay and engulfed the Champion area in flames. With even the creeks boiling from the heat, people took refuge within the 5 acres of the chapel. Next day, everything was destroyed right up to the border of those 5 acres. 3,000 people in total were killed in the fire, including all the animals left behind by those who sought refuge. Everything and everyone were saved, however, within the chapel boundary.
 
            In 2010, the Catholic Church proclaimed the site “worthy of veneration.” In 2016, it was officially designated a national shrine to Mary, the only one in the United States. To commemorate the former, the Walk to Mary was started in 2013. 300 people attended the first; 6,000 the last. This year, the name of the shrine was changed from “Our Lady of Good Hope” to “The National Shine of Our Lady of Champion.”
 
            As said, with the exception of the portion of the old chapel that is still at the site, there is nothing spectacular about this place physically. The small church that had replaced the chapel was expanded by a basic pre-fab construction, and the nicest of the few other buildings there might well be the gift shop. Several acres are dedicated to a walking rosary that is bucolic and peaceful, but certainly not special enough to merit a several-hour drive. Nothing, really, in the physical nature of the Shrine merits a long drive, let alone a grueling, all-day walk. Yet thousands take it up year after year in increasing numbers.
 
            I had not really thought about the oddness of the whole enterprise during the walk, but as I stood freezing under the fraying tent trying to hear through the rain and thunder, the “why” of it landed on me unprovoked with stunning clarity.
 
            It came with a vision of Heaven. As I try to write about it, the facts I thought I had known now have become scrambled, but it went something like this: without losing vision of what was all about me – the tent, the thousands of people, the pouring rain, the chill wind – I had a broad interior vision of a landscape lit up in white crystal. Trees, grass, telephone poles – both those within and outside my mind (or so I recall) - were lit with a radiance that sang joy, that gave joy, that promised in the fact of its very being an endless joy. There was nothing in this world that could compete with this joy. It was self-sufficient and complete. It was a true happy place. I have no idea how long it lasted, although it did not seem endless, and I have no idea how it came and how it went. It was and then it became a memory all in its own mysterious way.
 
            Holy Toledo! What the…? The pain of standing in the cold was still there, but now it was more of a trifle than a misery. The mass went on, the Gospel was read, and then the bishop of the diocese, Bishop Ricken, began his sermon. After a few opening words, he presented us with a question: “This place is suffused with the holiness of Our Lady and her Son. You have sacrificed so much of yourself because of this. Many of you have come with requests. Tell me, how many of you have already had your requests fulfilled? Please stand up if you have.”
 
            I did come with requests, as most did, and none of them were fulfilled as far as I knew, except for the fact that I had made the full walk in spite of difficulties. But then it occurred to me that I was wrong – that I did indeed have my greatest request fulfilled. What was the other stuff - my interior verbal requests for this or that – compared to what I had received? I had learned with certainty that everything else was small potatoes compared to the vision of heaven. Not unimportant, but small. This knowledge alone placed the cornerstone of faith within my grasp.
 
            Of course I stood up. At least 20 others did as well. Apparently I was not alone with my vision. Then the bishop asked, “And who here expects their requests to be fulfilled in the future?” Practically everyone else stood up. Said the bishop after this, “See the power of this holy site? It is true. We know it is true” (all quotes paraphrased).
 
            He is right. There is something really special about this unassuming place where so many were miraculously saved during the fire, and which was miraculously rescued from obscurity 140 years later. How do these things happen, these visions, these miracles? What is this hand that guides us through epics and eras and tragedies and histories? What is this unimaginably vast power that actually has the time to care for and call to each of us?
 
            After mass, we all turned to find one of the dozens of buses standing nearby to take us back to the parking lots or hotels where we had left our cars. I pulled my raincoat closer, but quickly found that it was unnecessary. Just as the rain had waited for mass to start, we found that it had stopped suddenly right at its end. From there, all was fair sailing into the night.   
 

​ 
          What do you watch on a Sunday evening with rain pelting the roof and nowhere to go? The possibilities on Netflix and Amazon and Hulu are limitless. A particular beauty, “The Librarians,” caught my eye, advertised as “adventures galore, secrets even more!” or something like that, which did get me to thinking: just what DO those mousy women with cat-eye glasses do at night when their hair comes down?
 
            But no. Incredibly, instead I clicked on – for both myself and my suffering wife – “Freud’s Last Therapy Session” featuring Sigmund Freud in his last days in London during WWII, where he met with famed Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis. Anthony Hopkins plays a domineering Freud who nearly cleans Lewis’s plate with his raw, scientifically-based assessment of Lewis’ conversion from atheist to true believer.  “Fairy tales!” he says. “How can a man of reason believe in this nonsense?” Although Lewis has an answer for everything in his books, here he seems to have lost his voice before the aggressive, self-assured Freud. So much so, that I had to glance at my wife now and then to see how she, a true believer herself, was taking it.
 
            It did not look like she was taking it well, and for good reason. The questions it raised in my own mind, however, made me watch with fascination. When Lewis feebly recounts his past arguments for atheism with his friend and colleague JRR Tolkien, he tells us that Tolkien pushed him to investigate the facts about the historical record of Jesus. That, and some personal experiences, convinced Lewis. We know the ultimate argument he would have had to confront: because Jesus really existed and said pretty much what the Apostles said he said, one would have to conclude that Jesus was either a liar, a madman, or exactly who he said he was. For the first, there were thousands of witnesses to his miracles, and no sane man would allow himself to be martyred, as the apostles did, for a lie; for the second, his inscrutable intelligence in the face of his critics negates any idea that this man was insane. This leaves us, as we all know, with only the third option.
 
            Freud did not listen to this argument, however, but rather talked of how silly this all was in the face of quotidian reality – it is, we might have to admit – and what a nasty god ‘God’ would have to be if he did exist. “Look at the suffering!” Freud stormed. Retorted Lewis, “Men, not God, have created our suffering.”  “Oh yeah?” replied Freud, “What men made my daughter die of the Spanish Influenza when she was 27, and her daughter die of tuberculosis at the age of 5?...I only wish I could  meet this monster and confront him on my death!” (all paraphrased)
 
            At least Freud did admit in the end to not understanding reality. That should have been a big opener for him for the entry of divine truth.
 
             Yes, the film did not allow Lewis to answer as he should have in many cases, but it did continue to push me to think about additional arguments for and against the belief in Christ and God that I have read. The notion of God being ‘all love’ while allowing the brutal realities of our world to continue is, of course, the biggest impediment to those who might be brought to belief. There is an answer to this, however, with two parts. The first, to which Lewis alluded, is the fact that men are themselves evil and bestow much of their suffering on each other. The second is that, through the story of Adam and Eve and the tree of good and evil, we learn that humanity caused its own separation from God by exercising the gift of free will. We all share in this separation, and it excludes no one, not children, not saints, and of course not sinners. By removing ourselves from the full protection of God, we opened ourselves as a whole to death, sickness, suffering, and of course our own evil.
 
            At the end of the film a note is flashed to the viewer, telling us what most already know: that Freud’s writings and research changed Western civilization forever. This is true, but how did it change us? His studies correctly uncovered truths that we hide from one another and ourselves, exemplified horrifically in the Oedipus complex, but incorrectly correlated that with our lack of souls. We were, for Freud, only thinking animals, doomed to frustrated sexual lives imposed upon us by society. He also understood that it was necessary to chain the demon within, even as it created neurosis, but the world never learned to what extent that “chaining” should be. The world took his discoveries of our hidden sexual desires and frustrations, then, without caution. From this we have gotten what we have today – broken families and growing sexual dysfunction as people try to fill the hole within themselves through sexual expression. What many do not understand is that sexual need, as with any physical need, is ultimately endless.  More, as Freud refused to admit, it is not our only or even our greatest drive. What society has created from his writings is a wrong-headed attempt to fulfill itself with what will never fulfill. It (society at large) is behaving much like a dog endlessly trying to catch its tale. Round and round it goes until, theoretically, it drops dead from exhaustion while solving nothing.
 
            Additionally, Freud’s studied failure to recognize Man’s connection to, and separation from God (he had ample opportunity, being raised in a strong Jewish family) sunk him, and the society that followed him, into a morass of ultimate meaninglessness. Instead of understanding that the universe was clearly created by a creator that logically cared for its creation, he pushed God away out of anger, leaving himself and his followers – many of us – alone with our broken and deeply perverse selves. There being no God, there is no truth but what can be ferreted out by a limited scientific method. With that, we have been allowed to toss off significant portions of traditional morality in an attempt to appease our never-ending psychological needs. Here we see the dog again chasing its tale, much as our society comes perilously close to spiraling into a dark pit from which it might not return.
 
            The writers and producers of the film exhibited the same myopia as Freud, even as they made genuine attempts to give both Freud and Lewis equal standing. We are allowed to sympathize with Lewis for his need for God and heaven, but in the end are warned against actual belief. As Freud said, God and heaven are fairytales suitable only for people with primitive or childish minds.
 
            It is an idea that exists in many of our political and cultural leaders today. But they are only resisting the actual evidence, just as Freud did by refusing to consider the importance of transcendental experiences among his patients (and thus his break with Carl Jung, who famously DID acknowledge this). So do most of us, at least at times. In this, we are showing our fallen nature, for our “fallen-ness” is not to be found so much in our ‘naughtiness,’ but in our failure – in our subtle refusal – to see beyond the flat world that Freud helped to create and perpetuate. It is this blindness that unites us, a blindness that comes with our separation from God.
 
            Lewis perceived that his periodic feelings of inner joy could be correlated with the real presence of God. We can see from his writings that he believed that this spiritual space elevated him and can elevate us above our worldly cruelties and twisted complexes. Freud refused to acknowledge anything of the kind. If we are to believe the film, this was done not out of a scrupulous compilation of his studies, but out of disappointment, hatred, and pride. We cannot follow his lead. It not only leads to a dead end, but leads to death itself.
 
            Freud’s view of the human being is the perfect reflection of our shared brokenness, but we are so much more. It is not Freud’s unearthing of our inner broken selves that will save us and the world, but rather the re-discovery of our higher, spiritual being. That is what the longing for the spiritual path has always been about.  
 
           
   
 
           
   

 
          We had no idea what was to come. It started with a casual browse of the U Tube channel, where we happened to notice something about a place in the Cantabrian Mts. of northern Spain called Garabandal. I had briefly heard of it before, where 4 female children in this tiny village of shepherds supposedly had visions of the Virgin from 1961 to 1965. For reasons unknown to me, I had dismissed it a while ago because the name carried the slight odor of fraud. Just for kicks, though, we decided to click on the video and were surprised by the facts. Indeed there had been fraud on the part of the spokes-girl of the 4, Conchita, but it was understandable in context. The visions and spiritual ecstasies filmed and documented were absolutely genuine, however, and – shockingly to me – the messages were almost exactly what the 6 visionary children in Medjugorje would recount nearly 20 years later in the early 1980’s. We were both intrigued.
 
            Shortly after, our church held the annual retreat where I have become the default guitar player. During certain periods we have an “intermission” with others running the retreat, and it was there where one of them mentioned how she would like to return to Medjugorje. I replied, “I would too, but I would like that trip to include a visit to Garabandal.” A day later, my wife and I got an email from a pilgrimage organizer stating that she had put together a trip to both Garabandal and Medjugorje. A day after that, she said that we would have to act fast, as there were only three positions left. As anyone of faith knows, we took this to be a sign (yes, it is how we think) and ‘signed’ up, money and time be – er – darned. A few weeks later, we were on our way.
 
            There is too much to tell in one or even three essays about those two weeks, but I can summarize the primary interest of most of us there: that, according to the visionaries of both places, a big-time change is supposed to occur within the lifetimes of at least one of them from each place. This change will include a time of saving grace in which we will all see ourselves as God sees us (in Garabandal, they called this an “illumination of conscience”), followed by a punishment of sorts if a great number of us choose to ignore the warning. Conchita from Garabandal is currently 75. The time just might be close.
 
            Most of us know that something strange is afoot in our world today and that we are heading for very different times. These will, unfortunately, not include flying cars, but they will involve AI and the possibility of a world-wide security state. These different times might be very bad indeed. For us pilgrims, we look to the shocking refutation of traditional morals – as in childhood gender transitioning and gay pride months and drag queen dancers in the libraries and open-ended abortions, etc. – and we believe that something on the order of Sodom and Gonorrhea will soon play out; that is, that because of increasing moral evil, some sort of purification must take place. Afterwards, we believe that we can then look forward to a “permanent sign from God” that the visionaries from both places predicted. What that sign will be only the visionaries know, but it supposedly will be indestructible and unquestionably the direct work of the Holy. It will harken a new and better era.
 
            With that much information back- loaded, I now will bring us forward to Medjugorje, to which we flew after a week in Garabandal. In all three of my visits there, we have stayed at the hotel – a supremely modest hotel – of one of the 6 visionaries, Mirjana. There, she helps serve food and interacts with everyone as freely as any other person. At present, she is experiencing severe back pain, and so often has a tired look on her face, but still she is the model of pleasantness and even joy. For most pilgrimage groups, she holds a Q&A on certain mornings, something that she has done so often that her interpreter tells us now that there is no question that she has not heard. For our Q&A, that did not bother me. If she had already heard the two questions that I had ready for her this time, all the better – she would be prepared with a suitable answer.
 
            The first of the two had been mentioned earlier to me by another person in the group who, for some reason, refused or forgot to ask it of her when the time came. Even though a little voice told me to forget about it, I had to ask it myself, and did. The reception was chilly.
 
            “The visionaries of Garabandal said that they would have a permanent sign from God after an illumination of conscience. Will it be the same as the one we are supposed to get here?”         
 
            Her answer, with a stern face: “Yes, we are supposed to get a permanent sign from God here.” Period. It was only later that I learned that she NEVER answers questions about other vision sites.
 
            The next question I asked had arisen from earlier that morning. I had gotten up before everyone else and had gone downstairs to the entrance and anteroom. Alone, I looked around and found a Bible in English on a small table. On a whim, I did as Evangelicals often do: flipped the Bible open to a place chosen by chance, which I presumed to be the domain of our Lord. There, I came upon the story of Ahab and Jezebel and their fight with the anointed prophet, Elijah. This had been a time in the history of Israel when the leadership had fallen into idolatry. As usual in these times in the Old Testament, a prophet (Elijah) was sent to warn the leadership that a continuation of such would end the protection of the Lord and bring horrible consequences.
 
            So, taking that as my cue, I brought up the belief that I think we all had, framed now in the context of Jezebel and Elijah: that an enlightenment that served as a warning would come to us from God, which would be followed by a horrible punishment if we did not heed the warning. As I had embedded this question in the Bible, I felt that she could not refuse to answer. As it turned out, she did and she didn’t.
 
            With a deep breath that was almost a sigh, she said (I paraphrase) into her microphone: “I cannot think in terms of punishment with the visits from Our Lady, but only love. She comes with such overwhelming love and tenderness for us, for each and every one of us, as the perfect mother for us all. She only wants us to know this so that we will act from this deep and perfect love. She knows that it is the lack of love in this world that causes the bad, and she wants us to embrace this love and do only the good. With this we will create the world that we are intended to have.  So think only of this, not of punishment. Think only of this and you will know the beauty of God and live in the love that He has for all of us.”
 
            She said several other things of the same nature, and then with a sad but caring look finished with something like, “That it what I have known from Our Lady. It is the most important thing that we can know.”
 
            While her answer does seem evasive – a possible punishment had been foretold by her, after all – it really does get to the heart of the matter. In this context, the story of Elijah and Jezebel may be seen as it truly is - an inspired parable. From it we learn that when a society forsakes the moral basis from which it once prospered, it becomes weak. When a nation becomes weak, it becomes prey for a greater power, and eventually loses the greatness it once had, or even its existence. There does not have to be direct divine intervention for this to happen. Rather, this sequence is as natural for human societies as it is for sheep that become prey by straying from the fold.
 
            And so what held us together as pilgrims – the sense that a great change is coming due to our society’s rejection of traditional values – had been proven to us in the best possible way. For we were told that neither God nor Mary wish us any ill will, nor are they the sources of any future misery. Rather, we are, or could be. The Warning – an illumination of conscience that shows our true moral state – would be a love offering from God. Because we also have the gift of free will, the rest would be and is up to us. Either we turn to embrace the divinely given immortal truths or we face the negative consequences. While miracles are welcome, and indeed seem necessary right now, we should already know what to do without the need for a jolt from the supernatural. Humankind has long been shown the results of societal actions through the writings of Moses, the teachings of Jesus, and the oft-told story of Rome’s decline and fall. If we only realize that we are simply – no more and no less - a part of history, we will understand that safety lies behind the shield of our immutable and inspired values. As long as we remain there, we will not be in need of the phenomena of visions. Rather, such happy events would appear to us only out of a loving desire to chat.   
   

​ 
            Hanging near our dining room table is a reproduction of the image of the Virgen of Guadalupe that was placed on the tilma of the Aztec Juan Diego in 1531 Mexico. I look at it every day as a reminder that this world is surrounded by miracles. These miracles themselves are reminders that the world we live in is not the only world that there is. They remind us that not only is there another world, but that this other world has more power and is thus more real than the one we live in. I, for one, need this reminder, not only every day, but nearly every minute. This world has such a blinding effect, and such a binding effect that it is only through sheer will and the existence of miracles that I can keep my head above its shallow waters: shallow waters, but deep enough to drown in.
 
            It has not always been so. In reading Guadalupe and the Flower World Prophecy (by Joseph Julian Gonzalez and Monique Gonzalez), I am brought back to the reason I decided to study anthropology. It is in the accounts of primitive, ancient, and archaic societies that we find again and again that the primary concern for many of these societies was (and still is for some) encountering God or the gods, both to appease them for favors, and to find a way to join them in eternity. From the aforementioned book Guadalupe, for instance, we have this poem from the pre-Columbian collection of Aztec poems, “Cantares Mexicanos:” ‘It is not true/it is not true/that we came to live here. We came only to sleep, only to dream.’ Clearly, the poet understands that this world is only an illusion in comparison to what else supersedes this world. And clearly, there is a longing in this to find that other world. This is exemplified in another poem from the “Cantares:” ‘Will you scatter your unworthy servants? I am leaving you, my God. I am leaving you my God, giver of life. Where is he, the God, the giver of life? Where do you live?’  
 
            We have in Guadalupe an explanation of how the Aztecs and the Mesoamerican world in general were positioned by God – that is, prefigured – to hear the word of Christ through Mary when the miracle of the tilma was given to them. Through this image, they saw ample representations of their heaven, the ‘Flower World’ that they had long imagined. More importantly, they also saw something that they also longed for but did not know: how to get into heaven. For these people to understand, a cuatrerfoil, or four-petal-led flower, was positioned on the pregnant belly of the image of the Virgen Mary. This flower had long been understood by Mesoamericans to represent the portal to heaven. To them, it then became obvious: the Christ to be born from the Virgen was destined to open this portal.
 
            Within a few years, nearly the whole of the 9 million natives still alive in the area of current-day Mexico City converted of their free will to Christianity.
 
            There are so many miraculous things about the image on the tilma that it would and has filled books. There are so many more miracles in this world, of bleeding statues and hosts and spinning suns and impossible cures as well, all presented to us so that we might believe, just as the Aztecs and their neighbors did 500 years ago. But times are different. Whereas before, everyone took the powers of God or of the gods for granted – how else could we exist? – the modern globalist – including most of us - now takes this life, our here and now, for granted as the center of existence. Where, we ask, is the proof of this alternative reality? If I jump off a bridge here, I will splatter on the rocks below. But what effects does the power of Heaven have on me now? Or on the future or past or ever? Where, we ask skeptically, are the blood and guts of this so-called invisible power?
 
            Unlike the Aztecs who pined for the gateway to God, we generally dismiss any signs that it might even exist. If a woman, let’s just say, goes to the grotto of Lourdes and is cured of an incurable cancer – and this has happened dozens of times in recent years alone – we generally deny the miracle. Instead, we call this “psychosomatic healing,” as if labelling something with a Greek word settles the issue. It does not. It merely takes the issue out of the spiritual realm and puts it into the psychological where it sits, just as puzzling to us as before, if not more so. If, for instance, the power of our minds can heal us of great illness, why don’t we use it all the time? And – the elephant in the room – how does it do it? Bueller?  Anyone?    
 
            The central problem with the above example is that we, as rational globalists, happily and naturally trade a mystical but salient reason for such a cure – that it is done by the maker of Heaven and Earth – for something about which we know nothing. It is not, then, that we are looking for an explanation in this case, but rather are looking for an explanation that will not involve the supernatural. For the average guy, this is not done simply because this is a field of inquiry beyond science. That is acceptable. Rather, it is done to dismiss the possibility of the very existence of the supernatural, no matter what.
 
            This is the sign of our times. It is, as Christ once put it, the Sign of Jonah.
 
            Jonah had to suffer three days in the belly of a fish before he would submit to God’s will. He had been ordered to go to the massive, pagan and enemy city of Nineveh to preach redemption from an impending catastrophe. He would not, and so embarked on a ship going elsewhere. When the ship was caught in a storm and was about to sink, Jonah admitted that the storm was his fault for having disobeyed God – whereby the crew threw him in the ocean. It was there that he was swallowed by a fish (or whale), and where he survived by the will of God for three days. Finally, a chastened Jonah was spit out onto the shores of Nineveh, where he finally did just as he was told. Shockingly, the city repented and was saved.
 
            The Sign of Jonah was a prefiguration of Christ, who spent three days in Hell – in the cave of death – before he rose again to offer redemption to a fallen world. Such was the purpose of the image of the Virgen of Guadalupe, which also, incredibly, was hugely successful.
 
            However: would Jonah or the Virgen be successful now? Of the later, the image still exists, and it truly is filled with miracles, down to its very existence on an otherwise fragile cape of cactus fibers. But who is seeing and believing? Are most of us even capable of believing? Or has our preoccupation with the material world through our successes with science formed an impenetrable block against the reality of the spiritual world?
 
            The Sign of Jonah in essence conveys the need for tremendous suffering to break through the wall that encloses all humanity. This may take the suffering of an individual ‘hero’ or of all of us. This wall once was made of pagan gods, who at least were thought to exist in the spiritual. Now, it is made of an even harder wall built from a complete absorption in the material world.
 
            Miracles are still there to save us from the purgation of suffering. On April 8th, for instance, the central US will have a total eclipse of the sun. It will pass through ALL 7 towns in the US that are named Nineveh, as well as through the one and only Nineveh in Canada. It will first pass through the town of Jonah in Texas. It will allow us to see the allignment of the two brightest “stars” in the sky, Venus and Jupiter as they sit beside the moon, as well as a huge comet that will be at its nearest to the sun and visible in the darkness of the eclipse, a comet that passes by only once every 71 years.
 
            Maybe this is not a miracle warning. There is no voice so far imparting messages to innocents. It certainly isn’t as noteworthy as a cancer cure or the spinning of the sun, either, but it does seem to me that it is in line with other unusual events. The Virgen of Guadalupe was backed by the sun, supported on the moon, and cloaked by the stars. Celestial events are often harbingers of God, such as the Star of Bethlehem. So many other warnings have happened recently or are happening right now, such as those in Fatima and Garabandal and Akita and Rwanda and Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina. I could go on. For those that leave a message, they all speak of one thing: the Sign of Jonah, a warning of impending (and necessary) suffering if we do not open our eyes and our hearts to the greater world. Because we are more blinded than ever, this suffering might well be greater than that which once threatened Nineveh.
 
            The Aztecs saw the tilma and believed. Perhaps nothing will make us see en masse except a long confinement in a cave, in a whale, or in a bunker in Idaho. It certainly is getting harder and harder to see anything beyond our earthly concerns, even when we are allowed by an eclipse to peak into the heavens in daytime. It is necessary that we try. Truth, eternity, beauty, the Totality, whatever we wish to call it, is always worth the effort in a world such as ours where beautiful flowers always wilt and die.