IV. A Change

I attended church with Jonah. We sat on folding chairs in a carpeted auditorium where through a big window you could see the desert hills stuck in with yucca and sage. Jonah pointed at features around the room — the band tuning instruments to our right. He said the pastor is the one who plays the bass guitar. A cool guy, he said, he’ll speak in a bit. And Jonah showed me through the paper worship aid.

The band played and we all stood, maybe 55 of us. Some people clapped and others raised their hands and shut their eyes. I felt that even if I didn’t know what was going on, I’d made a positive decision compared to others I’d made during the past few years. Then the band stopped and we all sat.

Pastor Bill (Bill was his name and he had a mustache) set down his bass and stepped onto the open floor and held a book. He looked comfortable standing there and pleased to be able to talk with all of us.

And he started to speak in a simple way. I understood each sentence he spoke for he spoke as if he just spoke to me. I felt that he spoke only to me. I was alone in the room and he spoke like some dad — kind, casual, mustachey, and coherent.

Growing up my mom often complained that she could never understand our priest’s homilies. I guess I didn’t either. So many big words. I understood the space — the candles, the altar, the stained glass, the smoke of incense, the white garbs…all those things said, we are here to acknowledge higher things.

But I did not understand when the priest spoke of Eucharist or Catechism, or liturgical seasons, or diocesan appeal, or rectory, or Vatican Two. Perhaps the obscurity of his speech made the ceremony all the more mystical.

But now I had a dad talking to me. Why are you just talking to me, I thought. It took a lot of courage to come here. Why do we have to talk here alone?

What he said felt like kindness. And what he said said we would be alright.

And he said one thing that stayed in my ears for days and years ahead. He said, “Most of us forget that God wants to speak to us. So we don’t get quiet. If you want to listen to God and talk to God, here’s a question you can ask him, ask, God, who am I in light of you?”

And I said okay. And soon I started to notice people in the seats around me.

That evening I went to a town party. They’d become dismal scenes, visited by strangers, people in their 30’s who sat on couches in open garages and appeared entranced by some stupefying set of pills. I drove home after one such party, and instead of making the turn to my parents’ house, I pulled into a parking spot in front of the church I attended as a boy.

I sat in my driver’s seat with the ignition off and the silence of the haunted forest pregnant with presence. There is a cliche that floats in our air waves: “Listen to your heart”. The line can be heard in songs I hate. Cliches may be the distillation of our shared lessons, the stuff we all remember together after we’ve forgotten.

My heart was what it was. I did not know what it was because I lived far from it. I did not know that I was afraid to go near to it. It was a fortress with a narrow open door. Part of me knew that lies lived inside, and truth lived inside. So it was an icy thing from which I stayed clear.

But the currents of the moment nudged my interest towards this center…this center of what is. The night and forest inhaled in quietude.

And I pressed my hearing to my heart, and I inhabited my heart in all the darkness that I now saw there. And I spoke some wordless prayer. Prayer was not something I did. I believe I did so as a boy, but what memory of this spiritual activity was the light of an extinguished star.

I said something to a something or someone that I wanted to know now. I was open to something. I wanted to know what was true.

After years of lies to everyone and myself, I was ready to be honest. I even said what Pastor Bill said to say. I said, “God, who am I in light of you?” And with that I felt so in the dark and alone. But only for a moment.

All at once — and this is where I’d do best to not over explain — words don’t work well here — a light, a love, a spirit pure and kind, a life that I loved and loved me in return overflowed my being, making my cold core a bright mystical monastery where I wished to spend the rest of my days.

That’s the best I can do.

And later I would use the word God, although this term comes with shortcomings. God remained with me there and through the night and into the morning where I awoke to an empty house.

My parents were gone at work and my younger brother and sister gone at school. I stepped downstairs into the sun filled living room and I loved all.

What does one do when his eyes are suddenly filled with light. I found an old Bible in a stack of books beneath an end table. I opened the book to an arbitrary place and began to read.

The Book of Proverbs…sounded cool… for gaining wisdom and instruction; for understanding words of insight; for receiving instruction in prudent behavior; doing what is right and just and fair…things I suddenly wanted.

As I sat and read the Bible, with the light from the loft skylight warming me, I thought, I ought to do something to show my appreciation of this light, this holy presence.

I went to my dresser and pulled out a brown zip-up hooded sweatshirt, put it on, and placed the hood neatly and ceremonially over my head, then I went and made oatmeal.

I never liked oatmeal, but now the oats looked simple and beautiful as I stirred them in their pot. I only dropped a pinch of brown sugar in the oats. I didn’t want the delight of sweetness to distract me from what I now felt. As I ate my oatmeal, I looked out the window at the hummingbird sipping from the red hanging feeder.

I talked to the light — thank you for love. What would you have me do?

The light responded in silence, and sparked within me an idea

I would make my brother’s bed, some symbolic reparation for making myself too cool for him, calling him names and beating up on him even though he was five years my junior.

I would do the yard work my parents asked me to do so long ago.

I cleared the leaves from beneath the neighbors deck, their dogs growling at me the whole time.

The whole time I stood in something new. Something that was love wanted me to know love and be better.

That evening I helped my mom do the dishes after dinner. She noted that my willingness to help was unusual.

I told her, “I think I found God.”

She said, “Hm, well you have been nice to everyone this evening.”

And things for me were different after that. Some things stayed the same — I still lacked a good amount of education and I believed still that I knew a lot. But now I had a reason to do well. I had a reason that I didn’t before, a reason to tell the truth, or to work hard at my job, or to help those around me, or to start reading books, or to spend my days and nights hoping to catch a sense of that original illuminating bliss.

There would come times in the years to follow, as I entered deep into a religious life, where I’d wonder if I’d imagined things that night. I’d wonder if I over did it in giving over so much of my life and livelihood to religion and spirituality in hopes of knowing glory. I’d wonder why I couldn’t just be happy pursuing a career in accounting or nursing, or any honest work that equaled honest pay.

What I knew was that I looked back to that night as the turning point that made me “the religious guy who you might not want to cuss in front of” among plenty of circles of people. In other circles it made me a religous leader of sorts. It made me a relentless theological searcher. It made me take to the mystifying task of discerning God’s ways and arriving at all sorts of baffling confusions. I still wonder about that night.