Editorial: My First Time

I had a vision the summer after the seventh grade. I recount it below. Until reading William James, I bracketed this instance, this moment of exceptional clarity as apart and distinct from later and more overt experiences of God. This was natural. The moment lacked all theological content. It involved no beings loftier than myself and a girl from my English class. And it certainly did not happen in a church.

But no few of the events reported in the lectures that made up the Varieties of Religious Experience lack the same religious content. Some were in fact recounted by atheists. Given this, and given that the Spirit I now recognize seems deeply consonant with the energy of those few hours of my life, I now include my first vision with all the rest. They are one and the same, providing me with a deeper understanding of myself and my role in this world, and provoking me to learn still more.

Further, it is one of a string of encounters whose monumental import both stand apart from and influence all the minutes of my life. Things happen to us that are so great they flavor the way we encounter the remainder of our days. I suppose first sexual experiences might be such things. After them, we speak of having sexual lives. We have sexual thoughts, sexual impulses that flow as currents in the rivers of our consciousness. We can hardly experience anything without them.

It is no less so with spirit. So Anne, if you're still out there, thanks.

The moment came in the bed of my grandfather's pickup. The truck had a cap on it, over the bed. We were in the pickup going upstate to send our hunting licenses for that season. And I think it was because our Bronco was broke that we took my grandfather’s F150 and my pap drove and my dad sat in the passenger seat, and I sat for hours in the bed in the dark and tried to sleep but couldn’t, for the noise, and tried to talk to the guys up front and couldn’t because of the glass between us.

And I tried to stay awake to watch the lights go buy and couldn’t and lay down for a while to be comfortable, and couldn’t and tried to stay awake or asleep but the noise from the vibration of the truck was too much for either. We kept going and going and going so I just sat there through the thick August night neither hot or cold but the prickling, itchy place between, and I tried to sleep or stay awake or think about things or do any of it and my mind went blank and there was Anne Gority, the pale girl from my classes who sat behind me and was popular and always laughing, having fun.

And she was pretty, not in an obvious kind of way but in a haunting way like the moon on a lake or like music in your head the way I had found, that if my days held the rhythm of music, if I could catch the right tune in my head and let my mind fill with it, then I could be happy and the thoughts would pool inside me till they got clear all through. And suddenly she was there, right there, the girl who sat behind me in English and said how still I always sat:“Every time I look at you, you’re either sitting likethis,” she folded her legs Indian style “or like this”and put her feet rigid and on the floor.

And then she asked “How are you?” and I said, “Just peachy,” because she had said it once and it fit her cheerfulness and she thought it was funny so she kept trying to talk to me for a while but she always started by asking how I was, and I was nervous and awkward and too scared to say anything to her but“just peachy” and for a while that was funny but then I got afraid she’d get bored with it so of course couldn’t think of any other reply and then she did get bored and stopped asking or noticing me but she had shown an interest, a friendly interest that at least
didn’t seem mocking, and there she was now in my mind in my head in the pickup.

So I sat there Indian style because I had learned that I could really be quiet that way, quiet and still and after a while when I had decided to let myself be hungry too hungry to sleep too hungry to do anything but have a headache, that’s when she came in the long dead night so dark with fog that i couldn't even watch the lights go by, couldn’t do anything but sit there because the bed shook too much, made a humming numbing vibration that drowned everything else, the voices of my father and grandfather in the cab, passing cars, thunderstorms, everything but itself which simply continued forever over everything.

And so I sat there, thirteen, and pale pretty Anne came to me like music in my head and she looked like she wanted to say something. I had noticed her, she got the best grades in the class and played sports and did well, better than anyone and had so many friends and was that shocking shade of white with freckles but she laughed and smiled constantly and she seemed to understand something I didn’t, because for a long time I hadn’t felt like laughing or smiling very much and didn’t have very many friends but there was this girl Anne and she had noticed how I sat and commented on it.

And I had tried to explain that it was about being still and watching and nature and discipline and harmony and in the end had given up because it was like trying to explain two kinds of magic to each other, the words all tumbled and jumbled in front of me like a wall, but I had seen that she still found me amusing though it had come to nothing but now she came to me like a song in the back of the pickup in the secret night on the way to my family’s cabin and sat there for a while like she was ready to say something but was waiting.

My thoughts kept on pooling and swirling and then she looked at me then turned and laughed and turned again and I had seen somehow inside her, had felt for awhile what it meant to be her and happy and laughing because no matter which way she turned she laughed like a song in my mind, she never faltered but kept this serenity. It was okay with here, it was all okay with her.

She just sat there not saying anything but waiting in different positions laughing turned this way and that and was smart, sharp and quick and witty in class, which made me feel even worse because of the peachy thing and her hair, she had this striking black hair and pale skin and freckles and of course I had a crush, I knew what they were, but none of them ever came and sat with me in my imagination in the back of a pickup truck.

The way she flipped her hair or seemed so serene must’ve caught me because I sat there hung between waking and sleeping and seeing visions of her over and over and couldn’t stop it, tried to stop, tried to make it stop, she was so loud and clear and pale in my head and I couldn’t sit up straight or stretch out my legs because of all the other stuff in the bed so I sat Indian style, the way she was sitting ready to say something, and there was this girl Anne flipping around in my head along with the music over and over and when she had sat behind me in English she hadn’t thought me boring for a long time, longer than I ever thought possible.

And we sat there holding still and I just felt my breath and pulse and this went on and on for twelve hours or minutes or half-seconds, because in that moment quiet and discipline and harmony didn’t mean just gritting your teeth and bearing through but equilibrium, joy, the energy which had you feeling like you could run or pedal or laugh forever and she had that, she had that and I had that somehow in our shared joke, pale Anne behind me asking how I was and tolerating the lame joke about peaches for longer than I would have imagined and sitting there serene and somehow flowing with things, in balance, pale freckled Anne with the raven black hair.

So we shifted around barely moving just turning and laughing and something odd was happening, so weird no food or drink for twelve hours with laughing pale Anne till seeing her in my head made it clear that everything would be okay, that I would be balanced sitting like that and letting it flow and laughing and I could have fun and she thought I was interesting. So we sat like that and eventually she finally said it, I do not know why she said it, but she said it anyway and I did not know what it meant, had never heard the words before but would understand somehow all through, every part of me, sitting back still and laughing:

“Find your center,” she said.

And I could see her tongue and lips and cheeks forming the words and just seeing her there in my minds eye made me feel okay so that she gave me this without knowing, this living thing without ever knowing it, this pale freckled girl who somehow managed to be popular who’s probably by now forgotten my name and face and talents and surely a silly running joke about peaches

But she changed everything, everything, by those three words, though I don’t know which ones, the “How are you?” when she was really there or the “Find your center,” when she wasn’t.

Because if you think about? When someone asks you how you are? Find your center, and you'll know.