Imagine to Remember

Despite a very religious upbringing I do not know God. What I know, what I have are a set of facts that I learned first as child and later through my own study, but this is purely cerebral, academic. It lacks what is essential. I can, for example, recite verses and passages. I can explain various theological positions. But my heart grew heavy as I came to understand that this information was no substitute for that which I, and which we all, whether or not we know it, whether or not we are willing to admit it, actually seek. In the Temple of My Familiar, Alice Walker writes that “The God discovered on one’s own speaks nothing of turning the other cheek. Of rendering unto Caesar. But only of the beauty and greatness of the earth, the universe, the cosmos. Of creation. Of the possibilities for joy.” And I have yet to discover this God.⁣
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I have had my glimpses, my moments of joy and the intuition that there is something just behind the veil that separates worlds. What Emily in Emily of New Moon calls “flashes” those moments where she is bestowed with a sudden awareness that she “was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty” where she can only briefly hear the “unearthly music” from beyond the veil. These moments, fleeting as they maybe, are my only proof. I am not crazy, things are not as they seem, and other people have sensed this same truth.⁣
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