The foul spirit threw the man into a fit, and with a loud cry came out from him.
unclean spirits
are not seen
in their recreation glory
only in their present discomfortas with other unseens
we respond scream for scream
refusing a larger picture
settling for a pea in a bedso we shake and shake
ourselves and others
to more clearly see
what our descendants will seeit is a coming out
that disappears an unseen
such revelation is for no purpose
beyond a sorting out for latertransforming unseen to clean
is a dramatic story
told and re-embellished
full of sound furynow it is ours to use
to escape
a needed next shaking
care well for what is loosed
Shaken to our foundation we are called and call out for both relief and a source worthy of jumping from to land in a larger life. Conversion is convulsive.
This section nearly dismisses the person possessed by an external or internal compulsion or addiction in order to show command over whatever the times identify as outside nature, the demonic that divides a self from itself.
Positively, this moment describes the result of a decision to repent. A consequence of repentance is space opened that it may be able to be transformed to prevenient mercy toward others. This space may or may not arrive at a shift from wilderness to intentional partnership with all of creation—water, land, air, and energized/evolving beings. It is difficult to shift relationships from domination to mutual consent.
Negatively, human beings become but carriers for kind or mean spirits. Our significance is not in our being, but our representation of some either/or/both/and of good–evil.
A part of our work some two-thousand years later is to deal with whatever agitation lies within our lives. That which jerks us around needs confronting. To put off this confrontation at the Pettis Bridge, Stonewall Bar, Standing Rock, or a local setting is to give-in to a bully. Be thankful for the convulsions that transform caterpillar to butterfly, adolescent to adult, follower to messenger, meanness to kindness.