Star-Dust and the Hallowed Hoodie
It will make so much more sense if read in order beloveds.
Sequel to Star-Dust and the Suspect Seabag
A quiet Carolina campfire.
A hoodie turned tabernacle.
A silver-haired mystic who keeps forgetting why she summoned us.
This is the next vision of Star-Dust—part revelation, part comedy, part warning—where the ordinary becomes holy, teeth are optional, and eternity drops a bag on a bedroom table in the Father’s house.
The first sensation we notice is the warmth soaking through our cotton pajamas, gently caressing us from the nearby fire. Smoke dances in the air and curls in stringy little fingers of grabby exploration. The campfire sits in that perfect center stage—coals steady, embers firm—when the only thing necessary is throwing another log on the bier.
Then the sounds arrive: worship music playing softly against the crickets’ backdrop. Our back is wrapped in one of Star-Dust’s own hoodies, we assume, as we lift the oversized sleeve to ensure no repeat of the nasal drainage drama from last time. Star-Dust loves to perform recycling in an active manner that some less generous souls might call slothfulness, but we know it is simply genuine laziness.
Three chairs.
And—oh!—Little Louie V., Star-Dust’s fourteen-month-old tuxedo Shih Tzu, sitting in an odd combination of socks, slides, and full-coverage protection in the form of a Psycho Tuna hoodie splattered with stains. Star-Dust herself is dressed much the same: AE wide-leg sweats, hoodie, and those glowing eyes. Her eyes are glowing tonight exactly as they did before the theosis—though she learned long ago to dim the lightsaber sight.
“Hey! You came. I wasn’t sure my invitation would arrive in time.”
She motions toward the three chairs and the fire. “This was a bit last-minute, but when Mercy offers opportunity, I always say yes.”
She smiles again. She has taken her dentures out, apparently, because we detect the slight lisp of diction lacking dentistry. Such a beloved goofball, obviously comfortable enough with us to enter as her authentic, toothless self.
It would seem that a smile does not require teeth to be radiant… who knew? Star-Dust just demonstrated why certain stars commit seppuku the old-fashioned way. They get jealous and wish they had half the projection power this silver fool of Love carries across from me.
We reach down and run our hands through the soft, silken texture of Louie’s coat while looking up at Star-Dust.
“Why did you ask us over in vision?”
She smiles then, soft creases of genuine warmth feathering her cosmic hazel gaze.
“Yes—earlier when we spoke and you pointed out the oversight, I got a little flustered and may or may not have forgotten why I asked you over to that café in the first place.”
She averts her eyes, attempting not to look embarrassed.
We laugh—a deep belly laugh.
Peak Star-Dust energy.
She does the impossible and then forgets the reason for the mission mid-step. It appears the spiritual assistance Star-Dust partakes of may be more than divine herbs… perhaps this is why she always smells a touch like patchouli?
“You didn’t!” we gasp in mock seriousness, clasping our hands dramatically.
She shrinks momentarily, then suddenly brightens, as if she’s receiving a secret transmission none of us are privy to. The Signal app of heaven? We want in.
“Oh! Before I forget again—the reason we called you there this morning was to share a bit of revelation and allow you some time to digest it before our next meeting. The setting of the café… the people… the souls you saw… they are actually the saints in Light. That vision is what a church looks like when modeled after someone like me and my imagination.
Every setting becomes participation in the Body of Christ.
Each soul—whether they share my belief or not—is another flare ready to be sent stratospheric in contagious love as joy.
There are no longer any boundaries in heaven.
The Church walks amongst us, and sanctity exists wherever the eye perceives it in unity with the supreme source—the Father—as glimpsed through the perfected lens of the Son Yeshua, inspired and carried on the winds of understanding within the temple of a HOLY MIND bathed continuously in the radiance of the Father.
You cannot understand now.
There is a river that flows from before creation, and even once this present form has passed away, it will be revealed again. It gives life everlasting. To drink of it apart from perfection is to doom the soul to eternal suffering and slavery.
Still, Beloved—some will drink. They will locate it. They will attempt to pervert it. Then, once they have tasted and learned the truth, Eternal Life absent Love is actually death reenacted eternally into infinity without redemption.”
She pauses.
“Also, Beloved—we stashed the bag on the table in your room.”
She delivers this bombshell like it is nothing special. As though the fact that her Husband’s Father’s house has a room prepared for us is not itself confirmation that our names are inscribed in the Lamb’s Book of Life—written in the Blood of the Lamb who was slain and yet lives.
There is nothing we can even think to say as the embers begin to settle and Louie whimpers for Star-Dust to pick him up. She stoops and snuggles him, pressing her silver hair against his little flat face tenderly as the vision begins to fade and turn granular—the music vanishing first, then the firelight… until only the woodsmoke lingers as the last reminder.
Until next time.