Thank you for sharing this. I am constantly hungry for these kinds of stories, exactly these kinds. Full of credulity and doubt and wonder and frustration. I have not had an experience like this, but I’ve held fast the hope that they are real regardless. When I read words like the ones you wrought with such integrity and humility and awareness, that hope gets new strength.
I believe more stories like these will emerge, increasingly many, until the apologies start to feel less necessary, until transcendence itself starts to seem almost normal, almost inevitable. At least for those who have eyes to see, and ears to hear.
I'm at work right now, and I can't stop crying. I just can't. I'm doing that weird thing women do when they don't want their mascara to run- holding my fingers under my eyes. Gah!!
I think I saw an angel once, when I was working in the hospital as a nursing student. I used to work in the mornings, doing vitals and baths before going to class at 9:00. I would go back to the oncology unit around 8:00 p.m., this time reversing it and getting everyone settled for the night.
Anyway- we had a new admit from the post partum unit. I was told she had just had a stillborn baby and been diagnosed with leukemia. I went into her room to get her vital signs, and when I looked at her, I was struck with terror. She was sitting at the edge of her bed, and sort of looked like she was glowing. And I felt like you would if you came upon an alien. I knew she was Other- that she was powerful and holy. I bolted out of the room. I still can't explain this madness. I don't know why I thought those things.
After gathering myself, I went back in. She looked more like a regular woman this time, and had a small smile. She was still intimidating- but it was manageable. She had dialed it down.
The next time I came into work, she was gone. Her name was Regina.
Incredible piece. I have also felt the presence of God, and felt and feel much the same way about it. I never argue about it with anyone, why would I? It's like arguing with someone who is colorblind that blue and green are different colors. If you've seen, then you've seen. I can't explain it either, but it changed my life, and, like you, I do connect the awe I felt when my son was born to the experience.
I also felt comfort in knowing that I was always held, even in my darkest moments. It's difficult to talk about becuase it sounds like madness, but I can't deny what I experienced.
"The greatest proof in my mind that Jesus spoke something like the truth is that it’s very difficult to take the bits he actually said and make them funny."
Nadia Bolz-Weber led me here. I have read a long list of NDE stories, and yours ranks up there as one of the most resonant with me. Thank you for being willing to awkwardly speak your real story, and if a pile of apologies helped you do it, then bless the apologies.
You're also a hell of a writer. I hope you write books. Lots of them.
Wonderful, and wonderful timing for me personally! Congratulations on your growing family, who are lucky to have someone intellectually (and morally and emotionally) brave and honorable in their midst.
Nadia Bolz-Weber suggested this read. I'm happy to have obliged. I experienced similar to you. Your descriptive talent is admirable. This God visit was in a night time Al-anon meeting in the annex of a Lutheran church in Hilo, Hawaii. I was in a children's classroom with crayon art and finger paintings on walls above the book shelves. "Experienced" is not the best adjective. I "lived" similar. Not an NDE and not a beloved ancestor reaching out but a timeless, space-less gathering of gold light, sparkling light, vibrant and full of Love. God pierced the veil but I didn't come to that conclusion until years later. This benevolent, accepting light took over from the light of the florescent bulbs in that evening meeting where fourteen of us gathered to heal from our brokenness. The Light was Love Itself. At the time I didn't know I was experiencing God.
Like you, my childhood was gasoline poured on a dumpster fire and I had been stuck inside. When I was 12, just before my Barmitzvah, I walked out to the end of an ocean jetty. It was made of huge boulders piled up to prevent erosion in a town called Carlsbad. I walked and jumped over the gaps until I found the end where the waves crashed and I looked up and told God to F*ck off. I had been molested by my older step brother and neither parent, though both knowing what happened, came to my side. I became an atheist. Life didn't get better. It stayed miserably the same until I left for college.
In that 12-Step room was a woman who was my cosmic mirror. No other way to explain it. When she put herself down by saying things like, "I'm so stupid", I would say, in my mind, "Judy, you're not stupid. You are a child of God". As I said those words, they reverberated back to me as, "Robert, your not stupid, you're a child of God". Then I saw Angels on either side of her. They were, now that I have had time to reflect, a mirror image of myself. They were My Angels. I didn't have money for a therapist but I did think I was going insane.
Just before this happened, I had recovered from a rare parasite that had invaded my spinal chord and brain. I survived but painfully so. Then, unrelated to that illness, while driving one night from Hilo town to Pahoa, the bright idea of running off the road and killing myself seemed like a great idea. Probably the darkest moment of my life. Three times I went to that darkest of black places and three times I was pulled out wondering how I got there in the first place. Six months later God broke silence and pierced the veil to let me know that perfection is not what we suppose it to be.
Thank you for your essay. Just because I had this illumination doesn't mean I can call it back. It is a remembrance and like any blissful engagement, it likes to be bolstered by other's stories of Love reaching out and squeezing our hearts.
Wow! So many people choose to proselytize after experiencing such things, using jargon to describe and interpret what’s happened to them. I appreciate your honesty and your refusal to try to tell others how to think about it. It makes sense that I would have found you through Lydia Bolz-Weber.
I did some deep breathwork at the yoga studio a few weeks ago. I may or may not have seen God. I refuse to elaborate. The emotions attendant were quite excellent.
Hell of a story. Thanks for writing a beautiful ode to the John’s and Joe’s and Bill’s of the world. Some of my favorite people. Some of my favorite wordsmiths.
Hey. I’m a follower of Jesus and I just want to say- none of this is weird to me. At all.
I think smart progressive people (generally my folks) do ourselves a huge disservice by creating a mental framework of ‘the supernatural is for those folks not us’.
I loved reading your experience.
And. . .There’s more out there. There are other smart skeptical people who’ve had visions and experienced signs and wonders. There’s a lot of good life. Abundant life. And pain. And love.
Seek and you’ll find. I wonder if something (maybe the same something that led you to remind your readers how embarrassing and weird this all is,countless times in this essay?) is keeping you from seeking.
Praying for that ‘something’ to get quieter and for the seeking urge to get stronger. Because . . .yeah. Just because.
I try not to think about these things, but the head-spinning question for the eye-rollers is, how did something come from nothing?
I was thinking on that thought last December, since the fabric of society is sort of circling close to nothing these days, and we have to find a way to build something out of that again. I was also reading a portable Coleridge collection - I think you might enjoy such a paperback very much. I have usual habits of coffee and the littlest piffs of marijuana you've seen a guy take, plus I'd gotten a little handle of whiskey to take pictures with. I walked to the park on a freezing day, circled once around a statue of Lincoln, smoked a piff behind a tree in a grove, and I saw a very important duck that was totally still, and an old gray Volvo driven by a person who must have been old, turning slowly around a corner. Two or three days before that, I had an odd incident where I was nearly having a panic attack about the state of the world - you know, all the people doing horrible things to other people - and from my window I saw lightning strike twice, from a blue sky, with no thunder. A few weeks ago my girlfriend & I hiked up a mountain and I found a really cool stick laying on the peak. I sensed that it was Important.
So there's my entry. Nuts, huh? I took a picture of the duck, but as it turned out, that was the last frame on my camera - I went to take a picture of the old gray Volvo, because I like cars. I knew I was out of film, but I clicked the shutter anyway, to show that I would've taken a picture of his cool car - and the duck appears to be a duck, indeed. I don't know anything more than that I saw two things that day that seemed Important. Now I do feel about that way about lots of things normally, but Coleridge sort of put me in a different mood - if you want something to try on the replicability front, that would be my advice.
I've done acid a few times - it's wild, but sensible, for thinkers. I met my girlfriend on my first dose, and I'm pretty sure she's real, or at least, it would be a real trip if she wasn't. As for near death experiences, I had a slight nailbiter swimming out to a floating dock once - I'd just eaten and was pretty out of shape at the time. My younger sister had to get me a boogie board so I could kick myself back. (She had no issue with the swim.) When I was back on the shore I vomited up a whopping roast beef & cheddar bagel. I started running a little so I wouldn't be quite that aerobically helpless and I don't eat quite so much beef in a sitting now.
It's hard to get across that I don't find anything here to be discordant with anything I ever thought. How did something come from nothing? Why does observation affect matter? What is the stuff of thought? Who knows. There are mysteries. e: Oh, and to balance that with profanity, mine's thicker than my wrist.
Because Nadia Bolz Weber said to read this, I did. Good advice!
You got me crying ❤️
Damn. I'm an atheist and this piece just blew me away. It deserves to be read.
Astonishing. Just absolutely astonishing. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing this. I am constantly hungry for these kinds of stories, exactly these kinds. Full of credulity and doubt and wonder and frustration. I have not had an experience like this, but I’ve held fast the hope that they are real regardless. When I read words like the ones you wrought with such integrity and humility and awareness, that hope gets new strength.
I believe more stories like these will emerge, increasingly many, until the apologies start to feel less necessary, until transcendence itself starts to seem almost normal, almost inevitable. At least for those who have eyes to see, and ears to hear.
Holy crap, Some Guy.
I'm at work right now, and I can't stop crying. I just can't. I'm doing that weird thing women do when they don't want their mascara to run- holding my fingers under my eyes. Gah!!
I think I saw an angel once, when I was working in the hospital as a nursing student. I used to work in the mornings, doing vitals and baths before going to class at 9:00. I would go back to the oncology unit around 8:00 p.m., this time reversing it and getting everyone settled for the night.
Anyway- we had a new admit from the post partum unit. I was told she had just had a stillborn baby and been diagnosed with leukemia. I went into her room to get her vital signs, and when I looked at her, I was struck with terror. She was sitting at the edge of her bed, and sort of looked like she was glowing. And I felt like you would if you came upon an alien. I knew she was Other- that she was powerful and holy. I bolted out of the room. I still can't explain this madness. I don't know why I thought those things.
After gathering myself, I went back in. She looked more like a regular woman this time, and had a small smile. She was still intimidating- but it was manageable. She had dialed it down.
The next time I came into work, she was gone. Her name was Regina.
Thank you for your story- I loved it.
Incredible piece. I have also felt the presence of God, and felt and feel much the same way about it. I never argue about it with anyone, why would I? It's like arguing with someone who is colorblind that blue and green are different colors. If you've seen, then you've seen. I can't explain it either, but it changed my life, and, like you, I do connect the awe I felt when my son was born to the experience.
I also felt comfort in knowing that I was always held, even in my darkest moments. It's difficult to talk about becuase it sounds like madness, but I can't deny what I experienced.
Thanks for writing about the ineffable.
"The greatest proof in my mind that Jesus spoke something like the truth is that it’s very difficult to take the bits he actually said and make them funny."
Challenge accepted! (It's already outlined.)
Nadia Bolz-Weber led me here. I have read a long list of NDE stories, and yours ranks up there as one of the most resonant with me. Thank you for being willing to awkwardly speak your real story, and if a pile of apologies helped you do it, then bless the apologies.
You're also a hell of a writer. I hope you write books. Lots of them.
Just wow!! Amazing, and beautifully articulated for something ineffable. Thank you for the handful of ocean, Guy.
Wonderful, and wonderful timing for me personally! Congratulations on your growing family, who are lucky to have someone intellectually (and morally and emotionally) brave and honorable in their midst.
Nadia Bolz-Weber suggested this read. I'm happy to have obliged. I experienced similar to you. Your descriptive talent is admirable. This God visit was in a night time Al-anon meeting in the annex of a Lutheran church in Hilo, Hawaii. I was in a children's classroom with crayon art and finger paintings on walls above the book shelves. "Experienced" is not the best adjective. I "lived" similar. Not an NDE and not a beloved ancestor reaching out but a timeless, space-less gathering of gold light, sparkling light, vibrant and full of Love. God pierced the veil but I didn't come to that conclusion until years later. This benevolent, accepting light took over from the light of the florescent bulbs in that evening meeting where fourteen of us gathered to heal from our brokenness. The Light was Love Itself. At the time I didn't know I was experiencing God.
Like you, my childhood was gasoline poured on a dumpster fire and I had been stuck inside. When I was 12, just before my Barmitzvah, I walked out to the end of an ocean jetty. It was made of huge boulders piled up to prevent erosion in a town called Carlsbad. I walked and jumped over the gaps until I found the end where the waves crashed and I looked up and told God to F*ck off. I had been molested by my older step brother and neither parent, though both knowing what happened, came to my side. I became an atheist. Life didn't get better. It stayed miserably the same until I left for college.
In that 12-Step room was a woman who was my cosmic mirror. No other way to explain it. When she put herself down by saying things like, "I'm so stupid", I would say, in my mind, "Judy, you're not stupid. You are a child of God". As I said those words, they reverberated back to me as, "Robert, your not stupid, you're a child of God". Then I saw Angels on either side of her. They were, now that I have had time to reflect, a mirror image of myself. They were My Angels. I didn't have money for a therapist but I did think I was going insane.
Just before this happened, I had recovered from a rare parasite that had invaded my spinal chord and brain. I survived but painfully so. Then, unrelated to that illness, while driving one night from Hilo town to Pahoa, the bright idea of running off the road and killing myself seemed like a great idea. Probably the darkest moment of my life. Three times I went to that darkest of black places and three times I was pulled out wondering how I got there in the first place. Six months later God broke silence and pierced the veil to let me know that perfection is not what we suppose it to be.
Thank you for your essay. Just because I had this illumination doesn't mean I can call it back. It is a remembrance and like any blissful engagement, it likes to be bolstered by other's stories of Love reaching out and squeezing our hearts.
Wow! So many people choose to proselytize after experiencing such things, using jargon to describe and interpret what’s happened to them. I appreciate your honesty and your refusal to try to tell others how to think about it. It makes sense that I would have found you through Lydia Bolz-Weber.
Fuckin’…ok dude.
I miss my blue collar co workers.
I did some deep breathwork at the yoga studio a few weeks ago. I may or may not have seen God. I refuse to elaborate. The emotions attendant were quite excellent.
Hell of a story. Thanks for writing a beautiful ode to the John’s and Joe’s and Bill’s of the world. Some of my favorite people. Some of my favorite wordsmiths.
Hey. I’m a follower of Jesus and I just want to say- none of this is weird to me. At all.
I think smart progressive people (generally my folks) do ourselves a huge disservice by creating a mental framework of ‘the supernatural is for those folks not us’.
I loved reading your experience.
And. . .There’s more out there. There are other smart skeptical people who’ve had visions and experienced signs and wonders. There’s a lot of good life. Abundant life. And pain. And love.
Seek and you’ll find. I wonder if something (maybe the same something that led you to remind your readers how embarrassing and weird this all is,countless times in this essay?) is keeping you from seeking.
Praying for that ‘something’ to get quieter and for the seeking urge to get stronger. Because . . .yeah. Just because.
I try not to think about these things, but the head-spinning question for the eye-rollers is, how did something come from nothing?
I was thinking on that thought last December, since the fabric of society is sort of circling close to nothing these days, and we have to find a way to build something out of that again. I was also reading a portable Coleridge collection - I think you might enjoy such a paperback very much. I have usual habits of coffee and the littlest piffs of marijuana you've seen a guy take, plus I'd gotten a little handle of whiskey to take pictures with. I walked to the park on a freezing day, circled once around a statue of Lincoln, smoked a piff behind a tree in a grove, and I saw a very important duck that was totally still, and an old gray Volvo driven by a person who must have been old, turning slowly around a corner. Two or three days before that, I had an odd incident where I was nearly having a panic attack about the state of the world - you know, all the people doing horrible things to other people - and from my window I saw lightning strike twice, from a blue sky, with no thunder. A few weeks ago my girlfriend & I hiked up a mountain and I found a really cool stick laying on the peak. I sensed that it was Important.
So there's my entry. Nuts, huh? I took a picture of the duck, but as it turned out, that was the last frame on my camera - I went to take a picture of the old gray Volvo, because I like cars. I knew I was out of film, but I clicked the shutter anyway, to show that I would've taken a picture of his cool car - and the duck appears to be a duck, indeed. I don't know anything more than that I saw two things that day that seemed Important. Now I do feel about that way about lots of things normally, but Coleridge sort of put me in a different mood - if you want something to try on the replicability front, that would be my advice.
I've done acid a few times - it's wild, but sensible, for thinkers. I met my girlfriend on my first dose, and I'm pretty sure she's real, or at least, it would be a real trip if she wasn't. As for near death experiences, I had a slight nailbiter swimming out to a floating dock once - I'd just eaten and was pretty out of shape at the time. My younger sister had to get me a boogie board so I could kick myself back. (She had no issue with the swim.) When I was back on the shore I vomited up a whopping roast beef & cheddar bagel. I started running a little so I wouldn't be quite that aerobically helpless and I don't eat quite so much beef in a sitting now.
It's hard to get across that I don't find anything here to be discordant with anything I ever thought. How did something come from nothing? Why does observation affect matter? What is the stuff of thought? Who knows. There are mysteries. e: Oh, and to balance that with profanity, mine's thicker than my wrist.