Prologue: Part II

"This anthology, and its companion volume; The Enlightened Heart, collect the poetry and prose, not of longing, but of fulfillment. The men and women that speak to us from these pages have each, to a greater or lesser extent, entered the Kingdom of Heaven. In order to tell us about what is unknown and unknowable, they have to speak in terms of the known. That is why metaphorical language is so indispensable and why the distinction between poetry and prose finally breaks down."
 
        Not longing, but fulfillment. I searched for fulfillment when I realized that I hadn't found it in the "Christianity" that I was raised in. I had grown up in "Christian" churches and schools my whole life in a family full of Christians, yet nobody ever asked me, "Does this life fulfill you?" And I never asked where to find it. So I set out on a solo search for the answers I sought.
        I trudged through the tempestuous wind and torrential downpour of the twirling twister of drugs, sex and slavery to sin. I swam through the storm, barely staying afloat for 8 long years, and I swallowed to much of that sea I was drowning in, yet didn't find fulfillment in any of it.
        Then I was led to New Zealand and from the first week I spent here, in a little town called Kaiwaka, I knew I was finding the fulfillment I had been searching for. I found it when I first dug my fingers into the life giving soil that we were created from. I found it at the beginning.

        Matthew 13:11-18
 He replied, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.  Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in parables:
“Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.
But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.