Trip to the underworld

I had a trip to the underworld yesterday. Because of unique circumstances I stopped in at a gas station I used to go to everyday in my old days. Before pulling into it I thought, "I could run into someone here..."

As I was getting back into my car after buying something to drink then that someone appeared. He was forlornly holding an empty red plastic gas can and making gestures to his pocket as if he needed some money, though he never asked for money. He kept looking at me. "Do I know you?" I queried. He said his name. Yes, he knew me. I recognized the name, but not the face. He was a shade from the realm of the dead.

We greeted each other. I asked him if he needed some money, and gave him a 20. Then he started talking. It was like giving him blood.

He had a strange knowledge of everybody I'd known in my old life. Strange because he wasn't even in all those circles, but his knowledge was coming from the spiritual realm. He talked and talked and talked, and told me what everybody had come to and was doing now. Who had died, who had gone astray of the law.

Then he began to fade, and I gave him another 20. He began to talk animatedly again. I asked him about everybody whose name I could remember. But he mostly didn't need any prompting.

After we'd exhausted all the names from the past he made an obligatory gesture to exchange numbers or see if I'd want to go golfing or something, but my reaction was distanced. We said goodbye, and he went his way, and I drove off.

It was a trip to the land of the dead. He was the shade that came forward.

I keep getting this shock (the Two Conscious Shocks as means of being in covenant with God)

Every now and then when I'm reading some secondary source explaining Calvinism (or attempting to) I come across a particular shock that is delivered to me.

The seals of being in covenant with God (He does His part and we do ours) are baptism and the Eucharist. These two seals correlate to 1) the first conscious shock of self-remembering and accumulating higher energy (the Spirit to ever greater degree, whatever our limit, what we can handle); and 2) the second conscious shock of non-identifying and 'eating our suffering' so to speak (conscious suffering), loving our enemy, identifying with Jesus and His suffering in life and on the cross, and not indulging internal-considering, etc.

If you don't yet know classical Covenant - Federal - Theology it is merely biblical doctrine unwatered down, un-negotiated down to the demands of our fallen nature. Calvinism is a nickname for apostolic biblical doctrine. Hardcore. Accepting true doctrine - propositions from the Bible, as difficult as they may be to accept - to the point of it effecting inner re-orientation in us from being man-centered to being God-centered. It is also armor of God.

But this shock I get is powerful knowledge. To actually *know* how to be 'in covenant' with God. I mean *after* monergistic quickening and regeneration and conversion, to actually know *what it is we do.* The two conscious shocks. And they are what initiates the wayfaring. And wayfaring is warfaring, as the saying goes.