“You think Yoda stops teaching, just because his student does not want to hear? A teacher Yoda is. Yoda teaches like drunkards drink, like killers kill.”
Yoda
He said to them, “So then, every Torah-teacher who has been made into a talmid for the Kingdom of Heaven is like the owner of a home who brings out of his storage room both new things and old.”
Matthew 13:52
Proclaim the Word! Be on hand with it whether the time seems right or not. Convict, censure and exhort with unfailing patience and with teaching.
2. Timothy 4:2
Taken on top of a hill, he saw a great open plain, misty and foggy, and therefore no details of what is in the plane were revealed to him.
God told him: it is you that will write what will be on this plane.
I now write what I see on this plane.
Setting
On the slope of the hill is a monastery overlooking the whole plane. It is white and can be seen from afar. It has an inviting yet daring look at the same time. It is a heavy and holy place of importance yet inviting to the hungry and thirsty.
From this monastery, a waterfall rushes down into the valley of the plane. At its foot, there is a university. It is a place of education, yet so much more. It refers to the word sense of the Latin word universitas, meaning wholeness, the whole.
The river flows through the campus and into the plane, having more and more arms and turning the plane into a place full of life and fruitfulness.
There are villages and cities on the banks of the river that feed from it, and there are people, in small groups, teaching each other and being taught by some.
Some are working together – not because they have to. Work has been automated largely, and man does not have to work for food any longer. They work for fun. It is more about accomplishing a common task than working to meet your needs.
Others stroll the fields, enjoy the lawn or march through the forests.
But all of them dig deeper into God.
And as they go, they live, teach, make disciples, baptize, heal and set free. It just happens. It is so natural.
Larger groups come together in cities.
But in all settings, everybody provides from the place of their strengths and giftings while learning from each other.
People go to the university to get taught the ways of life. They go forward and become fathers to others.
And some even dare to climb the mountain and come to the monastery to attain wisdom, revelation, strategy, and knowledge for the time. After a while, they return to the plane.
At the sides of the plane are rolling foothills. Behind them, there are yet other planes with their monastery that look different.
Between the monasteries, there is a busy exchange.
The Monastery
The monastery, from the outside, looks like a small building, certainly smaller than it is. It reaches deep into the mountain up, down, and in.
There is a large library with books of all ages, even ages yet to come. Those books are deeply connected. There is a topical order to the books, yet other ontologies are symbolized through color-coded ribbons connecting books, sometimes far apart in topic and time-space.
Within the library are workplaces with desks and writing utensils just as much as there are resting places with couches and leather chairs to relax and read.
This library is the collection of God’s wisdom made accessible to mankind through the teachers that are students of the Kingdom.
There is a room with a round table, as we see it in medieval castles. This is where God’s council meets and strategizes. Jesus and his ministers of the fivefold sit and write the stories of the time at hand.
Each monastery only houses a handful of people, mainly prophets and teachers, just as in Antioch.
Occasionally, some of them that had come to the monastery are sent by the Spirit to return to the plain—Apostles. In the plain, they multiply what they have seen in the monastery, a full-fledged fivefold, to serve the people of the plane.
The Monks
Let’s call the permanent inhabitants of the monastery monks. Not that they walk around in cowls and have tonsures. But their look is very special.
They are the wolves and other animals making up the council of the Lord most high.
They are the abstract thinkers and dwellers before the Lord that not only touch his heart but progress right into his deepest thoughts.
The brain is not mentioned in the bible. At least not directly. The heart is mentioned hundreds of times, though. The heart symbolizes the brain in that we do not feel the brain. We feel pain in the heart like anger, fear, joy, and love. It all happens in the brain and manifests in the heart.
Those men and women, those monks, do not only see the manifestations of God’s thoughts in His heart—which obviously is far from a manifestation in the natural realm, which takes place in the plain—but they reach behind it and see the thoughts of God.
They are the ones that write the stories about God’s thoughts and intentions.
They write stories about men and women, teaching others to write stories. They teach the teachers.
The Waterfall
The outcome is the waterfall. These are the thoughts and emotions of God’s mind and heart, flowing into the plane and manifesting fruit as much as enabling the building of places for people to dwell and heal, get equipped, mature and go.
So the waterfall consists of the word, the Spirit, and the blood.
The first Christians called themselves Halacha, the way. Some saw themselves as disciples of the way, and some called themselves the way. But what way?
Halacha is the interpretation of the will of God for a certain time. Thus, both Jesus’ teaching and Christians were and are the interpretation, the letter of God’s will, and the manifestation of his intentions at this time.
The monastery does not produce the full Halacha, as this would produce a hierarchical system dependent on a few enlightened ones.
The monks develop the big picture that will be added to and refined by many, and executed by even more, thus becoming real, even reality.
Myself
As I am painting my canvas, and writing my story, I want to place myself in this picture.
Just as my name is Ralph, which means “a wolf in the council of the Lord most high,” I see myself as a monk in the monastery.
Years ago, in a vision, I saw a little house in a clearing in a forest. Actually, that was a setting somebody put me in to do a thought experiment. I was then told to cross the clearing and enter the house. In there, I would see my future self.
I expected to see myself packing my bags to fly to yet another meeting and minister, but when I entered, I saw a totally different scene.
In the house, there was a living room with five leather chairs and small tables next to each of them. On the tables there were computers.
In this room, a handful of people searched the scriptures and wrote articles, gave explanations, extracted principles, and discovered truths for the time.
From this house, invisible connections went to other such houses and other places, none of them in visible reach but one small village close by.
I knew then that the house’s inhabitants, with me being one of them, rarely physically left the house or the clearing in the woods, but their words changed the world.
Few visited the little house, and most spent some extended period, but not too long there, only to leave and rarely return. Yet another invisible connection, another lifelong cord, was knit.
This new image extends the setting and shows this little house as a monastery on, at and in the mountain of the Lord.
The Plane
The people of the plain, as I said, refine and manifest the will of God for the time.
This is where houses are built to help the ones in need. This is where all those plans and stories come into being, bringing to life the master plan in so many details.
This is the garden that Jesus entrusted us with, for which he gave some garden architects, some gardeners, and some plants. Not in a hierarchy but perfect symphony.
As with the body, there is no hierarchy, yet different functions. There are the functions of the head, the functions of the heart, and the functions of motion.
One could rephrase that and call it planning, connecting, and doing.
A Bodypart
God one morning told me that I am the nervus laryngeus recurrens in his body. This nerve starts very close to the brain, goes down to the heart and runs back (recurrens) to the larynx, which is the voice box. It regulates all but one muscle of the voice box.
The nerve does not talk but controls great parts of the vocal system.
I will not myself connect and talk to many but will provide teaching from the treasure, both old and new.
I will take God’s thoughts, run them by the heart, and deliver them to the voice box to form words.
I will need the translation done by the voice box from signal to sound because very few will be able to understand the signals.
This is a wolf howling at sheep, scaring them to death.
Timing
This has been in my heart for 47 years now. I have carried bits and pieces since I was first introduced to Christ when I was seven. It did not last, and I needed several starts to connect forever, and the picture was very scary, but also painted with a broad brush at that time. But I always saw myself as a black panther, an owl, or a wolf, inspired partly by the Jungle Book. All three of those characters are about wisdom and counsel.
For many years, I tried adjusting myself and my message, especially my delivery style, to a sheepish bleat. It sounded like the wolf in the story with the seven little goats. Meanwhile, I ate chalk to render my voice more gentle, losing my identity.
Everybody thought I was out for them—their position or beloved doctrine.
I so sheepishly tried to become a sheep, and I lost all courage and counsel of a wolf for a while. And I was a terrible sheep.
Some common traits I succeeded in. Faithfulness is one of them.
It took a while – a rather long one – for me to leave behind both my desire to be a sheep and frustration, as I seemed not to be allowed to be a wolf.
Yet I am. And I cannot stop it, as much as I cannot stop being a teacher.
This new era, this new freedom to paint my own canvas, will result in me becoming the wolf I am supposed to be. I will find my pack and faithfully bond with them to build the council of the Lord most high—a wolf among wolves.