The Substance of Things Not Seen.

You have to believe. That is all there is to life, love, and happiness.

Remember when you were a child, and the world was a miraculous place where any dream you had would come true? Think about a specific day when you were truly happy and I will guess it was when you were a child. When I think of my childhood there are freeze frame clips in my head. I remember my mother and father dancing in a ballroom, I smell cookies sitting on a wire rack, and my mother in an apron saying I could have one. I see icicles hanging from the rain gutter of my childhood home, a small yellow house by a pear orchard. There was a stillness in that rural neighborhood I rarely find these days. Winter was time off from school. It was made up of making snowmen, snow forts, sledding, and snowball fights. The icicles sparkled in the morning sunshine, and I snapped them off as if they were fine pieces of art to be collected and saved. I remember the fresh snow that lined the fine limbs of our willow tree. My mother stored summer in Ball canning jars, in a pantry. There were rows of golden yellow peaches, plums, pears, apricots, and cherries, in a perpetual state of ripeness: the sweetness of summer. In the winter, after a day in the snow, my father, brothers, sisters, and I gathered at the small kitchen table and had tomato soup, and homemade bread. We had peanut butter on celery sticks. Then the jars would be set on the table. Dad would loosen their rims, and open their lids, and Mom would put the fruit in our bowls with a large spoon. When we tasted the fruit we were reminded that winter was not forever. Many seasons have passed, but the memory remains. Some things are timeless: Christmas presents, first communions, a broken arm, standing on the church steps while my mother wiped the dirt from my cheeks before we went in. My first kiss; my first fight; my father driving me to a free-throw tournament; my grandfather - wearing his fine blue striped overalls - telling me stories of his youth. In the mind of God I am still being born, and sitting at that dining room table with those peaches in my bowl, and I am in Heaven too, all at the same time.

When  I am in doubt about the likelihood of my dreams coming true, I remember my parents and grandparents and how they were here, and once young, and my same age, alive and in love, and once they too were children. They had hopes like me: dreams that faded and were never realized. When I am down, thinking of my failures, my ruined aspirations, I think of a scripture found in Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." There is much to be learned from this wisdom. It is saying, "Never stop dreaming and believing."


I have a theory that we will all be children in Heaven. We will never have to grow up, and our lives on Earth will be a distant memory. We will know, finally, who we really are.

The world can get you down if you follow its belief system, that possessions are lasting. The world preaches a gospel that goes, "When pigs fly." It is the gospel of doubt in the miraculous. It is easy to have faith in the things we see. We have proof. Only fools believe in the invisible things. Or do they? The irony is that the things will all pass away; the things that are invisible will last forever. They are faith, integrity, courage, honesty, persistence, commitment, fidelity, trust, love, joy, and hope. We are only expressions of God's dream - of God's heart. We are beings of light, as any physicist can tell you. If there were spaceships small enough they could fly right through us. We are illusions and the world and its things are illusions, because behind these molecules called you and me, and everything else, is the invisible heart of God. 

When I was nine years old, the priest of our church one Sunday described the Holy Spirit as being like a wind. This made sense to me. I had seen the wind fill the white sheets of my mother's clothesline in our backyard in the summertime. I had pressed my face against the sheets and felt the clean warm cotton massaging my cheeks. The sheets were like the sails of a ship. Where would they sail to if they could?  I had enormous dreams, full as the sheets of my mother's clothesline. I dreamt of being an astronaut going to the moon, being a geologist, and winning the Olympics as a runner, or pole-vaulter. I marveled at the structure of crystals, clouds, the architecture of a butterflies' wing, the scent and color of a rose in my mother's garden. What magnificent power and intelligence had made such things? I had a deep curiosity to find this force, this being, this Creator of all things. And I sensed then that this force was the force of pure love.

In the film, "Hook," Robin Williams has to remember he is Peter Pan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRspLSB2J-E&feature=related He is a lawyer who deals in facts. When we look at the face value of things, and do not see the unseen, we end up being someone other than who we are. We forget. It takes faith to fly to Neverland and be who we are. But once we do it, we know the way. It takes a supernatural thing to get us back to seeing like children see things. Fairy dust. Being a parent is one way to remember. Tragedies can wake us, so can falling in love. I remember when  I became a father. There was my baby girl looking at me as if she had arrived from another planet. She had; the planet named Heaven. The invisible kingdom.

We get amnesia sometimes. When we were children, laughter was easy, and smiles were a natural expression of our state of mind. The state of our souls. Like Peter Pan we must shed the doubt and fly into the arms of love. If summer can be captured in a Ball mason jar - love, faith, and joy can fill the container of our souls. And like a child you can say "I have captured it. Do you want to see?" Peter could not see the invisible food until he found his true self, then he was able to eat as much as he desired. The invisible things, like love, are like food for our souls.

In the movie, "American Beauty" there is a part that speaks so clearly about the unseen things, and the nature of this unseen Creator. In the film, Jane Burnham (Thora Birch), daughter of a failed real estate mom, Carolyn Burnham (Annette Bening), and Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a frustrated salesman, forms an unlikely relationship with a neighbor boy named Ricky Fitts, (Wes Bentley), who also has strange parents (Col. Frank Fitts USMC, and Barbara Fitts - Chris Cooper and Allison Janney). Jane and Ricky sit in Ricky's room and watch one of his films, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB0th8vNLxo that has to do with a plastic bag dancing in a small whirlwind by a brick wall. If you find yourself doubting there is a Creator, please watch this clip.

The rest of the movie paints a portrait of American values gone awry. It shows clearly how the pursuit of material things ultimately leads nowhere. I know something about this aspect of American life. Once I had quite a few possessions, but in the past two years I've been laid low. It has forced me to focus on the invisible things - that matter.

Do pigs fly? Yes, they do, if only in your imagination. Anything is possible to a person who believes. You just have to do a little soul searching to find the wind that will fill your sails. I am ready, how about you?