Isaiah, undone (Revised)

Isaiah 6:4

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.


O God, what is this?

There is immediacy, the heart understands before the sense can comprehend what is seen. My soul is thrown down, cowers back, seeks to hide and finding nothing to hide itself behind, is dismayed. This is the reaction of my whole self even before my eyes could make out the shape of the temple, the great robe filling it, God as dwelling among but transcending, my eyes perceiving here a greater reality than what I have seen, for it is the temple but the proportions are wrong, and changing, deepening as my eyes scan them. There is a likeness between what I have seen before and what I see now, but it is as if a whole new depth where added, a realness that makes the old temple appear only a shadow, the words of Solomon speaking out from it, will God really dwell in a temple made by the hands of men? This is a greater temple, a place of surpassing beauty, of smoke and fire, there is the altar, there the doors, there the sea, there the lampstand.

Then my ears too, hearing a thunder that echoes from the walls of this place, for I am both in the temple and perceiving its wholeness. My ears at first were dazed by the brilliance of the sound, the greatness of the sound, like a living thing almost, and in awe the words slipped past my comprehension. As the world focused, the words became clear, the repeated words, and my cowering mind recovered a comprehension, the sight and the sound explaining my heart to me, and I am dismayed

Holy! they cry, three times they repeat it, the emphasis exalting in its repetition, ascending as a mountain path to unreachable heights, the forbidding places of smoke and fire, like Mount Horeb where the Lord once thundered. The words of it at once are known, for this is a place where words are truth, where to contradict what is plain is unthinkable, for there is unity here, and the beings who speak it have no parts. They cannot shift and change, for lies have to do with change, and a limitedness of understanding, and these beings are intelligence, are all intellect. They speak what is true because to do otherwise is not possible, because in the presence of God all is seen and known, nothing is hidden, and what is spoken is, like the existence of the one who speaks.

Holy! This word penetrates me. My cowering soul is suddenly seen, as the works of the flesh are burnt away before the great presence in front of me. I am known, and in being known, I am terrified.

O for the shelters of my past, the sanctuaries of my works, the pleasant places of my mind, and the securities of my abstractions! All are gone now, in this terrible reality, for at once they are seen for what they are, and in being seen, they vanish. The light shines upon them and they burn away like the morning mist, vanishing like the dew, blown away like the chaff. They are gone, gone and I stand exposed, with nothing to hide me, naked before him, looking upon myself in my ugliness and feeling shame.

O Lord, I have read Moses and the shame of our first parents! How long have I clothed myself as they did, in the leaves of my own imagination, the inadequate covering of my petty pride! This foolishness confronts me now, tested in the flood of his presence and found wanting, the waters rushing over my head, the flood engulfing me. Now what I have made is destroyed, and I have nothing.

This is me, unmasked. This is the secret shame I have so long worked to obscure. This is the self that exists, the real, that which I cannot change or alter, that which in glimpses has long terrified me. This is weakness, ugliness, meanness, hatred, selfishness, pride, and an overweening desire to master all I see. This is what I hide in my words, my polite ways. This is the swallowing self, the galloping engorger, that which cannot be hid, always peaking forward and revealing itself, my hated being, hidden from all.

O Lord, now I have nothing, I have nothing, I have no works, no shelters, no foundation, no place to hide this ugly self in! Now I have no refuge for here in the terror and splendor of your presence all is lost. It is just me, in my shame and guilt, standing before the one against whom I have set myself. Whatever I had is lost, and you will destroy me.

Ruined! Ruined! And before his great beauty, the splendor and beauty of his holiness. It is terrible, but beautiful in its terror, as are all such things, for what can destroy us also draws us. Beautiful though it thunders, the attraction which the seraphs I hear cannot stop praising, for their actions are not monotonous but living, a joy, a joy my heart can conceptualize and therefore increases my despair, for I suffer not just the punishment of my shame but also the things lost. This was once mine, for there was a place where no one was ugly, God pronouncing all things good, and thus able to stand before him unashamed, rejoicing in the holiness known and seen, participating in it, two things concurring together, one greater, the other lesser, but unified.

This is itself, holiness describing unity, oneness, purity, unmixedness. There is no deviation in it, but there is exaltation, advancement, uprising, a thing seizing its created place, living in fullness as it ascends deeper. Holiness is a thing in its proper place, and so is joy, the delight in a thing fitted. God made all things for himself, and set them in the place for which they were made. Rejecting this, we rejected also our happiness, and now the world groans.

But the heart has not perceived these things, until now, until this terrible presence made all other things fade. O for the wasted days, the days of hiding. Now there is no hiding, only breaking, only destroying, only the eternal burning of his holiness. I am ruined! My lips reveal themselves unclean, bringing forth as they have the deeds of the unclean heart, the twistedness of my shameful self, and now with all things clear, all truths known, they cast me down.

There is only despair now. I die, and perish eternally.

[Thus man is brought before God. If he does not come here, there is no repentance, for repentance is a turning from the broken worlds created, and though few will have them burnt as Isaiah by the fire of his presence, many of us will have them removed by trial, the fire of earthly experience. But they must be surrendered or taken, if God will have us]

[The seraph flies to him and touches the coal to his lips, this coal upon which had dripped the precious blood of the lamb, a shadow yet, for God represented himself unto Isaiah in the temple]

Mercy!

How?

I see it, but it is obscured by the smoke of the temple. The altar! This place, real as it is, must also have a real sacrifice, a depth of sacrifice, with power as this place shudders with power! The sacrifice then, it too has power! O Lord, this is your salvation!

Now I am clean! Now in my exposure I am whole, I am myself, I am a man remade! Here I am!

O Lord, send me!

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Perhaps I will later do a follow up explaining more fully his thoughts after the coal touches his lips.