Shattering the Crystal Face of God: Adventures in an emerging world by Meade Fischer.

 

Book Review

This is my second book from the author and the most enjoyable one from his pen. This book is a soul searching openness to the world as he sees it. An in-depth look at life and what it offers. Only when we open ourselves can we fully grasp the immensity of creation around us and in us. 

The name of the book, Shattering the crystal face of God, stopped me for a few moments, then I thought, God is big enough to take whatever is written between these pages and remain Sovereign. God is not easily offended. 

Reading it though, surpassed my thoughts, and I smiled. You are not alone, Mr. Fischer, I am thinking like you. There must be more to the world than we see or what our perception is. We cannot be born only to live a mundane life and wait for death. There must be more. 

The author begins at the beginning of his life and where it has started for him, I found his thoughts sincere and clear. Filled with an insight one only can get when confronted with life in its enormity. As he describes The Big Sur River, for instance, I could picture it in my mind even though I have never been there. 

 

As he delves into the discoveries around him, seeing the beauty of patterns involving, I envisioned the trek of the birds across the Kalahari, or staring at the expanse in the night to see the patterns evolving before me in sparkling light. Or what about the spots of the leopard, a unique print to each but similar in genes. 

Once we see God's creation in the smallest of leaves, and the delicate patterns of life in one tree, then we realize how infinite creation is. The author writes it best: "I’m in the process of creating wilderness, and it feels better than you can imagine. It isn’t that hard: take a walk in a beautiful, unspoiled country, take some pictures and some notes, draw some lines on a map, spread out your arms, and shout, “Let there be wilderness!"

Clearly, you can not only understand his thought process but can see the love of nature he has, as well. It filters through the words and lines as it flows onto the paper effortlessly. It brings nature closer, making it more personal to understand his revelations. In the end, the book is a tribute to God's work as seen through the eyes of a man searching for meaning.

 

This is an excellent read. It is thought-provoking, poetic in delivery, and filled with great value any reader who is looking for meaning, would enjoy.  

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Snippets from the book.

Walking to Molera Beach at Cooper Point was like walking it when the state first bought the land and had yet to make a park of it. Hiking the trail through a towering, verdant canyon erased a quarter century of human tramping and plodding. This wasn’t a park for people, but a dance parlor for bumblebee and lupine, an aerodrome for songbirds, a tanning booth for lizards, a conspiracy of unsavory thistle. Gaining the headland involved bushwhacking the trail, a trail that had been devoured by the greedy appetite of nature. The first violet iris on the trail arose like a gun sight against a Big Sur of dreams, a Big Sur quiet, thick, verdant, contemplative and still. The Big Sur River, alive with glowing emeralds, flowed full and proud toward the cove, blue-calmed despite the raging wind that pushed white caps from behind the point rock to the horizon. The rock was a packed rookery, the pocket beach below the headlands was awash with musical pebbles in the rising tide. The main beach was filled with driftwood from slivers to huge trunks. Near the river, at the edge of the driftwood, someone had made a driftwood tent, a place to lie, perchance to sleep and dream while gazing at the little waves lapping the shore. Biking Highway One from Molera south to Fullers was the rare opportunity to really see the rich tapestry of Big Sur. Without traffic, one can ride down the middle of the road, swerving from side to side to take in every nuance of scenery. In a car there are stretches of meadow, thickets of brush, and clumps of forest. From a traffic-free bike, there was magic at every curve. Each tiny creek had grown waterfalls. The river was so cleansed that the bottom gravel rattled, as the mountains sweated their excess water. Each little meadow was a labyrinthine mystery, a winding road to wonderland. Every mature redwood had a hollowed out place in its base that had that lived-in look of a small, comfortable den. Locals were standing in the parking lots of closed or partly opened businesses, stretching arms to the sky, celebrating the place as it was the day they arrived. No one was in a hurry, everyone was taking the time to smile and greet, conversations happened any place two people met, even in the middle of the highway. While waiting for a section of road to open, I was lying naked in the tall, sweet grass between the road and the cliff, watching hummingbirds dart against the backdrop of spreading oak branches, alone for miles, alone for hours. In a flash I’m there again, painting a picture on the porch of the Phoenix Shop at Nepenthe. The view is making me delusional and slightly manic, and one of the people in the shop is an artist and is discussing the view and the care of good brushes. Some sort of weird rapture is setting in. I’m assured that I’m OK, that humanity has the ability to rise up and perfect itself, that the world is both an aesthetic and pragmatic work of art, and that joy and wonder will endure.

Almost without taking a breath or blinking, I’m in the car again, my eyes tracing the full, rich, sensuous curves of this fecund coast. I remind myself that it isn’t the spring of ‘98, but the spring of ‘99. The road is long since repaired, and the rains have been gentler. The season of renewal still wraps me in its arms and sings me to flights of ecstasy. I’m working my way slowly through the erogenous zones of this wild and free land. My watch is left behind somewhere, and the petty stresses and obligations of mundane living are caught in a tree somewhere near Point Lobos. Looking around, I see that nothing is exactly as it was thirteen months ago, but then, nothing will ever be like it is this moment. I know this coast like the topography of my mind, but still I see myriad things I’ve never seen before. As always, I consider myself the model of self-restraint when I can drive this road without pulling over, stripping naked and running—gibberishly screaming —into the brush.

I remember someone saying, “I have my faith to see me through.” If “faith” is an absolute conviction without benefit of direct experience, how much greater is the experience of this moment than all the prayers of mankind.

#2

Moments had become years, had dissolved toward oblivion.

My one success in those years was getting through college: no grants, no loans, no savings. Living by my wits, working when absolutely necessary, doing without a car, sometimes without shelter, I graduated.

Foolishly, I thought the diploma would free me from my habit of sabotaging my life. I planned on finding some work that acknowledged my education, education, skills, and talents, and allowed me some self-respect. When I ended up at the same kind of clerical job I’d had four years before, with less money in the bargain, my bile rose like the tide.

Then, like the desperate are wont to do, I looked outside myself for something to cling to, an anchor for my castaway life, an artificial center for my universe. For some it might have been God or golf or some other hobby; for me it was a woman. She was my salvation, my goddess, my excuse for being, and when she walked out on me, I crumbled like a gingerbread man in the rain.

Alcohol and drugs are not problems per se. Individuals have problems, probably from living in a dysfunctional society. Drugs and alcohol are merely symptoms of their inability to deal with it all.

The human mind seems to recoil when attempting to look over the whole of anything and to see it as unbroken continuity. To be human is to see some patterns in life, some divisions. We are born tailors, landscapers, fabricators. We fabricate everything in our lives: our tools, our surroundings, our identities. Everywhere we look, we see the dotted lines, labeled, “cut here.” The retailer sees the seasonal patterns of sales, while the new mother sees the patterns of child changing and feeding. The architect is surrounded by structural patterns, and the microbiologist, molecular patterns. The artist sees color and form patterns, while the TV viewer sees the patterns of prime time and late night viewing. We all live in and are constantly thinking in patterns, but we rarely stop to consider that, like templates, these patterns overlay every aspect of our lives. We also seldom realize that all of these patterns are fundamentally related.

 

The movement of living things, such as the leaves of trees on a windy day or the intricate dance of a flock of birds, crack open, ever so slightly, the door between the world of the physical face of God and the world of forces that bind it together in a vibrating becoming.

"Although I don’t understand musical theory, I know there are patterns of life there also. Some music can heal illness, something traditional healers have known for centuries. Other music, we all know, can instill romance, and other music can irritate you to the point of punching someone out. Then there is the ambient noise of the city and the home, the music of the damned. It just leaves you disconnected, out of sorts, and out of phase. I know there is music in a creek flowing over a rocky bed, for I have sat and listened to its song. And there is music in the wind through the trees, and music in the ocean waves assaulting the shore. My nerves are like tuning forks, and each music touches a sympathetic vibration within, creating little variations in my dance of life."