If you have never felt the crispness of the night air and smelled the strong scent of pine high in California’s Sierra; if you have never huddled close to a crackling, open campfire and watched the sparks swirl into the sky and disappear among stars so close; you may not understand how I could feel myself so small and God so large. Feel it. Sense it. Experience it. My insignificance. God’s vastness.
But I was there, one brisk late summer evening, collar turned up against the cold. The darkness had dropped a curtain around me, thick and heavy. I had to look up. Up at the suns and the constellations. Up. And then down. Down at the flickering fire in front of me. Down at the book, flat, open before me.
In the faint and dancing light I strained to read: “He saved others, but he can’t save himself! ... Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe him.”
Why had I taken a Bible with me? My faith was in flux. God had seemed distant. Had I distanced him? What prompted me to pull the Bible out of the car, then, that night? And why did my eyes fall on Saint Matthew’s account of the crucifixion, chapter 27? And why did I feel so strange a sense of ... of participation in what I was reading?
“From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice. ... ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”
I looked up from the book and stared off into the darkness. What was I thinking? What was I feeling? I was at that moment feeling sorry for Jesus. Sorry for him and angry at those who mocked him, spat on him, bashed his head with rods, nailed him to the timbers. Everything was out of control, and it felt so profoundly unjust.
“When Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split.”
The next words perplexed me. Were things out of control?
“The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
“When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, ‘Surely he was the Son of God!’”
And that’s precisely how I felt as I finished the story, closed the book and stared again first a the fire and then at the endless expanse of space above me.
I felt small. God felt large. Large, but now also strangely close.
What was this experience? These High Sierra feelings? Simply emotionalism? “Yes,” some would say, “unchecked emotions.” I’m not so sure.
This much I will grant. Several years later, in retrospect, I wouldn’t necessarily stake my whole religious experience on one evening’s reading one cold night, above the valley, away from the commonplace. But on the other hand, I would argue with anyone who would write off the experience as mere sensationalism and untamed emotion.
Perhaps I felt God so strongly because for once I had met him on his turf — nature — away from the silliness of the city and the distraction of life and my preoccupation with how I was perceived by those around me.
Also, this was not the only time I sensed God’s vastness and closeness simultaneously. Later, I would often walk southern California’s beach, feeling wet sand under my bare feet and white foam washing around my ankles as I inhaled the salt air. And occasionally, when I was all alone, I would talk to God — sometimes out loud — as I walked along the shore.
Christians refer to such one-way conversation as “prayer.” That sounds formal and ritualistic. To me, at those times, it was just conversation. Conversation often punctuated with question marks. I wondered what God was up to. Why I sometimes felt disappointment or faced “unanswered prayer.” I had a friend who died. I was betrayed by someone I trusted. I felt strong guilt over my moral shortcomings.
God listened to my complaints and questions about all of this, and I have no reason to believe he was anything less than patient with it all. My faith grew stronger. God and I gradually became closer friends, which may sound audacious, but it feels wonderful. I had thought of myself as “Christian” for several years, but as my acquaintance with God grew, I felt many of my doubts begin to melt ... or at least diminish in importance compared to the things that now seemed certain.
Maybe it’s my poetic nature, but I like to imagine it was God prompting me to fetch my Bible out of the Chevy that brisk night high in the Sierra. I like to think of the wind of his Spirit blowing the book open, fanning the pages to Matthew’s Gospel. I like to visualize God reading the story to me by the firelight, under his canopy of stars.
I don’t understand all the mystical details. But I know this: That black late summer night, with my Bible open before me and with the infinity of space stretching out above me, I was not alone.
Nor have I been since.
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