Astounded - Hearts Hardened
Astounded - Hearts Hardened
July 13, 2025
By: Lou Engelhardt
Language and culture affect our perception. If there is no word for something, it may or may not exist. Ken Carey says: [Words we use to describe] “Our view of ourselves and our world .....are but a thin sliver of the multidimensional reality we inhabit.” That reality, as described by different cultures, is a place in which miracles happen all the time. And, What are miracles? They are defined as extraordinary events often attributed to divine intervention that appear to defy natural and scientific laws.
Other realities have been described throughout history, and that fascinates me. Especially descriptions that go way back…to a time when folks thought the world was flat, that there was a dome over it, and above that Gods and Goddesses held meetings and contests in another reality, fighting to gain the attention and loyalty of the people below. During that time in history what was known was mostly shared through spoken words, gathered and retold by storytellers. Each time a story was told it could and would have different meanings depending on whose words that told the story….For instance, the Yazidi people from what is today, Northern Iraq, in the area around Mt Sinjar, believed that Mt Sinjar is where Noah’s boat finally came to rest, that it crashed into the rocks of the mountain and was going to sink due to a huge hole in the hull, but a black snake coiled itself into a plug for the hole and to saved the animals and people on the ark. TFor this reason, they believe in a snake Goddess. The Yazidi also believe they only descended from Adam, and not from Eve. That is another story for another day.
I love these stories and I find sometimes that folks seem to lose some appreciation or ability to hear such stories with any sense of belief as they grow out of childhood. Something about growing up changes us. Perception from childhood and also in earlier cultures contain complete belief in a multidimensional reality. However, it seems that as we mature in our culture anyway, we are taught these things are simply someone’s imagination. We are taught that words only mean certain things, and without words for things, what we perceive does not exist. What happens to harden our hearts so we have trouble believing that even without words there is another reality and that miracles can and do happen. When do we become frightened and astonished by things we now call ghosts and “otherworldly”?
When I was about five years old the storyteller was my Berkley Grad, wild gypsy, opera-loving grandmother. She read Greek myths to me at the breakfast table while I ate grapefruit with a serrated spoon and Cream of Wheat, and drank Chamomile tea. My favorite myth had words describing Perseus’ journey, in his winged shoes, to behead the Gorgon Medusa while looking in a mirror so he would not get turned to stone. This myth also described how immediately, when Perseus beheaded Medusa, the winged horse Pegasus, (on whom one could fly to heaven) was released from Medusa’s head. My grandmother also taught me to say the 23rd Psalm outloud, from memory. The 23rd Psalm had words that helped keep me from being frightened by the ghosts I knew were always hiding under my bed.
As a child I believed in miracles. I believed that I could fly on Pegasus or with winged shoes, and I believed God would cook dinner and walk with me beside still waters. As a child I found it easy to believe in the words of myths and psalms as they described a multidimensional reality full of miracles.
When I was in my 20s, living in Montana, I heard the words of a woman Shaman from the Crow Nation describing healings where she actually opened bodies with her hands and took out evil spirits. I believed her words describing these miracles.
Long before Christ, history provides us with facts showing adult men and women from all over the world have used words to describe multidimensional realities and miracles. The Minoan people of Crete were builders of amazing palaces, designers of ornate frescoes. They told the story of King Minos being cursed by Poseidon, and of the first supernatural creature - a minotaur - and of a complex labyrinth being built to confine the Minotaur. They relied on words from Goddesses to heal and guide them.
The Mycenean Greeks were legendary warriors and traders, who believed their first king was Perseus, (yes, the same, the beheader of Medusa), and that he was the son of the God Zeus, and that the walls of Mycenae were built by Cyclopes. They developed and used the first known written words called Linear B.
The Chinese believe that their deity Shangdi is the supreme ancestor of their royal lineage and they tell what are called “tales of the strange” featuring supernatural beings and ghosts: like the story of Chang’s Flying to the Moon and the love story of the white snake and a scholar.
During this same time, in North America, tribes living along the California Coast and around Lake Huron, as well as many other parts of the American continent, spoke of the presence of spirits and gods and miracles in their multidimensional reality. Also during this same time, the ancient Hebrews were telling stories of miracles and of finding one God who fought other Gods on their behalf - some of these Gods were Baal (numbers
25:3) and his wife Astarte, who is referenced as the Queen of the Heavens in Jeremiah
7:18), Chemosh (1 Kings 11:7), Dagon (Judges 16:23) and Milcom (1 Kings 11:13). The Hebrew God said “Yourshall have no other Gods before me, and He claimed the Hebrews as His people”. These early stories were shared orally and changed with whoever the storyteller was. It was later that the stories of the Hebrew people were written down, and this took place about the same time as the early Greek languages started to be written. The Hebrew stories were written mostly in ancient Hebrew which is rooted in Afro-Asiatic language - which is quite different from early Greek.
Jesus was born into the Hebrew reality, born a Jew, and raised with words about One God. Yet He was also born during a time when words from many perspectives surrounded him. An example of this is the mention of Queen of Sheba, who was a pagan queen. This is found in Luke 11:31. The stories of these earlier times all captured the idea of something that is always present beyond what we can see, whether we choose to recognize it or not, and that miracles wake people up and draw them into the full experience of a great spiritual realm. All the beliefs shared belief in a multidimensional reality in us and all around us – every day. And yet, today it sometimes seems we struggle to accept there is a multidimensional reality. And in Jesus' time, the disciples and other witnesses appear to have struggled to accept miracles.
All this background is meant to help bring us to the story at hand. Words describing a miracle written down by a young man who was not even a disciple.
Records indicate Mark was perhaps 15-16 when Jesus was alive, and that he followed Paul and Barnabus during their ministries after Jesus’s death. It is believed that Mark started writing his words, capturing stories he heard from Peter about 30 years after Jesus died. I’m pretty sure he did not plan to have his words collected into what we now call the New Testament.
It seems to me that Mark was especially interested in recording stories of miracles. His choice of words perhaps showed his own astonishment at the idea of a multidimensional reality and that he struggled to accept the miracles that Jesus performed. Mark’s words suggest he may have resonated with the struggles of the disciples as they tried to understand Jesus’ actions, and things the disciples could not see. I think Mark found that the words of Jesus describing this Hebrew God was astonishing because this God was bigger and more powerful than all the other Gods that he heard of in his life. In Mark 6:45-52, Mark’s words describe one of many miracles performed by Jesus as the son of this God. Jesus had already cast out unclean spirits, healed Peter’s mother, healed a leper, made it possible for a paralytic to walk, healed a shriveled hand, stilled the sea, and just that day finished feeding 5000 people.
“Jesus immediately insisted that His disciples get into the boat and go ahead [of Him] to the other side to Bethsaida, while He was dismissing the crowd. After telling everyone good-bye, he went up into the hills by himself to pray.”
Why Immediately? Awww, after feeding 5000 people.
Here is Jesus, perhaps 31 or 32 years old and here are the disciples, mostly between 15 and 18 years old. They were not a group of highly educated college grads, they were primarily tradesfolk or their children. It must have been difficult to understand this man telling of things beyond their experience and previous understanding.
I was a summer camp counselor and owned a summer camp business during my 20's and 30’s. I also raised three boys. I know what adolescent boys and young men are like. The disciples were a group of boys and young men following Jesus around, relying on him, asking questions, hungry, away from home, astonished and sometimes frightened at what they were seeing and hearing. It’s not like they were Jesus’ peers or had his back, or could counsel him in times of difficulty. I can only imagine his exhaustion, especially after he just spent the last hours speaking in front of a large crowd and then feeding all of them.
No wonder he immediately sent them away, and dispersed the crowd on his own. Needing some “down time,” some “me time,” some time to meditate, to pray, to find his balance, and to restore his connection to the grace and strength of the holy spirit. He needed time with God the Creator his Father.
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I loved spending time with my father. He was a good listener, and always saw me whole. He was kind and constructive, wise and nourishing. Up until the day he died, I relied on him for his leadership and guidance. I remember walking across the hills with him one day at his ranch in Northern California and asking: “how are you able to always be so strong and giving?”. And his response, “I have been graced with the way I think and live, and by how much life has given me. I do not know any other way to be. Why would I complain rather than being grateful and continuing to be who I am?” I know he was connected to something much greater than himself. He lived his life as if it was a given. I very much needed his words and time to connect with him when my boys were young.
I’m sure Jesus needed that kind of connection to His Father in heaven, needed His words as a source of grace and strength, needed time to restore his trust and to renew His acceptance of the responsibility to be who He was. So there He finally is, sitting on the mountain, visiting quietly with his Father. And the story continues…
“Now when evening had come, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and Jesus was alone on the land. Seeing the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them, at about the fourth watch of the night (3:00-6:00 a.m.) He came to them, walking on the sea. And [acted as if] He intended to pass by them.”
Mark doesn’t give us much to go on here. I want to know how Jesus saw them in the dark, and heard their words from way up on the mountain.
I can imagine him shaking His head, and saying “gotta go Dad… those crazy boys are struggling again…wonder if I wander out on top of the water if they will ‘get it’, that they are connected to a multidimensional reality, and that miracles are real. When Moses asked to see God’s glory in Exodus 33, God “passed by” Moses to give him a glimpse. Did Jesus ask God “hey Dad, do you think if I did something like that they would get it?” So the next line says: “Jesus came toward them, walking on the water. He intended to go past them.” To pass them by.
(was he skipping, whistling, saying see this? Do you get it yet?)
“But when they saw Him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost, and cried out [in horror];for they all saw Him and were shaken and terrified. ” Frightened?
And Jesus has to use words to calm the young frightened boys and men. “...He immediately spoke with them and said, “Take courage! It is I (I AM)! Stop being afraid.” Then He got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased [as if exhausted by its own activity];
But the next line says: “and they were completely overwhelmed,because they had not understood [the miracle of] the loaves [how it revealed the power and deity of Jesus]; but [in fact] their heart was hardened [being oblivious and indifferent to His amazing works].”
What? They still don’t get it?
There are times I can relate to their astonishment and inability to see miracles. On the one hand my whole life is filled with miracles – every day instances when I am so blessed and things happen synchronistically that surprise and delight me. I sense that I can reach out through what feels like a “veil” and touch that other multidimensional reality - and hold the hands of my father, my sister and my grandmothers. I also believe there are angels - winged ones - among us here and now.
But there is a part of me deep inside that says I want words that create a REAL miracle. I want no more cough, no more arthritis, no more sciatica, no more depression, I want manna from heaven (literally I would like to see food fall from the sky). I want to pick up a glass of water and have it turn out to be fine wine. I want to be one of those “special” people who have come back from the dead, or regained their ability to walk, or had a demon tossed out of them. My mind twists things and says I have not had enough miracles, why should I believe these words about miracles and of some kind of multidimensional reality?
There is a tale from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, the peoples from the area around Lake Huron….. a story of Bird Tribes - winged spirit beings who lived among the people. The words of this story tell of a winged one who came to try to teach the tribes to stop fighting, and to recognize their blessings. The tribal leaders got angry, used words to try to frighten him, chased him up a tree at the edge of a cliff, and threatened to chop down the tree with him in it and send him to his death.
He stopped them with these words, “let me chop the tree down myself.” And he got down and started hacking at the tree with his knife. For hours he hacked away until it was almost chopped through. Then he climbed back in the tree so that his weight bent the tree enough to break the final connection and he toppled with the tree over the cliff. And they watched, astonished and frightened, and at the same time they agreed that he deserved to die.
Unbeknownst to them, the tree landed in the branches of other trees and was gently brought to rest and the winged one got up, saw a large buck, was able to take its life and skin it and carry off the haunches. And he walked back through the canyon and up to where the tribes were gathered. They saw him coming and were again “astonished”, and frightened and thought they were seeing a ghost. He calmed them by offering words of peace, sharing the deer meat, eating with them, and simply being present.
They decided he must be from some multidimensional reality, that his return was a miracle, and they began to listen to his words. Out of that grew the League of the Five and then Six nations which became a model our founding fathers used in crafting the words of our democracy.
And so my questions:
● What does it take for us to accept and honor the words and experiences of so many other cultures meant to teach us our place in this enormous multidimensional reality?
● What does it take for us to believe words that tell us of miracles?
● What does it take for us to hear words that help us really know that we are all one, that there is enough, that we do not have to be frightened?
● What does it take for us to stop looking out and seeing only differences, and start seeing miracles of belonging and perfection everywhere?
I love this quote from The Return of the Bird Tribes:
“In every moment the Great Spirit communicates to all creatures everything they need to know. Through ten thousand billion agents – angel, elemental animal, vegetable and mineral – through the vast and subtle network of living design beyond the weather, before the wind, the truth is ever transmitted into this world of form. … below the level of thought, when judgment subsides …. when your mind relaxes its cultural interpretations and trusts you to experience the natural clarity that is always present…when you are present.” Like Jesus was present. Like Jesus is present.
I believe God wants us to be present, and to recognize the multidimensional reality of our world. To know that we do not have to each be the same, use the same words, believe exactly the same, be just like anyone else, or “get it right”… we are all perfected parts of creation and just need to stop and “Be Still and know that I am God”. Psalm 46:10
May we always hear words with open hearts and compassion, may we sink our feet deep into the earth while we sit still and breathe in the wind, may we hunker down into the boat and not be afraid. May we truly know the meaning of these words, “God is before me and behind me and all is well.”
AND..
May we continue to grow out of our rigid adolescent limited understanding and bring back the wide eyed curiosity and understanding of words we heard when we were children. May we mature our sight to fully see and experience the multidimensional reality all around us with its abundance of miracles. May we live with the expectation that Jesus may come walking on the water every day.
Amen