Water and Light and Revelation

 one of my earliest memories. 

I'm riding in the back back of a hatchback on a wet night in East Lansing, Michigan in 1973 or 74.  The sensation of movement from this inverted angle intensifies the visual sensation of city lights refracted through the instable little dots of sliding water on the glass above me.

I am too young to know words like "mesmerizing" or "hypnotic" but I happily experienced some level of those along with elation. 

I have three thoughts while I lay there in awe.

1.) I will always remember this.

2.) This sensation / experience / revelation - whatever it is exceeds words.  I may never be able to talk about it.  It may always just stay inside of me which seems okay. 

And the third thought I can barely bring myself to type here.  It's outlandish and it's better whispered or if I could telepathically imprint it in your thoughts.  Because it wasn't a thought that I came up with -- it was just something given to me.  Revealed.

3.) THIS IS WHAT GOD LOOKS LIKE.  

The front seats were full of eager talking and I felt happily disconnected from it all.  Alone in this experience. 

I believe that I was in my twenties when I first recounted this as one of my earliest memories but not until this year did I ever say out loud the whole story. 

I could write a book about this memory.  Several.  One on epistemology.  Another on aesthetics.  A third on the angry snarling braided knot between science, faith, and public hopes for transcendence.

But not here. 

Instead I wish to bear witness to the way that suspended water,  mixes with light and maybe slight movement to awaken my heart, electrify my brain, inspire my soul with a sense of transcendence right here in the ordinary world.