“2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. 9 Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, 10 and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. 11 For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. 12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” (James 1:2-18 ESV)

The trials that come, the incompleteness vis-a-vis battle-wounded, of loss of some copacetic and complete self-image, coherence, cohesion: nothing can wound the man, woman of God that the Spirit cannot bless and rejuvenate, heal, repair, miraculously amend.

Yet we languish, forever fasting or afraid to peep out the window, nevermind actually to Engage, to be community-minded, to get a little percolation or pep in our stride. The worthy Citizen of earth’s Heaven, Third-Eye, Third Realm, she or he can laugh even at oneself at times, for the harrowing Reality: life is Pleasing, even amidst wartime, life is Cohesive and Encouraging, promissory, gifted, and then the trials that come. And then the live ammo: please help, we plead, but no, the test is that he or she faithful in small things shall be faithful in large things.

All of us are therefore Destined for a remove called Heaven or Hell, hopefully the former; hopefully we put all cynical wrong interpretations long ago behind us, we remember the Positive, the—yes—chess game with our own self and with our masters, that eye hath not seen nor ear heard what God has in store… yet to the battle-wounded, who with too headstrong a gambit haphazardly made the Ultimate Sacrifice, when what if, what if some smaller gestures would have continued the dalliance, the dance, the exchange.

The handshake. Some religions picture the wild extensions of the mind. Our minds are tied in to each others’. We are forged in the furnace, like the three—or was it four? One an angel?—living through the fiery furnace (Daniel 3). If we succeed, it is via a parrying with frustration: at every stage on life’s journey, just enough juice and encouragement from within our meticulous, at times diabolical, inner dynamo. Enough to overcome the caged antagonisms and sinful desires to see ourselves most clever or “just right”, our addiction or need for encouragement and for self-approvals. We self-approve, but in God’s mind this ultimately is towards Good Purport. We are after all seeing all sinful desires reworked into Positive vibes, Positive Coherence: man needs be man, after all, individual, self-controlled, ecstatic, positively-reborn.

We have these gifts because Christ lived like one of us, as a Person. Whose Cross… it reworked all things because of its perfunctory, deeper meaning, when after all we ourselves would have been happy to hear and follow and see the teaching continue. But not in this generation, was told the following crowd: for us, a deeper meditation, on the Meaning and Relativity called Love, to submit around one another not to any man or woman but to the cipher, to the lyrical, to the musical. And to allow, to love on, to put aside visual distinctions and Bless, all this is ours to live into and to own up to. Because our Maker has indeed Gone, Died, Abandoned earthly station for an ever-extending two millennium plus, to be with the Father in Heaven, but promising to come again. We have the hope even in the face of death, that no small consolation, our Religious consolation is deeply reassuring that better things will always be ours to own as the future. So we are content, to labor here, and content, when losing loved ones or companions in the faith, in the harrowing and hazardous work. They have received their award. And shall for all eternity receive their reward, just as we shall.