So Huge

Last week, the Abbess and I were relishing a long conversation with our one-time disciple, Jacquelina, who has long since snatched the pebble from our hands. She recounted for us her long-held belief which she had only later in life discovered not to be so. “I used to think,” she said, “that as we reach adulthood, we cease to experience laughter which is reserved for children." She told us it was only through her experience at Lillyfield that she came to question her long held belief. As her understanding was evolving, she had mentioned it to a doctor friend of hers who said, "Yeah. You believed that because it's true." Jacquelina was surprised, even shocked, to learn that she had not been the only one with such a belief structure. It was hard for me to imagine. My personal experience had been the polar opposite. One of my fondest childhood memories was of my dad's laughter, mingling with my own as he would pin me to the floor with his big foot on my chest, bellowing, "No one can escape from the strongest man in the world." It was an endearing frolic I reprised to the delight of my own children in time.

Adults don’t laugh. How silly, I thought. How could one believe such a notion. Then, Holy Spirit seemed to giggle in my ear while retrieving a random memory for me to consider. Holy Spirit tends to fancy doing that, it seems. At some point in my formative years, I had learnt the term “shooting star.” While an actual glimpse of this celestial phenomenon was rare in the suburban light-polluted skies of my youth, I was nonetheless fully convinced what a shooting star was. I don’t recall how I knew, but I knew quite well that this streak of light occurs when a distant star burns out and streams across the sky with its last breath of life. I knew it for sure to be so and assumed it to be common knowledge.

Then I found myself living under the unpolluted skies of the island of Ile Royale. Regularly I began to witness these burned-out stars in their last gasp of life streaking across the sky. But something didn't seem to add up to my now adult mind with its understanding of time and space. I questioned how a star so distant could traverse the light years of space across the vast galaxies in a matter of a second or two. I began to reevaluate this long-held truth and came to understand more accurately that this light show was actually a small, rapidly moving meteor, or debris burning up on entering the earth’s atmosphere. How could I have believed something for so long that wasn't true. It seemed silly now.

This reevaluation of long-held beliefs is a perfectly natural and wonderful human experience which, if we remain curious, can continue throughout this life as I imagine it might throughout the next life as well.

Why, even the Abbess and I, after nearly 50 years of marital bliss can still be quite surprised with what we discover about one another. Perhaps not daily as once was the case, but not infrequently either.

Reevaluating what we know to be true about laughter or shooting stars or even the people we live with can be quite enlightening.

It has been said, "It ain't what I don't know that gets me into trouble. It's what I know for sure that just ain't so."

Nowhere is this axiom more true than in what I know for sure about God.

As my personal journey of reevaluation is unfolding I am discovering the omnipresent Trinity to be vastly more loving, more compassionate, more inclusive, more forgiving, more inviting, more approachable, more kind, more patient, more gentle and just plain more fun than I had previously known them to be. So much so in fact that I am certain the former me would declare the current me a delusional heretic.   

Perhaps. But if so, then a delusional heretic more in love with God, and more in awe of his majesty, than ever before.

His majesty. Ah yes.

I am reminded of a dream. More than a dream, really…A life-long mysterious experience. For as long as I can remember, I have had a recurring dream. Not every night. Not even every month. But from time to time at random intervals, I would experience a huge, I mean massively huge indescribable substance, lowering down onto my chest, where it would come to rest. It was as big as the biggest planet I could imagine with an ever so slight curve to the bottom so that I was aware of its gigantic roundness.

It did not crush me, though I was aware that it certainly would have had it continued to descend. Instead, it took my breath away. I would always awake to hear myself, muttering the only word that I could find to explain the experience… "huge." I would hear myself repeating. "That is so huge." I was not terrified so much as I was breathtakingly paralyzed with awe. I always would find myself in a cold sweat attempting to regain my composure from the experience for several moments until the sensation subsided.

I had always wondered what this could possibly be but had long ago given up trying to understand it. In my later years I would wake up to the Abbess at my side and declare, “It was so huge again last night.”

One day, a voice from deep within me asked, “Would you like to know what that is?” I almost couldn’t believe my ears. It had been more than half a century. “Yes. Of course I would like to know. Please, what is it?”

Silence for a few long moments.

Then, with a tinge of glee, the voice said, “It’s my big toe.”

“Your big toe!” I exclaimed. “That’s your big toe?!?” Then you are so…HUGE!”

Tears filled my eyes as I was suddenly drenched with the awesome awareness that if the God who lives in me is that huge, and he is my friend, then I would never ever have anything to fear.

I could almost hear him laughing and bellowing, “No one can escape from the strongest god in the universe!”