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.