Beginnings are rarely one dimensional. Beginnings tend to gather like tiny cells and once gathered divide and specialize. Like the embryo knit together in the womb-two separate pieces become one and a spark of beginning, of unity, becomes a fire of division which burns into a pile of ashes. Or, something like that.
There was a little more to the beginning. Quantum physics has realized that looking at the pieces of something tells only part of the story. The story isn’t seen in the separate bits. The story isn’t seen in the whole. The story is seen in the spaces where relationships play out, the places between the separate bits. This is where God is seen too. Like Moses glancing out of the space between the rocks to see Him. Or the times when the mystics slip between the breathes of reality and see something those bound by time never see.
That year was magic. The backyard was attached to a rock house with an attic. My room was in the attic. Up in that space, the eight track stereo didn’t bother anyone else. Up in that space, I searched the places between childish things and the mysteries of becoming a teenager. There my life was lived in space between reality.
I knew my Jesus there. He had become a good friend of mine a few years before. I went to church faithfully and prayed fervently. One day I was working in the library at school. It was a beautiful place, the second story with a broad row of windows at the perfect height. I spent hours there every day. It was a refuge from the tedium in the classes below me, these classes where everyone else had known each other for years and I was new. Not only was I new, I was a little different. (I can hear my family laugh and say “a little?”) I was ok with that. I had my attic room, my magical backyard, and my Jesus. I was good.
Anyway, it was a bright beautiful day and the sky was its normal brilliant blue that day in the library. I stood for a moment watching a cloud float by and then… Then the sky opened. The sky opened and there was my Jesus surrounded by angels with flowing robes and a million other people and creatures. I said “I’m ready Lord. Take me.” He said “No, your job isn’t finished yet. I will be back for you.” Then the noise faded away and the sky cleared and I looked around. I looked around and seeing I was still in the library I went back to shelving books.
This was the world in which I lived. A world where in the space between thoughts miracles just happened. Miracles and normal experience were as routine as day and night.
Then the beginning happened. The beginning of the snakes and pure fear. Fear that locked me inside the little kitchen with its almost antique stove. Every runner of grass looked like the snake that was coming to get me. It was coming to get me and it was bringing a million friends. I could almost hear them rustling in the asparagus, slipping through the juniper branches, hissing to each other. But nothing is ever as easy as it looks at first glance. Fear mingled with other sparks and the fire that began choked out my Jesus and my God. It choked out understanding, faith, trust, and sent love crawling under my bed. The life of fear replaced the magic life where Jesus and I had visited in the places between the minutes.
The beginning became like our new tv. I didn’t know what was so special about our new tv. Then I heard dad exclaim that the colors were so real. It dawned on me then that the other tv had been black and white. In that moment of realization, I lost the ability to see the colors on the black and white tv. The beginning became a void that swallowed the beauty that surrounded me.
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