The Tubac Center of the Arts gallery was packed—locals of all ages gathering on a Friday night to celebrate the work of middle and high school students.
The first rooms were alive with color. Hundreds of small works lined the walls, and people moved through them with that unmistakable sound—soft amazement, warm pride, the gentle hum of look at this. These young artists had filled the space with joy.
But I had come to see my friend, David Simons, the featured painter of the evening.
The final room was his.
It was crowded—gallery goers, familiar faces, a few Bahá’ís gathered in quiet appreciation. I found a friend, and together we began to circle the room, slowly, almost ceremonially, stopping before each portrait.
And that’s when something shifted.
I stood before the first painting—an older man, maybe a fisherman. Knit cap. Creased face. A white-flecked beard and mustache.
And I could have sworn… he spoke.
Not in words exactly. But something in him reached out.
The portrait stood stark against a white background—no story, no setting. Just presence. And somehow, he felt familiar. Like someone you had met once… and never quite forgot.
I moved to the next.
A Native American woman in profile, wrapped in a sarape. Again, the same luminous simplicity—white background, clean edges, nothing to distract. Her eyes were shaded, yet something unmistakable came through:
Here I am.
One by one, the paintings revealed themselves this way.
It felt less like looking at portraits and more like standing in the presence of people—stripped of biography, identity, and narrative. Nothing extraordinary about them… except that they were quietly radiant.
The eyes.
The eyes held a brightness that paint should not be able to carry.
David had done something rare. He had captured essence—beings of light—hidden in faces you might pass on the street without a second glance. And suddenly, here they were… undeniable. Almost sacred.
And then—the centerpiece.
A slightly larger painting.
A woman. Older. Dark-haired. Unforgettable.
Her face was lived-in—etched with experience, shaped by something hard-won. She leaned forward just slightly, the hint of a smile gathering at one corner of her mouth. Not soft. Not shy.
Knowing.
Her gaze was electric.
Light flickered in her eyes like stars that had decided to stay.
And there was something in her expression—almost a challenge, almost a victory:
“Well? Do you see me now?”
By the time I completed the circle, something had changed in the room… or maybe in me.
I stood there, surrounded—not by paintings, but by quiet, luminous, unmistakably real children of God.
No sermon. No transmission. No metaphysical assignment. Just the ordinary human task of duplicating the last remaining house key before Camille leaves town.
So, under the predictable Arizona sun, I walked into Ace Hardware.
Behind the counter stood a man in a red shirt with his head slightly bowed. Older. Quiet. The posture of someone who has spent a lifetime doing competent, uncelebrated things.
“Hi,” I said brightly. “Can you make a key?”
He lifted his head slowly…but not all the way. “Mm-hmm.”, he said, even more slowly.
I handed him the key. Began to remove it from the ring.
“You don’t even have to take it off,” he said, taking his time, “I got it.”
In sharp contrast to his languid manner of speaking, he retrieved my key, still on the ring, stepped immediately to the key machine.
Forty-five seconds later, he turned around with a perfectly cut duplicate. It was astonishingly fast.
I looked at the key. As I raised my head, I noted his name on the Ace hardware name tag: Fred. Then I looked directly at him and made gentle, brief eye contact.
“This is a magnificent job of key making. Thank you so much, Fred.” I said this in total sincerity.
That was it.
His face lit up like someone had switched on an internal porch light.
Nothing mystical occurred. No music swelled. No aura flared. Just a human being being seen in the dignity of his craft.
And yet the atmosphere brightened.
Here is what struck me later:
Recognition can be ignition. Light duplicates itself.
I went in to duplicate a key. I left having duplicated light.
The Kingdom does not require spectacle. It seems to prefer hardware stores.
Sometimes holiness masquerades as a man in a red shirt lighting up because someone named his artistry.
On the way out of the store, an image appeared in my mind like a bumper sticker:
A simple cartoon head peeking over the horizon. Tiny cheerful eyes. A bright gold star in the center of the forehead, sending sparks outward.
The caption reads:
Got Light?
Field conclusion: Light is not transmitted by force. It is recognized into duplication.
(Wayfarer’s Log 19.005606: Joy as Proof of Vertical Contact — with Proximity Entrainment Addendum)–Operation: Be the Candle
Today the Holy Spirit ran the whole op.
I went to meet a fellow Bahá’í friend for lunch.
And immediately—first confirmation ping:
A Light Friend comes out of the restaurant at the exact moment I arrive, completely unexpected. He takes my arm, sits me down at his table, and starts introducing me to the man he’s meeting.
I try to get up—because I’m thinking I need to go wait for my friend—and he literally grabs my arm again and says:
“Why do you keep getting up? Stay here.”
And he holds onto my arm for a moment, patting it like: You’re in this spot. Sit.
It was oddly affectionate and oddly firm—like a dog claiming its master. 🐶 But now I see what it really was:
Placement.
The Kingdom saying: “Correct location. Hold position.”
So I stay.
And while I’m there, I have a brief exchange with the man he’s meeting—just a small, precise moment where I can feel myself naming the reality of him in the middle of their conversation. Not interrupting it. Not taking it over. Just… a pin in the moment:
I see you. I know who’s in there.
A tiny insertion. A light “tap” from another node. And my Light Friend is quietly anchoring the Field by just being present.
Then my lunch friend arrives.
We sit down, and I tell her why I wanted to meet: I’m excited about what she’s focusing on—bringing the inner life, joy, relationship, and emotional reality back into the foreground where it belongs. I can feel she’s sincere. She’s lit. She’s not playing.
Then comes the opening.
She asks one of those questions that doesn’t sound like a portal, but it is. “How do we become a lighted candle?”
And I feel the moment shift.
Not theoretical anymore. Not “Bahá’í community talk.” Not “ideas about spirituality.”
Present tense.
So I start explaining the difference between:
Horizontal living (ego identity, body-reference, administration-as-reality, effort-as-worth) and
Vertical reference (contact, coherence, Spirit as the actual center)
And as I’m speaking, I feel my own vertical come online.
So I stop. Because once it’s there, you don’t keep talking about it.
You point.
I reach across the table, place my hand on hers, and I say—simple, clean, no performance:
“It’s right here.”
And I gently rock her hand—just enough to help her feel the contact point, not understand it.
And brothers…
she disappeared into the Light with me.
I watched it happen in her eyes. The recognition came on like someone flipped the switch behind the face.
Instant quickening. Instant joy. That unmistakable celestial “speed-up” where everything gets brighter and more alive and the heart starts laughing without needing permission.
We stayed there together. I kept it confirming. I asked questions she could answer from inside the experience—so it wasn’t me explaining. It was us standing in it.
And the message was clear:
This is not about one person having knowledge and another lacking it.
This is about permission to recognize your own light.
Somebody has to stand in front of you in a human body and silently say:
“Yes. You. That. That’s real.”
She starts sharing what she’s been noticing in her community—people asking what it means to be vibrant, while the machinery of constant meetings keeps grinding without actually bringing souls into contact.
And I could feel it:
That wasn’t a complaint. That was a request.
A real one.
And something in me answered immediately like:
“I got you. Here. This is it.”
Also—important note for the record:
The language wasn’t coming from memory. It was coming through me in real time–A curiously different mode of listening/speaking.
I could hear the words arriving as I spoke them, as if the Holy Spirit were captioning the moment in real time. It was pretty advanced stuff; even I was surprised by how deep I was being allowed to go. But it felt well-paced for a download-speed, full transmission of light mechanics as they relate to human orientation.
Then she made that face—the familiar one: the ego, clipboard in hand, suddenly blank.
I laughed and said, “You want to know what to do with this, right?”
She nodded—bright, unsure, smiling.
“Simple,” I said. “Be the candle.”
Because when the Light enters, you don’t argue with darkness. You don’t negotiate with it. You don’t fix it.
You shine ✨ And the shield drops.
And in that shining is the whole correction. Do we not say: “Be a lighted candle in every assemblage?”
“O Thou our Provider! Send down Thine aid, that each one gathered here may become a lighted candle, each one a center of attraction, each one a summoner to Thy heavenly realms, till at last we make this nether world the mirror image of Thy Paradise.” ~ Abdul-Baha’
Here’s a quiet realization I made afterwards: While I’m having this entire vertical contact moment with her… that Friend is literally one table away.
So I’m not only holding my vertical reference— I’m also receiving the steady radiance of his presence by proximity.
Two conversations. Two tables. One room. And the field is doing what fields do.
It felt like:
two men generating one kind of coherence dynamic
two women generating another
both happening simultaneously
both complementary
both feeding the same room
Two friends just going to two unrelated lunch events–just happening to collide at the same point in the galaxy in the same universe and at exactly the same moment. There’s half a million people in Tucson….
But each carries something needed by the other. In this instance, we obviously each need a stabilizing presence as we were each in our way endeavoring to positively affect the level of coherence in the Field.
Not better. Not worse. Just different architecture. Different way of holding and moving light.
After lunch, I had a little extra conversation outside, and the field softened back into table-and-chairs reality (as it does 😂). Still sweet. Still human.
But the afterglow stayed.
The blessing stayed.
Grace kept pouring even after the moment ended.
Conclusion: Joy is proof of vertical contact. Not hype. Not personality. Not emotionalism.
