Approaching Zion: The Dance of God

Previously in the Approaching Zion series:

Childlike Consecration
Polygamy
Beauty and the Beast
The Doctrine of Christ
​The Pure in Heart
One Heart and One Mind
A Refuge from the Storm
Go Ye Out of Babylon
The Seventh Seal
Watchmen and Waste Places
The Seven Heavens
The Kingdom of God on Earth
The Destiny of America
The Mystery of the Atonement
Walking with God
Enduring to the End
​Dreaming of Justice, Longing for Mercy
Desert Healers 
Holiness to the Lord

(Time-lapse of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, Casa Rinconada)

Summer Solstice

Though I suffer all deaths that a man can die
To the uttermost end of time,
I have deep-drained this, my cup of bliss,
In every age and clime

   ― Jack London, "The Iron Heel"

Today is the summer solstice.  At 8:42 p.m. MST the Sun shall celebrate its victory over darkness.

I woke up today filled with wonder.  In the early morning hours, while in contemplation, I pondered what I might share with you as we too, like the sun, continue our journey through the realms of glory.

Every blog post I write as if it were my last.  Since I began Owl of the Desert five years ago, I've had 3 near death experiences.  Something is trying very hard to take me out of this world ― but I'm an onery old mule and too stubborn to leave.

Exactly one year ago I spent the summer solstice at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, home of the ancient Puebloan peoples (the ancestors of the Hopi Indians).

One of the reasons Chaco is so special is because the Native Americans over 1000 years ago built an entire city to align with the stars, and it has became a major site for the study of archeoastronomy. 

There, as I stood beneath the open skies on the solstice, where the peaking sun shines once a year upon the Sun Dagger, creating a spear of light that the Native Americans used to mark "the middle of time," I sensed the mystery of God's dance through history, and through the heavens, and through my own life.

So today I wish for you to feel some of that mystery with me.  I want us to dance with God.

Close Your Eyes & Breathe

​​   Consume my heart away; sick with desire
   And fastened to a dying animal
   It knows not what it is; and gather me
   Into the artifice of eternity.

― William Butler Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium"

Jesus spoke about one topic more than any other: the kingdom of heaven.

And yet I sense we're still confused about (1) what it is, (2) where it is, and (3) how to enter into it. 

We’re all after the pearl of great price (Matt. 13:45-46).  But there's a catch: it’s hidden. It’s buried; it's lost.  Many have forgotten it exists.

How do we obtain it?  

Let me tell you the truth: no one can give us that Pearl.  Not even God.  I certainly cannot hand it to you.  I wish I could; but I can only show you where to look.  Jesus Himself could only point the Way.

The Pearl is something that each of us must uncover and discover for ourselves.

What most people don't realize is that the kingdom of heaven grows within us.  It is not so much a place we inhabit, but something we come to embody. 

When we find it, we will look back and see that the pearl was with us all along, as a grain of sand in our belly, that grew into the pearly gate of the Kingdom (Rev. 21:21).

This is why I write in the style I do, to help us remember.  These posts are written for the subconscious mind, filled with types and shadows, in hopes of conjuring something lost, something hidden, something forgotten; what is this smell of a memory stirring from slumber?  Remember.

I write, however poorly, in an attempt to stretch our minds beyond knowing, beyond concept, towards something that must be felt deep in our longing, our bones, our grief.

There are many others who can teach us facts and figures, sums and subtraction.  But what we seek cannot be taught: it must be experienced.

Let these words wash over you, filling your senses; close your eyes and behold what lies deep within you.

Breathe in all that you are, carried upon the candlelight of God (Luke 15:8).  Eternity is the exhalation of God's love.

What is it you sense?  It is the kingdom of heaven emerging.

Three Weddings and a Near-Funeral

        Wander away
   from what you know
   into the strangeness . . . .
        A season [is] waiting there

― Ann Lauterbach, "Fable of the Barn"

Carl Jung (1875 - 1961) had a near death experience that afterwards changed the trajectory of his work in human psychology.

As you know, Jung did important work in the field of archetypes. 

Embedded in human beings exists a collective unconscious.  Just as we share a genetic blueprint (the DNA of homo sapiens that governs our species' biology) so too do mortal minds draw from a common set of archetypes that shape our psychology.

These archetypes stem from the Logos; they give us a glimpse into the Mind and heart of God.

In the spring of 1944 Jung had a heart attack.  He wrote about what happened next in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

He traveled far above the earth to a temple hollowed out of granite rock.  At the entrance he met a Hindu man, sitting in lotus posture, waiting for him.  The man wore a white gown.

The temple's adornment reminded him of the Buddhist Temple of the Holy Tooth he had once visited in Sri Lanka.

As Jung approached his Escort at the entrance of the temple, he experienced "an extremely painful process" as if "everything was being sloughed away" from him.

All that remained after he had been spiritually-stripped was his "own history."  I love that characterization; it reminds me of how Moroni put it, to "be brought to see [our] nakedness before God" when we depart this life (Mormon 9:5).

Jung said, "Everything I had ever experienced or done . . . I felt with great certainty: this is what I am."

Just as he was about to enter the temple, Jung was intercepted by a spirit-being "delegated by the Earth to deliver a message to me . . . [that I] must return.  The moment I heard that, the vision ceased."

But the part of the story I find most fascinating is what happened afterwards, as Jung spent the next three weeks in the hospital recovering.

It was during his convalescence, when He was deeply depressed (having to "go back to this drab world" after experiencing the "eternal bliss" of what lies beyond) that he had three remarkable visions.

What kind of visions?  That's the curious part.  There in his sickbed, Jung was shown three metaphysical marriages.  Jung interpreted these marriages as his own.

   (1) The marriage of Tiferet and Malchut in the Garden of Pomegranates (this is in the Kabbalist tradition if you're keeping track).  "It was I myself: I was the marriage."

   (2) The marriage of the Lamb from the Bible.  "Angels were present, and light.  I myself was the 'marriage of the lamb.'"

   (3) The mystical union (the hieros gamos, or holy marriage) between the gods Zeus and Hera from the Iliad.

"I would never have imagined that any such experience was possible," Jung recalled.  "It was not a product of imagination. The visions and experiences were utterly real; there was nothing subjective about them."

We dance at weddings; marriage is the movement of two persons becoming one, in step, mirrored upon the dance floor, in unitive harmony.

Let us dance, then, with God.

My Favorite Face of God

​   It matters not how strait the gate,
   How charged with punishments the scroll,
   I am the master of my fate,
   I am the captain of my soul.

     ― William Henley, "Invictus" 
​
What do weddings teach us about the nature of God?  About the kingdom of heaven?  About our own divine nature?

   And they twain
   shall be one flesh:
   so then they are
   no more twain,
   but one flesh.
   
   What therefore God
   hath joined together,
   let no man put asunder.

(Mark 10:8-9)

You can't swing a loaf of matzah in the gospels without knocking into Jesus at a wedding.  Whether He was turning water to wine (John 2), or comparing the Kingdom of God to a wedding feast (Matt. 22:2), one thing is clear: God loves weddings.

Are we paying close attention to the fact that God walks among us as the eternal "Bridegroom" (Mark 2:19)?  Of all the archetypes of Christ, that is my favorite!

This means wherever God is, a wedding is being celebrated.  And have you ever been sad at a wedding?

There is nothing, nothing in the world, like hearing God toast the happy couple.

"The power of God" (D&C 88:45) is What?

                Do I dare
   Disturb the universe?
   In a minute there is time
   For decisions and revisions

― T.S. Eliot, "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" ​​

But where do we find a God like this?  Where do we find a God who dances and makes merry (Luke 15:24-26)?

For is not the universe He created a great spiraling celebration of life and love?  It's one grand party.

Just take the movement of the planets as an example, the way the planets pass each other (what is called a 'synod') in the great Dance.

The earth passes Mars three times for every four times we link arms with Venus, creating a polyrhythm in the heavenly hoedown of 4:3 (a musical fourth, or subdominant chord in the Music of the Spheres).

But watch: If you create a chart of Venus and Earth's orbit, with the Sun at the center, you’ll find Venus' rotation period is exactly two-thirds that of an earth-year, creating a musical fifth (3:2, the dominant chord).

​When we chart the 'dance' between our two planets, it actually creates a beautiful five-petaled lotus flower, as depicted below.

The thing I find interesting about the Fifth (3:2) is the Pentad (number 5), according to Pythagoras, represents marriage (because the first masculine number is 3, and when joined with the feminine 2, they become five).

No wonder the Psalmist tells us to praise God through dance, for that's how the planets do it!

Praise his name
in dance.

(Psalm 149:3)

We get the word "planets" from the Greeks, planetes (πλανήτης), meaning "wanderers" or "wandering stars."

You see, there are five planets visible to the naked eye in the night sky (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), and when joined with the Sun and Moon, they formed the 'seven sacred planets' of ancient times.

What was unique about these seven 'planets' was they appeared to move across the sky differently than the fixed stars.

Just like us.

Imagine it! You and I are not fixed stars: we are wanderers, wandering stars, whose movement through eternity is a dance with God.

Where God Took a Wrong Turn

   You have known the alien feeling 
   In the calm of candlelight
   Winged, enchanted, on you fly, 
   Light your longing, and at last, 
   Moth, you meet the flame and die.
​
   ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Selige Sehnsucht"

I wrote previously about Walking with God.  Dancing with God is a bit different.  It's more intimate, with fewer words ― and more touching.

Very, very few people pray to God as their dance Partner.  And they're baffled why God seems distant?

Matt Segall said, "When Christendom submitted to Caesar and Caesar's lawyers edited Christian theology, they handed to God the attributes of an emperor."

Please re-read that statement.

Why have we made the Elohim into emperors rather than artists and poets, bakers and tailors, fishermen and shepherds?

Our concept of the returning, blood-soaked, crowned-Christ bears more resemblance to Constantine than to a Lover of lost lambs.
 
What would happen if we stopped picturing God sitting upon a throne, flanked by security (the seraphim), far-removed . . . and started seeing Him on the dance floor, mingling happily with the wedding guests, taking us by the hand to Quickstep (Psalm 37:23)?

"But Tim!" someone objects.  "That's blasphemous!  Haven't you heard of the sovereignty of God?  He's our King!  God doesn't dance!"

Really?  Jesus went to all those weddings and never danced?  Have you ever been to a Jewish wedding?  Of course God dances.

But was Brigham Young scandalized when women and men danced together the Waltz?  Are leaders today scandalized when members dance with God?

"But Tim" someone says, "God isn't here to teach us to dance.  Good grief, the ballet is boring!  God's here to teach us how to become priests and kings so we can rule and reign in the Household of God someday."

Sweet mercy: is that what we're doing, what we're preparing for, what we've made the gospel about?  A recruitment center for those longing to be CEOs in heaven?

Give me an open field and music to dance to, among the lilies and wildflowers, under a watchful sun warming my bare shoulders (Ezek. 12:6) ― and they can keep their 8-to-5 desk jobs in Kolob, for all I care, with their plastic-potted-plants and broken staplers, checking emails for eternity, waiting for the weekend, stressed about their quarterly performance reviews with Gabriel.​

As for me and my house, we shall dance.

​Brent Satterfield’s STE ("Spiritually Transformative Experience")
 
   All are architects of Fate,
   Working in these walls of Time

― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Builders"
​
In 2016 Brent Satterfield, a Mormon, had a soul-awakening.  He wrote about it in his book Bringing Heaven Home.  In his tour of the heavens, he learned some interesting things.

As such things go, including near-death experiences, I usually don’t put too much stock in the experiences of others.  I prefer to blaze my own trails.

But there was something in Brent’s experience that resonated with my own.  He described passing through the veil (what some of you may understand as having a Kundalini experience, or what some may refer to as the baptism of fire).

I laughed at the part of his story where, going into a sort of spiritual trance, he turned to his wife, Jenn.  "I told her I was going to go with God and even if it took me several days to surface (I might look like I was dead or dying), not to [worry]."  It reminded me of Lamoni's wife telling Ammon that even though the servants thought her husband was dead, "as for myself, to me he doth not stink" (Alma 19:5).

In a way, the veil over the earth is beginning to burst not because it is lifted like a tablecloth, but because individuals underneath it are piercing it, burning small holes into it from below, one-by-one.  God has artfully placed us here, now, so that when enough holes coalesce into larger ones, the whole thing drops away.

"[I saw] how all life was interconnected," Brent remembers.  "There was a field of shared consciousness that extended beyond . . . the earth itself.”
 
Something that Brent learned was that humanity shares a collective consciousness that is veiled.  Even though we are all different petals, we are connected to the same roots. 

What is important to understand is that when one of the petals awakens to the Roots, it has a rippling effect throughout the rest of the plant, or body.  In other words, when one person repents, all of heaven rejoices.
 
In Brent’s words:

"I felt limited in my ability to act on what I felt I was being given.  I saw the bounds of religious and societal authority that I still respected deeply.

"Jesus spoke to me of promises I had made to him at the time of my baptism and later in the temple.  He helped me to see their purpose and fulfillment in my life.

"He then symbolically took those promises from off of me by removing my clothing and placed a robe of radiant light upon me which he said would always be with me.  I was under a new relationship with God.

"I was to follow those things He put in my heart and no longer put others between us."

Now, the average LDS bishop might read those words and think, "Careful, Brent, you're on thin ice.  What about the chain of command?  Trusting your heart is a slippery slope and may lead to apostasy."

But you see, Brent was learning (as we must all) to dance with God.

Whilst the wallflowers that cling to the corners, to their hedges and finely-honed hierarchies, sipping watered-down punch, will not know the freedom of dancing with Christ.

   Christ Jesus . . .
   hath made both one,
   and hath broken down
   the middle wall of partition
   between us; 

   even the law of commandments
   contained in ordinances;
   for to make in himself of twain
   one new man.

(Eph. 2:14-15)

In this dance, there is no Bible placed between partners to keep them chaste: for we are of One flesh and mind.

The Dance of Little Children

             Come, my friends,
   ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world . . . 
   To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
   Of all the western stars

  ― Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

Why do leaders fear us dancing with God so?  Why do they cling tightly to their purview, as if they controlled God's dance card?

Never mind Jesus taught the opposite, that the greatest in heaven was he who is the least of all (Luke 22:25-26), even little children (Matt. 18:1-3). 

Let's be clear: little children have no worldly power.  They don't have passwords to log in to their bank accounts.  They don't trade stocks.  We don't even let them use sharp knives, or drive, or eat hot dogs whole ― let alone legislate, or rule and reign.

Alas, the Church is filled with so many "leaders" and so few little children.

But do you know what little children excel at?  Playing.  Dancing!  Laughing!

Let the little child within you out.  Play!  Dance even if you look ridiculous (or, as Noah David once put it, "even if you look like a goat on acid being tasered").

Move your body, for you are alive; so fly!

When did we stop playing with God?  When did the gospel become a schoolmarm?

I go to Church and hear people quote Joseph Smith from the pulpit, saying we "need a correct understanding of the character of God," and I wonder why the God I Foxtrot with looks so different from the one they worship.

The God I dance with holds me close; He does not control my steps but gently guides me by the small of my back; the smell of His breath is intoxicating as we turn upon the parquet flooring.

He is absolutely dashing, though plain and unassuming.  He is humble yet self-assured.  He whispers in my ear as the music plays, whispering words of beauty that cause my neck to tingle.  And His eyes!  I cannot tear my gaze from them as we sweep the ballroom floor; they warm me, bathing me in waterfalls and companionhood.  Eternity is to be held in His arms (2 Ne. 1:15).

Listen: the God who sits on yonder throne does not interest me at all.  I am interested in the God who steps away from His throne, who sets aside power and privilege, and who dances with us.

You know the One: the One who entices us with nothing but His beauty and conversation, whose hair falls into our face as He dips us low to the ground and lifts us up again.

And when we stumble in our steps, our clumsy feet failing to keep time with the beat, He catches us because we are (and have always been) enveloped in His loving embrace.  Whereas, a God perched on a throne way up north is of no use, no use at all, to me.

Zion needs the Bridegroom.

​That is why I will worship Him as my dance Partner, but never as an imposing figure, statuesque, seated majestically above me.

But Satan?  Here's the important thing to remember: Satan didn't worship God, he worshipped the throne.

Do we?

A presence bright and beautiful,
With eye of flashing fire,
A lip whose haughty curl bespoke
A sense of inward ire.

My saving plan exception scorns--
Man’s agency unknown.
As recompense, I claim the right
To sit on yonder Throne!”

(Orson F. Whitney, "Immanuel—A Christmas Idyl")

Yes, Lucifer understood the perks of power.  Our religious culture seems to as well.  That is why our churches have fashioned a God that is, in fact, Luciferian.
 
   Leadership is not fellowship. 
   
   Authoritarianism is not communion.

   Hierarchy is not equality. 

   Stewardship is not privilege.

Jesus wasn’t part of the Sanhedrin; we won’t find Him in their counsels.

We will find Christ on the dance floor, dancing.

   Will we join Him?

Participation Time

Okay, get ready.  Since it is the summer solstice, get up.  Yes, you!  Arise, and loosen those limbs.

I want us to dance together.  Yes, really!

As you watch and listen to the song below, I want us to move our bodies.

Move as if your body were praying.  Make movement into a prayer, your hands and feet its words.

Speak praise through your hips and raise your arms high.

Are you still sitting?  Come on, now, I am counting on you: be Little Children with me.

Here we go.  Turn the volume up; I'll be here when you return.  Don't be shy!

Dance.

The Time I Chose to Stay

​Late Sunday night, on March 30, 2025, my liver failed.

It was terrible timing, too, because I was scheduled to fly to Anchorage, Alaska early the next morning, where I was going to spend the week for work.

I had been sick for days, and none of the doctors or tests had diagnosed what was wrong. In my stubbornness, I refused to cancel my trip. "I will get better," I kept telling myself.

I was in bed at home, my bags packed, curled up in a ball, around midnight, when the pain passed the point I could bear. My eyes closed, I tried shutting off my physical senses, floating above it, if you know what I mean.

I prayed. I've mentioned before I have no fear of death, so I wasn't surprised when I found myself looking down and seeing sand beneath my feet.

I recognized immediately where I was, upon a stretch of shoreline that is dear to me from my childhood, where I spent my summers vacationing.

It was evening and the sun had dipped beneath the horizon over the ocean. I was alone. I called out and asked the Lord to walk with me.

He appeared and we walked, hand-in-hand, along the surf as the waves played around our ankles. He led me into a holy-of-holies.

"Why have you brought me here, Father?" I asked.

"So you may choose."

The tide was rising.

"If you wish to return," He said gently, "You must go now while the tide is low and the way remains open."

I sensed His meaning. Until that moment, I had not realized my condition was so serious. I had reached a critical threshold.

For me there was no bright light, no angelic choirs singing, no resounding joy. There was simply peace and calm as I weighed my decision.

"I choose to return," I said.

*****

Afterwards we returned to shore the way we had come, climbing over the mossy rocks, our feet wet, and I found a great bonfire waiting for us. I sensed He had prepared it. "Fire awakens the flesh, whereas water buries it."

We sat down on the sand before the fire and He was utterly at peace, present in the moment, as if eternity had stopped spinning and time had ceased. There seemed to be no urgency.

I watched the fire and all the colors dancing within its flame. We conversed, as Moroni described, "in plain humility" (Ether 12:39).

"It lives in you," He said at the end. And without another word, He vanished, and was not.

I remained alone near the fire until it had burned to embers, and awoke from my dream. I wrote it down while it was fresh and slept.

In the early light of morning my wife awoke and saw me and yelped, "Honey! Look at yourself!"

I sat up in bed and was the brightest yellow, my skin completely jaundiced.

Needless to say, I canceled my trip.

Shemlon's Shore

​​      Now there was a place in Shemlon
      where the daughters of the Lamanites
      did gather themselves together
      to sing and dance
      and to make themselves merry.
 
      And now the priests of king Noah
      laid and watched them;
      and they came forth
      out of their secret places
      and took them and carried them
      into the wilderness as their wives.

          ― As Retold by Mormon

Shemlon’s shore
an embroidered skirt
of dimpled moonlight
 
Shimmering lakeside
upon a taffeta breeze
carried inland from the sea
 
Daughters dancing
among water lilies bathed
in future’s innocence
 
When, from hidden nests,
priests emerge to force their hands
with premeditated fervor
 
Swapping silk for sackcloth―
silencing the music
and stilling the waters
 
     at Shemlon’s shore.