The Long Journey Through Night, III: The Masks of God

I cannot speak of what the absolute is. So I can’t speak of faith or my beliefs in any concrete way. I would describe myself as a devout, militant agnostic. I reside powerfully in the sublime realization that I do not know, that I cannot know.

So I have no concept of what THE Divine looks like. But I know what my life’s narrative feels like to me. So, at times, I gain a feeling of what MY Divine might look like. In that moment of time, at that place.

For much of my adult life, when I closed my eyes and saw the Universe as I felt it must be when it looked upon me, I saw a circle of my ancestors, arrayed around me. Like a council where I had the talking stick, or a dance jam where they were all gathered to cheer me on. My grandparents were arrayed behind me, their hands on my shoulders, offering strength.

That image formed slowly over time; pieces fell into place as years progressed.

When I hit the rough patch of my 30s, the image stopped working. A circle around me, as I stood in place. There was no movement anywhere. The circle hemmed me in. And I have no idea what my ancestors all look like. So mostly it was a featureless circle of silhouettes. Silhouettes not unlike the silhouette of panic I awoke to at night, when I startled from nightmares as a child. And my grandparents in my mind’s eye offered encouragement, but no drive or direction or strength. So, they were really nothing like my grandparents in the world, but such is the limitation of a child’s perspective, which is the only one I really ever had of them.

As it stopped feeling right, I let my image of the divine go. And another one swooped in on me. It had been materializing for years. But it was still a shock when it arrived.