Early Summer News:
Follow the Ever-Peal

It’s June 2nd, and we recently finished our 2020-2021 Guild season. As the humidity starts to thicken down here in New Orleans, we have begun the project of editing almost three years’ worth of visionary reports. We’re talking well over one thousand typed pages, divided into three books! They are not just dreams, but a record of all the teachings and experiences of the Guild since 2018, including our summer camp adventures last year. The process of re-traversing past visionary tracks has been extremely inspiring and made us dizzy in the best way. Once these manuscripts are as polished as we can get them, we’ll make them available to the world so you can enjoy feeling dizzy and fizzy as well.

In the meantime, we continue to visit the spiritual classrooms. Below is one of the most recent teachings that came down. Below that, as a musical treat, we’ve included an ecstatic audio track we made for our final online Guild intensive in May. Enjoy!

Follow the Ever-Peal

A few nights ago, we prayed with all our hearts to receive guidance for our life with Sacred Ecstatics. As Brad prayed, he received the advice to not pray with words. “Pray as you used to years ago—with music.” He switched to hearing his inner piano, fell asleep, and a dream arrived later in the night:

In the dream, I saw Hillary walking with a small boy along the streets of an old city in the dark of night. They were lost and weren’t sure which street or direction to take. An older man was ahead of them, checking to see what lay beyond the street on which they were traveling. He seemed lost as well. Hillary shouted out, “What direction should we go?” The elder in the distance may have responded, but it couldn’t be heard. Then she and the boy heard a voice from on high guide them: “Follow the ever-peal.” Upon hearing the word “peal,” they also heard it echo back in changing forms as “zeal” and then “field.” Perhaps it was “evergreen” I thought in the dream, reminded of a former spiritual classroom in which Hillary dreamed of a pine cone.

After waking up, we pondered the meaning of “peal,” usually associated with the sound of a ringing bell. This is a common sound in St. Vincent among the spiritual mothers and fathers who receive the anointment to ring the bell. But the odd addition of “ever” to make “ever-peal” reminded us of Sister Gertrude Morgan’s Everlasting Gospel Mission in New Orleans, the name of her home sanctuary and prayer room. She shouted through a painted megaphone made of paper with a voice that rang out loudly. She may not have had much mass appeal back then, but she had “ever-peal” that can still be heard and felt today.

Sister Gertrude Morgan preaching in her home,
The Everlasting Gospel Mission

We looked up the definition of “peal” and found it means a loud or reverberating sound of thunder, laughter, or bells. It originally referred to the bells summoning people to a church meeting. In “campanology,” the official word for bell ringing, it has a more specific meaning. An official peal requires a sequence of at least five thousand changes on more than seven bells. A typical peal takes three hours to ring. The tones, time intervals, order, and rhythms are memorized and must be perfectly timed. This musical tradition that dates back centuries in England is called “method ringing” or “change ringing.” It takes great concentration on the part of the bell ringers, who stand in a circle facing one another, to make it come together in the right way.

We realized that we are being reminded to follow the “ever-peal,” the everlasting ringing bells whose music calls us to cook in the big room. Peel away whatever blocks you from hearing the peal. Respond to the call to come out of the small room and into the holy cathedral. Your “big me” may try to venture far out on a limb to scout unknown territory, but keep walking next to the “little me” child who can still hear the call of the wild. The bell that marries the contraries of heaven and hell already tolls at funerals, weddings, victories over adversaries, and on important anniversaries. Follow the ever-peal, it will lead you to the utmost zeal found in the field of the Almighty.

“This is a field that holds much forgiveness. It holds as many forgivenesses as all the grains of the world’s sand.” – Otavia Alves Pimentel Barbosa, Brazilian healer, speaking of the visionary “field of the birds” she entered through prayer. Image from The Pinnacle Prayer Book.

Crossroads and Seiki Transmission: Ecstatic Audio Track

For an early summer treat, here are some stories of Guild members’ dreams and transmissions this past season. As one Guild member dreamed Brad say to him: “Stop your furious mind and connect to the love in your heart so you can travel to any place on earth.”

-The Keeneys, June 2, 2021.

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