Unifying the Spiritual and the Material

By Charlie Johnston

Thomasville, Georgia –

Our own Steve Baker formulated one of the more penetrating questions to a piece I wrote a few days ago that I decided to answer his question in the form of another column. First, it would be good for you to look at the column in question (or, at least, be able to refer back to it) so I link to it here.

Now for Steve’s question:

That is incredible news, Charlie. So heartening. I didn’t know whether the ceremony was woke or positive and am delighted to hear it was legit. In that case I view it as transformative, or at least indicating transformation.

I want to get some clarity on what you’ve said about what the rededication means for us. You seem to say that we have turned the corner and to quote Trump, “The best is yet to come.” Yet you then describe in detail what followed for you from your December 7th, 1995, experience, saying that it was a very difficult and scary time, with you having to make many tough decisions and figure out many difficulties, ultimately leading to you choosing your path and then suffering a significant health issue as part of those years.

Are you saying that the toughest changes and questions are behind us and that now we will see many good things happening? Or are you implicitly warning us that now things will get much tougher for a while as we all figure out what’s wrong, what needs fixing, accepting the costs of the decisions we will have to make to cut things apart and rebuild? If the latter, then what is now being asked of us is to finally step up, make the hard decisions, and build the Peaceful Land through hard work and smart choices and finally, seriously, turning to God again. Positive but difficult and even scary at times.

In the movie “V for Vendetta” the heroine stands, newly free, and says “God is in the rain” as the storm pours down over her. Is the Storm now upon us, and we should put on our galoshes and go splashing in the puddles with the Lord? Even as the Storm pours its rain down over us, we celebrate the downpour? Or are you saying that the Storm is tapering off and the sun is almost out again because the aftermath of the rededication will be the mirror to the aftermath of your pivotal visitation, as if we have all passed through the darker area between a double rainbow into the brightness above both?

Many people I know, and I myself, have felt greatly relieved since Trump was elected – burdens lifted, a new and sunny timeline embarked upon. Are we sensing the mirror outcome is now our reality? Or are we going to be sideswiped by the arrival of the hard choices, if for no other reason than that we are finally done with *our* training and are ready to make them?

Steve Baker

Now, for my answer:

(When I started composing this piece, it grew like kudzu – each piece layering up to the next piece before I could give what I considered a genuinely coherent answer. So here it is.) I was tempted to just respond to this by saying, “Yes.”

I constantly embed my writing with subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) puns, references (literary and other) foreshadowings and more. On these, it is rare for someone to pick up on what I meant – and it delights me when one of those rare occasions come. In this column, I did a pretty in-your-face dichotomy between the lifting of a veil of ambiguity and uncertainty and the onset of tremendous difficulties. And yet, I presented this as the beginning of personal triumph. It has been all of these things.

I do not expect anyone to take, at face value, my abundance of mystical experiences. Again, it does not disturb me a bit for someone to assume this is just the way my peculiar mind processes a lot of things. Frankly, I wondered about that myself for many decades. But it is important for you to know that I believe them and take them completely seriously – and learning how to make distinctions in the mystical realm is every bit as tricky (actually trickier) and requires as much discipline as learning how to navigate your way through the merely material realm. In this response, I must deal with both and I will speak candidly – but you can make of it what you will.

I wrote that Dec. 7, 1995 was the pivotal day in my life – and so it was. But I did not fully embrace its message until over a year and a half later. The reason was that I had been shown and told many things on that day. One of them was that, although the time was not yet, very soon I would have to decide irrevocably whether to go forward with the mission God wanted of me or forever lose my place. All my life, from earliest childhood, I had regularly had visions of walking along a particularly tangled path in deep wilderness. It was very hard going – but, even so, it soothed me because I was told this was MY path and God had appointed it for me. Right about the time I came into the Catholic Church I came out of the path atop a steep hill facing a great ocean. Down below was a ship at harbor, lazily getting ready for its voyage. I went down to the beach (very rocky) near the ship, knowing that this was what the path had been leading me to all along. I was told on Dec. 7 that soon this ship would set sail and I must be aboard, ready to do my part, or forever be left behind.

I had already long known that a great storm was coming upon the world, the greatest ever. I sensed this was the ship that would carry us to safe harbor, but only through many trials and perils. I was told candidly that if I said yes, I would shortly thereafter begin an extended period of extreme trial, trial that would take me to the limit of my endurance and beyond. Who looks forward to that? But I was also assured that if I gave final acceptance and endeavored to live it well, not one person I loved would be allowed to perish to eternity. I was told that the period of trial (which I have come to think of as the period when I was given to be sifted by the satan) was ordered to strengthen me, so that I would be iron before the storm hit and many were counting on me. Near the end of the visitation I asked if carrying out this work was part of my salvation. I was assured it was not – that mission and salvation are two separate things. I asked what would happen if I said no. I immediately was suspended above a great pit, slowly revolving 360 degrees. On all sides of me, people were dropping into the pit, all cursing me because I had known and done nothing to help them weather the terrible storm. It was sobering stuff.

It was late summer and early fall of 1997 when I gave my answer, entering into a 40-day consecration to the Immaculate Conception and pledging I would devote myself whatever the cost. Sure enough, right after the first of the year, my house burned down, my beautiful daughter went hogwild and was taken by the state on a delinquency petition, and I had to leave my job on a horrible misunderstanding that, just a few months later was proven to be a misunderstanding. Those were the better things that happened as 1998 began. I took some comfort in that it was on Feb. 11, the Feast Day of Our Lady of Lourdes, that the house burned down. I took this as an assurance that all this was the beginning of what the Lord had told me would happen, so to be not afraid. I’m sorry, I will skip over lightly on this, as it was brutally painful for the next five years and I do not like reliving details of it. Three people were witness to the fullness of it: my son, Fr. Babyface, and a dear friend.

I moved to Belleville, Illinois, in the St. Louis metropolitan area – not in any pathetic effort to escape, but because I was a very prominent man in northeast Illinois. Despite assurances of confidentiality, prominent people are the subject of much gossip in the halls of officialdom. I was thinking that whatever madness had afflicted poor Christie (my daughter) it would be much easier for her if, after she came back home, it would be to a place where she would not be the subject of courthouse gossip. I remember one judge, as this was ramping up, asking me at a social event what in heavens name was going on with my daughter. I told him that, somehow, she had become what I would be if I had no conscience. He literally shuddered, then said, “My God, that would make for a James Bond villain.”

At first my son hated the move. But once school began, he blossomed. After about a year and a half it became clear that Christie wouldn’t be coming home any time in the foreseeable future, so I started planning to move back to the Chicago area, which was home to me. My son objected strenuously, for St. Louis had become his home and he loved it. So I decided there we would stay until he had graduated high school, then I would decide what I would do. It worked out well, for the three witnesses to my sifting saw it nearly from start to finish. It had a profound effect on each of them. My friend said he had never seen anyone so snakebit, with everything I touched turning bad for me, and yet watching me keep a joyful presence for others. My teenage son, after listening to a Priest announcing he was so broken up after his aged Mother’s death that he was going to take a six-month sabbatical, told me on the way home that he felt sorry for Fr. X, but thought he was a wimp. I asked why and he said that we dealt with more setbacks in a week than that – and we kept going. Near the end, I told Fr. Babyface that it had been like a wolf at the door for five years: neither the wolf nor I won, we both just dropped from sheer exhaustion. My good Priest said I had literally lived the life of Job better than anyone he had ever encountered.

Many times I caught myself praying that God would relieve the unrelenting pressure – then I would think better of it and ask Him to give me more, but make me stronger so I could bear it cheerfully. And so He did. It was important that I be strong and resolute enough when the real Storm came that I would not waver or quake in fright at the sight of the frothing waves.

The five-year ordeal culminated with the neurological event that damaged my spinal cord and killed a lot of nerves on my right side. It was weird, for I became an old man overnight. It was 9:03 am on Good Friday of 2003 when I felt the snapping that brought me low. I was on the phone, in fact, with the friend who had witnessed my troubles – and I knew that this was not just an ache or something, but was very serious. It would be almost three months before I finally got the neurosurgery that would stabilize me…and my situation kept deteriorating until I did. I had to sign various waivers and things because my doctor told me there was a 30 percent chance I would not survive the surgery. In fact, as I learned much later, they did lose me a couple of times on the operating table and had to revive me – a very tricky business when they are working with your spinal cord exposed. I remember when they gave me the anesthesia I thought, well, if I am just a nut I may not wake up from this. But I had made arrangements for my kids and things were in hand, so I was okay.

Boy, did things change after that Good Friday. Before then, I had outstanding stamina and energy. If needed, I could work straight 36 hours, get a four-hour nap, and do another 24. I was also very productive. When I first got recruited into radio into the newsroom, I literally produced three to four times as many stories as everybody else, in addition to daily commentaries. If I got tired when something needed doing, I could push through and catch up on sleep later.

After the surgery and my recovery, I discovered I fatigued much easier – and if I tried to push through fatigue it just made things worse. When I stubbornly tried to push through anyway and it knocked me out for nearly a week, I learned that when I get tired I need to lay down for a while. If I don’t, I’ll be useless for days. Now I take a nap on most days, sometimes two, and if I get a cold, I’ll be in bed all day sometimes. (Thank God for Ivermectin, the best anti-viral ever! It limits the downtime due to a cold).  I have not had a moment when I have not been in some pain since Good Friday, 2003. Sometimes, at night, it is bad enough I take some night-time Tylenol just to take enough of the edge off so I can sleep. Ha! If I woke without pain, I would probably go see a doctor to find out what was wrong.

But this was the end of the trial by fire. I came out of it crippled and much feebler than I went into it. Long after my surgery I asked my doctor when the pain would cease. He finally told me he didn’t know if it ever would, that I had suffered such extensive nerve damage that some of my system was dead and I should be at least partially paralyzed on my right side. I should not be able to walk at all. Seven years later I walked across the country. The friend who had been witness to all of this told me, “Sheesh, for years you had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at you and, when none of that worked, God wrung your neck. So naturally you got up and walked across the country.” After completing that journey I began what has been the most fruitful period of my life, naps and all.

It has struck me as ironic, too, that the most fruitful period should begin and continue after I was crippled and significantly enfeebled. But that has its purpose, too. Fortunately, my disability is of the sort that I can easily hide (or at least downplay) for significant periods. But people can see that I struggle with a lot of physical things. They don’t see how much I have to rest, or that I rest a lot in advance of a big event to have sufficient reserves of stamina for it. I used to worry a lot more about people seeing it, but I came to realize that seeing it is a sign of hope, too. If a hobbled, old man like me can persist, a lot of people see that they can, too. It motivates – and heartens – them.

A lot of things happen when you decisively cross that threshold of trust and docility. I am a true believer, not in the sense of being a fanatic, but in the sense that if you know certain first principles to be true, specific consequences follow from that – and you must know these consequences and live them as they are. For example, if you believe that we live for eternity, why do so many believers still treat this life, this blink of an eye, as the only good? I hate faith-healing sessions where the leader asks people to rate their pain from 1-10 and then asks how it is after the prayers…and then reacts in triumph when there is a significant improvement. Maybe I’m dense, but I don’t see how that has anything to do with God…and everything to do with making the leader feel special. Perhaps an affliction is to help purify a person, to make his life better and his wisdom deeper. If so, temporal success just means stopping the purification and leaving the person stranded in the shallows. Perhaps it is to get the person to voluntarily bear the suffering to offer up for many other souls. Again, if so, temporal success deprives all the many souls of the graces that would have flowed from this glorious soul’s embrace of a difficult cross. God knows, in His great wisdom, when each person’s last state of grace will come. In His great mercy, He plucks souls from this earth in that last state of grace that they may not be deprived of the heaven He intends for them. If so, then temporal success dooms the person to perdition. All because we think the only good is to be found in this life, whatever else we say. Does that mean we should not pray for relief? Of course not. We absolutely should…but we must also recognize how short-sighted we are while doing it. I don’t know what the greatest good is, but I know God does. That is why I end all invocatory prayers by saying, “Thank you for hearing my prayer, Lord. Thy will be done.” And then I trust that whatever happens from there God has allowed either for my good or the good of others. Trust, faith, and love are all acts of the will.

This creates a great sense of confidence. If I do NOT damage my covenant with God by submitting shoddy, half-baked work then I can be assured that His will IS being accomplished and I am helping facilitate it, however blind and stumbling I am. The Lord is very tolerant of mistakes, like a gentle parent helping to reveal them to you and show you how to do better. He is very wroth with intentional deception: you are not allowed to aver something you do not actually believe. That is not a mistake; it is a dodge.

During my pilgrimage, I thought long and hard about how to go about trying to hearten people and give them confidence to get through the Storm. God did NOT tell me how to do it. He usually doesn’t. He gives me the info I need, occasional instructions or rebukes on how I am handling my work, then leaves it to me to devise the best plan I can think of, seeking His gentle guidance throughout. It was I who decided to speak out publicly about the coming Storm, the Global Civil War fought on cultural lines. The plan was accepted with one caveat: my angel told me I would make at least one major mistake publicly, that it would bear fruit of its own – but having started I was not allowed to NOT to speak out because of fear. And as soon as I knew I had erred, I had to acknowledge it and change course.

I didn’t really need to tell anyone about the Storm. It was coming whatever I said. It wouldn’t change much how people responded to the Storm, itself. I chose to speak out about this because I was as fundamentally certain about it as about anything in my life – and the broad image of what it would feel like. If it did not happen largely as I expected it, I could just retire and enjoy family and friends. I expected blowback. In fact, I counted on it. Substantial blowback would bring it squarely into view and make it memorable to people. I was saddened that so many who held positions of trust or authority in The Church got into a sort of dishonest frenzy of blowback – making up things I never said or imposing ridiculous misinterpretations of what I said to oppose me. It stunned me that they were willing to engage in what they had to know to be raw calumny to attack me. In that case, even if they were right that I was a fraud, they, too, would stand guilty before God. I prayed for them – and prayed that, as the Storm hit, they would, at least, repent of their eagerness to bear false witness. In the end, they unintentionally did me a favor. The Commission Archbishop Aquila established to investigate me read everything I had written and watched all the videos I appeared in. The contrast between what I actually said and what my critics hysterically and falsely claimed I said was stark and condemning – for them. But it did help to make everything memorable. Even so, it was not pleasant.

I was certainly nervous before the Abp.’s decision was released. When the commission called me in to give me that decision a week before it was formally released I was, quite frankly, sweating bullets. I am sometimes easily startled, but I am rarely nervous. But in this case, if the decision was restrictive enough, I would have to find a different way to accomplish my goal, for I would be obedient to the Abp.’s direction. I had several people – including Steve Baker – prepared to go through the website and make it compliant with whatever the Abp. decided. This was VERY important. Obedience to legitimate authority, legitimately exercised IS obedience to God. In fact, one of the devil’s favored gambits to pull the pious into deadly danger is to convince them that what they have to do is so important that the divinely appointed rules do not apply to them. Once they succumb, they become ineffective until they live proper obedience again. To do this is a failure of trust that God can accomplish His intention unless you break His rule to help Him along. Some break that barrier and, realizing what they have done, come back. Others, who might well be solid reformers, never recover themselves and so become either useless or an enemy to the faith.

When my two errors came, hoo boy did it sting! The first was that there would be no peaceful transition from Obama to Trump. The second was that Rescue would come before the end of 2017. Some people, including some theologians, have since said that both were errors of interpretation rather than substance – which I had already come to believe before they said anything. I knew in August of 2017 that I was almost certainly going to be wrong about the Rescue – and for a reason that I had known all along but allowed my stupid enthusiasm to blind me to. In eternity, when a Divine Decree is issued, it is done – for everything is always present to God. However, here on earth, it sets off an unstoppable process by which it is accomplished, in time. That dichotomy, as the Priests who have directed me since since 1995 well know, is the main reason why it is so very hard to get timing with precision. I had interpreted rescue as an event (which it is in heaven) rather than a process (which it is on earth) and it was extremely unlikely that that process, begun in 2017, would unfold before the end of the year. I had completely screwed up and had no excuse, for I knew that very well before I ever spoke publicly about these things at all.

The ”no peaceful transition” error was more subtle. By all appearances, the transition occurred peacefully and on schedule. What we now know is that, even before Trump took office, his predecessor and the federal bureaucracy had began a program to undermine and destroy him – and defy his authority every step of the way. I had stepped back and stopped writing on the website after that inauguration – as I promised I would if there was a peaceful transition – but I added the caveat that I would be back if there were a coup attempt. By May, I was satisfied that we were facing an ongoing bureaucratic coup attempt – and came back. The backstory of what happened was that, on almost every assertion I am given from mystical sources, I ponder until I have come up with about a dozen potential ways in which it could be fulfilled. I then consider the most likely and, if I say anything, confine it to what I think are the two or three most likely scenarios. In this case, a coup was one of the lower level possibilities in likelihood, but significant enough that I thought it important to mention as I departed for a season.

The reason I spoke publicly at all was not to warn people of the Storm for, as I said earlier, that was coming to all whatever I said. Rather, I was supremely confident that my description of the Storm as most resembling “a global civil war fought on cultural lines” and that the heart of collapse would be no “War of the Worlds” scenario, but a “complete loss of confidence in all the institutions we had long relied on” would prove out. I had no particular need for anyone to believe me about the Storm, itself, as it would prove itself out on its own. But I did need for a critical mass to hear it and some to object to it at the top of their lungs. That way, when I was eventually shown to have told people true on an unlikely scenario and in the face of loud, sustained contradiction, it would give credibility to the message that I DO need people to hear and believe: that this is NOT the end but is, in fact, God renewing the faith and face of the world – and He has work He calls us to: to participate with Him in that great effort.

The process, as much as it stung, served a great purpose as well. You cannot contain mystical wisdom in little cages of conventional thinking. Often prophecies are conditional – and not always obviously so. (Just ask Jonah). Even more often, prophecy usually comes to pass in ways that fit the prophesied words, but are not at all what people expected. (It seems to me that God delights in accomplishing things in ways that no one ever expected. This is not out of any mean streak – but to help those who are willing to think just a little more from God’s perspective. That is the work of a lifetime.) Some followers suggested I was not wrong at all – because it was a matter of interpretation. But I WAS wrong in my interpretation. I have already said God is quick to forgive and correct genuine errors – but He is a demanding taskmaster insisting that we take full responsibility for what we say and do. If we don’t, we are NOT fit for this type of mission. (And that includes saying something wildly wrong and then being very quiet when it is proven wrong in hopes that people forget what you originally said. God will not count on mouthy weasels.)

I can boil much of this down to three rules:

• Work hard to discern first principles, the guiding lights that are so true they are near impervious to assault.
• Contemplate deeply the consequences and implications of these principles and then LIVE THEM. Fools who mouth that God is joy with grief all over their face or that God is love while their face is contorted in rage persuade no one of anything – except to seek truth elsewhere.
• Contemplate the fullness of our lives, not just in this world, but through eternity. If the only good you can see is what is in this life, you make the vision of moles seem like that of eagles. The restless search for position and pre-eminence in this life only is as foolish as getting into a fight to be the first in line to board the school bus. That means nothing and is NOT how you will be judged at school.

Most people who know me well consider me very down to earth and unassuming. I think that is largely true, when considered in the context of this world. But I wonder at my vanity sometimes when I think of how jealously I work to guard my standing in the next world. It is not that I am particularly unassuming, but that I value the things of this world properly. The only things that have real value are to bring people to the joy that is in Christ.

So, with this prelude (that would do Leo Tolstoy proud), my answer to you, Steve, is yes. A great corner has been turned, given to us by God to ready us for the battle ahead. Our calling is to evangelize and re-evangelize the world. My greatest earthly fear was that we would first have to take America back by force before we could even begin our real task. I believe that we have already gone deeply into the Storm, but the worst is ahead of us – not in this country, if we properly value the great gift we have been given, but in the rest of the world. It is right and proper to rejoice in what we have been given. But if we do not use it to set ourselves to our task, we will lose it and have to start over. We do not have all the time in the world, but God has all the time in eternity. He will deliver this generation if we rise to the occasion , but it will not impede His plan at all if we dilly-dally and He must wait for another generation to complete our rescue.

If we put our shoulder to the plow with complete resolve, we can trust that God will provide what we cannot. If we wait for Him to fight the battle for us, we are on our own. So I walk with complete confidence, using both the seeming triumphs and the setbacks along my pilgrim way to try to advance the Kingdom of God. I have almost no fear of the valley of death before me because I know He is there, watching over me – and my duty is to advance boldly. Prudently, but boldly. That He decided I should do so only after I had lost most of my physical prowess and half of my stamina is ironically amusing, but ultimately irrelevant. I encourage you to contemplate what St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:9,10:

But he (the Lord) said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Let me share with you a snippet from what is one of the most consoling chapters of the Bible to me, Jeremiah 20. I quote here verses 7-9:

O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived;

Thou art stronger than I, and thou hast prevailed.

I have become a laughingstock all the day,

Everyone mocks me,

For whenever I speak I cry out, I shout, “Violence and destruction!”

For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long.

If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak anymore in his name,”

There is in my heart as it were a burning fire, shut up in my bones,

And I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.

Of course, God did not deceive Jeremiah: his own errant pre-suppositions deceived him. But this IS what it is like to accept the tutelage of the Lord. I know.

The great task, given to this generation by the Lord Almighty, is to re-evangelize the world. Build the faithful up; fight those who would hurt the faithful, be tolerant and forgiving of the trespasses of others while being rigorous in combatting your own. Know that we are the little ones of the Lord, blind moles who can scarcely perceive the light of the Son. It really is up to you whether this will be the most joyful period of your entire life or the most miserable. It is dependent on whether you invite His strength to fill your weakness. If you do it does not matter how weak you are, for His strength is infinite. Let us all begin our pilgrim journey to the mountain with joy, confident that we will see the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart from the land of the living.

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

Find me on Twitter at @JohnstonPilgrim

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