Visit From God

After God visits you are changed.

God first visited me at the end of February, 2015.  He gave me a vision.  On rare and lovely days he returns and visits again.  But there are no more visions.   When God visits there is accompanying euphoria.  It is as if a drug has been injected directly into my veins.  A drug that makes me high as a kite and I cannot move.  My eyes are shut and bliss is all consuming.  God only visits when I am alone.  I am alone during the day while my husband is at work.  And when the visit starts, I lie down.   Rapture is not something to experience standing up.  You have to be lying down while in the grips of rapture.

I know God had changed me because after his visit my parents can not hurt me.  God made me a lot tougher.  Or maybe, when I am closer to God, I am better protected.  In April 2015 I spent Easter with my Father.  Typically after a visit with with my father I am suicidal.  Usually because of the distress I take extra medication in the car while my husband drives me home.  My husband and I have fought because my husband wanted to ban me from seeing my father. 

But Easter 2015 things were different.  My husband noticed that when my father tried to bully me a bit, I stood up to him.  My husband says that bullies back down very quickly if they are confronted.  And at the dinner table, as we talked, my husband said I rarely made eye contact with anyone.  My husband said that whenever I spoke I looked up at a spot over his head.  There was a window behind and above him.  So this was a window I looked out of.  My husband  said I seemed very much like an autistic child.  And yet, the visit was fun.  It was nice to enjoy my Dad.  My Dad gave me an awesome painting he had painted.  And I had no distress after.

Then in summer of 2015 I spent two weeks at my mother's home on the coast of Maine.  Again, I suffered no distress from having this prolonged contact with her.  What I knew, during my visit, is that I must display no signs of emotional vulnerability.   For there is a pattern to mother's conversations with me.  After God had visited me, I understood how thing work.   God must have made me aware of what was going on.  If I doubt myself, or show any signs of weakness, my mother attacks me.  Her voice becomes very hard, condemning, criticizing.  If my mental defenses are at all lowered, then this will be the moment that she emotionally tries to destroy me.  Perhaps, that during that summer, I was so close to the vision of union with God, that there simply were not many times of self doubt or emotional uncertainty.  Mom and me were good because I was stronger than I have ever been.  Mom collapsed in her bed in the hour before I was to leave because she did not want me to leave.  I brought her tea in bed and hugged her.

So what exactly happened, when God first visited?

I was in bed and could not make art.  Because I was very worried.  The worry had left me exhausted.  It was morning, and I was exhausted.  There were thing happening, out there, in the far world.  Strangers were looking at my art and judging me.  My art was at the mercy of their opinion.

In the preceding year, 2014, all my effort had gone into making a ten piece series of large oil pastels.  My goal was to create a ten work portfolio to submit to the New York City art gallery Ricco Maresca.  Ricco Maresca has for decades represented the schizophrenic artist Ken Grimes.  They are open to representing artists who have disabilities.  But Ricco Maresca is elite.  My husband says they are Harvard taste and I would be better represented by M.I.T. taste. In truth, I am a little risque for Ricco Maresca.  But there are so few galleries that offer open submissions.  Ricco Maraesca was at least open to reviewing a portfolio by an unknown artist. 

On the day before God visited my husband had submitted my art to five New York City art galleries who all promote Outsider Art.  Emotionally I could not represent myself so he had to represent me.  I was just too frightened of them.  Yet I knew I needed them.  A gallery is a place to sell art.  I wanted to sell art.  So I needed to find a gallery.  The terror of their judgement was killing me.  Ultimately all the five galleries would turn my husband away.

So he submitted my art on a Sunday.  And on a Monday morning I lay in bed consumed by hope and terror.

The rapture was so sweet that there was no alarm.  I didn't fight being swept up.  And up, and up and up my emotions went into ecstasy.  When I closed my eyes, I saw in my inner vision a view of the earth from outer space.  And everything was enveloped in Love.   Me, the earth, all the creatures below and the empty space between the planets of our solar system, all was filled with Love.  It was God.  God is the fabric of the universe and God is alive with Love.  The idea of an independent self is mostly an illusion.  So much of who we are is an expression of God, that there is almost no room for a self.  We are vehicles. We are vessels.  Not just human beings.  But a dog.  A dog is the manifestation of God.  A coffee table.  A coffee table is the manifestation of God.  All dense matter.  All empty space.  All are alive. The Universe is alive.  And its awareness is that of Love.

Now before this February visit from God, in global news, there had been much alarm over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  One the BBC, one article I read asked if this would be start of World War III.  Personally I was scared.  President Obama was at a European conference and he then said that his primary worry was a nuclear missile detonating in New York City.  This remark occurred a day after a journalist asked, in an internet article, "Why is the eastern seaboard at the highest nuclear threat level?"  After hearing Obama's remark,my guess was that there was a Russian submarine off the New England coast and Putin was threatening New York City.  Putin held New York City as nuclear hostage in order that the United States to stay out of the conflict in the Ukraine.

So this is what was on my mind, besides waiting for the galleries in New York City to respond.  Those were my worries.  And about these worries, the Universe had a message to convey to me.

In my vision, up high above the earth, the Universe showed me the coastline of New England.  Part of the earth was dark, with the light of the cities, and part of the earth the sun lit up.  I saw where I was, and I saw where Russia was.  And then I felt, I heard, I understood, I was told this: "Everything is O.K.".  If the human species is foolish enough to destroy itself, and foul its planet with nuclear detonations, still, everything will be O.K.  In part this is because on the other side of death there is the rapture of Love.  What I experienced that moment I would again experience after death.  All creatures return to the universal consciousness of Love after death.  It does not matter to the Universe whether I live or die.  Because, the message to me was, "Everything is O.K."  It matters not the Universe the whole of humanity's history.  For in the cosmic eye, our troubles are less than blink, and our whole evolution is less than a yawn.  The earth is small when viewed from the vastness of space. And humanity is small in the arc of the existence of the Universe.  I must understand that whether or not the art gallery Ricco Maresca was interested in me, still, "Everything is O.K."

God chooses when he will visit.  I have tried to summon rapture by working on art to exhaustion.  This does not work.  Sometimes so much time passes without rapture that I think, "It was good while it lasted, but I am now on my own and God will not visit again."  And then to my surprise the rapture and touch of God returns.

In writing this and remembering the vision, I am now at the edge of rapture.   Often at night before sleep I send out a prayer, "I love the Universe".  When I say, with my inner voice, "I love the Universe" yes, then I feel the edge of rapture.  If I can say wholeheartedly "I love" then usually a taste of cosmic love returns to me.

I love God.