Apocalypse of Jude

“Before even the Spirit-time, when the sea was waste and void with darkness over the surface of the deep, the Spirit was upon the waters.”

The old woman speaks into a prepared silence that twelve people scattered on her lawn have made for her. During their time of prayer the Spirit has come upon the old woman as it does from time to time. The long rays of a sun falling away into the ocean stride the garden’s hedge-rose wall and mantle her small frame in gold. Behind her back a purple-robed range of peaks seem to bear down on her in the approaching twilight.

“And through the Spirit, God breathed Light to draw men to the Light.”

She now lifts an intense, inquiring gaze into the eyes of each around her.

“But many who have seen the Light, yet having not fully understood the Light, came in among us called to the Light. With their minds on darkness, they caused many among us to lose our first love.”

In her pause, a grief passes across her face extinguishing some of the light from it. Then as if from long memory, she draws breath.

“There have also been those who have been as hypocrites among us, slandering us so that we were persecuted. Others have come that have set up the high place of the enemy among us and with fallen priests enticed many to false sacrifice.”

Disgust now wrinkles her brow, slowly deepening to great sorrow, as in her turn she faces full into her shadow.

“Even Jezebel came with her deep secrets.”

She sighs deeply.

“Many of us learned them and fell away.”

Having stopped in the face of her shadow, she chews on her tongue as if trying to displace a foul taste. Motionless, she continues.

“There have been times when we seemed to come alive. But for the most part it was dead faith.”

She raises her head high again and lifts her voice.

“And if we have stood, it is because He has placed an open door before us.”

Around her a number of Amens are heard.

“But for some time now, most in this town have become neither hot nor cold. And it is about to be spat out.”

The vehemence of her voice angrily defies the now descending dusk.

“For we have chosen to clog up our souls with vanity, saying we are rich and, having become wealthy, are in need of nothing, not knowing that we are miserable, naked and blind. With the turn of each day, this Laodicea we live in has become even more wretched, preferring darkness to the Light, knowing not that Light is about forever to leave them.”

Anguish breaks forth at the end of her anger, revealing her heart. She breathes heavily in the freshly fallen twilight, before allowing her voice to come out in defiance again.

“But we are still here, as a voice in this place prepared for us in the wilderness. And this Easter we have petitioned for the souls of two young men whom the Lord has revealed and marked out to us for the fulfilment of His purposes in this town. Let us not give up praying for them.”

She raises her hands over them.

“To you who have been called. You are loved by God and kept by Jesus Christ. May mercy, peace and love in abundance be yours until He returns in glory to separate forever Light from the dark, as day is now separated from night. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit has to say.”

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 19

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