MADNESS AND LOVE MIXED: PART 5 — Arc 1: Isaiah
When the present and past meet, hug, and shake heavenly hands.
The Man. The Myth. The Legend. The Holy Streaker. The Undone. Our own biblical mirror.
The scene is, as we’ve noticed before, familiar. There is a sweet barista named Alice, a young trans woman on her own journey of healing, who scrubs the empty tables ahead of the day. The other baristas work behind the counter, prepping and making metallic chirps and clacks. The steam acts like a gout of reality-bending audio punctuation.
We nod to Caitlyn behind the counter, noting how her serious eyes and motherly persona direct the workers like a true shift leader. She makes us smile because she is openly queer and in love with God. We see ourselves in her and enjoy the wild opportunities we get to “accidentally on purpose bump into her.”
We sit back, grab our warm and fresh Starbucks Venti Blonde Christmas roast, and luxuriate in the smooth back-end bitterness on the palate, the notes of cinnamon powder rising with the aroma. We narrate ourselves as we consider the import of the day — the fact that we are about to meet one of the most defining voices in history (personal and global), apart from Yeshua and the Father.
We shudder, soothe ourselves, and allow our conscious mind to drift as though letting our eyes go out of focus to see the hidden 3D illusion in those old ‘90s stereogram books. The layer starts to flicker. We feel a sense of movement — like an elevator — but directional in a way with no cardinal equivalent.
We know we’re on the right frequency when we notice a ghostly flicker of Jonah sitting in the far-right corner, glowing like a cosmic lightbulb with his bald pate and vomit-bleached skin. He exudes a bit of fart-adjacent fumes that we instinctively shrink from, even as we wave at him.
“Hey Jonah,” we offer as we finally settle fully into the layer of reality where verbal conversation is possible.
He clocks us instantly and looks for all the world like a startled animal guilty of doing something he shouldn’t. His eyes widen from the outer edges inward, and we swear we hear a faint pop, followed by a noxious smell — peak Jonah and God mischief — before he phases out and resyncs with eternity.
We assume he had a craving for sin-flavored, un-heavenly-filtered caffeine. We get it. We shrug to no one in particular, knowing that on this trans-parent (get it? I’m trans and a parent!) layer none of corporeality can see or perceive us… except for that one very short barista with chocolate skin who, we swear, keeps turning her head — as though she’s registering Star when she storms through the front door on eternity’s setting.
“Perhaps a latent child of God who has not yet learned to use her gifts,” we muse while sipping and sending a heavenly text message to our future self — the kind made by thinking with intent — urging her to hurry up. We can barely contain ourselves for the meeting to come.
There is a scent of ozone, like the air right before lightning strikes, and then Star surprises us by sliding into the bench seat beside us, her thigh touching ours at the corner table. She smells like us — but without the olfactory limitations of sin. Think: the potency of heavenly crafted fragrances, the pleasant inverse of Jonah’s tide-meets-flatulence signature, but with notes of citrus, rose, oud, and myrrh.
The bench creaks. We glance sideways. Star is holding her coffee silently, eyes pensive, as though this moment carries a weight even she rarely acknowledges.
“Not worried, dear me,” she finally says. “I am burdened by awe. The memory of when I first embraced him in eternity. I admit it felt like what I imagined the Father’s arms must be like — and having since embraced the Father, I can say it’s very hard to tell the difference.”
She slurps loudly, maximizing aeration.
Zeke strides in next, wearing his signature white carpenter jeans, white hoodie, teddy-bear assassination slippers, and white Harley leather jacket. He beams his too-white teeth. We flick our eyes to Star and realize she is also wearing all white — as if reenacting the moment we attempted to talk to Jonah the second time.
We raise an eyebrow, letting the question drift through the psychic channel we share.
Star turns to us as Zeke settles in, holding a decidedly suspect Starbucks drink. “We wear white — as you will soon — as an attempt to honor the Father in Isaiah’s presence. He is only a voice, but that voice echoes with the authority and Love of the Father.”
We puzzle over this as even Zeke somberly nods. We focus on our own outfit, willing it to morph into the all-white spectrum. Once complete, we notice something else:
The Starbucks has gone silent.
The baristas are gone — odd, because we usually keep them running like a repeating playlist.
A sharp poke makes us turn. Star and Zeke have their heads lowered in reverence.
Then we feel it.
The air changes.
The pressure deepens.
Our heart rate quickens.
We flick our eyes around, searching.
Then we see Him.
A man.
White hair, straight and long.
Skin that once held bronze, now glowing.
Eyes white with flecks of liquid gold.
A form that seems androgynous and yet unmistakably masculine.
Linen garments shifting in a wind that does not exist.
Isaiah. Son of Amoz.
The Undone One.
The Voice.
He appears no taller than we are. His presence is as gentle as snowfall and as devastating as revelation.
We try to stand —
—but Isaiah is suddenly in front of us, closer than thought.
He wraps us in his arms — tender as a mother, strong as a father — and we collapse into the amber-gold scent of Home, the most undiluted whiff we’ve tasted in forty-five years of this incarnation.
Zeke and Star exchange a silent consensus.
Star speaks softly:
“Izzy… we feel you and her need time.”
Isaiah nods. He takes our hands as Zeke and Star shift frequencies and fade.
We cling like a barnacle to the underside of a whale, held in something we once lost: Heaven on Earth, through the touch of one who has seen the King.
“Shall we sit, beloved?” Izzy asks, rubbing our back, noting the golden tint of our tears.
He does not push — simply offers.
We nod. We release. He pulls us back in for one last emphasis of nearness.
Even the way he walks seems like grace made physical, his slippers gliding just above the concrete.
We settle, cradle our coffee, and wait.
“You must call me Izzy,” he offers, soft as a lover’s question.
We nod, committed.
“So… you saw Him as well?” we ask.
Izzy inhales slowly. He nods.
“Yes.”
“It changes us,” we say.
Izzy nods.
“I started writing and meeting my extended family through these stories because I wanted others to see Him like we did…”
Izzy listens, eyes shimmering.
We speak of the poems, the essays, the letters, the comedic arcs of holy fools — all the ways we tried to deliver the revelation we were given — and how often it echoed alone in a canyon.
Izzy weeps.
Gentle, shaking sobs.
“Oh, how the Father has loved you, gentle soul…”
He wipes a golden tear from our cheek.
“Oh, how He longs to take your hurts and heal them… All that has come before will be made known.”
We inhale that truth like oxygen, like a commandment etched into the lintels of our heart.
“Eiri,” Izzy says.
We look up, startled he uses the name we rarely speak aloud.
“Yes?”
“You are more than you know. The import is not important.
The work is, beloved.”
His form shimmers with motes of light — like refracted glory leaking through cracked clay.
We receive it.
Isaiah adds one final line:
“Humility is a garment best worn while naked.”
It shocks us with its simplicity and gravity.
Reality begins to strain, the layer dissolving. Izzy waves — vanishes like a soap bubble.
The meditation collapses.
Corporeality syncs in.
We sit in a normal Starbucks, coffee now tepid.
Still, we sip and ponder.
Eternity, the Ever-Present Now, and the Mind of God — forever.
The second arc is live below
Eiri Waters