![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewereredspecks.gif\")
\n\n\n\nA flashforward from the interior dimension:\nmy wrinkled hand threads through strands \n\nof dark hair\u2014 grandchildren; the little eddies\ntrembling to buoy the spirit on my bed \n\nas I lay there dying. The evidence of things\nunseen slip between the fingers but sometimes\n\nthe prayer of a teenager on Wednesday night\nlights the hidden forest tucked between dark\n\nslabs of mountain on fire and the muddy valley\nseen through mirrors dimly ablaze. It\u2019s why\n\nyou gather wood\u2014 In college, I kneeled between\npews; a couple of bony projections debating\n\nthe tiles of old. We gathered weekly to pray and\nprostrate like long boughs heavy with snow seen\n\non the side of the road; pyres we would build: \nsome standing tall like rocky spires in the desert\n\nand others layered square and buttressed with \narches; others still like mustard seed huts held \n\nin the palm. That night and all nights I saw myself \ngathering oak and maple through life\u2019s carnival\n\ncrests and day-common drab: There I was\u2014 \nspeaking high mutterings in laundromat seats,\n\nredeeming sharp cringes in the shower; I was\nuttering promises between her contractions,\n\njaw-dripping pleas before the results of the test.\nOh prayer alight! To summon the cycle of vicious\n\naffection\u2014 the hissing of thickets and crackling of\ntimber; the lullabied sputtering and smacking\n\nof heat on my cheek; and the glisten of sun-\ntickling tongues\u2014 Even this!\u2014 I've tasted dying\n\nand the ouch of the burn. Mga apo, seek\nsubstance and impinge the fingerprint upon\n\nthe eye; Savor promise and peek at prolepsis. \nDon\u2019t drown the man but kindle our wooden hope!\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
- “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.\u201d (Hebrews 11:1<\/a>)<\/li>
- In college, our church had a weekly prayer meeting every Wednesday in which one could freely attend. We would start at 9pm and leave when you felt it was right. Some would sit on a pew and pray. Others would kneel. Others would stand with hands on the side or hands in the air. Some would even find a corner or off-hallway to pray alone.<\/li>
- “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12<\/a>)<\/li>
- I learned church pews are made of oak and maple<\/a>.<\/li>
- “Faith does not just feel confident that this is coming some day. Faith has spiritually laid hold of and perceived and tasted that it is real. And this means that faith has the substance or the nature of what is hoped for in it. Faith’s enjoyment of the promise is a kind of substantial downpayment of the reality coming.” (John Piper<\/a>)<\/li>
- “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will<\/a> he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” (1 John 5:14-15<\/a>)<\/li>
- “Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, \u2018Be taken up and thrown into the sea,\u2019 and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:23-24<\/a>)<\/li>
- Positive feedback loops<\/a> – abound in medicine; at the molecular level, hormonal level, and physiological; when feedback loops go wrong, as in heart failure and kidney failure, reinforcement of a pathological cycle is often called vicious.<\/li>
- “They saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them.” (Daniel 3<\/a>)<\/li>
- “her contractions” – On October 21, 2019, our first child was born.<\/li>
- “Let us enter into the heart of the thicket.” (“Spiritual Canticle of the Soul and the Bridegroom Christ\u201d by Saint John of the Cross<\/a>)<\/li>
- “Mga apo” means grandchildren in Tagalog<\/li>
- \u201cUnlike technical knowledge, which can be communicated through the intellect alone, spiritual wisdom must be experienced and realized by your whole being\u2014head and heart, body and spirit. When David sang, \u2018Taste and see that the Lord is good,\u2019 he was uttering a Zen experience.\u201d (John C. H. Wu<\/a>)<\/li>
- “If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prizes which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity<\/a>)<\/li>
- \u201cOh living flame of love that tenderly wounds my soul in its deepest center! Since now you are not oppressive, now consummate! if it be your will: tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!” (“The Living Flame of Love\u201d by Saint John of the Cross<\/a>)<\/li>
- \u201cIt was a furious encounter with a living substance that was coming at me through all things at once… One reason for the terrible wordlessness of the experience is that you cannot observe fire really closely without becoming part of it.\u201d from\u00a0Barbara Ehrenreich\u2019s \u201cLiving With a Wild God\u201d<\/li>
- \u201cProlepsis\u201d- “the assigning of a person, event, etc., to a period earlier than the actual one; the representation of something in the future as if it already existed or had occurred; prochronism.”<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A flashforward from the interior dimension: my wrinkled hand threads through strands of dark hair\u2014 grandchildren; the little eddies trembling to buoy the spirit on my bed as I lay there dying. The evidence of things unseen slip between the fingers but sometimes the prayer of a teenager on Wednesday …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[37,36],"class_list":["post-2545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-verbal","tag-poetry","tag-writing","column","threecol","has-thumbnail"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2.png",503,239,false],"thumbnail":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2-300x143.png",300,143,true],"medium_large":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2.png",503,239,false],"large":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2.png",503,239,false],"1536x1536":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2.png",503,239,false],"2048x2048":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2.png",503,239,false],"slider-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2.png",503,239,false],"blog-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2.png",503,239,false],"teaser-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2-332x205.png",332,205,true],"gallery-1-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2-432x239.png",432,239,true],"gallery-2-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2-268x239.png",268,239,true],"gallery-3-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2-268x164.png",268,164,true],"image-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2.png",503,239,false],"video-thumb":["http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/therewerespecks2.png",503,239,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Del Rosario Henry","author_link":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/?author=1"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"A flashforward from the interior dimension: my wrinkled hand threads through strands of dark hair\u2014 grandchildren; the little eddies trembling to buoy …","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2545"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2815,"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2545\/revisions\/2815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.henrydelrosario.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}