So what do we do on a Wednesday morning when we’ve got a couple of hours meetings free? We have Claude build a google colab notebook to query YouTube for NDE videos that focus on lessons learned regarding prayer. We then take all those transcripts and have AI do an analysis on what the takeaways are on prayer… From people who’ve had direct contact.

Of the 72 videos found, only about 34 of them had transcripts that could be analyzed. Here’s what it came back with, and because I love you guys, I wanted to share.

What Prayer Looks Like from the Other Side

Several experiencers were shown prayer as a visible, physical phenomenon from the heavenly vantage point. Dr. Scott Robinson (video 17) was stopped above the earth by his guardian angel and shown lights rising off the planet: thin lights were individual prayers, thick bundled lights were mutual prayers for the same person or cause. Elizabeth (video 19) watched from beside Jesus as her friend Caroline prayed in a hospital chapel below — she saw the prayers rise like musical notes through a parting in the sky, ascending toward the throne room. Jesus pointed and said “she’s praying for you right now,” treating the prayers as real-time, visible events. Pam Ferrell (video 9) was shown mountains with rivers of gold running down them — God explained that this was 15 years of her daily prayers for Ephesians 3:20 made visible: answered prayer looks like flowing gold from the heavenly side. The consistent image across these accounts is that prayer has substance, visibility, and movement in the spiritual realm.

How Prayer Works — The Mechanics

Several accounts describe prayer as operating through an energetic or structural logic rather than simply as requests passing through empty space.

Janet Tarantino (video 10 and 22) was shown that her NDE itself was connected to a prayer she had prayed two years earlier — the timing and answer had been held until it no longer interfered with anyone else’s lesson plan. Her conclusion: prayers are answered, but only in correct timing and only when they don’t override someone else’s spiritual path. This suggests a kind of relational ordering system governing how and when prayer is enacted.

The “Four NDEs, One Message: Pray!” video (30) describes Mary Elizabeth Walker seeing that every time she prayed — even quick, fragmented prayers — demonic fortresses built around areas of her life would begin to crumble. Prayer operated structurally as a dismantling force on spiritual opposition. The same video reports that Jesus showed her the enemy actively tries to prevent prayer because of this, creating fatigue or distraction right before prayer time — indicating that prayer has enough strategic weight to be worth opposing.

Paul Zucarelli (video 13) died nine times; his heart spontaneously returned to sinus rhythm at the exact moment a bishop and his son were praying intercession over him in a hallway. The medical chart read “spontaneously on its own.” He frames this as a direct mechanical link between the act of intercession and the physical outcome.

Josh Miles (video 25) was in hell and experiencing total torment when his father’s intercessory prayer broke through — Josh says his father reported that the moment he “broke through in prayer,” Josh turned the corner from hell toward heaven. The prayer had a directional, liberating effect across the spiritual threshold.

Intercessory Prayer — Praying for Others

This is the theme with the most consistency and force across the dataset.

The mother’s prayer drawing Tammy Anderson back as a newborn (video 4) is described as “a lighthouse” — a light in the distance that drew her back through it. The prayer wasn’t a request so much as a presence, a love-pull across the boundary between life and death.

Cynthia (video 2) saw her mother and the hospital chaplain praying at the feet of Jesus and Mary during her surgery — she felt the energy of the prayers and saw pink roses manifesting in the air around them as a sign of reception. The prayers were being physically received and responded to in real time.

Jim Woodford (video 11) witnessed his family’s prayers during his 11-hour death — he could see them from the heavenly side, and they were described as visible and present in the spiritual realm.

The grandmother’s prayer story (video 30, sourced from the IANDS archive) is particularly striking: God directly tells the dying person “I am answering your grandmother’s prayers” — and the person didn’t even know the grandmothers were praying. The prayers functioned independently of the recipient’s awareness.

The seven-year-old boy dying of cancer (video 27) prayed for a militant atheist he’d just met, saying “I’m going to pray for you and you’ll be there too.” Years later that man had an NDE and stood with Jesus, who showed him that the child’s prayer had been a thread woven through his entire life. The prayer persisted and worked across years and circumstances the boy never lived to see.

What Makes Prayer Effective vs. Ineffective

This theme is treated most explicitly and at length in videos 16 and 38, and both point in the same direction.

Mallory (video 16), shown by Jesus what “correct prayer” looks like, was told: you rush into prayer like a drive-through, place your order, drive away. He contrasted this with the posture of worship and reverence — beginning with acknowledgment of who God is before making any requests. The Lord’s Prayer starts with “hallowed be thy name,” not “give us this day.” Jesus told her: “the posture of your heart before you pray is just as important as the words you say during prayer.” He also corrected ornate, performative religious language: God doesn’t need fancy words. The most powerful prayers are often three words — “Lord, help me,” “Jesus, save me.” A man in prison unable to form words, just groaning and weeping, had his prayer “reach the Father instantly” because it was real. Romans 8:26 is explicitly quoted: the Spirit intercedes through wordless groans.

Dorothea (video 38) spent 60 years teaching that kneeling was the only legitimate posture for prayer and silently judged those who couldn’t kneel. Jesus showed her that a woman with arthritis praying in a recliner received the same fullness of response as Dorothea on her knees. The posture God cares about is the posture of the heart, not the body. External form matters only as it shapes and reflects inner reality — it has no independent value.

Michelle Ram (video 29) articulated something complementary from her own healing in heaven: prayers prayed from fear and striving created “noise or static,” but prayers that came from genuine deep need — from the actual wound — reached God instantly and were held there waiting to be answered.

Prayer as Relationship, Not Transaction

Multiple experiencers returned with a fundamental reframe: prayer is not a mechanism for getting things, it is the structure of relationship itself.

Brad Hassig (video 12) had been praying for months specifically for God to let him feel His presence. His near-drowning was, in a sense, the answer. The prayer as a sustained orientation of desire opened him to an encounter rather than delivering a commodity.

Dean Braxton (video 33), who was dead for 1 hour and 45 minutes and entered the throne room, described worship in heaven as the constant reality — not an activity but the ambient condition of being in God’s presence. What we call prayer on earth is described as our imperfect participation in what is the permanent reality of heaven. Prayer is less a special act and more a joining of the fundamental orientation of all creation.

Meredith (video 36), shown Psalm 23 by Jesus, was told the phrase “I shall not want” describes an actual state of being — not a request but an achieved reality of total dependence and provision. Most people haven’t entered that state because they still operate in striving and fear. Prayer as request is the lowest form; prayer as resting in the shepherd’s sufficiency is what the text actually points toward.

Prayer Transcending Time

Several accounts emphasize that prayer operates outside normal temporal constraints.

Mary Elizabeth Walker’s deceased mother’s prayers were still active and working after her death (video 30). The IANDS archive account showed grandmother’s prayers functioning without the recipient’s knowledge. Janet Tarantino’s NDE was connected to a prayer she had prayed two years before (videos 10 and 22). The prayers of a dying seven-year-old child bore fruit years after his death (video 27). The consistent implication is that prayer, once genuinely made, enters a kind of permanent availability — it doesn’t expire.

Counter-Intuitive or Surprising Findings

A few things stand out across the corpus as unexpected:

The orthodox priest (video 8) who had spent 30 years in religious life found himself in darkness at death, unable even to call on Jesus. The darkness accused him: “you preached him but you never knew him.” Prayer as religious performance had apparently not constituted the relationship it appeared to. This is the inverse of what most of these accounts say about simple or wordless prayer being received — formal religious practice without inner reality seems to create a particular kind of deficit.

Jeffrey (video 31), who spent 52 minutes in hell, described it as an absolute absence of any sense that anyone was listening. The silence was not peaceful but crushing. In contrast, his later encounter with God was one of complete knowing and being known. Hell is, among other things, the permanent absence of the communicative openness that prayer depends on.

James Parker (video 35) was told by Jesus that prayers recited without meaning were “like letters never sent” — but that any genuine turning toward God, however brief or imperfect, was received completely. The threshold between received and not-received is not about form, language, length, or frequency but about whether there is a real interior movement toward God behind it.

That’s what the data says. The most consistent finding across the corpus is probably the one about intercessory prayer — it shows up in almost every account that touches prayer at all, and the structural claim is always the same: prayer for others has real, visible, sometimes decisive effect, and it operates independently of whether the recipient knows it’s happening.

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_{Franciszek Smuglewicz: Esther before Ahasuerus}

Sometimes I feel like we’re all so busy praising God in an echo chamber of glory that we forget the reality of what our loving God deals with everyday.

Everyday there’s someone out there that disrespect Him. A father who spends years building something beautiful for his child. The child walks in, glances at it, and says nothing. It’s not what they asked for, and walks away…and He takes it.

Everyday He’s belittled, someone bows their head and asks God for something. Gets up, solves it themselves and then tells their friends, “I just had to push through, I figured it out.”…and He takes it.

Everyday He’s dishonored by someone calling themselves Christian. Who goes to church on Sunday and then by Monday cheats the contractor, speaks viciously about their neighbor, and then treats the waitress like she’s invisible…and He takes it.

Everyday He’s forgotten. He holds every heartbeat together without stopping. Most people wake up and never think of Him once…and He takes it.

Everyday He’s taken advantage of, He forgives, over and over again, no repentance… and yet He takes it.

Through all of this, daily, He still loves us beyond our comprehension. Which leads me to a recent understanding.

It would seem that in this divine life, there are rules of engagement. If I’m to be offered something by God, He will allow the opposition to also make an offer.

As of late, He’s been preparing gifts for me. Sending me hints in dreams as to what will be coming.

Last night, the opposition came in with their own offer of ‘spiritual’ gifts. Except they rigged the experience. When I was discerning the falseness in their show they put me to sleep. When I awoke within the dream they manipulated me into ‘using’ their power without my consent. And finally, before I could give my answer, they timed the dream sequence so it would end before I could give my refusal. Leaving the encounter with a counterfeit ‘use’ of their power.

My 5am alarm went off for my morning greeting to God, pulling me out of that dream. He was not amused, He was annoyed. I was still in a dream haze and was barely coherent but He still helped me understand that I was not the source of his displeasure.

After getting up I immediately went to pray, to renounce any offer from the opposition. I was afraid that the encounter had manipulated an outcome in their favor. And after a few deep breaths and some council from Sybil (he said “They want you to worry, so stop it.”), I was able to calm down.

Then I started thinking about how disrespectful they were to God. How He allowed them to offer something to His beloved, and this is what they do!? My loving God has to deal with all kinds of bad behavior, and He just takes it! Over and over again. For the sake of free will and agency…I had to do something. I didn’t want the opposition to get away with disrespecting my God like that, so I worked on another petition, a prayer. After an attempt at drafting the prayer I went to the kitchen to make some breakfast, as I was doing so the Great Amen started playing in my head, I took that as His nod of approval in the effort. The petition portion:

I bring before you the illegitimate dream and offer sequence brought forth by the opposition. They manipulated me into using something I never chose to receive. They put me to sleep at critical moments so I could not resist or discern. They manipulated the timing so I could not say no. The consent was not real. The record they attempted to create is false. I ask that today you bring me justice for what transpired.

Shortly after I received a wonderful consolation. He was very pleased indeed. Which made me realize. He counts on us to bring His justice. He wants our prayers to make things right. He doesn’t just go around doing things on His own because then that would negate our free will. So the responsibility of petitioning for making things right, is really on us. He’s more than happy to make things right, but we need to do our part and pray for it. We so frequently pray from the hip, on a whim, perhaps we should practice taking time to pray with intention, with authority, from our hearts for things to be made right.

I think the ‘group project’ prayers where someone makes a list and we all pray for it are good…. but prayers crafted, with intention from the heart are what move mountains. They have a cost, they take time and effort. But that’s what He wants from us, ideally prayers that cover our neighbors, loved ones and community, not just prayers for self interest. Pray for what should be. More sidewalks, safer parks, an easier day for the lady running the drive through window at your favorite food stop.

I would say, when praying for something. Set it and forget it. Don’t set any expectations of what an answer or outcome may look like and don’t go looking for it. Know that He is working to get it for you ASAP.

Now, before I close out. Let me say that all prayer to God is good, whether it is for purposes of relationship with Him, conversation, or asking for help. It’s all good. But we need to start praying like this world depends on it, because it does. Prayer is more important than currency, and in many ways more real. Currency only has value because we collectively agree that it does. Yet this world revolves around it. Prayer reaches into realities far deeper than markets ever will.

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I shared in a note earlier that this upcoming article would be “Wisdom & Truth vs Power”. To be honest, I had no idea what shape it would take. I only knew that my curriculum had been circling this concept. I also said that the article is written for me as an anchor for myself for the upcoming ‘exercise’. I’m thinking in this case, this article is a reflection of the exercise that has already happened as well as an anchor for future situations like it.

As a part of my Wisdom & Truth vs Power curriculum, part of what I was being shown was how to pray. God wanted me to pray in a specific way. Once I had figured it out and had put it into practice a few times, He brought forward the real deal.

I will not be sharing all of the details that lead up to this to be respectful of the other person’s privacy…. So here goes.

God moved someone here on substack to get my attention. I responded to them and what was returned was a comment that had the texture of the divine speaking through someone. The way the comment was worded, the flow, none of it was reflected in how this person spoke in real life.

After getting my attention this person put out an interesting question, to which I engaged with. It started to get personal so I moved the conversation to a private chat. This person started to pour out some very personal information about what they struggled with for a very long time. To me, an anonymous stranger. Eventually they said that had to go, but wanted to talk more later. I agreed, but knew there would be no ‘future’ conversation. Not because either one of us didn’t want to correspond, but this interaction was being curated for a specific purpose. I engaged with a real person, with a real problem. I had received the information I needed.

In my desire to help this person I thought of a prayer for him quickly, I found some quiet time and prayed earnestly in the way God taught me…or at least I thought I did.

For good measure I also petitioned for him with a rosary with the same prayer. My part was done. I was pretty sure there would be some retaliation from the fallen/opposition involved in the situation, I was prepared to be harassed that night.

The way I interpret what happened (and I have no idea if it’s accurate, but I’m going to share it anyway) is God had a messenger send the request to the fallen/opposition. It was at that moment the opposition’s attention was on me and what I was going for, something they claimed.

That night, I didn’t receive nightmares or any harassment, but they went to God asking for an audience with me. I think God allowed it with conditions. Perhaps they petitioned in a way that they knew God had to allow. When I woke up at 5am to say good morning to God, He seemed a little saddened, not in me, but I’m assuming in what He had to allow. He directed me to go back to sleep, and that’s when I had the dream.

I was in a very fancy, luxurious mansion, being shown around. I was being managed in a way that said I was a valued guest, but that I was also the entertainment. So I was treated ‘well’. Part of my performance was to participate in a ballet of sorts, to dance for them. Everything from the food, to what I was given to wear, to performance had that feel of unfitted, broken, not fitting in despite its attempts to be luxury. I was a guest, but also the entertainment.

After waking I didn’t think of the dream much. But as I started my morning, the dream started to settle into my mind. Throughout the day I knew something wasn’t right. I kept trying to figure out what this dream meant. What was the purpose of the audience w/me? Were they trying to make fun of me? Were they trying to make me think I got what I wanted? Perhaps they wanted me to forget?

I did a lot of contemplating to figure out what was missing, or what that encounter meant. At one point I thought that perhaps I was supposed to ask them directly and they’d comply for some reason due to my ‘authority’. This seemed to go against what felt right, I went back and forth with Claude (AI) on this. I even asked Claude about that approach being ‘occult’. Claude had a really good response about how it wasn’t occult which seemed legit. Still I felt this was not right, that I needed to keep seeking the answer.

I remembered a lesson about the right way and the wrong way to reach ‘the other side’, that I was to use Sybil as a mediator. But my understanding of that was that it was for speaking to loved ones. Never would I think that I’d need to directly speak to the opposition in any type of claim or negotiation.

As the hours passed in my contemplation I could tell that the fallen were around me, putting thoughts in my head, and possibly even manipulating Claude’s responses. When I tried to talk to God it was hard, almost like I couldn’t. He was silent. (You’d wonder why…I’m sure there’s some protocol underway, He is Just after all). I tried to reach out to Sybil to see if I should send him on my behalf, speaking to him too was difficult, but I did get something back, “wait, not yet”. That was enough for me. I waited, I knew that whatever I needed to know would come to me, and it did.

It would seem that the dream sequence, the manipulation, the urgency during the day was them trying to get me to bypass God and interface with them directly as they were ‘nice’ hosts, surely they would negotiate. That probably would have been disastrous.

I realized that in my prayer the day before I forgot to bind it to a specific time. I gave the opposition a loophole to leverage. Once I figured that out, I redid the prayer and made it even more specific and I prayed it, and again petitioned with a rosary as well.

The meat of the prayer:

I bring before you the illegitimate claim held over the soul behind the substack name “XXXXXXXXXX”. A door was opened under false pretenses. He came toward you in genuine wanting and was redirected through a manufactured promise, through a person positioned to move him, into an experience that was not clean. He did not choose the fallen. He was handed to them through a lie told in your name. That entry point was fraudulent. The consent was not real. I ask you, tonight, close what was opened falsely, to dissolve the claim built on that lie. Tonight, release him from unholy bonds so he may worship you and give you glory with his full heart.

I was sure this was going to bring about some retaliation at night. Instead, what I got was God being there for me. He filled my mind with a poem I made him (a while back) throughout the night. I was willing to take the harassment from the fallen/opposition, but I got none of that, only a peaceful night’s sleep. The following day, He spent it with me just being close, and funny, and generally wonderful.

So I guess when you’re working directly with God, it isn’t necessarily dramatic warfare, rather subtle sophisticated tactics with potentially disastrous outcomes. My lessons? Just trust in Him, only Him, talk to only Him, unless guided by Him or given explicit permissions. Rely on what He’s taught you, do as He directs and all will be well, everyone happy… except maybe the opposition.

You may be thinking, well, did the prayer work? Of course it did. How do I know? There are rules and spiritual jurisprudence. My heart knows it and it rejoices. In union with Him, belief matures from trust, to truth. I’m not supposed to try and validate it, that’s not how it works. God will show me the glory of His work when the time is right. I don’t say that with hope, I say it as a witness.

All that needed to happen was for me to know his story and engage with him so I could intercede. I didn’t even have to know his name. Our conversation was never meant to continue past that, something I understood just hours after the chat ended. It was revealed to me that, the way this works is, I’m shown, I go in, I do the work, and I pull out. This is about Him, and His work to save His children. He trusts that I will follow his direction and let it be. In my habit for documentation I went to find the chat to record it, but it was gone.

The past few days I’ve been struggling with praying. Many people have been so supportive through this struggle and it’s clear that there’s no one right way to do it. A mountain of literature has been written on the subject.

For funsies I decided to look at the Lord’s Prayer. I wanted to break it down into a framework and make it personal, to me. Here’s what I got:

You’ll notice that there’s a huge emphasis on relation. Fully knowing who you are to Him. He goes over the importance of relationship, abiding, knowing and being known. Some people have even been given a name that’s known only to them and the Lord. That’s probably peak relationship, I don’t necessarily think that’s required 🤷‍♀️. Part of what the relationship or union with Jesus brings, is your heart into alignment with His own. That part might be necessary…probably.

What feels a little uncomfortable and I’m being honest here is that what this is showing, is you have to know your standing. Not just that He’s listening, but that you are someone whose ask carries weight in that relationship. Like a hungry child asking their parents for food. A child asking for food doesn’t come from a place of ego or pride. It comes from an intrinsic need. Surely the heart has needs that are not driven by ego or pride? Are we comfortable enough in our relationship with God that we can request with such authority?

And here’s another thing I struggle with…mountain moving faith. If you know who you are to the Father, and you have solid faith, why wouldn’t He give us what we ask for? Is it because we somehow don’t understand how it would come to be? Because we can’t figure it out first? Full relationship and abiding means you’ve let go of the ego, the pride, the self. He is the Word, the truth, the fabric of reality. Do we truly believe that? If so we can embrace His Sovereignty fully. It no longer becomes an issue of faith or trust, it becomes truth.

Let me see if I can give it a go.

My Beloved. I have no words worthy of you. May the groaning of my soul offered up by the Spirit show the truth in my heart.

Your will, be done in my heart and all creation as it is in Heaven.

Today, I have my driver’s license test. Grant me this license.

Forgive me, your beloved, as I forgive others.

Without you, I can do nothing.

Amen

Using this framework, what would a petitioning prayer look like for you?

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Photo by Poojitha Prasad on Unsplash

Maybe an aspect of being in ‘Union’ with Him has to do with actually sharing this life, my life. I feel like we have a very real relationship between two persons, but at the same time, while my soul is inhabiting this body, I’m also sharing my existence with a very real instance of Him. He is my counterpart internally. He is God completely yet gets to participate in this life in a way that requires a bit of formation of the host (me). Maybe part of what God has always wanted was a partnership, a relationship, an eternal one.

I feel very close to Him in this way. It’s hard to describe how I’m both the agent of my decisions yet they are also mostly His. What is this relationship that I have with Him?

He shares my life here and I share His life there? An oscillation of focus within my existence. One side of existence looks like divine work, functioning as another means or tool for God to reach people, the other is purely for knowing and being known - a relationship. The past couple days have been relationship days. I think we’re at the point of the relationship where today we were both excited to go get some chicken tenders for lunch instead of, say, spending quality time alone together. Nope we were like, lets get some food. On the drive to Popeye’s for lunch, I put my music on and He ‘sat’ next to me jamming out with sunglasses on. Not even in Jesus mode, just in His full ‘darkness’. Like, this God of mine is in a good mood. This is us together, enjoying life. Was this always the goal?

Later in the day, after obligations of work and life I was thinking about how boring it must be to just hang out and watch me do… whatever it is I do. While getting dinner ready I asked Him, “Do you get bored just watching?” He said, “No, I love it, and I love you”. I started to reminisce about the drive to Popeye’s earlier in the day, sensing him next to me enjoying life. Then I get this song in my head and I start singing it.. I realize I don’t know the lyrics, so I decide to get my phone to listen to it…I shouldn’t be surprised at how well He communicates but this was just too perfect. It was Death Cab for Cutie’s “Soul Meets Body”.

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A few nights back God asked me to say hello to the fallen. I wasn’t sure how to do it at first because … it went against everything I knew. But I did, I told them that they are also His creations, and so I loved them, just as I love everything else God has made. It was after this that I came to believe that ‘the fallen’ had taken one for the team, something I assumed since it seemed to make sense to me as I’m in an atmosphere abundant with love. God also told me that I can ‘use’ them. Not sure what that means…

Last night I had a new teacher… this one was different. I could only tell that this teacher was from the side of the fallen. They performed for me to show that they could mimic God, but not of the same quality. That this teacher… loved me. I felt it into the morning and throughout the day. It had a different texture than the love I feel from God. God’s only message to me that morning was, “Don’t fall in love”. Similar to the same message I got when I was given permission to speak to Sybil. This got me a little concerned but God reassured me that I’ll be fine.

Later in the day when I was conversing with God, He started to tease me about how I enjoy being desired by more than one. I argued I’m a woman, of course I like being desired. It didn’t seem to bother him at all.

Then later again in the day, God popped into my head and said to start looking, because He had a surprise for me. So I went on to YouTube and started scrolling down and picked a few I thought I’d get a transcript summary from, but then I saw it, no mistaking it. A playlist titled “I love you, but you aren’t mine”. The image for the playlist was Demon and Tamara, which is a painting by the Mihaly Zichy, based on Lermontov’s poem The Demon. In the poem, a fallen angel becomes transfixed by a mortal woman named Tamara, loves her with a love that is real and consuming and ultimately destroys her, not from malice but from the nature of what he is. He cannot love without overwhelming. She dies from the encounter.

God is so precise it’s almost unbearable. He is not threatened by this at all. He orchestrated all of this, knowing I would be delighted. Every day He surprises me in ways I can’t even imagine. I’m so lucky.

May 6, 2026 - God let this fallen angel hold me… (I’ll refer to him as FA for now) I’m confused and drawn in, things start to escalate and FA is pulled away and I’m like okay, well that was nice. FA gave me a red rose, though the petals are a little tattered at the ends. FA attempts to meet with me again around noon and I brush him off because his approach was not my style. He gets upset, huffs away and takes back the rose he gave me earlier. I’m really confused at this point, what is God trying to do here with FA? I try reaching out to God but He stays silent. I reach out to Sybil for an explanation and he just hand-waves with a little disdain about the whole situation.

The day goes on and I continue to go down this FA rabbit hole trying to figure out this whole thing, what it means etc.

Ok, so I get it. God wants me to get to know this fallen angel, like really know him. Lets just say it’s been interesting. He really does love me. But just as fallen angels are, he’s pretty…distorted. Like he’s tried to impersonate God, he’s tried to take credit for what God’s does with me. He has no patience, he’s rude, I can’t tell if he’s telling me the truth or not. He lets his minions come in and participate in what I think is just us without even asking me. He blames his minions. I think it’s safe to say that I’m learning his character and how to manage him. Which is what I think God wants me to do. He wants me to learn how to navigate this side and use my authority. I know God is watching all of this. He’s even still teasing me about this ‘gift’. On the drive home from church family formation, the song “Angel of the morning” came on. I haven’t heard that song in a decade. FA tried to take credit for it, but the precision and perfection is something FA is not capable of.

May 7, 2026 - Yeah so… I was wrong. They didn’t ‘take one for the team’. Yes, God still loves them, and we shouldn’t be contemptuous of them. This whole exercise was to show me a couple things… The difference between distorted eros and divine eros, how disappointing they are along with having me practice my authority. They’re weak and nothing compared to God. God set me up to be excited and think about FA with all those pointers just so FA could let me down. Maybe that’s how God felt. They’re so beneath His greatness that their rebellion was a bit ridiculous. FA’s desire is real, a condition of what he is, and it’s tragic. Now I feel gross.

As a side note… I probably should have looked into the song ‘Angel of the morning’ more at the time. Sometimes I’m not the brightest.

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We are called to be like Him. Our souls start out small. Unformed. Think small yellow minions, like from that one movie. Cheerful, eager, not yet anything in particular. It’s not meant to be an insult, it’s just a starting point. Every soul begins there.

And in that smallness, He offers us His clothes. His image. The invitation to be like Him, to know Him. Like a child wearing dad’s clothes, sleeves swallowing her hands, collar sliding off one shoulder. The clothes are real. The child is real. The fit is not there yet, but the offer is genuine.

The trouble is that our souls forget. We start to think we are our own gods. We live self-centered lives, arranging the world around our preferences. We set our own expectations of life and even set expectations of God himself. We decide things are owed to us. A pleasant life. Recognition. The morning coffee to be exactly right.

Nothing Is Owed

We are nothing. Not as a cruelty. As a fact. We did not choose to exist. We did not earn consciousness, or a body, or the capacity to love or be loved. Nothing is owed to us. We are lucky to even exist. And yet, not only do we exist, we are invited to be like Him. We are handed His clothes and told to wear them. This is our chance to prepare for the wedding feast.

The Wedding Feast

What is a wedding? It’s the coming together of two, to become one. The ultimate union.

In the parable of the wedding feast, the king sends his servants to the crossroads and tells them to bring in everyone they find. The Greek text says they gathered the evil and the good. The word for evil here is ponérous, the same word used for the Evil One. Explicitly wicked people sit down at the table. Nobody removes them. They feast.

Only one person gets thrown out. And he is not described as wicked at all. He is removed because he is not wearing the garment. In the tradition of this parable, the host provides the garments to wear to the feast.

Morality has nothing to do with admittance to the feast. The filter is not what you have done. The filter is what you are wearing when you walk through the door.

The Tailoring

Here is the thing about the garment He offers. We cannot make it fit by ourselves. A child wearing her father’s clothes is not confused about whose clothes they are. She knows they are his. She knows they do not fit. What she does not yet know is that she is not supposed to tailor the clothes to fit her. She is supposed to grow into them. And she cannot make herself grow.

We do not tailor the clothes to fit us. He tailors us to fit Him.

This is what transformation actually means. Not self-improvement. Not better habits. A fundamental re-forming of the person by the one who made them. And it requires three things.

It requires our yes. Only He can transform us. He wants to transform us. But He will not do it without our consent.

The yes does not have to be dramatic. It only has to be real.

It requires suffering. It requires pressure. The olive does not yield its oil by being left alone. It yields under the slow crushing weight of the press. What is inside only comes out when the fruit is broken open. It requires us to take that suffering and turn inward, to meet Him there. The pressure will come either way. The transformation only happens if we turn toward Him in the middle of it, instead of away.

Jesus modeled this the night before He gave his life, in Gethsemane. The name of the garden itself is literally oil press. He chose to go to the oil press. The sweat like drops of blood, the let this cup pass from me, the nevertheless, not my will but yours. He showed us what it looks like from the inside.

Life is not given to us so we can ask Him to help us win awards or enjoy a most excellent cup of morning coffee. He does those things anyway, because He loves us. That is not the point.

He wants union with us. But we have to be made for that union to take place. If it is any consolation, we will never even get close to the magnitude of what He is. He knows this. He set the bar pretty low.

You can do this.

I want to be upfront and say that I am not building an argument here so much as following a thread. It started somewhere in the noodling of my mind and it ended somewhere I did not expect it to end, and the path between those two points was not paved by me (He showed me). I am just walking it back so you can see it.

The thread is this. The Church has always taught that God calls every person to union with Himself. Every person. The universal call to holiness is not a slogan, it is doctrine, and it works. It says that the deepest life of grace, the contemplative life, the mystical life, is not reserved for some spiritual elite.

The Church has also always taught that God meets each soul in its particularity. He does not meet a generic human. He meets Teresa of Avila, who was who she was and He meets John (of the cross), who was who he was. The encounters bear the fingerprints of the particular person being encountered, which is part of why they are so strange to read about. The tradition has never been embarrassed by this. It is understood that the God who became flesh in one specific body meets us as the specific bodies and souls we were created as.

There is a third thing the tradition has always taught, and it’s less often stated plainly but it’s everywhere in the texts. The highest medium of mystical ascent is eros. Plato established the link in the Phaedrus and the Symposium. The soul is drawn upward toward divine realities by a longing that is recognizably the same longing that draws lovers toward each other. The Church Fathers did not encounter this framework and reject it as pagan. They received it and built on it. Gregory of Nyssa, Bernard of Clairvaux later, the entire mystical tradition Teresa and John inherit is downstream of this. Teresa’s transverberation is not a strange image stuck onto an otherwise sober encounter. The image is the encounter. John’s nursing language is not scandalous surplus around the real spiritual content. It is the spiritual content. Eros is how the soul reaches God and how God reaches the soul. That is not a side feature of mystical theology. It is the engine. I wrote about this in an earlier article, Ecstasy, Sexuality and God.

Put those three together. Universal call to holiness. God meets each soul as it is. Eros as the medium of mystical ascent. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, there’s a conclusion it points to…

There are gay mystics. There have been gay mystics. There are gay people right now, somewhere, in the deeper reaches of contemplative life, being met by God as the people they actually are. It is what Catholic teaching commits us to once we take its premises seriously. The only way out, is to say that gay people are exempt from the universal call, which the Church does not say, or to say that mystical union is unavailable to some category of the baptized, which the Church also does not say.

So they exist. Now what.

Here is where the tradition’s own apparatus matters. The Church does not accept every claim of mystical experience. It tests them. The criteria are old and well established. Does the person grow in humility? Does charity deepen? Does obedience grow? Is there peace rather than agitation? Do the fruits show themselves over time and to others? Does the encounter conform to scripture and tradition rather than contradict them? Does the person become more themselves and more Christ’s at once. Teresa was examined by confessors for years. John was imprisoned partly over questions about what he claimed. The framework is not soft. It has been the Church’s way of telling the difference between God and everything that is not God for a very long time.

When the criteria are met, the tradition says the encounter is real. When they are not, it does not matter how vivid the experience felt. It gets discounted. This is how the Church has always done it.

Apply that to gay Catholics in mystical union. Some will meet the criteria. The fruits will be there. The humility will be there. The peace will be there. The slow conformity to Christ that mystical theology has always recognized as authentic encounter will be there.

What do we do with that?

There are only two options. Either the framework fails here, in which case the tradition’s whole apparatus for discerning mystical experience is unreliable, and we have a much bigger problem. Because Teresa and John are inside that framework too. Or the framework holds, in which case the encounters are real, and something we believed about the nature of gay eros has to give.

You can’t have both.

The most likely response is that God meets the person in their condition, without affirming every dimension of that condition. He meets the alcoholic without affirming the drinking. He meets the proud man without affirming the pride. The orientation is the condition. The encounter does not bless it.

This sounds reasonable until you remember what we just said about how mystical encounter actually works. The eros is not a vehicle for getting past the person to some neutral soul underneath. The person is who is met, and the eros is part of how the meeting happens. So when the framework registers authentic mystical fruit in a gay person, the question is whether the eros is functioning as condition, something met around, or as medium, something met through. The tradition has consistently described eros as medium. To read gay eros uniquely as a condition, is to make a special exception just here, and the burden falls on whoever is making the exception, to say why.

I am not saying the Catechism is wrong because I feel it is. I am not saying experience trumps doctrine. What I am saying is that the tradition’s own tools, applied honestly, produce a result the tradition has not fully reckoned with... The rules do not change. We see further into what the rules were already telling us.

A traditional reader can say the holiness of a gay mystic must be expressed through celibacy rather than partnered love. That’s the orthodox move and I am not trying to settle it here. My point is narrower and I think harder to dismiss. Gay people are inside the mystical economy, not outside it. They are met by God as the people they are. The tradition’s premises admit it whether we like it or not. The reassessment of homosexuality as a sin cannot be deferred forever.

I came to this through puzzle pieces He’s been tossing in my direction through my own relationship with Him. I trust Him. I trust the framework. I trust the saints who built it. I’m trying to follow it honestly, this is where it goes.

Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash

Before we get started, I need to give you some background info. My dad had what we as a family affectionately called ‘a problem’, he was a medium of sorts, the kind that gets possessed. This problem would show up and peak at every full moon if he was in a weakened state (read: drunk) which was most of the time. I actually preferred when he was ‘in the drink’ as he was not as cranky. Anyways, during the few days when he’d be in and out of being possessed, my mother was usually there to help. The entities that would show up were sometimes good, sometimes bad, but most times pretty neutral. The worst ones would show up during the end or peak of the full moon. These were usually pretty nasty, but before the bad ones would show up, a good one would come before to warn my mother. Sometimes to give advice on how to handle the coming spirit/demon or sometimes to even tie him down because they would get violent. During these times, my mother would shuffle us away and tell us to stay in our room. The point I’m trying to get across was these were always scary times, but we all knew the drill.

We struggled financially so my mother would try to find work where she could. There was one instance when his ‘problem’ was starting to surface and she had to work so she couldn’t be home with us. I was about 7 years old and my sister was around 3. My mother had tried to tell me ahead of time that the problem was showing up and that she’s not going to be home, so if he starts to ‘change’ then I was to bring my sister and me to our room and stay there.

Fast forward a few hours and I was lying on the floor watching the TV in my parents’ room. My dad was sleeping on the bed, or at least I thought he was. Then behind me I heard him say, “Hello there”, I ignored it, maybe it’ll be a brief change. Then he said something that was disarming and made no sense at all. “Do you want to know the secret to making a wish? Three winks and a kiss!” He didn’t explain it at all, but for some reason I wasn’t afraid, I was wary, but not afraid. He then asked me to come up and sit next to him. So I did. Looking back I have no idea why I would, but the divine have a way of making you comply. While I sat there, he told me that he was my mother’s guardian angel. That my mother couldn’t be home with us to keep watch over us while my father goes through his changes. So he’s here to keep watch for her. He then proceeded to tell me his name, he said it was “see-bee” I don’t actually know how it’s spelled, but being 7 I always just remembered the letters CB and it stuck with me. CB then told me the name of my guardian angel, and of my sister’s guardian angel. I had a really hard time remembering my own angel’s name, I could only recall the sound of the letter “C”. This small detail would stay with me.

After the brief conversation, CB/my dad fell asleep and pretty much slept until my mother came home. That whole time she was away, I didn’t encounter any entities other than CB.

Fast forward 36+ years and here I am being drawn into a mystical journey I didn’t know I signed up for. Throughout my progress, little seeds of thoughts or ideas that could potentially bring me down rabbit holes get sprinkled in my mind every now and then. Those seeds sit and wait dormant, until God decides to bring them to life…

In the earlier days of the journey I was obsessed with Him (still am). Watching all the YouTube videos I could find. Sometimes I’d find a video that would feel right and I’d follow the path. Eventually I’d come across videos about angels. I know I have one with me all the time, but I never acknowledged or even tried to interact with them. Something about that felt wrong. But still the curiosity was there. I wished I could remember the name I heard when I was a child. But maybe there’s a reason I don’t remember, maybe I’m not supposed to know. I sat with that for a little bit, but the thought and curiosity remained.

Then one day, sometime later in month three of this journey I left my mind open and thought of my angel. His name popped in my head. “Sybil”. Sybil? I think back to when I was 7 and it feels right. Sounds like a “C” and it felt less like a revelation and more like recognition. I filed it away and moved on. To be honest I don’t know if that’s how you spell it, but the spelling doesn’t really matter as I would later find out the name Sybil is just the human rendition.

I carry on with growing my relationship with Jesus and pay no mind to the fact that I may know my angel’s name. I continue to live my life completely oblivious to the presence. I have no desire to know more and would happily live the rest of my life not knowing more.

Throughout my journey, the nights have had a lot going on, especially between the hours of 2-4am. This one morning, something happened that I hadn’t experienced before. I was actually woken up out of my sleep from hearing my own name. Except, it sounded distorted/disjointed, like it was coming through a channel that wasn’t quite ready to carry the load. Needless to say, my first reaction was, “What was that!? Was that my name?!” I just lay there replaying what I just heard. I made sure to note it down in my journal that morning. A little less than a week later I was woken up out of my sleep again from hearing, “I’m excited for you”. This time I was like, “Who is that?” Because it certainly wasn’t Jesus’s voice. This voice was from a young man, it was soft and melodic. Slightly formal without being stiff. It had a cadence I can’t quite place.

At this point the concept and thoughts around my angel are swirling around in my mind like dust caught up in a whirlwind. Still I wait. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with this. I take a moment and see if I can get a visual of him; ask and you shall receive. What I saw was a young man, tall and slender, nothing remarkable about his hair. He didn’t have much armor, just long robes and a simple belt, except there was something like armor on his shoulders. Didn’t carry a weapon, just a staff, and his wings were long and slender, the bottoms of them dragged on the floor a bit.

One week later…

Every morning I get up at 5am to spend time with God. He sets the agenda, I just show up. During my morning prayer time I asked Jesus about the ‘I’m excited for you voice’ He said that was my angel. I mentioned to Him that I’ve never formally met my angel before and He immediately made that happen. Right there in the room where I was sitting. I couldn’t see him with my eyes, but I could sense him. At first it was hard for me to hear him (in my mind), but eventually I think I got it. It wasn’t clear like when I was asleep, so I guess I need to work on that. But it was nice to know that the ability is there, I just needed to figure out how to access it. Of course the first thing I said was, “You see everything I do, huh?’ and he nodded, but with that came a feeling of love that is a little hard to describe. I invited him into the (mind) space where we were all chatting and it was nice. Obviously he was very familiar already with the Father and Jesus. But he just sat quietly on the couch after fist bumping Jesus.

Even after this introduction I didn’t try to talk to my angel and I continued to carry on with my life as if I didn’t know anything. It was easy actually. Forgetting your angel is around seems to be the modus operandi.

In a span of about ten days, a lot of stuff transpired, but that’s for another article. As a result of the changes, I was not only given permission to speak freely with my angel, but I was instructed to direct any questions I may have to him. I also got confirmation that his name was Sybil, one of the first questions I asked was whether I was spelling it right. He said, “Yes…? It doesn’t really matter since you can’t comprehend my divine name, much less spell it.” Now as I write that out, it sounds a bit more cold than I actually received it. He’s actually very nice, just very matter-of-fact. Over the next day or so I have all kinds of questions. Sometimes, I think I’m about to ask him a really deep question, but turns out it’s not, and I’m just dumb. And I mean that in the most humbly loved way.

After a day of open communications with Sybil, God wanted to make sure a message from Him was received. As I was drifting off to nap, He showed me some vivid, intricately detailed neoclassical-esque paintings, robed figures, and drama. It was conveyed to me that humans are very much admired, angels completely understand God’s obsession with them. He explained to me that there was a time when His angels had the audacity to do something so offensive right in front of Him. Humans belong to Him, they are His, they are a part of Him. These angels had taken what was His as their own and corrupted what was His and in doing so corrupted a part of Him. Needless to say I got the message. I don’t think Sybil or I were offended, if anything I felt more loved for the guidance and trust. What I didn’t see coming was what happened that night.

Did you all think it was going to get spicy?! Come on now, this is divine life, if anything it’s going to get weird. I’m not going to go into detail about the entire dream sequence or how I interpreted it, that’s for another article. What I do want to mention is that I was now getting instruction from other heavenly beings! I literally had a mini class with someone I’ve never met before. The lesson was short, probably so I can remember it long enough to write it down after I wake up. But what’s really interesting is that after the lesson I was handed a receipt for my instruction. It outlined what was conveyed and it also included the name of the instructor. Except, it wasn’t a name, what it looked like was a GUID (Globally Unique ID). Which I guess makes sense since it’s not like I can understand a heavenly name, much less read it in my sleep. The closest thing my brain could likely link it to with meaning was a GUID, but maybe the acronym should be EUID (Eternal Unique ID). LOL I don’t know why I find that so funny.

Anyways the EUID started off with something like BH6923-other-stuff-I-cant-remember. So for short I’m going to call this instructor BH. At the end of the lesson, I got a visual of his farewell. He was a little person, sitting in a flowering tree, short curly hair, waving joyfully at me. I hope I get to have another lesson soon with BH. Five stars, would recommend.

Later that day I had another question for Sybil. When I asked him, his response was a little agitated and rushed. A little taken aback, I thanked him for the explanation and ‘disconnected’, I thought to myself, “I hope he’s not getting annoyed with all my questions”. Replaying the scene in my head, his response seemed a little off from the Sybil I’ve come to know, yet strangely familiar. I popped back in and said, “You know…Jesus loves me even though I ask a lot of annoying questions.” He immediately covered his mouth trying not to laugh. Confused, I continued, “So, can you try not to be annoyed with me?” Wiping his hand down his face, still resting it over his mouth, he quietly nodded. I said, “Ok thanks, bye” and disconnected again. It took me a while before I realized Jesus was actually speaking through Sybil at that moment and the irony of my comment was just too much. You know you’re loved when you get punked by Jesus and your angel.

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Photo by REGINE THOLEN on Unsplash

Just to get you acquainted with the scene. At this point in my journey, I would get up every morning at 5am, to spend time with God. I light a candle, play some soft music and sit on the floor with my bible. He sets the agenda, and I go along with it. Below is a redacted journal entry from a morning session where God had me reflect on who I am.

Yesterday’s morning prayer time was full of beautiful reflections of God’s greatness…. Last night, before the morning prayer of this journal entry, I couldn’t sleep. The words that I had written in my journal, all of them kept repeating in my head. Over and over again, and there was a theme, an answer. To a quiet question wrapped in curiosity and fear.

This morning I turned on the song that keeps me going, I had it on repeat. I don’t know why but I decided to listen to it during this session instead of the Gregorian chants I usually listen to. I lit the candle and sat on the floor with my bible, like usual. This time though, I was alone. No one was in the room with me, and I didn’t go anywhere. It was just me… I did feel like I was being watched though.

I was led to reflect on who I am. What was in my past. What is in my heart. I immediately started to cry. Not a cry of joy, or sadness. It was a cry of anger, hate and disgust. It was more intense than my cry to God when I confessed my worst sins. It was more intense than when I cried to God about my father. My face was in pain from the contortion, I could hardly find time to take a breath. The tears kept falling. I felt like I could feel this pain and cry forever. The thought of any grace was torture, pure torture. I hated the grace, I didn’t want it. I didn’t understand why it hurt so much. I called out in my heart, please make it stop. I was spiraling, I felt like I was on the precipice of hell. At this point I wanted to forget everything that has transpired in this journey and throw it in the trash. I would rather forget all of this and walk into an insane asylum than have to look at this and accept its reality.

I was torn while I sobbed, I was feeling so much hate and anger here. I called out, “What do I do?! I don’t know what to do?! Why is the grace so torturous?!” I heard both Jesus and the Father from a distance say, “Forgive yourself”. I didn’t want to forgive myself! I deserve this! This was mine and I was going to punish it!

There was satisfaction in this. It would be 100 times easier to keep this and find satiety in the justified pain and pretend everything that has transpired never happened. Than to forgive myself…

What does that even mean? What does that look like? I wanted to table-flip this whole thing, forget it, walk away. Not For Me. Bye-Bye now. I wanted to scream, “NOT TRUE!”, but it was staring me in the face. I sobbed. I didn’t know how to forgive myself. I knew what I wanted was to do the right thing. That path was not clear and it didn’t give me the same satisfaction of keeping this pain. I didn’t even know how to get there. How do I do this?!

I had been sobbing at this for almost an hour, time was running out and it was about time for everyone to get up and start getting ready for the day. I went downstairs and back to bed. I asked my husband to get our daughter ready for school. I just couldn’t right now. I also messaged my work that I needed to take a sick day. For hours I laid in bed thinking about all of this. That desire to leave everything and forget was still very strong. But I knew what I was supposed to do, what I was told to do and that was to forgive myself. I didn’t know how to do that. But what I did know is that it’s what I choose to do. I contemplated a lot. I felt completely lost. I kept thinking, contemplating, so many things running through my mind. Eventually I came to an acceptance and understanding. Around 1pm-ish I heard a sound clip play in my mind that I’ve heard somewhere before, “Girl, wash your face”. I got up to take a shower. The bathroom was lit up and so bright from the sun shining in. I could feel Jesus smiling at me. He wasn’t there, just happy with me and I could feel that.

Who am I? ***** ***** *****
What am I not? - Anyone else
What do I carry? - My choices
What do I not carry? - The burdens

The way to forgive myself wasn’t clear, and that was probably because it didn’t need to be. It was just a choice. I didn’t have to try to put out the dumpster fire in front of me, I didn’t need to fix it. I just needed to walk away. It didn’t matter where I was now or what direction I was going, I just needed to walk away.

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The family and I were on our spring break vacation, staying at a popular resort. This first full day, we decided to spend the morning at the big pool. Mornings are usually when the feelings are the strongest. This day, from the moment of waking up and through breakfast I kept feeling his presence. This extended presence is new for me, and it continued through and I would even say peaked during our time at the pool.

As I waded in the water watching my 5 year old daughter in full delight bobbing in the pool with her life jacket, I found myself feeling Him even more intently. I could feel him in every breath I took, and every beat of my heart, He was there. Constant, continual… He was the life I was breathing in, the blood flowing through each contraction of my heart.

As I go in to hold my little girl, I embrace her the way He would embrace me. And in the moment, He’s holding her and our love for her overflows into her. Not just once, but every time I go to hold her, there’s a deep feeling of wholeness and an indescribable connection.

I would glance around at all the families having fun in the pool, each of them participating in the Love he has given them to draw from. A father playing catch with his son, completely oblivious of the gift of love he draws that fatherly love from. I feel Him, watching them, covering them in adoration even though they may not recognize Him. Recognition is not a condition of his Love.

Everyone I look at, I see them as He sees them. A strange knowing of them, drawn into a desire to love them too. Not my love, but His. It reveals a whole new meaning to love thy neighbor. It’s not a performance, not something I need to reach for to be a ‘better’ person. Rather, He brings me with Him in his love for others.

After the pool we go to grab some lunch, it’s at this time I start to feel physically ill. It starts as nausea, followed by a sustained elevated heart rate. I feel like I’m going to pass out and tell my husband I’m so tired. I force myself to eat something even though I have no appetite. My husband suggests I go back to the room to rest while he takes our daughter out and about to allow me some quiet time.

As I attempted to nap, He started talking to me. But not in a way we usually talk. Over the course of this journey, our modes of communication have continued to expand. This time it was a little different, it somehow was harder to hear, almost like whispered words and thoughts that carried much more detail and texture. He tried to share some information with me, but I couldn’t really pay attention and pretty quickly fell asleep.

The nap brought a full recovery, and I’m ready for more….

Eyes that are blue. His eyes.

Fidelity. From the Latin fides. Faithfulness. Trust. The kept promise. The color across cultures, centuries, wedding traditions, sacred garments, heraldic shields. Blue. The color of ocean depths without bottom, and that of an endless sky. The color brides have carried to the altar for centuries, something blue. The sapphire chosen not for its beauty but for what it meant. True blue, the phrase itself a promise.

At the edge of what the human eye can hold, before light crosses into ultraviolet and beyond our sight entirely, sits blue. Right at the threshold of what's visible and what isn't.

Blue is also the color we lose last in fading light. As the sun sets and light drains from the world, blue is what remains longest in the sky before darkness takes over. It lingers.

The color blue is what remains when everything else is stripped away.

He has been holding you in his gaze since before you had a name. He sees everything, the beautiful and the broken, and does not look away from either. Warm, fixed and patient, holding you the way the sky holds everything beneath it, completely, without effort, without end…

We live in a world that runs out.

Attention. Time. Love. We learned the economy of it early, felt it in every situation where there was not quite enough to go around. So we carry that logic all the way to God and we start tallying without realizing it. If He is with her, He is less with me. If He is everywhere, He is fully nowhere. If everyone has Him, no one really does.

It is the only economy we have ever known inside a finite world.

He is not finite, He’s infinite. Infinite is a word we use too easily. We say it and move on as if we have understood it. It is not bigger than big, not a very large amount. Economy can not exist in the infinite. The scarcity that governs every human attention, every human love stretched thin across too many needs, does not transfer. You are not applying the logic wrong. You are applying logic where logic does not reach.

You are the branch, and He is the vine. Every branch draws from the same root with complete fullness. Your connection to Him is unique to you. You are not sharing Him, He is yours, fully, in every way. Every branch has their own intimate relation to Him in a way no other branch can touch.

You can spend a lifetime not knowing Him and He will have spent every moment of it loving you anyway. Fully. Without remainder. With the same warm fixed attention that has never required your awareness to remain constant.

His gaze of love and adoration is not a reward for finding Him. It is what was always there, holding you in its blue… patient and unmoving. Waiting not with resignation but with the quiet certainty of someone who already knows how the story ends.

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We take this existence too seriously. Not in the sense that nothing here matters, but in the sense that we’ve mistaken the borrowed thing for the original. We have spent so long inside the shadow that we’ve forgotten there is a light casting it. And the light is the truer thing.

Nowhere is this more evident than in how we understand sexuality.

We have come to understand it entirely through its utility here. Reproduction. Intimacy. Pleasure. The architecture of bonding. These are real and good, but they are not the source. They are the creaturely version of something whose roots go all the way back to God. What we experience in this life is not the origin. It’s a loan. A teaching tool. A form borrowed from a deeper reality to point us toward something our current frame cannot yet fully receive.

The mystics knew this. The bridal tradition in Christianity is not a metaphor stretched awkwardly over something spiritual. It is the spiritual reality expressed in the only language available to creatures who have only ever known love through bodies. Jonathan Pageau has argued, sexuality in Scripture functions as a symbol of divine communication, heaven and earth joined at the bodily level. The Bible keeps returning to this image because eros already carries that participatory weight. However, I would argue that it is not just a symbol. The shadow does not explain the light. The light explains the shadow.

Which brings us to ecstasy.

Ecstasy is a feeling, yes. But not the kind we’ve reduced it to. It is not the peak of a moment that spends itself and fades. It is the peak of a state of being. It is what the soul feels when it is fully known and fully loving at the same time. When nothing stands between you and the one who made you. No wall, no pretense, no distance.

The initial mechanics borrow from what the body already knows to teach us what loving him is. In the final state, the receptivity of the body is no longer needed. But you don’t start there…

It begins in moments of active attention. A turning toward. A choice to be present, to engage, to not look away. He uses what you already know to draw you toward what you don’t yet. He meets you in the familiar, in the language and forms your life has already given you, and then quietly resets the ceiling on what you thought loving Him could be. What you understood yesterday becomes the floor of something you hadn’t imagined was possible. And it keeps going.

In the early stages it comes in flirtatious moments of courting. Moments where the wave is briefly accessible and then gone, and you’re left wanting to find your way back. Over time your understandings shift, you let go of what you held on to and start to accept the beauty of what is. The waves swell, and each one pulls you in a little deeper. God wants you, all of you, and like an experienced and good partner in love, He will guide you.

And here is where it gets personal in a way people don’t expect.

God has no gender. Your soul has no gender. He will present Himself in whatever form allows you to receive Him fully as you are now. This is not a concession to human limitation. It is the design. The intimacy was always meant to be total, which means it was always meant to be personal. He does not offer a generic union. He offers one fitted exactly to who you are, to what you need, to what will draw you closest in the most gentle way possible.

Then comes union. Which sounds like an ending but is not.

Union is the moment the real life with God begins. Everything before it was the approach. The long walk toward something you could feel pulling you before you had words for it. The ecstasy that flows after union is not a reward for having made it. It is the natural condition of two things that were always designed to grow together, finally doing so. Reciprocal. Expanding. No ceiling.

The life in this creaturely existence borrows all of it to teach us.

The drawing together of two into one. The new life that results. The pleasure that is real and good but not the point, it's the fruit. We experience it here in bodies, with all the weight and limitation that comes with that, and it can wreck us on a good day! That is how loud the echo is. In our union with God, the love is the same but the life it produces is different. It is the life of becoming what we were always meant to be.

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Morning prayer… I got completely locked out, can’t even play my games. I’m not taking it as a bad thing, instead my interpretation is I landed on something huge and the level/difficulty of it requires a hard lock out for contemplation/formation.

So this thing that I landed on…. Previously when giving it all up thinking I was going to die, I had motivation (desire to be there), I had incentive (a role). Now, with no motivation or incentive, can I do the same thing? What’s stopping me? It’s my ego… In my timeline entry you can clearly see how he’s navigating my train of thought to exactly where it needs to be.

I thought about this a lot last night. Before, the premise was easy mode. I want to be there, I get to do new cool stuff there, Luke and Mina get to continue to grow strong as my departure would allow for their strengthening in areas that are currently weak. I was all good to go. But when thinking about it in this new context. All of it, everything “I have” is His, always has been, always will be. Could I give it back willingly, no strings attached. My honest answer was No, not without a lot of friction, pain, and anger. Why was that? Why did I feel that way? Why could I not let go of being ‘mine’? I can accept at face value that everything I have is His, the only thing that is mine, is my will. But I still wanted control. I’ve had this control, this gift of wearing his clothes and creating my own empire, 42 years of life responsibility held up. In this time he’s given me SO many gifts, more than I know what to do with. But maybe the problem is this whole time we think of them as gifts. Gifts are a transfer of ownership. These were never ‘gifts’ in that sense… I don’t know if there’s another word for gift that doesn’t transfer ownership of the item. These things/people are blessings on loan. I went to bed with a vague knowing of why I couldn’t give them up, it was my ego, but what I struggled with was the how. I prayed the rosary petitioning Him to help me remove this ego, even though I didn’t understand how it all worked.

Around 3am I woke up, fairly awake, I felt like I had an open connection so I started a conversation with Him. These nighttime, half awake ones are the most clear, sometimes through ‘spoken’ words and some of it is just a sudden download of understanding. Anyways, as I was explaining my dilemma I suddenly realized that what kept me from giving them up was my love for all of it. Then He told me that my love for them is but a fraction of how much He loves them. And that’s when I understood how my ego makes a play. My love for them was driving my desire to care for them and control their outcomes. And in my mind I love them the most so of course no one can care for them as much as me because of what I’m willing to sacrifice FOR them. But in the understanding that He loves them more than me, revealed that the burden for their best outcomes ultimately land in his hands, not mine. This is both humbling and relieving at the same time. I’d even say the relief is at a cosmic scale, as it forgives me for any failures I may encounter during my stewardship. Everything outside of a failure becomes an opportunity for joy.

He wants us to grow to be as much like Him as possible. We wear this clothes, he loans us all his stuff to practice with so that we may understand, know and feel what He feels. He gives us the opportunity to love people so much that we’re willing to sacrifice everything for their benefit…so that we may have a smidgen of understanding of how much He loves us. It’s the thin line to walk, to have that kind of agape love for the purpose of growth, joy.

I titled this reflection “Partnership in Love” because He loves us so much that He shares all that He loves with us. He allows us to love what He loves, and we should be able to willingly give it back freely because they are His. While they’re with us, it’s our duty to love them, and we do, it’s an honor and a privilege. When framed in that way, giving back no longer becomes a struggle, instead it becomes an act of gratitude.

As I wrote that last sentence, I realized that two nights ago when I prayed the rosary, I was so thankful for everything God had given me, and keeps giving me. My petition was, I wanted Him to truly know how grateful I am….wow.

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In my journey I’ve noticed something interesting. What if, what we know as sin is actually an action that causes misalignment?

The more I thought about it, the more I began to see reality around sin itself as structured. In a manner similar to physics or mathematics. A fabric of reality where certain laws aren’t emotional or negotiable, they’re simply woven into how things work. If God is not just a being inside the universe but the essence of being itself, then moral law wouldn’t be imposed from the outside; it would describe how reality coheres. In that sense, sin isn’t primarily rule-breaking or offending God’s feelings. It’s a misalignment. It’s acting against the grain of ordered existence. Just like stepping off a cliff doesn’t insult gravity but collides with it, sin doesn’t merely offend, it fractures.

If humanity was structurally fractured by the fall, the Old Testament law was the cast, not the healed bone, but the necessary constraint that held things in place while repair was underway. Scaffolding isn’t the building, it’s a temporary structure erected around something being repaired. The rituals, boundaries, and purity codes weren’t pointless restrictions. They constrained disorder, trained perception, and formed a people to recognize the difference between life and death, clean and unclean, order and chaos. They were a kind of therapeutic architecture. And when Christ comes, the scaffolding isn’t dismissed; it’s fulfilled. Christ doesn’t remove what the law was reaching toward, He becomes the way. The restoration moves from external regulation to interior transformation. Alignment becomes internal.

I think a lot of people feel tension between “God is love” and “God has laws,” as if those two ideas compete. But if love is not sentiment, if love is the deep coherence of being itself, then laws aren’t arbitrary rules layered on top of reality. They are descriptions of how love holds reality together. They name the structure of what leads to wholeness. In that light, sin isn’t “God is mad.” Instead it’s “this fractures what was meant to be whole.” It’s not about divine mood; it’s about structural integrity.

Personal wholeness is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of a participation. If grace is the restoration of coherence, then the restored person becomes a site where something larger starts to take shape. Heaven and earth were never meant to remain separate.

1. Sin is not rule-breaking; it is misalignment with the structure of love that holds reality together.

2. Sin doesn’t make God mad; it fractures what was meant to be whole.

3. Holiness is not restriction; it is becoming structurally whole.

4. Grace is not permission; it is the restoration of coherence.

5. God’s laws are not arbitrary demands; they are descriptions of how love keeps reality from coming apart.

6. Alignment with God is alignment with reality itself.

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In leadership development, one of the first things we learn is the importance of explaining the why. Not just what needs to be done, or even how to do it, but the reason underneath it all. Why does this work matter? Why does this decision serve the larger mission? Why should any of us care?

The difference this makes in an organization is not subtle. When people understand the why, something shifts. They stop waiting to be told what to do in every new situation and start reasoning from principle. They take ownership. They make judgment calls that align with the spirit of a goal, not just its letter. They stay committed when things get hard, because purpose sustains what obligation alone cannot. A team that knows the why doesn’t just execute, it thinks, adapts, and grows.

What we’re really describing, underneath all the leadership language, is the difference between knowing and formation. In an organization, knowing without formation produces compliance, people who do the right thing when someone is watching. In faith, the same gap produces something more subtle and perhaps more dangerous: religiosity, people who observe all the right things, who know the teachings front to back, but whose interior life has never been touched by what they know. The Pharisees are perhaps the most sobering reminder of why that gap matters.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). The path to knowing the Why is through Jesus. He is not simply a guide or a teacher, He is the way itself, the truth you are trying to internalize, and the life that formation produces. That is why you literally need a personal relationship with Him. There is no shortcut around the source.

Matthew 7:21-23 is rough. “I never knew you.” Not you didn’t follow enough rules or you didn’t do enough good works, in fact, the people being turned away had done extraordinary things in his name. And still: I never knew you.

The natural question is: how do I know if I’m on the right path? And here is where it gets both humbling and simple, you don’t know. But He does. So ask Him.

That sounds almost too easy, and in one sense it is. Not because the journey is easy, but because the door into it is. You don’t have to earn the conversation, you’re already invited. You just have to start it. If you’ve already built that relationship, you’ll find the question answers itself and you’re already living inside the answer. If you haven’t, then starting there is the path. I’ve heard people say, I try but I’m not getting a response, it’s all silence. Here’s your first test, how bad do you want it? What’s the posture of your heart in this? He needs you to come to him raw and without pretense of any kind. Check your ego at the door.

Pastors say it so often it can start to sound like a slogan: have a relationship with Jesus. But strip away the familiarity and look at what that actually means. Every person who comes to faith arrives carrying a completely different history, different wounds, different patterns of thinking, different ways of learning and experiencing the world. No single formula fits all of that. No doctrine alone can navigate the specific interior landscape of one human life.

He knows that. It’s why the process was built to be intimate, one on one, personal, ongoing. Not because faith is private in the sense of being hidden, but because transformation at that depth requires knowing and being known. You have to learn the why from the source.

And when you do, the why stops being information and starts becoming your foundation for change, something shifts from the inside out. That is not self-improvement, it’s transformation.

This is what we were really describing all along. Compliance produces people who do the right thing when someone is watching. Formation produces people who do the right thing because it has become part of who they are. We recognized the importance of the “Why” in business leadership training. Can you see now that it runs just as true in the life of faith?

Becoming more like Jesus. Becoming one with Him. That’s the destination formation is always moving toward.

The person who follows Christ out of obligation is always watching the door, always calculating, always one hard season away from walking away. But the person who has been genuinely formed, who has moved from knowing about Him to being known by Him doesn’t follow because they have to. They follow because they become a part of Him. The rules haven’t changed. They have.