Lying in the Grass, Looking Up

Memories of God #1

Sometime in my preschool years (before we transferred from the country church to the town church), a Sunday school teacher commented that God was not an old man with a big gray beard, but was a spirit that was everyone all at once. Seems like a heavy idea to be laying on preschoolers, but this comment stayed with me.

Sometime later (that week? that month? I don't remember), I was in our backyard, lying in the grass and watching clouds. I was thinking about what that Sunday school teacher said. I don't know that it's fair to say a preschooler was "meditating" but I was definitely trying to wrap my young mind around that idea.

Then, at once, I was aware that God was in the grass under me, in the pecan tree a few yards from me, in the crepe myrtle next to me, in the clouds way above me, all around me. God was in the air that moved about me.

It would be 20 years or more before I knew that this was called a "mystical experience."

But it remains foundational in my faith. In my life. The world is shoot through with God.

This is one way I understand the Reign of God is at hand.