The End Is the Beginning
The humming had changed a bit several times during the morning. At this moment, the rhythm seemed to have a note of urgency, to be more compelling. I don’t know what gave me that sense, so I asked my son.
“What is the purpose of the humming?”
“That is what called you and the others who have joined the children. We were calling each of you. That has been one of the purposes.”
I had not had any sense of being called, but I understood this was true. The humming was audible near to the shore but undoubtedly was perceived by every ear that was open to it.
“And who are all of these children? Why did they come here?”
He looked over the crowd, all of whom were facing the sea and humming in unison. A considerable number of taller figures, the adults who had responded, were interspersed among them and joined with them as one in the humming.
“We were to be the future, all of us, every child across the world. Some were not allowed to be born and some, like me, died in the process. Others have seen the future ahead of them here in this life, a future destroyed by the generations that came before them. And others simply preferred something different than what this existence has to offer.”
He turned and looked directly at me as he continued.
“Every child before birth saw what you refer to as ‘peace on earth.’ ‘Heaven’ is another name for it. But they had no words, only pictures, and the pictures quickly faded in the light of this reality. Everyone knows that the reality being perpetuated is drifting farther and farther off course, but few care to consider this truth.”
His arm swept across the sea with the crowds of children and the adults they have called lining its shores.
"Some of these are orphans, just as some of the adults that you see never had children. They have been joined in a spiritual family. Before you is a reunion of child and adult, of nature and harmony.”
His eyes scanned the crowd as he continued, “There are those who did not come when we called, adults who might have joined us but could not hear.”
He looked directly at me again, but there was no accusation in his eyes or the tone of his speech as he said, "Spiritual malpractice has destroyed many. And this desire for longer life by those with an evil heart will but prolong the misery of all."
This seemed merely a pause in his speech, so I was quiet in spite of my desire for answers. No, it was not just an answer to my unformed question that I wanted, but an understanding of this phenomenal event.
I do not know if he was receiving information from elsewhere, or just trying to think of how to put it in language I could understand. Finally, he turned and looked at me.
“The call is almost ended. My mother is coming to me.”
I was glad Rachel was coming, as if there would be a sense of completion, the wholeness of a family. And perhaps there would be a sense of conclusion, as well, although the thought of that was a mixture of longing and uncertainty, almost fear.
His eyes moved up over my shoulder and I turned to see Rachel coming toward us.
I thought she had seen me as her facial expression showed recognition, but she ran past me to her son, bending her knees so that she could hug him tightly. He responded just as strongly.
The child that had been a part of her for so many months was now a part of her again. She was weeping but the emotion was clearly joy.
She began peppering him with questions as would a mother who had found a child who had been lost, but in mid-question she stopped, pulling back to arms’ length and looking at him.
He said, “There are no answers.”
She nodded. “I know,” she said and embraced him gently as if there were all of the time in the world and what happened next was irrelevant to what was happening now.
That was another epiphany for me: what happens next is irrelevant to what is happening now.
It seems I was usually living in the next moment instead of the present moment. And when I was not in the future, I was as likely to be in the past as in the present.
They were talking softly as she knelt before him holding his hands with her own. I could not hear what passed between them, but it seemed a gentle give and take rather than an urgent need to know. The words were not for me. They were hers and his.
Beyond this moment, what was there to know?
Looking at the backs of the crowd, and the profiles of those standing beside us, it was possible to believe that this could go on forever. I believed what Evan, Jr. had said, that somewhere this moment in time would exist forever.
That is when the humming stopped. Silence was immediate and total, no lingering note or sound of any kind. Everyone began swaying to some unheard rhythm.
My son spoke to me. There was not another sound. His words probably carried a little distance, but no one turned in our direction. Or perhaps he uttered no sound.
“The time has come for the final song. We will leave when it is done.”
Rachel looked at me. Her face was still streaked with tears. She was smiling until our son’s last statement.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, that last look she gave carried a thousand times more. Every word, thought, and action that had ever passed between us was bound up in that eye to eye contact.
She could see me, also! But it was even more than that. I saw her heart and she saw mine, and the exchange between them spoke so loudly that words would have marred the moment.
The moment ended there, and yet I still have it with me.
Still looking at me, my son began to sing and then he turned toward the sea.
Rachel mouthed an “I love you” and turned toward the sea, standing beside her son, their voices merging with that of the others.
I found the words of the song were flowing through me and from me, as well. This seemed the tune of eternity and the words were ornaments upon it.
The final note of the song came, and we held it for a long time, the intensity gradually falling. In the total silence, all of the children and adults who had been singing continued swaying. Without being conscious of intent on my part, but as if in response to some silent and invisible signal, I became still at the same moment as my son.
There was no sound, only the sense of a storm coming as when the skies darken and the wind rises.
The waves of the sea moved with the swaying of the bodies and their raised hands, their movements like a symphony at the command of the conductor. The slow swaying of bodies and hands seemed a stark contrast to the necessarily violent response of the sea, changing course from moment to moment.
The waves were rising higher, and the swaying hands moved more slowly so that the rising mountains of water were able to follow with their full effect.
The children and the waves moved in unison, silent conductors leading a silent symphony.
There was an eerie silence as the crowd of spectators behind us were paralyzed with ominous expectation.
The spell was broken as the crowd suddenly yielded to fearful panic as contagious hysteria spread in an instant.
Gasps and then screams preceded a general stampede away from the rhythmic bodies and sea moving as one.
The height of the waves now towered far above us although they still maintained the invisible border between sea and land.
This continued for some moments until the mountainous waves could hardly be contained. The wind now was whipping spray across the invisible border, sprinkling the conductors of this fantastic show with what seemed a foretaste of nature’s power unleashed.
And then the raised arms were lowered and the bodies stilled.
The peaks of the waves towering above us just yards away began to fall, keeping the imaginary boundary that had kept them from us, falling back into the water from which they had come.
There was perfect silence as the waters reunited and a calm descended upon the entire seascape.
There was not a breath of wind nor a wave upon the still water.
The eerie calm provoked greater fear among the spectators than had the towering waves. Very few people had remained behind us, and even these began easing back farther from the sea, some breaking into a run, as if an innate sense warned that this was the calm before the storm.
I shared their emotions, but something greater kept me from reacting in fear and panic. Something in me wanted to reach out, to reassure them that all would be well. But would it end well?
My son (my son!) said, “Do not worry. They will all be happier than you can imagine, much happier than possible in the world of Atlantis. It is time for us to go.”
“Wait, what will happen to them?” I had been looking at the children and their loved ones in front of me as I spoke the question, but ended by pointing to the crowd behind us. Few remained, the others in full flight.
“What is that to you? There is a task before you, and your message is not for them.” His voice was firmer and stronger, the tone of one used to command.
He seemed to need to reassure me.
“All of them, those on the beach and those who are running away, all of them will be together. You have called it ‘heaven.’ There they will be given the choice of a better future, or they can decline the offer and return for what will happen here.”
We left the shoreline and moved toward the edge of the city in the direction of the far distant mountains. The last of the crowd were scurrying to and fro without any apparent sense of direction or purpose.
Finally, my son took my hand and said, “Let’s go to your destination.”
We did not walk or fly. We simply were at the top of the highest mountain that could be seen from the city. It was many miles north on the edges of the snow-capped range. This line of mountains on the continent was a little distance from the sea. This was the northern boundary of habitable territory. Beyond here, the weather was perpetually cold.
At this point in time, the earth had no tilt to its axis. There were no seasons. The tropics were perpetually hot and rainy, and the northern latitudes were perpetually cold, covered in snow and ice. Large deserts spotted the tropics, and icy barren wastes dominated the farthest northern and southern regions.
The temperate zone - the home of Atlantis, the other two large nations, and multiple smaller entities - was a narrow band of moderate climate.
There were undoubtedly freezing cold temperatures in the wind and snow on top of this mountain as we looked southward, but I had no sense of discomfort.
The sea with its islands was clearly evident, and I could discern the larger cities, particularly the city of Atlantis on the Isle of Atlantis. All was serene from this distance as I scanned the horizon.
My son said, “Watch to the west. Our singing has brought a meteor that has struck the earth far away in that direction. We will be aware of the impact even here.”
A few moments later ("moments" means nothing here, for time had ceased to exist for me), the mountain shook noticeably.
The sea of glass quivered like a bowl of gelatin, the smooth surface rippled by strong currents below.
A crevice suddenly appeared in the western part of the sea. Water poured into the gaping hole as the dark opening spread eastward like a black paint poured out onto its surface.
Each island was either split by the running crevice and its halves sucked into the opening, or was pulled whole into the depths like a saucer on a tablecloth as the fabric is pulled off the edge of a table.
The crevice continued eastward toward the other horizon.
The earth around us continued to quiver like the back of a dog as it shakes off the water when coming out of the sea. Large rocks were dislodged and there were landslides below us. Soon the peak crumbled beneath us although we remained in place. Had we been mere physical beings, we would not have survived.
The air above the crevice was growing incredibly dark, a blackness rising like steam from a kettle mixed with the smoke and ash from a fire. The afternoon sun was high to the west, but already the light was little more than that of twilight as plumes from the events below reached upward in front of the sun.
The picture before us was the lengthening shadow of a hand covering the light.
The crevice below us continued to widen even as the sea was emptied into it. The shores around the sea were collapsing into the hungry pit, and the ranges of hills beyond those shores could not maintain their height, sacrificing their fallen peaks before gradually yielding to the flooding tide.
By this time, the clouds of debris and steam, coupled with the fading light from the sun, made discerning what happened below impossible. The black cloud darkened and thickened before us, and all Creation disappeared from sight.
These words have not adequately described the event before me. I can say, “All life was destroyed by a cataclysmic event,” but these are only words and cannot carry the intensity of the scene that played out before me.
I was speechless, unable to ask the questions that must inevitably follow. Yes, I could not even form a question.
There was no silence to break, for the roar of these events still was reverberating around us, but my son spoke in a voice I heard clearly and distinctly.
“You sought immortality, and you asked to be a sacrifice. You have been granted both wishes.
“The earth will be a wasteland for many millennia. There is a healing that must occur. As always, whether a man or a planet, it begins with the inner core and works its way to the surface.
“God will begin once more when the time is right. The slate will be clean with no memory of the evils of Atlantis. That is both a blessing and a curse.
“With remembrance comes the danger that the same efforts will be made and there will be the same conclusion. But with forgetfulness there is almost a certainty that these same horrors will be played out again.” He paused.
I said, “There is nothing new under the sun….”
And now he looked at me and repeated, “There is nothing new under the sun, that is, unless a new mind brings it. The mind of the past will bring the past. You are to bring the mind of the future.”
Finally I was able to formulate a question. “What is the future?”
“The future is what has been from the beginning and is what will be until the end. The future is love, and it will wrap its arms around the past and embrace the present and bring them forward into the future.”
Listening to his words brought many emotions and feelings to the surface. The overwhelming nature of the destruction assured me that there was nothing I could do for the past. The present seemed as much a mystery as the future.
I replayed his words. In the world of Atlantis, they would have been disregarded as meaningless ramblings. But with the evidence before me, my mind was reformulating virtually every concept stored there.
Watching all of the existence that I had known disappear at first had created an overwhelming sense of loss, a grief that permeated my body to the very marrow (if that even still existed!).
One part of me watched like a man who had helped in the construction of a beautiful building only to watch it crash to the ground into a pile of rubble beneath a plume of dust.
Now the other part of me was seeing the new opportunity. This other part of me saw beyond the collapse of a failed existence and the possibility of something better.
The dust that blotted the sun and covered the earth in darkness would settle. There would be no rubble from Atlantis, for it had been swallowed whole. Everything that had existed would disintegrate back into the earth from which it had sprung, reduced to its primal ingredients.
Here were the seeds of a new beginning!
My next question stemmed not from my fear but from my hope. “How am I to help in this?”
“You have a story to tell. You have seen one ending, but you have a hope for a better ending. And that is why you are here, watching the consequences of poor choices.”
The dark cloud that was moving toward us already obscured all visibility of the earth below us. Soon we would be in a darkness that would obscure any sight, above as well as below. But I knew what he meant.
“And I must watch this until time begins again. I must watch through the eons of recovery until the earth is healed, made whole, and becomes alive again.”
“Yes, Evan.”
No, it was no longer my son’s voice in any way. It was far older, far stronger. I could not see him now, but he was still present.
“And then?”
“As mankind again populates the earth, we will be singing to them as we did to all of you from the beginning, even before Atlantis. For a while they will hear. But then they will become deaf to the spiritual world.
“Then will come your time, Evan. You will be the voice that gives them counsel that they can hear, if they will. You will speak in their tongue of experiences they can understand. By then, you will know the curses of immortality and its loneliness, and of sacrifice and its demands.”
His voice paused, but I felt that he turned from facing the destruction toward me.
“You have a story to tell, and you will tell it. You will know every man, woman, and child to whom you must speak. Your story is something to which they are able to relate. You are one of them. You are one with them. As you speak from your heart, they will hear in their hearts.”
“What if they will not hear me? What if they become as Atlantis became?”
“There is another plan, but that is for another time, a last resort, if you will. But again, what happens later is not your concern.
“Your concern is the present, always the present. And when the present is a new civilization, a new world teetering between hope and fear, between love and hate, you will make known your story.
“Yes, your story is for one person at a time. You can write a book, you can set up a stage performance, you can write it in the sky! But then you will tell it to one person at a time. You will have them to know it, to feel it, to experience the story as their own.”
I tried to understand. Actually, the instructions were clear. My mind was racing as to how to endure the time of the earth’s regeneration. I had experienced days of loneliness recently before this event. How was I to endure millennia?
“Recently?” Ages seemed to be passing before me. How long had I been watching the devastation play out beyond the darkness below? Everything seemed to have happened within minutes, but more likely it was years, perhaps even centuries or more.
He heard my thoughts.
“You will not be alone, Evan. I am always with you.”
I was not sure just what those words spoken in the darkness meant, but they were very comforting anyway. I could not see him in the darkness, but I felt his presence as well as heard his words. This, too, was a lesson. A spiritual presence does not require a visible body.
“Follow me in a song,” the voice said.
I have never been a singer, but as with the humming on the shores of the sea, no effort was required on my part but to let the music flow through me.
He began with a soft note like the rolling in of nightfall, a gentle soothing caress that relaxed every muscle and eased every thought. The note held until the darkness no longer existed around me. The swirling debris had disappeared and the sun now burned brightly in a clear sky.
Then the note changed to a slightly higher pitch.
The humming had changed a bit several times during the morning. At this moment, the rhythm seemed to have a note of urgency, to be more compelling. I don’t know what gave me that sense, so I asked my son.
“What is the purpose of the humming?”
“That is what called you and the others who have joined the children. We were calling each of you. That has been one of the purposes.”
I had not had any sense of being called, but I understood this was true. The humming was audible near to the shore but undoubtedly was perceived by every ear that was open to it.
“And who are all of these children? Why did they come here?”
He looked over the crowd, all of whom were facing the sea and humming in unison. A considerable number of taller figures, the adults who had responded, were interspersed among them and joined with them as one in the humming.
“We were to be the future, all of us, every child across the world. Some were not allowed to be born and some, like me, died in the process. Others have seen the future ahead of them here in this life, a future destroyed by the generations that came before them. And others simply preferred something different than what this existence has to offer.”
He turned and looked directly at me as he continued.
“Every child before birth saw what you refer to as ‘peace on earth.’ ‘Heaven’ is another name for it. But they had no words, only pictures, and the pictures quickly faded in the light of this reality. Everyone knows that the reality being perpetuated is drifting farther and farther off course, but few care to consider this truth.”
His arm swept across the sea with the crowds of children and the adults they have called lining its shores.
"Some of these are orphans, just as some of the adults that you see never had children. They have been joined in a spiritual family. Before you is a reunion of child and adult, of nature and harmony.”
His eyes scanned the crowd as he continued, “There are those who did not come when we called, adults who might have joined us but could not hear.”
He looked directly at me again, but there was no accusation in his eyes or the tone of his speech as he said, "Spiritual malpractice has destroyed many. And this desire for longer life by those with an evil heart will but prolong the misery of all."
This seemed merely a pause in his speech, so I was quiet in spite of my desire for answers. No, it was not just an answer to my unformed question that I wanted, but an understanding of this phenomenal event.
I do not know if he was receiving information from elsewhere, or just trying to think of how to put it in language I could understand. Finally, he turned and looked at me.
“The call is almost ended. My mother is coming to me.”
I was glad Rachel was coming, as if there would be a sense of completion, the wholeness of a family. And perhaps there would be a sense of conclusion, as well, although the thought of that was a mixture of longing and uncertainty, almost fear.
His eyes moved up over my shoulder and I turned to see Rachel coming toward us.
I thought she had seen me as her facial expression showed recognition, but she ran past me to her son, bending her knees so that she could hug him tightly. He responded just as strongly.
The child that had been a part of her for so many months was now a part of her again. She was weeping but the emotion was clearly joy.
She began peppering him with questions as would a mother who had found a child who had been lost, but in mid-question she stopped, pulling back to arms’ length and looking at him.
He said, “There are no answers.”
She nodded. “I know,” she said and embraced him gently as if there were all of the time in the world and what happened next was irrelevant to what was happening now.
That was another epiphany for me: what happens next is irrelevant to what is happening now.
It seems I was usually living in the next moment instead of the present moment. And when I was not in the future, I was as likely to be in the past as in the present.
They were talking softly as she knelt before him holding his hands with her own. I could not hear what passed between them, but it seemed a gentle give and take rather than an urgent need to know. The words were not for me. They were hers and his.
Beyond this moment, what was there to know?
Looking at the backs of the crowd, and the profiles of those standing beside us, it was possible to believe that this could go on forever. I believed what Evan, Jr. had said, that somewhere this moment in time would exist forever.
That is when the humming stopped. Silence was immediate and total, no lingering note or sound of any kind. Everyone began swaying to some unheard rhythm.
My son spoke to me. There was not another sound. His words probably carried a little distance, but no one turned in our direction. Or perhaps he uttered no sound.
“The time has come for the final song. We will leave when it is done.”
Rachel looked at me. Her face was still streaked with tears. She was smiling until our son’s last statement.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, that last look she gave carried a thousand times more. Every word, thought, and action that had ever passed between us was bound up in that eye to eye contact.
She could see me, also! But it was even more than that. I saw her heart and she saw mine, and the exchange between them spoke so loudly that words would have marred the moment.
The moment ended there, and yet I still have it with me.
Still looking at me, my son began to sing and then he turned toward the sea.
Rachel mouthed an “I love you” and turned toward the sea, standing beside her son, their voices merging with that of the others.
I found the words of the song were flowing through me and from me, as well. This seemed the tune of eternity and the words were ornaments upon it.
The final note of the song came, and we held it for a long time, the intensity gradually falling. In the total silence, all of the children and adults who had been singing continued swaying. Without being conscious of intent on my part, but as if in response to some silent and invisible signal, I became still at the same moment as my son.
There was no sound, only the sense of a storm coming as when the skies darken and the wind rises.
The waves of the sea moved with the swaying of the bodies and their raised hands, their movements like a symphony at the command of the conductor. The slow swaying of bodies and hands seemed a stark contrast to the necessarily violent response of the sea, changing course from moment to moment.
The waves were rising higher, and the swaying hands moved more slowly so that the rising mountains of water were able to follow with their full effect.
The children and the waves moved in unison, silent conductors leading a silent symphony.
There was an eerie silence as the crowd of spectators behind us were paralyzed with ominous expectation.
The spell was broken as the crowd suddenly yielded to fearful panic as contagious hysteria spread in an instant.
Gasps and then screams preceded a general stampede away from the rhythmic bodies and sea moving as one.
The height of the waves now towered far above us although they still maintained the invisible border between sea and land.
This continued for some moments until the mountainous waves could hardly be contained. The wind now was whipping spray across the invisible border, sprinkling the conductors of this fantastic show with what seemed a foretaste of nature’s power unleashed.
And then the raised arms were lowered and the bodies stilled.
The peaks of the waves towering above us just yards away began to fall, keeping the imaginary boundary that had kept them from us, falling back into the water from which they had come.
There was perfect silence as the waters reunited and a calm descended upon the entire seascape.
There was not a breath of wind nor a wave upon the still water.
The eerie calm provoked greater fear among the spectators than had the towering waves. Very few people had remained behind us, and even these began easing back farther from the sea, some breaking into a run, as if an innate sense warned that this was the calm before the storm.
I shared their emotions, but something greater kept me from reacting in fear and panic. Something in me wanted to reach out, to reassure them that all would be well. But would it end well?
My son (my son!) said, “Do not worry. They will all be happier than you can imagine, much happier than possible in the world of Atlantis. It is time for us to go.”
“Wait, what will happen to them?” I had been looking at the children and their loved ones in front of me as I spoke the question, but ended by pointing to the crowd behind us. Few remained, the others in full flight.
“What is that to you? There is a task before you, and your message is not for them.” His voice was firmer and stronger, the tone of one used to command.
He seemed to need to reassure me.
“All of them, those on the beach and those who are running away, all of them will be together. You have called it ‘heaven.’ There they will be given the choice of a better future, or they can decline the offer and return for what will happen here.”
We left the shoreline and moved toward the edge of the city in the direction of the far distant mountains. The last of the crowd were scurrying to and fro without any apparent sense of direction or purpose.
Finally, my son took my hand and said, “Let’s go to your destination.”
We did not walk or fly. We simply were at the top of the highest mountain that could be seen from the city. It was many miles north on the edges of the snow-capped range. This line of mountains on the continent was a little distance from the sea. This was the northern boundary of habitable territory. Beyond here, the weather was perpetually cold.
At this point in time, the earth had no tilt to its axis. There were no seasons. The tropics were perpetually hot and rainy, and the northern latitudes were perpetually cold, covered in snow and ice. Large deserts spotted the tropics, and icy barren wastes dominated the farthest northern and southern regions.
The temperate zone - the home of Atlantis, the other two large nations, and multiple smaller entities - was a narrow band of moderate climate.
There were undoubtedly freezing cold temperatures in the wind and snow on top of this mountain as we looked southward, but I had no sense of discomfort.
The sea with its islands was clearly evident, and I could discern the larger cities, particularly the city of Atlantis on the Isle of Atlantis. All was serene from this distance as I scanned the horizon.
My son said, “Watch to the west. Our singing has brought a meteor that has struck the earth far away in that direction. We will be aware of the impact even here.”
A few moments later ("moments" means nothing here, for time had ceased to exist for me), the mountain shook noticeably.
The sea of glass quivered like a bowl of gelatin, the smooth surface rippled by strong currents below.
A crevice suddenly appeared in the western part of the sea. Water poured into the gaping hole as the dark opening spread eastward like a black paint poured out onto its surface.
Each island was either split by the running crevice and its halves sucked into the opening, or was pulled whole into the depths like a saucer on a tablecloth as the fabric is pulled off the edge of a table.
The crevice continued eastward toward the other horizon.
The earth around us continued to quiver like the back of a dog as it shakes off the water when coming out of the sea. Large rocks were dislodged and there were landslides below us. Soon the peak crumbled beneath us although we remained in place. Had we been mere physical beings, we would not have survived.
The air above the crevice was growing incredibly dark, a blackness rising like steam from a kettle mixed with the smoke and ash from a fire. The afternoon sun was high to the west, but already the light was little more than that of twilight as plumes from the events below reached upward in front of the sun.
The picture before us was the lengthening shadow of a hand covering the light.
The crevice below us continued to widen even as the sea was emptied into it. The shores around the sea were collapsing into the hungry pit, and the ranges of hills beyond those shores could not maintain their height, sacrificing their fallen peaks before gradually yielding to the flooding tide.
By this time, the clouds of debris and steam, coupled with the fading light from the sun, made discerning what happened below impossible. The black cloud darkened and thickened before us, and all Creation disappeared from sight.
These words have not adequately described the event before me. I can say, “All life was destroyed by a cataclysmic event,” but these are only words and cannot carry the intensity of the scene that played out before me.
I was speechless, unable to ask the questions that must inevitably follow. Yes, I could not even form a question.
There was no silence to break, for the roar of these events still was reverberating around us, but my son spoke in a voice I heard clearly and distinctly.
“You sought immortality, and you asked to be a sacrifice. You have been granted both wishes.
“The earth will be a wasteland for many millennia. There is a healing that must occur. As always, whether a man or a planet, it begins with the inner core and works its way to the surface.
“God will begin once more when the time is right. The slate will be clean with no memory of the evils of Atlantis. That is both a blessing and a curse.
“With remembrance comes the danger that the same efforts will be made and there will be the same conclusion. But with forgetfulness there is almost a certainty that these same horrors will be played out again.” He paused.
I said, “There is nothing new under the sun….”
And now he looked at me and repeated, “There is nothing new under the sun, that is, unless a new mind brings it. The mind of the past will bring the past. You are to bring the mind of the future.”
Finally I was able to formulate a question. “What is the future?”
“The future is what has been from the beginning and is what will be until the end. The future is love, and it will wrap its arms around the past and embrace the present and bring them forward into the future.”
Listening to his words brought many emotions and feelings to the surface. The overwhelming nature of the destruction assured me that there was nothing I could do for the past. The present seemed as much a mystery as the future.
I replayed his words. In the world of Atlantis, they would have been disregarded as meaningless ramblings. But with the evidence before me, my mind was reformulating virtually every concept stored there.
Watching all of the existence that I had known disappear at first had created an overwhelming sense of loss, a grief that permeated my body to the very marrow (if that even still existed!).
One part of me watched like a man who had helped in the construction of a beautiful building only to watch it crash to the ground into a pile of rubble beneath a plume of dust.
Now the other part of me was seeing the new opportunity. This other part of me saw beyond the collapse of a failed existence and the possibility of something better.
The dust that blotted the sun and covered the earth in darkness would settle. There would be no rubble from Atlantis, for it had been swallowed whole. Everything that had existed would disintegrate back into the earth from which it had sprung, reduced to its primal ingredients.
Here were the seeds of a new beginning!
My next question stemmed not from my fear but from my hope. “How am I to help in this?”
“You have a story to tell. You have seen one ending, but you have a hope for a better ending. And that is why you are here, watching the consequences of poor choices.”
The dark cloud that was moving toward us already obscured all visibility of the earth below us. Soon we would be in a darkness that would obscure any sight, above as well as below. But I knew what he meant.
“And I must watch this until time begins again. I must watch through the eons of recovery until the earth is healed, made whole, and becomes alive again.”
“Yes, Evan.”
No, it was no longer my son’s voice in any way. It was far older, far stronger. I could not see him now, but he was still present.
“And then?”
“As mankind again populates the earth, we will be singing to them as we did to all of you from the beginning, even before Atlantis. For a while they will hear. But then they will become deaf to the spiritual world.
“Then will come your time, Evan. You will be the voice that gives them counsel that they can hear, if they will. You will speak in their tongue of experiences they can understand. By then, you will know the curses of immortality and its loneliness, and of sacrifice and its demands.”
His voice paused, but I felt that he turned from facing the destruction toward me.
“You have a story to tell, and you will tell it. You will know every man, woman, and child to whom you must speak. Your story is something to which they are able to relate. You are one of them. You are one with them. As you speak from your heart, they will hear in their hearts.”
“What if they will not hear me? What if they become as Atlantis became?”
“There is another plan, but that is for another time, a last resort, if you will. But again, what happens later is not your concern.
“Your concern is the present, always the present. And when the present is a new civilization, a new world teetering between hope and fear, between love and hate, you will make known your story.
“Yes, your story is for one person at a time. You can write a book, you can set up a stage performance, you can write it in the sky! But then you will tell it to one person at a time. You will have them to know it, to feel it, to experience the story as their own.”
I tried to understand. Actually, the instructions were clear. My mind was racing as to how to endure the time of the earth’s regeneration. I had experienced days of loneliness recently before this event. How was I to endure millennia?
“Recently?” Ages seemed to be passing before me. How long had I been watching the devastation play out beyond the darkness below? Everything seemed to have happened within minutes, but more likely it was years, perhaps even centuries or more.
He heard my thoughts.
“You will not be alone, Evan. I am always with you.”
I was not sure just what those words spoken in the darkness meant, but they were very comforting anyway. I could not see him in the darkness, but I felt his presence as well as heard his words. This, too, was a lesson. A spiritual presence does not require a visible body.
“Follow me in a song,” the voice said.
I have never been a singer, but as with the humming on the shores of the sea, no effort was required on my part but to let the music flow through me.
He began with a soft note like the rolling in of nightfall, a gentle soothing caress that relaxed every muscle and eased every thought. The note held until the darkness no longer existed around me. The swirling debris had disappeared and the sun now burned brightly in a clear sky.
Then the note changed to a slightly higher pitch.
