We have not done the work necessary to make God relevant for our time.

                 There is this sense of a broader time that slams into me at the ocean. As my feet press into the warm sand, I step outside the strict human view we train ourselves to adopt in our awkward attempts to convince ourselves we have come so far. The imprint of my feet in the sand suggests that we have not really changed from this most basic human form, though. Each footprint is a symbol of what we have been, our tracks etched with such an aching, vulnerable signature.

                 We step out into that primal world of sea and sand and are momentarily stripped of the symbols of our place in what we think of as modern time.  I am drawn by the infinite stretch of sand and the waves. We refer to them as waves, but an ominous stillness lies just beneath the hiss of wind and the rumble of sea. Stillness is there, a depth of something beyond us that we resist. In our distraction, we avoid the subtle lure of what lies just beneath the surface.

                Sometimes I stand there, allowing it to tumble up from deep within me. And there is the mesmerizing rhythm of water sliding in as it reaches the shore, easing along, inching further up and onto sand as the tide presses in. And yes, I am tugged by something so strong, gripped by this dizzying sense that in this environment I have come nearer than ever to a secret, though I am not certain that is the best word—secret. But if it is not an actual secret, then it is in the vicinity of something that is hidden from us.

As I stand there, the wild energy of the sun spills down through the atmosphere igniting, interacting, crashing into the world of what could be a primordial sea. It might as well be, because the ocean is one part of the world we cannot tame or stamp with our idea of what it means to be in our time. The beaches and the ceaseless, eternal rhythms of the sea are essentially unchanged from how they were thousands of years ago, and even millions, for all I can tell. That tug is strong within me.

            And this is near what I mean when I suggest that we have not understood much of what there is in the world that intersects our own. It intersects the world we see, the one we have insisted upon and so carefully settled and finessed, studied and believed.

            A good part of what I mean when I say we have not done the work to make God relevant for our time lies here. We have not done the work because we have in our insolence pretended that God does not exist, or—if by some measure he does--he is irrelevant. Certainly we do not believe that using potentials we associate with the vague, disturbing spiritual world we mistrust—we would not seriously consider developing these tools as an aid to Science, using them to broaden our reach toward discovering facets of the world and existence that are hidden.

            And thus we lie here contentedly, filled with self-congratulation and adulation for who and what we believe we are and are becoming—especially our burgeoning Science and our technology. As for me, though, I suggest that our beloved Science applied alone can offer only glimpses of what is. There is much that eludes the rigid objectivity of scientific method. We are therefore blind to much that is, and unless we can somehow be jolted from this spiritual malaise, we are unlikely to ever understand even the most miniscule glimpses into who we are or what we are becoming.
           So yes, indeed, I am suggesting the unthinkable—that we pursue an objective study of our spiritual potential and of this entity we are presently so mistrustful of. We should pursue these as a branch of Science. We cannot divorce ourselves from these elements and hope to understand who we are or what we are becoming. And we cannot fully comprehend the Universe.

           And speaking of this presence, which we call God, what do I mean when I insist that we haven’t done the work necessary to make God relevant for our time? Isn’t God relevant and unchanging in whatever moment in history the human species is in? Does God’s relevance depend upon us somehow working hard to make him real for our time?

            Of course not. God is unchanging and eternal regardless of how distant we may be from him. But if we in our impudence yawn in the presence of this entity, this presence that is always there, we ourselves are blind to the lion’s share of what is and we become stagnant. I am, then, referring to us and to our blindness to so much of what is right here in every moment of every day. And yes, it does take aggressive, hungry work in each generation to come nearer to all that is there and in doing so to find ourselves—who we really are and what we were created to become.

            The Holy Bible is an incredible record of human involvement with God, beginning in the book of Genesis. But at best, we have been inconsistent, stubborn. That’s what I would call it. We have been like toddlers, stubborn children with lower lip protruding like the lower lip of a displeased two-year old. And here we are in what we count as the twenty-first century, and we feel a glowing satisfaction with our accomplishments.

            I would never suggest that we should not be satisfied. There is nothing wrong with that. It’s just that we have managed to lose sight of what is the most incredible adventure and possibility. And that is what is wrong. There was a time not so long ago where the great musicians, artists, thinkers, writers, and builders created works of genius in the pursuit of what they felt in regard to God. We have lost our sense of it, concluding that what may have inspired works of genius then was a sad incompetence. After all, these were days before modern Science revealed the true nature of the Universe and suggested an infinity of what is yet to be understood.

           A large part of the work we must do to make God relevant in our own time involves rediscovering the implications, the inescapable pull and draw of this presence. Just as some of the brilliant thinkers and artists of the past did, we must pursue this aggressively. We must rediscover that only through this can we hope to even begin to understand the true facets of the Universe and our place within it, strange as such a proposal must seem.

           From the perspective of our modern culture, so desperate to disassociate itself from an identity which seeks God, even if imperfectly, such a proposal must seem outrageous. Even so, it is here where our great challenge lies, lurking like a tiger, scenting the air, impatient for us to awaken from this stupor and rejoin the pursuit of this incredible potential implanted within us and of an entity that has pursued us since we opened our eyes and first glimpsed this strange, fantastic world presented to us to grow in and to live.

When everything stops, there is this eerie, all-encompassing silence that descends.

                All the noise that surrounds us in our time, this noise that we become so accustomed to, is gone as though some heavy blanket has come down and absorbed it the way we might soak up a spill with a towel.  A heavy blanket of snow absorbs sound like that.

                In addition, though, all of the traffic is still after one of these storms. Cars and trucks are deserted, abandoned by their drivers, stuck in the snow. No machinery rumbles. Even the electricity is down in this area. A stillness has descended, and the sounds we have learned to ignore are gone. A heavy snow transforms our habitat. This could be long years ago, centuries or millennia ago—even back to a world of prehistory before our piddling species awakened to traipse the planet and tinker with whatever we in our impudence have decided to adjust.

                But in such an event there descends an ominous stillness that can be frightening. Something is the matter. At least that is a first impression, that there is something wrong. But for me, it is one of the moments when I sense this hidden tug, an awareness that has crept upon me quietly, stealthily, with the threatening, lilting stride of one of the feral cats.

Perhaps that is why sometimes I sense God as one of the big predator cats we have learned to be in awe of. When we were living so near the earth, out in the wild, as no doubt some distant tribes and cultures do today, we have understood the necessity to hide from such a predator. And so it may seem strange that I would suggest that God is like one of these ominous creatures.

But it isn’t necessarily the instinctive fear I am talking about here, though it might be well to think of that as well. After all, the Bible says we ought to fear God. Is that because God might rend and tear, devour us hungrily? If this were my church Beginner class years ago where wonderful ladies helped us young ones consider God and what it means to have a relationship with him, we would be singing little songs about how God loves us, and these nice ladies would not whisper about the dangers. And neither am I, though you may be wondering where this is leading.

                I’m just saying that there is an area biblically where we are encouraged to fear God as we would fear anything that is so far beyond our understanding, even as we would fear the raging intensity of a snow storm where the world is transformed into a primal landscape and all we can do is hide, having crept into some protected area.

Of course today we have structures—houses and buildings with heat and environments that effectively shut out the elements. But still, we have a healthy respect for the ominous power of nature. And I would argue that this is a good analogy to that Beginner class. Sometimes we awaken in the Spring to days of beauty: the scent of earth and the curved, delicate green of new chutes and plant life. Even the birds are alive and celebrating, chirruping and gathering their morning meal from air and soil. Then, we can smile at our children and truthfully say that nature is a happy, beautiful environment that makes our hearts sing.

                               

                But of course even as we tell our children about the fragrant beauty and warmth of nature in the Spring, we know from long experience that nature has a potential ferocity that can gather itself into frightening storms that in any season can leave marks upon the world and, as the children’s stories show, blow our houses down as effectively as the wolf who huffed and puffed.

                We are a species surrounded on every side by potential danger and uncertainty. But as for this presence we have named God, does it make us want to hide that there is a side of him that is like the coiled, potentially deadly beauty of the lilting walk of a tiger or some other predator cat as it moves silently through the jungle?

                And what does it mean, then, that this presence, this entity we name God, has stalked us since even before we were here in our present form? Certainly that is a puzzle we must work out as we edge into the future. But for now, we should be confident that this presence has long-term plans for us. We are naturally uneasy and even frightened. This entity is beyond our comprehension. Even the Bible says we ought to be in awe bordering on fear when considering a presence beyond our capacity to understand.

                But we must, as each generation before us has attempted with varying degrees of success, be aggressive in our study of this entity and in our hunger to grow and better understand what it is we are destined to become. Furthermore, we must discover what it means to be part of this presence, to have a relationship with this presence.

                If there is any condemnation of our present generation, it lies here. We have lost any sense of aggressively pursuing this. We have the audacity to yawn in the vicinity of this incredible mystery. We are the most disrespectful brats, failing even to sense the enormity of this presence, this entity that pursues us always. Even in the aftermath of a storm of snow, we yawn and simply wait in our warm environments for it to dissolve.

                We are a culture now that ignores the presence of God and is blind to our spiritual potential. We laugh at the suggestion that any significant understanding of the Universe will be impossible without an aggressive pursuit of this entity. We would do well to listen after a snow, or at any time when we can for just a bit step out of the constant distractions of this modern world we inhabit. 

                There is much that awaits us, if we will only learn to sense what is there that we have trained ourselves to ignore. Most notably, this entity we so awkwardly name, simply, God is there in every moment of every day, waiting for the time when we might awaken from this self-imposed stupor that defines our time and inhibits our ability to sense what is there, whether that be after a big snow or any moment of any day.

Whenever the sun has lit the air with such tremendous brightness, something deep within us responds.

                That is one of the recurring themes in what I write. At least that is what I have discovered. But sitting here in this room with sunshine spilling into the world outside the window, I cannot help but feel the familiar twinges. That is how I know that regardless of what moment I am in, whether it is now or was when I was an eight-year-old, I have sensed this thing, restlessly mucking around on some level beneath the surface where I can see sunshine spilling down through the atmosphere into our world.

                And yes, I did sense this even when I was an infant lying in that crib my parents had placed me in. There was a ribbon on the left side of that crib and there was a ribbon on the right. The purpose of each ribbon was to tie gently, oh so gently, around each wrist. And there I was, lying there in that room with ribbons tied and thus it was not possible to develop what was considered a bad habit of thumb sucking.

                It sounds awful, doesn’t it? A little like terrible rituals we shudder to hear about in other cultures. And yet I suspect that the parents in these other cultures feel warmth and love as they consider this child that has been born to them. And in the dim light of early morning, bending over it, aware of its humid scent, the scent of an infant and the hope, the love, the aching sense of wanting this infant to grow into a healthy, happy human.

                And yet we are capable of binding the wrists of a child. At least that was not uncommon when I was an infant. Is that less cruel than the foot binding we are told occurred with the Chinese infants? And there are terrible things. Terrible things done even today, though we try very hard not to.

                And you might nod, expecting that I will give a few examples. But that is just the point. I am not going to give examples because I want us to consider that the ones I might refer to are the very ones we would not be aware of that we do. Some future time, some generations out there in what we think of as the future, someone will glimpse our time and shudder at the things we have done, all the while bent lovingly over this new life, this infant fragrant with that deep, primal scent of new life and such a depth of gooey life.

                But it is the love that matters, no matter what the time. We just have to trust that any terrible misassumptions we have about what is best will be swallowed up in the genuine love and care. Surely it is common for parents to arrive at some point after raising the child and look back and be a bit chagrined and distressed at some of the things they did, fully ignorant at the time the thing happened that what they did, decisions they made, were perhaps dangerous or in some way misguided.

                That idea is on the periphery of the tugs that reassert themselves, regardless of the day in my life. I might step beyond them for a while, caught up in the intricacies of everyday life, forced to work, to balance figures, to see about so many mundane problems. But then, in a moment, paused in between one thing and another, such as just sitting here on a morning with sunlight spilling in through the busted window glass, there it comes. Restless, like a cork bobbing in the water, or like a little eddy, a swirl as some fish rises to the surface to snatch an insect or some thing it is drawn to. 

               Even there in that example it occurs to me that on some level we are all like the fish or the bird or any live suspect, any living bit of a life upon this planet, this world. And we all in every moment on some level are driven by this deft and primal need to be in an environment where we can be comfortable, raise our progeny, have some hope, some plans, and certainly find the edible nourishment.

                And we are, aren’t we? We are such strange, beautiful, creatures. And yet we are enigmas.

                The tugs that I feel, they are ultimately drawn from this deeply present, deeply powerful, unseen instinctive reach for the spiritual. Here we are on another day which on some deeper level calls out to us, resonates within us. Even each lick of energy and heat from the sun that draws a sense of gladness and happiness is there. But part of all that is this mystery, this reach toward the one we have named God.

                And in our time, whether we were infants in cribs and bassinettes or adolescents struggling through the horrendous hormonal changes, literally creaking as we grew, like monsters in a way, if you consider us solely as biological organisms driven by stuff that is the material of determined, viciously programmed life that seems on this primal level to have no compassion, no feeling but just a stubborn, preprogrammed determination to grow and ultimately to reproduce itself. And on one level we are hostages carried along like captives.

                In one sense we really are savages, though we don’t mean to be. There is this silent, dusky part that is in the vicinity of the tug I feel. It isn’t just me. We all have sensed it. And it is here that we come near to this presence, this entity, that we have largely abandoned. At least in this particular moment in our journey through what we think of as time we have abandoned.

                We have this misplaced assumption that we have become sophisticated now and grown beyond it. And yet the awful truth, the imminent secret that will never cease, never desist, is the fact that just as wild and unyielding as the preprogrammed development of these biological forms we are attached to is this other that ultimately is our destiny.

                It is spiritual. And it is the entity that created us and set us here to grow and wrestle with the agonizing tension between our physical, biological selves and the spiritual which will ultimately define who we are and answer the questions that plague us concerning our ultimate reason for being. 

                But certainly it is no wonder that we are tortured, contradictory enigmas. Perhaps we can be forgiven if we are something of a mess. And yet it must be said that we have to return to a path that is built upon the assumption that this entity, this presence that has stalked us since the beginning is a reality we cannot pretend was a part of our primordial past. Far from that, it is actually our future, our reason for being.

Sometimes just the concept of afternoon and evening and all they suggest causes me to experience a tug.


                I do not understand why, except that this tug draws upon something deep within me.

                I am reminded of how it was there at the lake on one of those calm, gray afternoons when the lake was so still, and I could sense this presence there. I have always had the sense of this presence. I was surrounded by family, community, teachers for whom this presence was real.

               When I would sense this presence, I simply understood that this was the same entity spoken of in the Bible and taught about in our church. It was the same experience my mother would quietly describe, whetting my appetite for something there, always near, and that we can learn to let it come and surround us. That is one of the chief lessons from my childhood.

                And yes, as I was near the lake, sitting on the bank and watching the red and blue plastic bobber jiggle as some unseen fish nibbled at the worm impaled upon the hook, I could feel the warmth, the tingling excitement of the presence which was real even before I learned to go deeper and let this presence infuse me and draw me toward the mission I gradually felt was there for me.

                My family, community, and even the Nation when I was young taught that God draws each of us toward a task, whether it be something large in the estimation of our fellow humans or something that might seem insignificant. If it is inspired by God, even the smallest, incremental steps with him are potentially huge and part of the larger plan that we ourselves cannot always see.

                But there are ideas that tug deep within me and draw me, grasp something largely unseen and unacknowledged deep within. There are worlds and evidences that are hidden from us. They have not been purposefully hidden. However, we insist on chiseling a careful identity for ourselves, and through our history we have decided what reality is, and we believe we have grown beyond God. However, there is much that is right there in front of us that we simply cannot see, or it may be that we in our insecurity and fear refuse to acknowledge much that is there.

                All I can say is that the very concept of evening or of stillness of calm afternoons at the lake fishing produces a sharp tug within me. It is as though a  Bluegill deep beneath the silty lake water has suddenly struck at the worm and yanked the bobber, signaling that I have a fish on the line.

               And yes, I realize the potential cruelty. Now I do, but for me then it was a bonding ritual with my brother and my dad, driving out to Cherokee Lake with fishing tackle, and I sensed this presence there. 

               But sometimes I recognize the savagery that is within us all, and that it is in me. I mean there I was sensing God even as I was impaling a night crawler worm onto a hook, and enticing these sleek, living creatures to gulp the hook. And then the hook tore into the fish's mouths so that they were doomed to be hauled into the world of shimmering air and light and sounds, to be grasped by the fingers of a monstrous creature—one of the human species, of which I was one, and still am.

             However, the point is that there is much that is hidden. Even our savagery we try to hide as we define ourselves as these sophisticated, modern creatures who have grown beyond God. We do not associate legitimate, vigorous scientific pursuit as having much of anything to do with this entity, this presence.

              Even thinking of the idea—the very idea—of evening or those quiet afternoons fishing at the lake evinces that sharp tug within me because the experience implies unseen depths of who we have been in all the millennia, the many generations of our human species. We have been so awkward, stumbling as we come, intent upon our own concerns.

               We are so often ignorant of what is here surrounding us on every side, particularly as it relates to our relationship with this entity we so awkwardly refer to as God, and believe we have come beyond it now that we feel we have grown so wise. And yet we cannot truly know the Universe and all its mysteries, much less who we are and what we are becoming, until we find a way to again be invested in the notion that this entity--God--is the key to it all.

Give thanks to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever. Psalm 136:26

                When I let go of the rigidity of our everyday world and then, allowing the stillness to lure me to other places, I am sometimes in that warm, shadowy room upstairs in Nana’s house in Middlesboro, Kentucky. There is a window on my right as I lie there on the bed. The softness of damp air spills into the room in the early morning and a warm, dry heat on a summer’s mid-afternoon.

This was the upstairs room in my grandmother’s house where I slept during visits. I was nearly four years-old there in that room where I experienced such immense comfort—not merely physical but a deep sense of internal security as well. That one room in particular wrapped me in warmth and the jittery, excited taste of the presence that I encountered during my alone times in Harlan and now was so powerfully here with me in my grandmother’s house.

                My sister, Jeanie, and I would play a game following afternoon naps in that room. One of us would spin the world globe that sat on a small desk while the other held a forefinger lightly above the surface, touching ever so slightly. The one spinning the globe would chant, “Round and round and round she goes. Where she stops, nobody knows.”

This was probably some chant that emerged from barkers at carnivals where hundreds of the gullible have stood, feet in sawdust, out in the night, mesmerized by lights and calliope whistles and clowns. Some guy smiling and strutting gives you three-chances-for-a-quarter to knock down bottles or spin a wheel, or topple cardboard rabbits with cork shot from a popgun. Something like that.

                But I would be fascinated to look at the surface my finger touched when the globe stopped. Sometimes it was the ocean. That was not much fun. But many times it would be what seemed to be an exotic area far away in some dark region of Africa or perhaps Egypt or magical Switzerland.

               

                Easing gently into this other world, this other time, though, is when I most notably sense God’s presence, and within that world I am reminded of special moments such as the ones at my grandmother’s house in Middlesboro, among the many others. The memory of them simply wraps around me. The common denominator is this—they all have a sense of security, peace, and love at their center.

                Here is where I began to understand the idea of God’s love for each one of us. God’s love is so much more than the prissy weakness many associate with Christianity. It is powerfully there. Begun, perhaps, in the security we feel as infants and children when we are fortunate enough to have unconditional love from parents and family. That is how it was begun, certainly, for me. Perhaps as this presence—God—initially has crept up to me and begun to coax me toward him, he has used the wonderful love and peace I experienced as a child.

I was fortunate to have two amazing, loving grandmothers deeply committed to God. That is not to mention my incredible mother, who was always fascinated with the idea that we can communicate with God.

Any of us can, and it is really the essence of the Holy Bible—what it ultimately teaches. Whatever we might acknowledge –or not—God really is near us, just as the Bible assures us.

There are some who believe those of us who desperately seek a connection with God are weak and desperate to find solace and relief from the agonies of the world that confronts us with its responsibilities and dangers. However, our need for God stretches far beyond this. And besides, it is not weakness to cry out in the midst of desperation, even as King David in the biblical Psalms. Unquestionably courageous in battle, a man among men, he was aware of God and in many of these beautiful Psalms yearns for God and asks for protection.

Yes, we are in a dangerous world, even at the best of times. It is a signature of human existence. Once there were predators that literally snuck toward us as we lay hidden in some warm shelter, a nest filled with the scent of our pelts, the exhalations of our breathing, and hidden as best we could would be the precious offspring, so new and dependent upon us. Even now, we exist among frets and dangers, death and heartache, anxiety and a quest for survival so much part of our daily routine that we scarcely pause to think. It is etched deeply into the most primal parts, deeply it goes, grasping our very genetic materials, intricately engraved across our DNA.

Our desperate need for God goes far beyond some brittle, cowering need for protection or legends to help us feel better about death which stalks us or the mystery of what there is after death. Perhaps this is one of the great secrets. And I am quite certain that part of the aching, awful tragedy for the ones who shunned God in life will be the horrible realization after death that it’s all true. Everything that resonates through the Holy Bible—is true, and that what they presumed was weakness and desperation of fools who needed protection is actually the living, quietly breathing reality of something so immense and beyond us that we have scarcely even begun to fathom the implications for who we are and what we are becoming.

How terrible to experience the intense, sudden realization—all in a moment—that you literally wasted the time given to us on this planet, in this world, and likely have forfeited the ability to continue.

But I do believe we would do well—very well, indeed—to begin with those warm, precious moments when we have felt most secure, loved and protected, as first steps in understanding the immensity of God’s love for each of us. It is powerfully there, though it confounds our reason that there could be the maker of the Universe and all that is within it, a presence so profound and beyond us and yet so desperate for an intimate relationship with each one of us.

Though it surpasses human understanding, it is nevertheless true. And it is high time that we acknowledge this in our own moment in history and begin again to seriously pursue a genuine quest for this and all that is promised. Presently, we are so awkwardly in darkness and so confounded and confused, and yet we are ready for an amazing transformation that will propel us with renewed zest and wonder toward all that God is waiting for us to come toward at long last.

Of all human activities, man’s listening to God is the supreme act of his reasoning and will.—Pope Paul VI

This quote causes a stirring within me. And it reminds me that there is something large that has been in the depths of me, there in the night as I lie down in bed, or in the morning when I wake up and reach out again toward this entity, this presence.

I have known since I was sixteen or seventeen that there is something important that God wants me to write about. It has felt so awful to have it like a huge something deep within me that must eventually be born, but has eluded me for decades. I have attempted to get it onto paper since before word processors.

When I was in my twenties, there were the big manual typewriters. Each one had its own feel, its own personality. It was a delicious experience just to press the keys, to hear the keys tap and the carriage ratchet. At the end of each line I would grasp the silver lever of the carriage return and nudge the carriage across so that the words would begin again on the left of the page even as it advanced the roller to the next line. Then, gradually, the carriage would rattle toward the left as I typed, and in this way each eight-and-one-half sheet of clean paper would be filled with words.

  Now, today, I am sitting in the car listening to the soft patter of the rain. It is yet another of the subtle things we take for granted. What does the soft, steady measure of the rain have to do with moving toward God’s time? Somehow, the process of settling down, easing out toward the quiet and stillness, causes me to slip into memory and from there toward this other world—God’s world—which always surrounds us but which we have trained ourselves not to acknowledge.

Allowing the stillness within the steady rain to grasp something within causes me to remember that NBC live telecast of Peter Pan when I was five or six and we lived in Harlan, Kentucky. In the steady patter of the rain, this stillness begins to rise within me and take me in much the same manner as sleep does, I am drawn toward other places, often in memory.

On that summer evening, our living room was filled with low, dusky shadow as twilight crept in. I remember a subtle sadness underlying the way I felt on that evening, sitting on the living room couch with my mother, my sister Jeannie and my brother, David. I was oldest. But we were fascinated by Mary Martin as Peter Pan, the story, the sense of drifting out upon the summer air, all the windows open in the house and the dusky, low light of a summer evening easing into our house. And this was a black-and-white Motorola television, the one my dad had brought to our Harlan, Kentucky house several months before.

But the steady patter of the rain as I sit in the car all these years later causes me to ease back to that time in my memory, and the awareness of other time enhances the stillness and somehow allows this sense of this presence which is God to build into me. As I listen to the steady rain and glimpse the wetness of the dark lot through these rainy windows in the car, and the bleary light of the globes on tall, slender black poles positioned in the lot, I guess part of what settles quietly within me is this stepping back from the intensity of our everyday life when we are focused on the immediate that we see with our eyes and on the individuals, the intricacies of what it is to live day to day.

Perhaps the point is that as I ease toward the stillness that begins to rise from somewhere deep within, it reminds me of water rising beneath the wooden hull of one of the battered, much used rowboats that are tied up at wharfs and docks near lakes and rivers. I have moved out onto the still waters on such boats, feeling the steady, powerful pull of some incredible other time and reality. Moving out upon the still, mesmerizing surface of a lake, it is as though something there is drawn up through the wood of this boat, nearly like thought or something somehow measured not by sight and touch through our physical senses but through other parts, elusive and ephemeral. These are mere vestiges, underdeveloped in our time.

So I suppose the answer to what the steady patter of the rain and how it moves me into another time sometimes accompanied by memories is that it begins to tug at something deep within and move me toward a world which surrounds us, though we have never really learned to inhabit it. However, this measure of stillness and other time is connected to this presence which is God. And perhaps it is also prayer. Christ’s disciples asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray,” because they were interested, understanding as they watched him deep in prayer, spending so much time in prayer, they knew that Jesus was experiencing something vital, powerful, intense.

When we learn to really pray, it involves a letting go of the everyday, anxiety-ridden time, the critical, distracting world which rivets our attention upon this limited, human perspective. Effective prayer teaches us through practice and a yearning for God to move into a realm that is his, using a hidden, crucial ability instilled within us that we have allowed to atrophy.

So yes, I am excited when I see the quote of Pope Paul VI. “Of all human activities, man’s listening to God is the supreme act of his reasoning and will.”

                  It is true, and it is our challenge. This is key to what we must practice and learn to do and—through this—begin to understand who we are in relation to God, and why it is we are here. Even settling back and allowing something as steady and commonplace as the rain to draw our focus from the intensity of our usual anxieties can be a starting place for slipping into the prayerful state which finds us beginning to move toward this presence, toward a world and a time that is his and which calls to us constantly, though we have learned not to hear.

There is something that happens, and I can only suggest that it has much to do with this peace that passes understanding.

                It is mid-November, but the grass in the Pigeon Forge area is still a delicious green, though there are dried leaves now in the little dip on the other side of the white fence.

                Well, that may be an interesting detail. It certainly isn’t some major idea. But I suppose the only way that I can approach the deep ideas, such as they may ever be, is to begin lightly. I really think that is the answer. Just to begin with these keystrokes, tapping keys lightly and allowing even my trivial ideas to flow. And along the way I will think of others.

               I have been thinking about what happens when I experience this stillness and become aware of God there. Time begins to ripple and rise around me. And as I was beginning to think about that, I then had an image of a scene from Y-12 in Oak Ridge. It used to be called the Secret City, and for one year I worked there. What I remember most is how I would walk deep into some of the most classified part of that city, passing old brick structures from the nineteen forties. It really was like going back in time. And there was a tunnel I would walk through at one point, and it reminded me of that animated movie Roger Rabbit. The main guy in the movie drove through a tunnel in order to reach that other world, where the so-called tunes lived. 

                Here, though, this tunnel led into the really old and classified part of Y-12, and the sidewalks were vintage, nineteen forty-five concrete, and the old brick of the building I walked beside was damp and oozing moisture. At one point, there was a vent of some sort and some odiferous vapor would be expelled in a white cloud. I held my breath as I walked past it, imagining dark labs of the past where terrible concoctions were brewed.

                And perhaps this is what I mean when I say that time begins to ripple when I am still. It happens this way, that I get still and ease into what I think of as that other world, the one which is synonymous with this presence we think of as God. Yes, for me the fabric of time ripples because often I am transported to other places in my mind. Often, they are memories of other times when I was younger, as in the sudden memory of my experience of Y-12 in Oak Ridge. But nearly always, when I am drawn into that other time through this stillness that comes, there are ideas that rise gently within me. Ideas that usually have something to do with who we are and what we are becoming.

                Sometimes it isn’t so much an idea as it is a sense, an intimation where I feel as though there is something elusive there, just beyond my present ability to capture it. And I understand that here, as I feel drawn intimately into this other measure of the world that surrounds us, is God. We do sense some glimmers of this other world and we on some level understand that there is much that eludes us and yet it calls in some long, timeless fashion. It is one of the universal experiences that defines our species. We know this when we read literature, much of it dating back the earliest times when our species learned to write. And some of these stories are transcribed from oral traditions which have their origins even farther back in time.

                And I suppose this is the idea for today, for this particular moment in my living, breathing, nibbling at fingers. Oh, yes, I suspect I will nibble at them today because I just now used the sliver clippers to carefully trim my fingernails. Each one is curved, like the crescent moon. Except that each one of my fingernails has that solemn, human signature. These are among the many parts of ourselves that we take for granted. We do not see them, in a way. Just as I trimmed my nails, allowing each to fall onto the little notebook I use to track expenses. Each one fell into the middle, the little runnel between the left-hand and right-hand page. And I was aware of a slight, nearly imperceptible sense of satisfaction at seeing them there before I rolled down the window and upended the little notebook, allowing them to tumble out into the dark, rough lot where my car is parked.

                We are strange, contradictory creatures, held captive in physical bodies which grow and shed and replicate themselves many times as cells regenerate and fingernails slowly grow, as does the strange, silky hair on our bodies. But lifted within, quietly residing, gently and innocent and vulnerable are these spirits, these souls as we call them. And it is the human spirit, the soul, that is the essence, the reality, of who we are, though we are confused and have yet to understand who we are. We have yet to understand who we are in relation to God, and to do so is the great challenge that spreads out before us as we move ever nearer to our unseen destiny out there in what we refer to as the future.

                May God have mercy on these nimble, stubborn spirits, each one precious and created by him. May he help us to understand at long last who we are and the purpose for which we were created, long anticipated and much thought about. The suspense is palpable to the many who in the stillness wait to see what we will become, and whether it is even possible for us to finally be what we were created to be.