I've been thinking of my comments about meeting God. Then an old friend of mine, probably the most spiritual person I know (even if she goes in for all that Angels and Miracles kind of talk,) wrote me about reading my blog on above said comments. "What do you mean "IF?"" Yeah that's true. Technically, I have met God. Of course, I still would like to meet God over a nice nosh at a good deli. The last time was a surprise. God met me in late March on a frozen lake just off California Highway 4, somewhere in or around the northwest edge of the Carson Iceberg Wilderness. Looking back now on some maps, it had to be close to Ebbets Pass. Of course, I've never been sure if it was late March or Early April, but then of course, the details are helpful, but I'm happier remembering the impact of the experience.
Okay, I'm sure your asking yourself what the hell was I doing on Highway 4 late March, in the Sierra Nevadas at the end of the winter. The question presses more when I illuminate that I lived in Southern California on the edge of the High Desert, on the blue collar bastions at the fringe of the Great LA Sprawl. So what was I doing there? Hey, I'd like to know that. So I best answer it then. The memory has been leaking through, and been wanting to make me see that experience again.
My habit since my first set of wheels was to spend evenings wandering out past the borders of the city, and randomly drive the backwaters and scenic highways after dark. Head out just before dark, get back just before light. But it wasn't until I moved to Redlands that I began to master these evening drives. I could go over the mountains, come back around through the high desert passes, and end up cutting across suburbs until I hit beach. And then in 1996, there were many reasons to be driving. Most of them dealt with the questions formed as I think I finally first decided that I would be who I wanted to be, not who others wanted me to be. (Actually that really started after puking all over myself in the bathroom of San Bernardino's only passable British pub, but that is another story.) But I was in college, and spontaneous as these drives were, I never went farther than set points on the map, and always made sure to be back home before or at sunrise. That is, I never did, until late March of 1996.
I was full of nervous energy after the event at the pub, and I couldn't channel it in the usual ways. So I figured a really long drive was in order... I'd cut over the San Bernardino Mountains, drive through the desert and behind the Angeles range, until I'd come to the foot of the Sierra Nevadas and turn back at the point of no return on the 395, which was the 178 to Bakersfield. Going any further on the 395 meant committing to driving basically until Nevada. Even at that point in the year, most of the park roads or small highways were still closed for the season, or because the season wouldn't reopen for the season. I broke a couple laws wearing the earphone beads to listen to my portable tape player, since there was no radio in my beloved basic Toyota Tercel. The first few hours were uneventful, and around 2 AM, I was coming up on my cutoff on the 395. Also I knew I didn't have enough gas to really go any further without the promise of after-hours fueling. I took my phones off and stopped for that staple roadtrip food, beef jerkey at some podunk general store. I stood in the chilly parking lot and looked up the highway into the mountains. And then I said, "Keep going." Well, not me, really.. more a voice inside my head that spoke in my voice. I can recall hearing that little voice before, usually telling me to not do what I am going to do and will lead to people pointing at you and sniggering for an unnecessarily long number of months. And usually it was right. But this was the first time, I listened. And it wasn't a choice, really.. it was just like something I should do, and I did it. I climbed into my car and didn't turn back.
Not like the "choice" went over with flowers and cake. I had an important essay due the day after next. My Tercel was only a few months old, and I hadn't tested it on any really long trips for real rate of gas consumption. But that little Teddy Roosevelt kept saying to take that hill, and I had to believe in my steed. I drove on through the night, keeping myself awake with the old head out the window. They say that if you pray enough, you might see God. Maybe that is the missing factor. I prayed with my whole being as I passed through mountain towns with their sidewalks rolled up. I prayed with a fervor I never showed on Yom Kippur as I came down toward Nevada, with no habitation in sight. "Oh, mighty mighty are you, O Lord. Oh Ruler of the Universe, I beseech you, do not let me run out of gas in the middle of nowhere at 5 in the morning." Whether it was the Will of God, or the Super Unleaded I had decided to spend a few more dollars on, I made it through those mountains. Even for a Sunday night/Monday morning, it was startling how little traffic was there, and I coasted into a fuel stop at a low-end border casino on Topaz Lake. My relief was so great, and the view of the lake from the restaurant so dazzling, that I ignored how lousy was the 8 dollar breakfast special.
One of the sharpest things that morning, was that my mind was even clearer than the perfect blue sky. I'd been driving with very limited breaks for close to twelve hours. with no stops even for that insistent bane of male biology for the last four hours. Beyond the crap breakfast, I had been consisted on the miracle libation, the New Gods ambrosia, Coca-Cola, and processed meat snacks, but yet I had not had a total sugar crash meltdown. A few questions asked and a now much abused map of California searched, I was left with a handful of passes that were clear and easy, even if looked like it had snowed only the day before. You can always tell a cyncic on the road. He's the one who's driving on a perfect day and wondering if it can be too perfect. But onward I had to go. I slipped some J.S. Bach into the Walkman and turned off the 89 onto the 4.
I grew up in Texas, so the only snow I'd seen for real was the rare fall of wet flakes that never stuck. Then I moved into the mountains of Southern California, where there was snow, but it was nasty mushy stuff that was grey before it even hit the ground, and blackened by the hour. So, I'd never really seen snow. But what I saw as I climbed higher on the highway was snow. Feet of perfect crystalline water, undisturbed by any feet or wheel marks since they fell. The morning sunlight was catching against the snow in just that way that it looked like etheric diamonds were strewn by a great lazy hand. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #1 was filling my ears and I didn't get a few of those dramatically places drops leaking down the cheeks, I got the "Great Teton Dam Break Disaster" sort of thing. There was no-one, simply no-one. I've always bickered over why mysticism is mark by its ineffibility, but right then, I understood you can't always convey meaning to another, when you've slipt from time and space. I drove along, weeping at the completeness of the scene before me. A moment of pure beauty, so striking because how much I had denied myself the possibility of it. Maybe not so much beauty, but purity. If I had seen that alone, that day, that would have been enough. But as I've been known to say, "The Universe doesn't alert me to truth with a glad hand, but with a dropped piano."
I've never been one to put much umbrage in psychic powers. Oh, sure, I've been known to have a precognitive dream now and again, but usually all they do is alert me about a time when my fly is open on a job interview. The same spiritual friend says I am a powerhouse, a dynamo of mental energies, but for me, I have only one true and important ability. Psychic packing. I'm sure I am not alone in this. I think I might have inherited from my Jewish mother, and her stereotypical purse of hyperutility. It's not a packrat thing. Packrats just keep things they think they might need later on. a Psychic Packer has to keep things because he or she knows they are NEEDED. Case in point. I hadn't been living in the SB Mountains for a couple years, and my new home was in easy-winter valley basin, yet when my last Tercel became an over-grown paperweight, I still couldn't bring myself to not transfer my old pair of Sorel snow-boots to the new Tercel. Then, the little voice told me to pull over into the driveway of some vacant summer homes on the edge of a flat spread of snow over what was either a field or a body of water. The taps turned down inside my eyes and I climbed into those boots. But as I walked farther and farther from my car, over a berm, and into the middle of that untouched field of snow, I was weeping with another explosive burst of joy. I stopped nearly in the middle and that is when I met God.
Now, when I say I met God, it wasn't like a bursting of the divine light and singing of the angels, or a momentous intellectual realization of the truth of a higher being. I'd long given up on the God as the "cosmic muffin or hairy thunderer." F. Buckminster Fuller once said something definitive about the divine, "God is not a noun. God is a verb." God is not the force, God is a force. A unified dynamic universe, where everything and everyone are connected. That's what I wanted to feel, what I still fight everyday to feel. The connection. And as I threw my arms out, with the sparkling snow, the sky's blue that was the meaning of blue, and for the first time, I knew it. I hadn't met God, but I sure as hell got a direct line to God's operating board. For that one moment, I felt myself in contact with everything, and I knew the big hope. The hope that I really did belong... somewhere.. in this wacky cosmos. And hope is enough for faith. So as I finally walked back to my car, I walked with faith. And laughter. Always laughter. I guess I understood then, another thing.. that there was a place in the infinite for me, and that only made this a much funnier universe. It's something I've always wanted, to laugh because I just know something. I don't doubt it, not at the core. That's even funnier, because I can't dislodge something from inside me, and for once, I don't want to.
I looked for a pay phone to share what had happened, but found only one, and I had three quarters. So I drove on down through to Angel's Camp, and finally to the Interstate 5 with a straight-shot into LA and then San Bernardino. It was so lucid for me that day. I drove home, adding together a trip time of 25 hours, stopped for coffee where my friends hung out, and still finished the essay before I passed out. Yeah, I met God.. and God is a verb.
Okay, I'm sure your asking yourself what the hell was I doing on Highway 4 late March, in the Sierra Nevadas at the end of the winter. The question presses more when I illuminate that I lived in Southern California on the edge of the High Desert, on the blue collar bastions at the fringe of the Great LA Sprawl. So what was I doing there? Hey, I'd like to know that. So I best answer it then. The memory has been leaking through, and been wanting to make me see that experience again.
My habit since my first set of wheels was to spend evenings wandering out past the borders of the city, and randomly drive the backwaters and scenic highways after dark. Head out just before dark, get back just before light. But it wasn't until I moved to Redlands that I began to master these evening drives. I could go over the mountains, come back around through the high desert passes, and end up cutting across suburbs until I hit beach. And then in 1996, there were many reasons to be driving. Most of them dealt with the questions formed as I think I finally first decided that I would be who I wanted to be, not who others wanted me to be. (Actually that really started after puking all over myself in the bathroom of San Bernardino's only passable British pub, but that is another story.) But I was in college, and spontaneous as these drives were, I never went farther than set points on the map, and always made sure to be back home before or at sunrise. That is, I never did, until late March of 1996.
I was full of nervous energy after the event at the pub, and I couldn't channel it in the usual ways. So I figured a really long drive was in order... I'd cut over the San Bernardino Mountains, drive through the desert and behind the Angeles range, until I'd come to the foot of the Sierra Nevadas and turn back at the point of no return on the 395, which was the 178 to Bakersfield. Going any further on the 395 meant committing to driving basically until Nevada. Even at that point in the year, most of the park roads or small highways were still closed for the season, or because the season wouldn't reopen for the season. I broke a couple laws wearing the earphone beads to listen to my portable tape player, since there was no radio in my beloved basic Toyota Tercel. The first few hours were uneventful, and around 2 AM, I was coming up on my cutoff on the 395. Also I knew I didn't have enough gas to really go any further without the promise of after-hours fueling. I took my phones off and stopped for that staple roadtrip food, beef jerkey at some podunk general store. I stood in the chilly parking lot and looked up the highway into the mountains. And then I said, "Keep going." Well, not me, really.. more a voice inside my head that spoke in my voice. I can recall hearing that little voice before, usually telling me to not do what I am going to do and will lead to people pointing at you and sniggering for an unnecessarily long number of months. And usually it was right. But this was the first time, I listened. And it wasn't a choice, really.. it was just like something I should do, and I did it. I climbed into my car and didn't turn back.
Not like the "choice" went over with flowers and cake. I had an important essay due the day after next. My Tercel was only a few months old, and I hadn't tested it on any really long trips for real rate of gas consumption. But that little Teddy Roosevelt kept saying to take that hill, and I had to believe in my steed. I drove on through the night, keeping myself awake with the old head out the window. They say that if you pray enough, you might see God. Maybe that is the missing factor. I prayed with my whole being as I passed through mountain towns with their sidewalks rolled up. I prayed with a fervor I never showed on Yom Kippur as I came down toward Nevada, with no habitation in sight. "Oh, mighty mighty are you, O Lord. Oh Ruler of the Universe, I beseech you, do not let me run out of gas in the middle of nowhere at 5 in the morning." Whether it was the Will of God, or the Super Unleaded I had decided to spend a few more dollars on, I made it through those mountains. Even for a Sunday night/Monday morning, it was startling how little traffic was there, and I coasted into a fuel stop at a low-end border casino on Topaz Lake. My relief was so great, and the view of the lake from the restaurant so dazzling, that I ignored how lousy was the 8 dollar breakfast special.
One of the sharpest things that morning, was that my mind was even clearer than the perfect blue sky. I'd been driving with very limited breaks for close to twelve hours. with no stops even for that insistent bane of male biology for the last four hours. Beyond the crap breakfast, I had been consisted on the miracle libation, the New Gods ambrosia, Coca-Cola, and processed meat snacks, but yet I had not had a total sugar crash meltdown. A few questions asked and a now much abused map of California searched, I was left with a handful of passes that were clear and easy, even if looked like it had snowed only the day before. You can always tell a cyncic on the road. He's the one who's driving on a perfect day and wondering if it can be too perfect. But onward I had to go. I slipped some J.S. Bach into the Walkman and turned off the 89 onto the 4.
I grew up in Texas, so the only snow I'd seen for real was the rare fall of wet flakes that never stuck. Then I moved into the mountains of Southern California, where there was snow, but it was nasty mushy stuff that was grey before it even hit the ground, and blackened by the hour. So, I'd never really seen snow. But what I saw as I climbed higher on the highway was snow. Feet of perfect crystalline water, undisturbed by any feet or wheel marks since they fell. The morning sunlight was catching against the snow in just that way that it looked like etheric diamonds were strewn by a great lazy hand. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #1 was filling my ears and I didn't get a few of those dramatically places drops leaking down the cheeks, I got the "Great Teton Dam Break Disaster" sort of thing. There was no-one, simply no-one. I've always bickered over why mysticism is mark by its ineffibility, but right then, I understood you can't always convey meaning to another, when you've slipt from time and space. I drove along, weeping at the completeness of the scene before me. A moment of pure beauty, so striking because how much I had denied myself the possibility of it. Maybe not so much beauty, but purity. If I had seen that alone, that day, that would have been enough. But as I've been known to say, "The Universe doesn't alert me to truth with a glad hand, but with a dropped piano."
I've never been one to put much umbrage in psychic powers. Oh, sure, I've been known to have a precognitive dream now and again, but usually all they do is alert me about a time when my fly is open on a job interview. The same spiritual friend says I am a powerhouse, a dynamo of mental energies, but for me, I have only one true and important ability. Psychic packing. I'm sure I am not alone in this. I think I might have inherited from my Jewish mother, and her stereotypical purse of hyperutility. It's not a packrat thing. Packrats just keep things they think they might need later on. a Psychic Packer has to keep things because he or she knows they are NEEDED. Case in point. I hadn't been living in the SB Mountains for a couple years, and my new home was in easy-winter valley basin, yet when my last Tercel became an over-grown paperweight, I still couldn't bring myself to not transfer my old pair of Sorel snow-boots to the new Tercel. Then, the little voice told me to pull over into the driveway of some vacant summer homes on the edge of a flat spread of snow over what was either a field or a body of water. The taps turned down inside my eyes and I climbed into those boots. But as I walked farther and farther from my car, over a berm, and into the middle of that untouched field of snow, I was weeping with another explosive burst of joy. I stopped nearly in the middle and that is when I met God.
Now, when I say I met God, it wasn't like a bursting of the divine light and singing of the angels, or a momentous intellectual realization of the truth of a higher being. I'd long given up on the God as the "cosmic muffin or hairy thunderer." F. Buckminster Fuller once said something definitive about the divine, "God is not a noun. God is a verb." God is not the force, God is a force. A unified dynamic universe, where everything and everyone are connected. That's what I wanted to feel, what I still fight everyday to feel. The connection. And as I threw my arms out, with the sparkling snow, the sky's blue that was the meaning of blue, and for the first time, I knew it. I hadn't met God, but I sure as hell got a direct line to God's operating board. For that one moment, I felt myself in contact with everything, and I knew the big hope. The hope that I really did belong... somewhere.. in this wacky cosmos. And hope is enough for faith. So as I finally walked back to my car, I walked with faith. And laughter. Always laughter. I guess I understood then, another thing.. that there was a place in the infinite for me, and that only made this a much funnier universe. It's something I've always wanted, to laugh because I just know something. I don't doubt it, not at the core. That's even funnier, because I can't dislodge something from inside me, and for once, I don't want to.
I looked for a pay phone to share what had happened, but found only one, and I had three quarters. So I drove on down through to Angel's Camp, and finally to the Interstate 5 with a straight-shot into LA and then San Bernardino. It was so lucid for me that day. I drove home, adding together a trip time of 25 hours, stopped for coffee where my friends hung out, and still finished the essay before I passed out. Yeah, I met God.. and God is a verb.
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