This is a discussion. Its for a few reasons. Up front I want to name them:
- Writing helps me stabilize and deepen, by naming some things.
- Illustrate something of the sense of listening to God – the different texture it gives to reality and the inner world.
- Fills in some perspective, from the partially activated mandates of 2017, to where we are now, in 2021. That cycle has come around again.
- Helps others understand something of the spiritual battle we are in.
Its also partly addressed to a friend, who knows those some of those things; so is a useful figure to frame it up for. I guess because there is some common story, some shared metaphysical furniture, so to speak.
So, local friend. I had a dream the night before i saw you. I saw a figure who I knew was Darth Vader, but also looked like an aging rock star; scrawny Mick Jagger like; bare skinny arms hinting at abuse. I knew this Vader / decrepit rockstar wanted to try to rule from a hidden position, and he said to someone else with a nod: “we rule the galaxies between us”, then stepped back into a hidden place, a place high above. The dream didn’t seem to disclose who he proposed as a coequal, just that it all felt decrepit, cunning, evil in high places.
So, this morning, I was sitting in Chancery Lane having morning coffee after dropping daughter to school. I like Chancery Lane and its arty cafes – have made creative videos for work there, and had some recent God moments there.
But this morning I hear a song, and it feels laden with something, a wounded complaint. “I’ll never be your beast of burden … ain’t i rough enough …..ain’t I tough enough”. ( I don’t realise till later its the Rolling Stones, which later recalled the Vader / Jagger figure)
We’re stepping into a somewhat heightened state where details are more meaningful – movig into some deeper waters in the nightly worship meetings, and a clarity comes where one sees and senses more. These times can be cyclical on a couple of scales – individually it may be easier to tune in on a day off work. Corporately we’ve been here before as a group; that wave is rising again. Such times can also be progressive, building over months and years – as each grows in hearing and sensitivity
“I had with a sense your spirit was dancing as I woke”, said my wife, earlier this week. Next morning I woke with something similar, a Lionel Ritchie song, “Dancing on the ceiling”, surfacing from forgotten memory into a dream, then echoing into the waking state. And a dream sense of painting the sky.
Today, having coffee, the wrought iron gates to Chancery lane, adorned in ivy style, near El Gordo look slightly serpentine; and I feel like I’m listening to the complaints of the principality being given its marching orders to leave from the town. We’ve touched this in the recent intercessory surge as well. Named some of what people sense as opposition.
Who was Nimrod ? A mighty warrior who had kingdoms. Who is the beast? A system of rulers and kings. Who is the Queen of heaven? The one we sense as a local principality, claiming allegiances through religious misdirection. All those things have dubious, linked, provenance and are characterised by unfaithfulness. (… beast of burden song insists in gravelly tones… all i want is for you to make love to me). Such things have always wanted our heart, our partnership.
And listening to the café music, it feels like not just hearing disconnected tunes in a cool cafe, but also hearing something of a complaint, from something over the city, now being rejected, divorced. The beast of burden song gives way to a self pitying complaint (If tomorrow never comes) , and then a comment on megalomania (Everybody wants to rule the world), and it all somehow threads into the complaint of a jilted ruler.
A prophetic friend said to us in 2017 as we approached a high water mark in the Spirit, listen to the music on the local radio, its all got a touch of God on it. I don’t recall if you were here then, local reader, but it really seemed to. Those snippets of song that come into mind as one wakes – you mentioned hearing “life goes on” as you woke after a difficult time, my “dancing on the ceiling” example, are something similar – we’ve all learnt to listen to the waking echo of a dream as potentially holding a message to catch; given we believe a primary Word creates and sustains all things, and speaks through them. But back then was something moving more into full daylight. More than the phrase that catches your attention, it felt everything was breaking through like that, all day long, if you paused to listen.
The term apophenia means seeing patterns that aren’t there; joining dots that should not be connected. But conversely sometimes we are opened to see things that are there, and find all sorts of things are being used to speak a present word. And all need to weigh up what is happening, when things seems revelatory. What are idioms of Spirt we have learnt, and are learning? What is stretching us into a new mode, and as we grow, adding to what is known.
Back in that 2017 revival season, for a few weeks it felt not only that the songs were speaking, but that dreams were crossing directly over into the waking state. Maybe it was the amount of prayer we were soaking in; but it felt like God turning up the volume. I want to unpack that a little, as backdrop to Chancery lane this morning.
So, a good friend of ours was here in 2017, a missionary grounded in an indigenous town in Central Australia, quite a seer, and was spending a couple of years on furlough in this town. After so many dreams and visions in our community –hundreds and hundreds of posts shared among us a we learned to listen and decipher, and then all rising to up to a common target together – she had a key dream. It was a nested dream, of three dreams within dreams, and sense of waking from one into another. After months of intercession and listening, it felt to me like an inflection point, the point dreams were crossing into reality.
And for me stretches of life became really started to feel like an acted parable, laden with meaning like a crafted scene in the theatre. It was like dreams and visions surfaced everywhere, in every scene, with the same strange latency of meaning as a dream or an interactive, instructional scene. I remember being at the market one day …I’ll hold that for story for another post maybe
One example I will list; for a week everything my work mate said had rich double meanings, coincidentally using lots of the same symbols that we had landed on recently in the intercessory group, which he was not part of. It also happened to him a bit too – I mentioned a” json file’, which is techie language for something we worked on, and a mutual friend called Jason walked around the corner at that instant; making an unlikely appearance upstairs in the library. A string of similar things happened around that same day or so, and you know its more than your doing brain pattern matching when it happens – he was pinging on the oddness of it all, without me really saying anything
In the end there were so many overlaps – every second sentence seemed weighted like that. I ddn’t disclose the multiple layers that were so clear to me, but after a week asked if i could come and chat with him and his wife – good friends already, open to God’s current speaking, but not quite the same church community, though we overlap a bit. I shared what had been happening, the parable like nature of the last week or two, and some other things; fire angels and so on. Intrigued them into wanting more.
Soon after, one of the deepest nights I ever saw was at the their house …
I’ll trace that too before getting back to this morning’s coffee and the jilted power over the town. The longer background hopefully helps gives perspective.
I was little destabilized that night at their place, back in 2017, after a week of fire and rebuilding. A visiting prophet had warned that may happen, as he opened some windows over us, but I’d missed the warning. A week of intense fire opened up, a deep reboot like I’ve never known, and being so heightened was quite destabilising for a few days. I had to lean on a friend for a few days; getting my bearings again as the deep rebuild stabilised, and a new way of seeing opened. It happened to a few others in that season as well;
So although quite stretched, at that house I was safe with these friends and family, and we circled around for hours, building deep and profound conversation together, with children contributing timely pieces.
I was puzzled too, that a key post I’d made a day before on social media, with a significant image, just disappeared. I went to look at it early in the evening, and it was just gone. I wondered at how that happened – was sure I hadn’t deleted it, and it would have not have violated any policy, and there was no telltale explanatory note from any fact checkers or copyright notes etc. For me, it was rich and meaningful, a key marker of the end of a level. It stood for something like exiting the Matrix, or at least one level of the Game of Life. I liked the way it came together, using a visual symmetry I have a long cherished, now with people innocently commenting on the post’s outer meaning, adding a layer of detail. As I wondered what had happened, I “saw” the post in minds eye, fluttering up, being taken as if a treasure, in another place; like the rich, deep conversation, which unfolded directly after.
That night I had a clear impression that we were not exactly alone, our families and a friend, having a meal together, and a long conversation, were somehow visible from afar. At key points I would get a sense we were bouncing up very high as if from a trampoline, in a stadium seen by many, and the high points of that conversation seen and recorded. I’d done some apologising to each one present for various breaches of relational protocols – getting a deep touch from God like I had that week quickens the repentance, and knew I had not always got the role of father, husband, work colleague, or prophetic friend, all correct That was part of the intro to our deep discussion together
The whole thing felt like a testimony being kept and stored in heaven, high points celebrated and sealed, like the post that disappeared.
So finally coming back to today, a similar season now opening, or restarting. Things didn’t feel as heightened this morning having coffee at El Gordo in chancery lane, but we’re getting there. The season deepens.
So that’s some background to the songs of complaint, a rejected spirit over the city.
So this morning, coffee over, I decide to walk to OfficeWorks in the mall; I need to buy a USB stick for work. Nod to fellow believer I see from a distance, now serving as a city councilor. We’ve chatted recently but not today; he might tag all this as introspective excess, while he gets on with serving the poor. But he likes his writing too, and I respect his way, and such things can overlap.
As i get to the store I remember OfficeWorks no longer opens to the mall. Right at that very moment the music in the mall stops, and the radio presenter says “someone has just texted in to say they think OfficeWorks should open its doors again, from the mall side”. I feel a bit like I’m in the Truman show for a moment – how did that radio just broadcast exactly what I was doing and thinking about? – the inconvenience of that store entrance being closed.
To add to the odd coincidence, I turn around and see that ABC radio is actually broadcasting from the mall, the presenter is sitting behind me in the open air, at a table only 30 m away; interviewing someone, with a few techies around her. They aren’t commenting on me, or not intentionally, which just makes it all a little more strange that they’re coincidentally narrating my experience from close by.
At the time that all mostly just felt oddly coincidental – even in a heightened state not every coincidence needs to be a God moment, though we must be open.
And perhaps it does carry more meaning– have felt something there as I pondered, in retrospect. As Isaiah (30) says.
“Your own ears will hear him. Right behind you a voice will say, “This is the way you should go,” whether to the right or to the left.”
As to the question of whether the randomness of the radio be quickened to carry a personalised meaning? … well … that seemed to be underlined in all this.
I felt a darker irony though about what happened next. A local councillor is being interviewed by the presenter in the mall – or maybe is this the new mayor, broadcasting on the radio, about what the community can do to engage the mall etc. She talks up community partnership, not just council plans. So If Tai Chi or Moonlight Market is your flavour then come on those days.
The irony, though, is this: as I walk away I notice a drug deal going down. Three desperate looking young guys are sitting at the end of the mall. One passes the other a satchel and he leafs through, inspecting the content. I look twice and they notice. I walk a little, wonder if I should report it, and reflect on the irony of the ABC in the same mall, trying to talk up the mall as shopping or lifestyle option, while this is happening. The beast is not fully gone – that decrepit dark lord still has some influence.
I turn to think if should report it but two of them have already scarpered. They looked desperate enough that I check my back, that I’m not being tailed as a I walk to the car.
So, that’s a snippet of a day off, buying morning coffee and buying a USB, in such a season; when one believes God may be speaking.
Later that day more timely and precise things happen, the randomness of making a simple choice to get a coffee or take a walk become sites of revelation and even more unlikely coincidence. When hearts given over to Him are bounded in goodness, the lines fall in pleasant places, hearing the transmission of the Message that is closer than it seems.
When we are open to God; the door that opens in Jesus Christ, the ordinary has God layers.
As postscript I want to add another thing, that also happened as i walked down the mall.
A passerby made a comment on the radio, saying he used to like the older mall, but understood a lot of the expensive redesign went on hidden but necessary things like drainage works. I’ve learnt from 2017 that the design and operation of the city space is an important sphere of public testimony that God is interested in working with, as well as all the art spaces, so I don’t dismiss all this as mundane. And remind myself of some previous keys about all this, that as He touches this city he will honour those who serve and sow to the future.
To footnote such a story, one could say, coincidence can be part of the language of the Spirit, a sign our story is rubbing against the intent of the one who made all things, and can oversee our stories. Coincidence is not always that, and even though sometimes it needs to be resisted as other things brush up – not all co-incidence is good – yet sometimes it reveals good things, or at least revelatory doors opening.
PPS – I can imagine that some may feel – “it sounds like the author is basically sane, but I don’t love the tone of this – bit too loopy. or inclined to make mountains out of molehills”. Well, have a look at the the title piece – the idea is that prophetic pieces (which stretch) and teaching pieces (which stabliise) inform each other. This is mostly on the former side, though it does aspire to leave a trail.
PPPS. That market story. Might add.
Antioch Exchange 