Those days, I was rotten with virtue, and God was on my lips and Jesus in my heart, and I walked like a man lending a hand to the Holy Ghost; the Trinity, always, just happy to see me.
These days, I stammer and halt to reach for the word “God.” Battered as it is, and left for dead by taut materialists and moon-eyed metaphysicians, or tailored and slick-polished by Peale-esque positivists, dewy TV-preachers, or militarized by a garrison of fundamentalists and anvil-eyed God, Guns & Country zealots, or leveraged by Father-God paternalists, as though the “Word became flesh” to reinforce male supremacy.
But yesterday, walking an aspen trail along the Elbow River, a deer leapt in the shallows and we stood blinking… the deer’s slender hooves unsteady on the gravelly bottom, some mystery twitching between us, some intense presence, a single shock of grace;
and in that bewildering, disabling, stoppage of time, I saw the fusion of this doe and those river stones, the aspens and the heavens, and me, a mere atom disappearing into it all and rising more intimately, more fully myself;
and God was in and on the breeze and whispered through the cinder-thick walls of my ignorance, (my unconscious devotion to the banality of my ego); and meaning flooded in, the truth of love and charity, flooded in; and faith was self-evident and God, too obvious, too present, to need a name.
Everything changed. And nothing changed.
I asked my heart, is this enough to hang a faith on, and so a life? This “spot of time,” this mystic clearing, that will surely recede and fade in the rolodex of weeks and scroll of time.
Let it be. Then. This is my faith, my tenuous discipline to keep alive an ember of memory, to breathe on daily, failing often, yet knowing that forgetting is poison, and breathing is faithfulness to the next grace coming.
Becoming immersed in the awe that keeps shining out of the ordinary
Thanks for this, Bob.
Such a beautiful piece Stephen
Loved this – “my unconscious devotion to the banality of my ego” – captures in a few words the existential paradox that we breathe into everyday
Thank you, Ananda. That means a lot to me.
Enlightenment
Thank you, Sally.
You have stirred a memory, so I wrote it – https://substack.com/@marcialeelaycock/note/c-128023061
Thank you, Marcia, I loved your story/memory.
A beautiful container for ‘a single shock of grace,’ thank you Stephen
Thank you, Suzanne!
‘This is my faith…’
Thank you Stephen, for this walk
of grace
in the knowing <3 -^-
Thank you, Tamara!
Stephen….the first morning after burying my first born grandson I sat in my car in the driveway holding back tears when a red cardinal landed on the hood of my car. I sat in awe and unbelief waiting for him to fly away, but instead he flew a few inches to land on my side mirror and just looked at me before flying away. That brief encounter of awed stillness I knew God was present turning grief into a smile.
Dear Peggy, your note breaks my heart. I’m choking up even now, and at the same moment, I’m awed by your encounter. My deep gratitude to you for offering your story.
Your accuracy in combining words to capture that elusive moment when a true glimpse of God appears … swells my soul. May it sustain you for your lifetime. Thank you for sharing it, Stephen.
Thank you, Valerie. Your words are a blessing.