4 am wakening

She told me that if you wake between 4 and 5 am it's spiritual.  I'd always thought it was the 'early morning wakening' of depression.  I 'm in a Communist country where freedom of speech has fallen.  Everywhere the making of a police state rises. There's less truth and the judges don't condemn perjury.
"Remember that song of the sixties, Donovan, "Beatniks are out to make it rich, must be the season of the witch." She said, "It's been going around in my head."
We'd been talking about the solar eclipse. Auspicious times.  Great celestial events.  Wars and rumours of war.
I"m wrapping myself in the St. Patrick's Breast Plate prayer, "I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, Through belief in the Threeness, through the confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation."
"I arise today Through the strength of Christ's birth with his Baptism, Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial, Through the strength of his resurrection with His ascension, Through the strength of the descent for the judgement of doom ......"
Then I cut to the chase, fly forward to the most comforting part,
"Christ with me, Christ before, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of Everyman who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me."
"I arise today Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, Through the belief in the Threeness, Through the confession of the Oneness of the Creator of Creation."
I am calmed somewhat.  I would meditate for hours like I've done before.I'd return to that little room with my friends where weekly we'd chant together then sit in silence, hardly knowing one another but year after year month after month gathering to sit in silence.  I long for those times. Times before the later storms. I remember the lulls in the war. I remember so well the gathering of skills and forces.
Then the winds are on me again. The hurricane is everything.  I've battened down all the hatches and cling to the mast tied to the boat as it's flung about the raging seas that rise again and again and crush me alone in the darkness and rain.
"I arise today Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, Through the belief in the threeness, Through the confession of the Oneness of the Creator of Creation."
I know it's the trusting again. I know I've opened myself a fraction and felt the vulnerability of human kind. I've asked for help. A minor thing really to any other. But I've let them near.
I dreamed of my father and my brother and my mother and my aunt. I know it's bad when they gather.  In the past it was my aunt. She died first and would come to me in my sleep where I was scared and alone and thinking of dying.  Then my mother and father died and they joined her. Sometimes they're alone or together.  When my brother died he joined them.  I awoke to the sweet memory of their presence inside me.  They comfort me.
There's nothing better than the dogs. The dogs sometimes come. I wake and my face has been licked by my former canine friend.  If it's a tough night and I wake with sweaty and afraid my dog Gilbert is there beside me, his little body nestled close to me, reminding me.
I'm not alone. We're not alone.
My dafault channel is 'self pity' and 'anger'.  I'm an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. I don't trust well. Betrayal has been by friends.  Callous in the end.  I've been misunderstood.  The communications have broken down. I've been 'beat up and battered round'. The lyrics of the Travelling Wilbury song "Handle Me With Care" come to me.  Handle me with care, I beg, I plead, I warn.
This morning I just woke from a dream where I was with family, alive again, not dying.  There was no war and the government wasn't trying to kill it's citizens. I don't know who it is in government. There's money in death.  Someone is a collector.  It's like those science fiction tales  where the aliens have made a pactwith some of the government leadership to collect the spirits of the dead so cause death to occur through disease or war.
The fentanyl epidemic is upon me.  Talking daily to men and women who don't return. I learn from a call from the coroner.
"I'm just collecting information.  We think it's an accidental overdose."
You think. I go through the motions.  Share my last memories.  I'm important for a moment.  I knew the deceased. I'm worried that I didn't do enough. There's never enough time. The government police doctors stand with guns at our back and send us out into the front lines. I'm always reminded of that Russian movie with the sniper. The new recruits are unloaded and sent to the front against tanks and machine guns. They don't have guns.
"Get weapons off the dead," the comrade capitan tells them.  Then he stands perfect and safe, back from the front, holding his gun to shoot in the back any troops that waver.
That's the committees we get today. Rows of leaders with guns and alibis.
"I hardly knew him, " i say. Always guilty. What more could I do.
My friend died, I'm thinking. I could have gone for dinner one more time if I'd known he was going to die.
I've always blamed myself.
"Get down off the cross we can use the wood."  I'm always looking over my shoulder now.  The last judge I met was insane, drunk as a skunk and loud and psychotic.  But I must trust the position. In the rule and order there can be a weak person in a position of power but the position is good. Don't fight City Hall.  Right now the Prime Minister scares me, truly scares me, like King George the Third must have been frightening. But it's an individual, not the system.  It's the externalizations, too, of all your inner fears.
What we fear outside is what we have not faced inside.  It is what someone represents. It's the monsters from the childhood fears that come back to haunt. Not the real individuals.  I am still afraid. The rationalizations don't get me out of bed. I am prone to the fetal position.  I'm afraid of being homeless, pushing shopping carts on the street, not having toilet paper, smelling, having no where safe to sleep, having lice and bed bugs.  I am afraid of theft in the night, gangs, rape, losing organs.
Then. I think of 'principalities'.  There is such failures of the authorities. A man kills my dog.  Another threatens me for a year, intermittently like a Chinese water torture. The emails come.  "I will kill you and I will kill your dog."
I have been protecting my dog for a year and more.  He's lost his eye.  The hatred I've attracted in my work, doing the right thing, believing, serving, refusing to support violence, reporting the pedophile, having the guns removed, refusing the drugs that will make the individual more dangerous.  I'm a bulwark against the sea. It bashes relentlessly.
The beurocrat always comes to mind. Her insanity. Her power and the abuse of power as she stood before me and said in that haughty whining voice, "Women don't lie about sex."
I am in a jail and I want to run away but I don't believe there is any escape and I know too well that women lie about sex. Women lie, Men lie. Humans lie.
Even today I faced a man and unravelled lie upon lie until i found his history of violent past and wondered how I'd come to this place again.  Faced with his fear and violence in a room with help so far away remembering being held hostage and threatened that night. It flooded back.
But I don't mind him. I'm scared. It's right to be scared. He's scared. But the beurocrats they really frighten me. They're so far from reality a homing pigeon couldn't find them. They have lost their centre. They're as sick as today's media.  There is surprise everywhere. Upheaval. Those who claim to known don't.  The uncertainties have never been greater. So the beaurocrats who have lived their lives in terror staying as far from reality as one dares, congregating in packs, joining with others in echo chambers , packed lemming like together in offices of distrust and deceit, reassuring themselves, mutually, seeking ever for scapegoats.  Always they sacrifice virgins and novices and let the blood out of the jugular before they eventually eat the corpses and secretly wipe their chins and smile.  Eyes glowing.
"No in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Paul had a flowery tongue. He was a great orator.  He believed and was persecuted.  I fear persecution. I have been baptized.  I've felt the sprinkle of holy water and have been immersed in the river of Jordan. But even bathing in and swallowing copious amounts of hyssop hasn't left me purified. I'm barely sanctified. I'm not even sure at times what the words mean and too often I feel that experience of being alone before that other experience of unsurpassing joy and connectedness with divine.
I'm held in the arms of love. I'm again a babe in the lap of my mother.  Pieta.
"For by him all thing were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him."
"And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.'
Ephesians 6:12 "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers , against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."
I know this.  I never feel evil in my fellow man but see the sickness. I would free them from disease. I believe in death that I am released from this corporeal form and live on in spirit, in Grace.  This is a passing phase and limited time in an eternity of timeless time.  I am only now on the surface of things.
There is victory and reassurance in these phrases of Paul but earlier in John Jesus says, "I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming and he has nothing in Me."
That's the rub as Hamlet would say.  The "ruler of the world".  Obviously that was then before Jesus died. Before as the old timers said, 'there victory in the blood."
I just learned that Steven King recovered from alcoholism. I too am recovered from alcoholism. I once got drunk and escaped this world in 'demon drink' and felt the illusion of peace for a time only to return to having greater anxiety.
Now I awake in the night and am comforted by my dreams but anxious to face the day.  I fear I'm not a very good Christian. I'm partial to all the character flaws that are called sins in the old language. I especially like gluttony, sloth and lust and anger and envy.  Pride is my go to place. But I know pride goeth before the fall so I'm ever on the watch for Murphy's law. I'm the Fool in the Tarot deck ready at any moment to step off the preciprice.  I strive for wisdom and peace and calm and then a moment passes and I realize I've trusted again, that I've opened myself a little. I feel the scars pulling where the previous wounds were made. I let someone touch my back today where the untouchable is and the wounds reside.
"Et tu, Brutes".  His friends gathered round him and stabbed him over and over again in the back.  I am partially healed.
John says, that "They will wage war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will triumph over them because he is Lord of Lords and King of Kings - and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers."
I 'm tired again. I'm going to go back to sleep for another hour of rest before the work day begins.  My dog is asleep. He will wake me as he does by licking my face and cuddling. I can look forward to that. I don't know what came over me this morning. The first dreams were so wonderful but then I thought of this world and became afraid again. Now I'm comforted. There is always comfort in the scripture. Yet I don't read it enough,. I am reminded sitting around the table at St. John's discussing the teaching of Jesus with the other men and women and how comforting this was.  We gather together to read and discuss another book too that first was written by men who together believed in this good book.
I'll go to bed again. I've self soothed. Thank you Lord.   Thank you Jesus.  Thank you Mom.