CIVITAS SACRI

(The Holy City)

16” x 16”

Pine and acrylic paint

One of my strangest counselling sessions was early in my career with a young man who was experiencing depression. This depression had its roots in a chaotic childhood filled with sexual and physical abuse and desertion.

We were in the middle of a session, with me doing standard treatment, when I sensed an “urging” within me: “Share Ezekiel 47 with him.”

I mentally shoved this aside and continued with the treatment. I had read Ezekiel 47 the night before and I basically understood the symbolism, but it didn’t particularly grab me. In the midst of the devastation of Jerusalem a “man”, an angel perhaps or some sort of avatar of Yahweh, shows Ezekiel the future rebuilt temple. He goes into great architectural detail and details about the rituals that will be conducted there. In Chapter 47 this “man” takes Ezekiel wading into the river that flows from the temple.

The ”urging” came a second time. I had to suppress it. It would be very unprofessional of me to bring up a Bible verse in the middle of a cognitive-behavioral procedure, especially one in which I felt had no bearing on his situation.

But it came up a third time. I have a rule that if I have an intuition, I will dismiss it unless it comes up three times. Then I pay attention to it. I have learned that if I dismiss such “gut feelings” I later regret it.

So I feebly said, “You know, your situation reminds me of Ezekiel 47…” I was thinking, “Oh, boy, what do I say now? Where can I go with this?”  But I didn’t have a chance to continue. He stared at me in shock, and then began weeping. After about two minutes of sobbing and half a trash can full of used tissues, he looked up at me and said, “I need to tell you what happened yesterday.”  He then went on to tell me that he was suicidal, and was walking down the street, heading home to where he was going to put a gun to his head, when he noticed he was in front of a church. He felt an urge to go inside. It was empty, so he sat down in a pew. He heard a voice say, “Read Ezekiel 47.”  He looked around, and there was nobody there. But there was a Bible in the pew rack, so he picked it up and read about Ezekiel and the “man” wading in the river. This threw his into despair because it felt like God had played a cruel trick on him.

But he didn’t kill himself, because even if God is cruel, at least God talked to him.

He asked me to explain Ezekiel 47 to him.

I shared that in the midst of the devastation of Jerusalem, God assured Ezekiel that there would be a new beginning. The precision of the vision was in stark contrast to the chaos of the present situation. And then the “man” waded out into the river that flowed from the temple, planted a marker, and came back to lead Ezekiel to the marker. This happened several times, evidently indicating that God was going before the people of Israel to lead them into an abundant future.

This whole incident became a turning point in the life of this young man.

 I made this piece “The New Jerusalem” in the early part of the COVID lockdowns. A plague was sweeping over the world, and many of us sat isolated in our homes while our culture was collapsing in chaos. To make matters worse, we were often hearing of global warming, how our world is being devastated, perhaps to the point where ecological recovery was no longer imaginable.

As I was sitting alone in my house, in the midst of this seemingly post-apocalyptic chaos, I heard the words of a “man”.  Not literally. I heard and read the hope that the theology of Christogenesis brings, and I heard the prophetic voices of Native American elders. It was very much the same message Ezekiel heard.

Christogenesis maintains that Christ is present in the evolutionary process, a process of collapse and growth. When one system collapses a new, more complex system emerges. This is consistent with the Native American teachings that maintain that the world cleanses itself occasionally, only to come back stronger.

Take forest fires, for example. Forest fires are a natural phenomenon, usually occurring as a result of lightning storms. A fire will sweep through a forest and cleanse it of dead material and disease. As well, the area is open to abundant sunlight and the earth is rejuvenated with fertilizing potash. A forest full of dead branches and sick trees gets replaced with a lush meadow, which within a few decades becomes a deciduous forest, and within a century supports a stand of towering, healthy coniferous trees.

As I was creating New Jerusalem, I was reading the Book of Revelation, and I listened to John Rutter’s Visions over and over again. Revelation  echoes Ezekiel in portraying devastation and chaos, but assures us through meticulous measurements that God is in control. In the fourth movement of Rutter’s Visions this glorious New Jerusalem emerges from the chaos and despair of the earlier movements. The New Jerusalem is Chapter 21 of Revelation.

As a therapist, clients often come to me because their lives are collapsing. They hope that I can help them reverse the damage, clear the chaos and make things go back to the way they were. On a societal level we are in much the same place. The world as we knew it is changing forever. Our losses are going to be devastating. I ache for those who are going to be victimized by this, for those who will be destroyed by this, but I trust nature, and I trust God. who has seen a lot of changes in the past 26.7 billion years.