Message In A Storm by Ernie Vecchio, Licensed Counseling Psychologist (pocket ebook reader txt) 📖

Ernie Vecchio is also the author of

The Soul’s Intent:
An Interview with the Divine

http://www.ernievecchio.com

"One who loses the mercy and confidence of their inner voice lives in fear of it."

~Vecchio~

Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter One – Fate
Chapter Two – The Comparison
Chapter Three – Voices
Chapter Four – The Tirade
Chapter Five – I Will Ask
Chapter Six – The Companion
Chapter Seven – Humbled by Ego
Chapter Eight – The Human Spark
Chapter Nine – Kept In the Dark
Chapter Ten - Why

PREFACE
Book of JOB
Synopsis

There was an extremely pious man named Job. He was very prosperous, and had seven sons and three daughters. Constantly fearing that his sons may have sinned and “cursed God in their hearts”, he habitually offered burnt offerings as a pardon for their sins.
A divine council of Angels and the accuser or adversary (Satan) present themselves to God. God asks Satan his opinion on Job, apparently a truly pious man. Satan answers that Job is pious only because he is prosperous. In response to Satan's assertion, God gives Satan permission to destroy Job's possessions and family.
All of Job's possessions are destroyed and the wind causes the house of his firstborn to collapse killing all of Job's offspring who were gathered for a feast. Job does not curse God after this but instead shaves his head, tears his clothes and says, “Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return : Lord has given, and Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of Lord.”
Job endures these first calamities without reproach. Meanwhile, Satan solicits permission to afflict his person as well, and God says, “Behold, he is in your hand, but don't touch his life.” Satan, therefore, smites him with dreadful boils, and Job, seated in ashes, scrapes his skin with broken pottery. His wife prompts him to “curse God, and die” but Job answers, “You speak as one of the foolish speaks. Moreover, shall we receive good from God and shall not receive evil?”
Hearing of the evil that has befallen Job, three of his friends come to console him. There is a fourth who plays a significant role in the dialogue; however, his arrival is not described. His friends spend seven days sitting on the ground with Job, without saying anything to him because they see that he is suffering and in much pain. Job breaks his silence and “curses the day he was born.”
In the epilogue, God condemns Job's friends for their ignorance and lack of understanding while commending Job for his righteous words. He then commands them to prepare burnt offerings and reassures them that Job will pray for their forgiveness. Job is restored to health, gaining double the riches he possessed before and having seven sons and three daughters (his wife did not die in this ordeal). His new daughters were the most beautiful in the land, and each was given inheritance along with their brothers. Job is blessed once again and lives on another 140 years after the ordeal, living to see his children to the fourth generation and dying peacefully of old age.

Chapter One
FATE

I drove to the lodge and sat in my truck, searching the back seat for my cell phone. Pieta, I suspected, would already be in the lodge restaurant, waiting patiently to speak with me. What was going on? We were close once, but we hadn’t spoken since college. What is the urgency now, especially to ask me to drive hours to meet?
I got out of my vehicle and slowly approached a rustic log structured lodge with a large deck and winding steps. In the distance, I could hear the wonderful sounds of nature, birds chirping and waterfalls crashing. It was autumn, my favorite time of the year. The leaves still glistened from a recent rain, and the air held a damp green smell of renewal. The early evening sun cast a perfect light to deepen the colors. It was almost surreal.
As I approached the restaurant where we were meeting, memories of this old friendship flooded my thoughts. I remember him as a deeply spiritual man. Was he still on his path? And what was this profound message he had mentioned — a thirty-six hundred year old dream written down but never interpreted? He sounded excited to tell me.
“I am flying out shortly after we meet,” he had said on the phone. “Can we meet to talk about it? The message in this ancient dream supports your teachings — you will love it.”
Supports my teachings? To what is he referring?
Surprisingly, this country lodge was more crowded than I thought it would be for a Sunday. Maybe it was the church crowd from this small community. Working my way into the dining room, Pieta waved at me from the corner. He was sitting by a window that overlooked the waterfalls.
Approaching, I noticed a commotion at the table next to him. People were shuffling and cooing as if talking to a new baby. The manager had come over to break up the noise. When everyone dispersed, I could see what was getting so much attention—a puppy, in a basket under the table. Next to the basket was Pieta leaning in to play with it. “You’ve got to love puppies! They are the ultimate magnet.” he said.
He loosened his jacket to make himself comfortable and stood up to shake my hand. I forgot how dark he can get when he’s been in the sun. I noticed he was a little grayer around the edges, but the calm that comes from his face was familiar and soothing to me. This I remembered well.
“I can’t believe you came on such short notice,” he said, grasping my hand with the certainty and warmth of a mentor. “I juggled my schedule in hopes that you would meet me, and here you are!”
“Well, you got my curiosity going when we spoke on the phone!”
“That was the intent. Sit down. I don’t have a lot of time, and I have much to tell you.”
Removing my coat, I sat in the corner closest to the scenic view. We ordered coffee and spent the first 30 minutes telling old stories and remembering our first meeting. I didn’t avoid speaking about the newest transition that was taking place inside of me. Pieta could always tell when I was changing.
“So are you still the moving target I remember?” he asked.
I always had difficulty hiding my feelings from him. He was one of my few friends who actually knew me. “I’ve really missed your gift of being able to see me. Do you want the truth?”
“Is there anything else?” he asks.
“Well, the truth is, I am changing so much internally these days that very little of what I thought was real about my life remains. I’ve been considering becoming more reclusive and moving to a different place that supports my passion for teaching.”
“I remember that you said there were a couple more books in you. Is that part of the decision as well?”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “But, I still struggle with the ego and whether anybody really cares about what I think and feel about all of this.”
He smiles. “So what are you going to do?”
“I’m still sorting it out,” I said. “I just know that I am moving internally and I don’t want to interfere with it.”
Inverting my concerns, as Pieta typically does in these discussions, he remarks, “Sounds as if you are entering the wonderful place of uncertainty.”
“Uh, I guess,” I said. “You always turn this around on me. What do you mean?”
“Your struggle is in this thirty-six hundred year-old dream.”
The restaurant fell away to white. It was like there was no one else in the room but us.
“Tell me more about this dream,” I said.
He looked out the window, then back at me. “I told you on the phone that I was researching the location of The Book of Job. I found out that the experience actually took place in the Middle East.
“The more I looked into this, the more exciting it became. Based on a translation of an ancient Sumerian text, the Erra Epos, it relates a story of catastrophic destruction, on a scale comparable to nuclear weapons, about this time in history at the Sinai Peninsula and at the city of Sodom and Gomorrah. This would have created some sort of ‘nuclear cloud’ that would have been carried by the prevailing winds eastward, causing death and desolation to anything in its path.”
“That is incredible!” I said. “What does this mean in the context of Job’s experience?’
“Well,” he said. “I kept hearing that we don’t know the author of The Book of Job. We are not sure when it was written, except that it predates Christ by, at least, a thousand years. And when I spoke to the church, they didn’t want to discuss any of my theories.”
“That’s not surprising.” I said.
“Yes, the more questions I asked, the more disturbed - people in the church became. The biblical teaching has always been about Job’s faith or patience, that he is rewarded in the end for his loyalty. And that it addresses the age-old question of why do righteous people suffer?”
“Why do any of us suffer for that matter?” I replied.
“Well,” Pieta said. “Job is described in the Bible as a man of Uz. It seems the location of Uz is uncertain. Biblical scholars suspect that it is near Edom, or south/southeast of the Dead Sea. Others believe that Uz was located far north of Palestine near Haran, the home territory of Abraham. Anyway, it turns out that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed in Job’s time by “brimstone and fire” and is now considered to be in an area beneath the waters of the Dead Sea.”
“And this is significant because …?” I asked.
“What if Job was in the path of its destruction, and the winds carried the fallout to his location?” he replied.
“You mean like radioactive fallout?” I asked.
“Exactly!” he said. “This would support that Job was having an outside experience that he interpreted as God? But, what if it was actually a severe storm? That would mean that, in truth, his story as told in the Bible is about an internal struggle with what was happening to him.”
“That would be an amazing way to look at the text,” I said.
“Bear with me,” he replied, then paused.
“Did you know that God was a gambler?”
“What?” I laughed.
“Imagine, we have been taught that there was a historical moment when two deities, God and Satan, had a bet!” he said as he smiled.
“I must admit,” I said. “That does sound a little ridiculous. And besides, how would we truly know this, let alone record it?”
“I agree.” he said. “The way the story goes Satan bets God that Job, though righteous, has a weakness. For example, he accuses God of protecting Job and his wealth from any kind of harm. Said differently, Satan is betting that Job serves God only because of his material possessions. Thus, he challenges God to take them away.”
“So that’s where you come up with gambling deities?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “And God takes the bet, as