Editor’s note: This article was submitted for publication Fall 2018. This is a late upload.
By: Joseph Rich
Prior to 2000, my family lived in a southern town on a sleepy street populated with old trees and old people. Each made creaking sounds. At the age of 11, we lived in an old two-story home built in 1938 from cypress board and solid oak. It was a very stately home near the explored campus of the local college. The bathrooms all had old musty clothing hampers. The clothing hamper was recessed with wooden doors, perforated holes for ventilation and a spring hasp on the inside of the chute opening outward to the room.
As a child, we all enjoyed playing hide and seek avoiding capture whenever the opportunity presented itself, such as a rainy day. It was great fun, and I took great pride in never being discovered in my “secret hiding place.” If one were to get on ones’ hands and knees, crawl to the rear of the clothes hamper and look directly up, there was a crawl space that went up into the wall. The space was just big enough for a skinny 11-year-old to climb inside the wall space and be out of sight to anyone peering in. The rear wall had slats every foot or so and a cobweb or two. It was a matter of pulling and pushing your back against the wall and partially wedging your body in while climbing out of sight. It was like vanishing into thin air, and no one could find you.
Remaining hidden was fun for only a while. After a while holding yourself up requires a lot of energy and leads to pain. It can weaken a body no matter the size or age. The body becomes a learning aid to let you know hiding is unnecessary and painful. When hiding, one is involved in the game, an illusion or projection. As I would hold on in secret, I would begin to hear voices and imagine all kinds of terrors. Eventually, my grip would loosen, my energy became sapped, and I would fall, collapsing to the bottom of the musty place. Little by little, long after my youth, I was responding to my perceptions and fears of falling slowly but surely.
I began to perceive my “hiding place” was not so great and began to change my behavior accordingly. My desire to quit the game did not change until my perceiving was corrected. Now, instead of looking out from my clothes hamper, I look out from my holiness to the holiness of others. The view is a more rewarding experience. Being free of the self-imposed clothes hamper, we are free to experience miracles in our minds. Our mind can extend to others from the state of grace not from, “the many voices” in the walls and fences of the mind. Miracles come when the mind is ready to be free of the enclosure.
It is so much more joyful and fun to send forth from grace. God is in charge of grace and restores our awareness to reality. Our very “best” images remain enclosed, musty, and fearful.
Miracles we discover have no boundaries. Miracles have no rules of hiding and seeking. Miracles are a complete reversal of this to “seek and find.” Miracles give reality its proper place. This leads us to the proper function of mind, which is to extend, not remain hidden and afraid. In falling from our hidden place, we restore spirit to its proper place. The order is restored, and love unfolds. We come to find hidden what we seek, in between, behind the fears, the truth and peace of God. All I want, is the peace of God.
The escape from darkness. The hiding place cannot remain hidden. Someone knows its whereabouts. Who knows? The Builder. There is nothing you would want to hide. Your friends need you. We have exerted enormous energy to maintain our hidden spaces in the mind’s wall. A miracle will dispel the illusion, placing us in communion and service to the Holy Spirit. What voice will you hear this day? Come out and play. I am the friend. Discover and wet your spiritual toes. Hear the creaking fade away. Time to advance is upon us.