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Chapter 10

To the Freedom of the Surf and the Liberty of the Land

Having felt the stifling of the communist regime, Little A wanted to explore the ways of liberty where it was unregimented, itself, in its own element. It occurred to him that the Surfies of Australia might be a locale for presenting the Gospel, or the Aborigines of the same land, since in the former case the ocean seems as if limitless, and the bond of body and vehement water a challenge highly individual to the spirit, whereas in the latter, the desire to own parts of Australia and do it their own way is strong.

Who 'owned' the ocean before the Surfies took it ? Did the English since their navy ruled the seas at one time, or the Dutch since they explored much, or the Portugese or the Spanish, or the Scandinavian lands of the Vikings who moved as far as the USA by report, and ravaged large areas, even moving inland on the river system, in Europe ? What nonsense, thought Little A, who had been immersing himself in history for some weeks now, in preparation for a good understanding of his field. Is the sea owned by users of it, or is the land ?

Is Australian owned by aborigines because they were here before Europeans, or by those who possess it ? The sea is for those who find a path in it, in the province of peace; but they do not own it. If every country were to claim this and that from former use, whose would the sea be ? or the land!

And who were the original users of the sea, or of any land ? A maestro dressed as a man is any who presumes to imagine that the original people in any land were the last ones known!

Former users are just that; it is God who made the land, and by the way it is used, one would almost think that man or this or that race had made it. If you find a purse on the ground, is it yours ? If you spend from it, does this make you an original possessor ? Or is the money that of the one whose it was! who made it and filled it, so that the whole seizure whether by original stealing or later, is but theft! Original thieves or later ones, what difference is it! It is from the Lord God Almighty that they steal, white or black or yellow or any other colour, it is matter of indifference.

Moreover,  when they add to this the taking of their own bodies, products of extraordinary laws and mathematical brilliance, designs without parallel on the earth at the mind of man, products from the mind of man’s Maker, and claim over these a complete sovereignty as if there were no ground for thanksgiving, for submission or even enquiry, it is then that the whole torrid history of man grows tempestuous! Then they clamour at catastrophe, as if God owned them everything for ignoring Him, flouting His ways and arrogating His creation! They find His salvation insufferable and try to make a world where it is not needed, as if to spit in His face once more, as first they did at Calvary.

It is not this or that race, it is the whole human race which is guilty of it, and claims to this or that power is merely superfluous, when peace is not first made with the Original Possessor, who is the Original Maker and Creator. Yet they want to be restored to "their land" and the Surfies to "their freedom" as if either had made it; and in this they are not alone, for most of the world is trying to steal from God the post of OWNER from the reality of USER!

With such thoughts, Little Angel went to certain stretches of the Australian coastline and watched the Surfies in their long vigils in the nearer deep, their cavortings and tunnelling, their rampagings and their elegance, their soarings and their divings, their sideways thrusts and their searchings outwards, as if looking for liberty in the midst of the elemental ocean in its further reaches, overarched by the limitless seeming sky, ready to be tossed and impelled like racing cars with less noise and more mobility of body.

He dressed as if a tourist, and spoke to one of them. G'day! he initiated. Hiya mate! came the reply.

Like the life ? he enquired.

It gets you after a while, came the reply.

I suppose so, agreed Little A. Been at it long ?

Oh ya, about 3 years.

What do you do for a crust then ?

Oh, I use unemployment and some money I stored up while I was working. I go up and look for work sometimes, but no one seems to want anyone as free in spirit as I am, in my profession.

Does it give you a certain feeling of fulfilment, out there in nature with its geometries in the ocean, the sky your hat and the shoreline your distant margin, as if you were a disembodied spirit ?

Oh not that. I am very much for the body, the Surfie replied, smiling, but you are right in a way, though. You DO feel as if your own body is part of a sort of symphony of being, a togetherness of motion, as if you are a part of an immense free moving reality, and you forget time and space as containers, and become freed to participate as your strength and lithe motion allows it to be. And you are WITHIN something, part of it,  yet not fixed to it, if you follow, and this is like a horse galloping, and not even needing a road.

I suppose it is as if time  stops when you go tunnelling along the near crest of the waves, surrounded with mighty waters, but moving with facility as if it were all tamed ?

Not entirely. You see it is not so much the poetry of motion sort of thing, as the athletic dynamics of MAKING it so which so enchants me. You leave no trail, take no toll, but share in the tempestuous frolics with a sort of belonging as if you were its visitor, and it was yours, your host, and you get along together.

Do you ever think of freedom as such ? to be what you are meant to be ?

Oh yes, a lot. What am I after all ? why can I think ? how can I know ? where am I going ? I am always moving on the waves,  to and fro, but what is my progress, to what is it all leading me ? In a way, I am getting off the merry-go-round and using my freedom to explore just being.

If you look to what made you and the ocean, your power to think and feel, to know and to rove, to wonder and to ponder, to savour geometry in motion and to feel the aesthetics of power, and ponder the power needed to make it all  GO, like an elaborate sports car on a highway system, and what made the highways for the going, then you begin to look beyond nature, just something made, to its source. Then you can relate better to what you are, and find out where to go. Have you ever thought about this, outside the pet tags and phrases in which the media and academics of some kinds, display their ignorance ?

Mate, I have, I have.  Do you think God is up there, looking on ?

More than that, He has His power to look with the power to make at what He is looking, at you and me, and it is well to get to know Him, even as you frolic and discipline your body and enjoy your liberty on the lovely waves of His creation.

How can you get to know Him ? It would be better than any other liberty to know what liberty is FOR!

He has a book, called DNA, which is your own body's rules of the road, and more than that, engineering appointment for its construction, as carefully written as any thesis, and far longer, being thought equivalent in size to about 1000 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica (if there were so many), and so systematic that it is like a code of majesty, deploying things over the generations to make things like ... you. It is all set in the midst of the rules for land and water, atoms and compounds, astronomy and celestial order, to enable life.

Yeah, I heard something about that. But that is how I am, what about where I go with my liberty, for at the moment, I am just enjoying it, savouring it, finding what it is that I have as I move in motions of art and elegance, power and surging.

Beyond your body is your mind, and beyond that your spirit by which you decide how to use both mind and body, for truth or friction, for joy or sorrow, for guilt or guile, for nobility or ‘necessity’ that passion breeds. Where is your spirit leading you ?

You are going without the knowledge of God, and should find the other book, in which He puts, this time, not your specifications in order that your body, mind and spirit which last you are using with such delight, should so much as exist, the factory siting and the assembly line, but the point of the assembly and the rules for the road, including the destination.

You interest me, mate. I have heard this sort of thing before, but you do interest me. Say how about meeting for a burger around 6 tonight at the Ocean Club! you know, the joint over there.

Right you are! said Little A, in the vernacular, hoping it was not dated.

The Surfie did not seem to mind, and when they had exchanged names, John Smith and Angus Little for the angel, they parted for the time, but Little A prayed, and prayed and prayed for John Smith.

After they had eaten, they chatted a while, Little A met some of John's friends and talked about a few things and then, they moved out to the cliff top, which was lonely and watched the setting sun. There is art! said John, for night after night you see more than geometry, you see designs with the very name of liberty, sketching miracles of wonder across the skies, hues so subtly moving and merging, fires and softness so close to each other, vastness and intimate details, that it is like a book of paintings, all free, some pageants of wonder.

You love art, don't you, replied Little A. What used you to do before becoming a Surfie, John ?

I was a school teacher, but the kids these days, they seem to grow up before they are 'teen agers, and to be old by 20, compared with my earlier times, and they seem more and more motivated either by a lazy style or a wire-brained method. In the one case, they seek to get as much as they can for as little work as they can, and live disoriented lives, with neither promise of anything nor hope; and in the other, they screw up their minds and find their interest payments, and make love and asses of themselves with whatever girl they find, spawn their offspring and leave them all for some other one, and make a mockery of life and love and liberty to the point that merely bringing them up to do it, the one way or the other, becomes a hideous bore. There must be something more worth while than that!

Yes said Angus Little, smiling, I suppose these two sorts of human pathology of spirit are common and rife. More worth while than that, or any other fretted discipline without meaning, or indiscipline at war with it ? Yes, better there is. Moving quietly, he asked John several questions about his life, and found that he had a strong moral code which he kept resolutely, and that he valued strength of mind, spirit and body, and just wanted the release for some worth while and reasonable goal.

Speaking of the Messiah of the Bible, the sunset of strength and beauty, which was followed by the dawn of deliverance, he sketched in the Gospel of the grace of God, the meaning of freedom as the path of those in the image of God who are not forced to be people of God, but neither are they forced to avoid it, but who must face the reality and make peace with their Maker, or not, in accord with the specifications of the book of the Lord, which alone has shown its pep and punch, its accuracy and its power over the millenia, and which never changes.

John seemed to be seeing a spiritual sunset and dawn all  at once, and grasped eagerly to find what you do to find the God of creation, who made all things including liberty, and made man with it for ...

For Himself! John, said our Angus. It is this which is the source of the almost indescribable longing, for man is like an aircraft that always taxies on the ground; but it is built to fly.

It is necessary to find a larger sky than the natural one, and a greater liberty than that of the waves, though both of these are beautiful symbols as well as fascinating creations.

How ?

Christ is the expression of God on earth, as the sunset is that of His creative handiwork, and the dawn that of His elemental origination of things. He has come for us, since we are too muddied and muddled to go to Him.

That seems pretty canny! said John

He has preceded it by precise prophecy  in the Psalms, in Isaiah, in Micah and many prophets, the date of death in Daniel, and He has come and done it, and died ...

But why die ?

Why do WE die ? We do it involuntarily, but He did it voluntarily, by prediction, at the time prescribed, in the way foretold, pierced on the Cross which was a Roman device ...

Yes, I know, I know, John responded, for making a hideous example of those they wanted to crush, and in the meantime, making a hideous example of brutal buffoonery of themselves who did it.

Quite right, I agree, said Angus.

WHY did He do it all then ? How does this make freedom mean something ? asked John.

WHY do soldiers die for their country ? It is basically in the  straight case, to save it from becoming a slave pen for some petty power, like Germany or Japan in the last way, with some pretentious ideology that is not grounded well, and to make that dream founder, so that ...

So that ? asked Angus.

Yes, that is it, isn't it ? replied John. England decided that it would be so that they could have some Socialism, and then some Thatcherism and then some Europe, so that now they are sinking into an unknown 'common destiny' with a body which cuts out religion from its Constitution as if it were rat poison. Europe has invaded by capitulation this time, and less and less  does that England which was the hub of the British Empire of immense might and order, know where it is going.

It is surfing with no objective but to go, as far as I can see it, John mused.

As with the nations, so often is itwith the individual, rejoined our Angus. You need to find the God that land is so vigorously forsaking in so many of its citizens and ways, and to do this, to follow the Christ who came to lead you home, to the destiny which is your source, and the way is called salvation.

I've heard of the Salvos.

Yes, but that is an organisation; this is the heart of the quest. It is Christ as SHOWING you what God is like, TELLING you how to be at peace with Him and MAKING that peace by bearing the guilt of sin on the cross of condemnation, so that He USED man's hatred of truth, to display it.

That I CAN appreciate, said John growing warmer in feeling and moving as if on a spiritual surf board. That is good, that is, and wise too.

Yes, and in dying at their hands, He made a way for their hearts. Clearing the books by paying for all who use His gift, He makes a way to become friends with God.

That will do me, said John, that puts a string around a lot of bits that have been swirling in my mind for years, and lets me get in the tunnel of truth.

Would you like to tell Him ?

Surely would.

Do you see then that you have been on the wrong wave in just seeking freedom - it is wonderful to be free, freer than any bird, but you must first find the right wings and the right sky ?

Yeah, I have missed that wave, and gone on too long bound by desire for freedom. I need God to show me and know me.

He knows you already, but you must know Him. This is what you do. Just tell Him that you are sorry for missing the wave of truth, that you want the tunnel of reality, and that you receive Christ Jesus as the very image of God sent to show us deity, to die for sin and to break death so that eternal liberty in the love of God might come on us, as CHILDREN of God.

John did so, in prayer, and soon sought solitude on the cliffs, exchanging addresses with Little A, and being thrilled with the way he had found. Little Angel decided to watch his progress by many ways, and to help him find the basics of the Bible in the near future; but for the moment, it was clear that John needed a little time.

From sea to land, went the Little Angus,  deciding to keep his new name, and to look inland and in the city, for some aborigines if by any means he might win any to know God, and be free from the traditions of man, just as so many nations and races, are bound by their own ways and need liberty to follow those of the God who made them, the land, the sea and the body.

On his way to the centre of Australia, or the North, or wherever he was led, he met an aborigine, Frank was his name, and they had a talk in a park. Hi fella! said the aborigine. Hi man! said Angus.

And before long, they were sharing a meal at a fast food place, at Angus' expense, and he was hearing the whole story of the man's life, how he had been sexually abused, how he had abused many women, had several children, loved the drink, inhaled marijuana and felt it was all puss.

Angus gradually led him past his race, his humiliations, his molestations received and given, the drink and the drugs to welfare. It paid, and Frank procreated! that was the story. He did not want to leave all his kids, he said, but what could he do ?

Moving to the Lord of land and the power behind nature, Angus found Frank well prepared, saying, yes there was an aboriginal minister he knew who had explained all that, and shown how many of the aboriginal race had had a substantial knowledge of the Creator before the white people arrived, and how later some found the understanding of sin not against custom, but against Creator, and sought Him and His peace.

Gradually Angus took Him to the heart of the Creator, to the concept of HIS children, and that HE does care and has shown it by what He did, and the Bible and the salvation of God by which you become one of HIS children, by faith, and Frank followed, for his heart had long been stirred by these things, and he said he knew some other aborigines who were following the way, and after Angus had helped him to understand, he advised him to take care of his children and to seek to bring them past human ideas and racial concepts, the same as he had done with the Surfie, and to find the God who made man, and rest in His life, given for Him on the Cross, raised from the dead to provide for Him, and this, rather than follow the customs of some of His creation, whatever their race.

Live in His shadow, Frank, and follow His word, and rely on Him completely, treating your body as a temple for His Spirit and giving thanks for the life you have, seeking to use it as HE directs, and to love Him as a child loves or should love His Father; for this is the Father of mercies and the God of comfort. To know Him is the crux, and to know the Lord Jesus Christ is the way; and since He lives, you live by and with Him.

Frank brought his current woman along, and she had a tale of sorrows and exploitation which made Angus' head swirl and heart weep. Molestation, direction by elders with racial laws, exploitation, poverty, distress, misuse of funds, deprivations, children in frailty, and she wept. Angus spoke long to her and to Frank about their needs, and she gladly received Christ as her own Saviour and Frank agreed, yes it was right for her to obey Christ first! He began to relax and they smiled rather shyly at each other, as if they had just met. Little Angel resolved to keep in touch with them, and to help in his new guise.

They exchanged addresses and Angus went North.

If Frank had seemed relatively affluent (in his case, he had two houses to which he could go, one for some of his first family and one for another), and good pay cheques such as few nations provide, yet it was different when he travelled to his new destination in the more desert regions. Here he found a place where there was a ruling elder who took much of the money and funds for development and used them for his own use, where tradition became a substitute for justice or grace alike, where 'rights' over women were at times mercilessly used, and where children were often diseased; and he felt it amazing that with the same cheques, they could be living, some in new houses, while others were in such disordered conditions, so differently from those of Frank.

With one aborigine, Harris, he spoke at length, and was thinking of starting a mission when he found they had a church a mere 50 miles away, to which some of them went occasionally, and a few often. However this church was not biblical and believed in all sorts of laws made by man, and ignored the requirements of the Royal King of grace, Jesus Christ, so that Angus almost despaired. However, in time he led a group to the Lord, and they started their own church, and Angus prayed and prayed and prayed for a pastor who would follow the Bible, and over many months, one was found who helped them straighten their lives, avoid the drugs, detest the booze and seek the help of a well-known aborigine who specialised in making worthwhile economic projects for members of his race, with whom Angus left them.

Land and sea  do not liberate, he thought, though each is from God. It is not in ‘Nature’ but in its Maker that reality is found; it is not in ‘owning things’ that liberty comes, but in knowing the One who owns because He made, and having made, made us. It is discovered in realising that His redemption is available and taking it, finding one’s place not in hiding amongst the goods He made, but receiving the funding of grace and the place of service of the God of creation and the Christ of redemption, learning one's calling for the household of faith, what a person is needed to do, and the completion of this testimony of life in the arrival of His adoption notice.

This, it is the one given by God as adoption papers are given on earth, but this one, it is from His seal in the Spirit, based on the blood on the Cross, and sent with complete certainty from the victor over death to those who are His - yes, yes, Romans 8:9, the little one mused: to share eternal life that nothing can quench, or spoil or sever. His little heart glowed with the beauty of holiness. Thank goodness for His word, so that people can check it for themselves, and relying on the Lord only, serve Him with joy, liberated from confusion, joyful in the glory of God.

It was time to go back to heaven, he felt, but there was a deep insistence in his heart that required him to stay longer, so he did. I am only a ministering angel, he thought, but if that is my mission, I must complete it; and he wondered why more humans did not do the same; but then, he reflected, many do, it is just that the harvest is ripe and there are relatively few reapers. Angels to the fore! he mused, even if they can only help. Better to help than to linger useless among the lost. So he regathered his thoughts, his mind and minded his mission, and prayed and prayed and prayed until the peace of abiding was his once more.