There was a time I delighted in taking the Holy Book and thumbing through the pages to that pertinent particular passage which was bracketed by history and philology and sociology and hermeneutic and anthropology, and diving into the lines of words I swam in the text, opening commentaries and the Brown-Driver-Briggs or the Lidell-Scott and I squeezed the phrases and I wrung out the words until the ancients whispered, and shadows of long distant years explained the symbols, in such a construction, in such a tense, shuttled back from English to German to Latin to Greek to Hebrew, where the passage of years had shucked the intent and bent the parlance, so that mystery enveloped the clear and concrete, but could not completely obscure the voice of the Almighty which spoke through His Spirit when all of the interpretation, extrapolation, interpolation, imagination, and illumination was systematically complete. The Scriptural ping, sent from far back in space in time, took on flesh and breath and volume and crystallized behind my eyes with immense clarity, and what was confusing or irreconcilable simply slipped into a word which was unmistakable and pronounced for that moment, that day. It was the word of the Almighty, awakened from the cryptic text by the fire of the Spirit which burned silently over my head, like the tongues over the disciples at Pentecost- and what may have been obscure was intelligible and resolute, and my flesh was flooded with light, resolve, hope, and peace.

That time for me did not end so much because there was something in the ancient text that tired or bored or repelled or stymied me, because in those times, I found myself elevated and motivated by the fire and the word. My story is probably much like most who have known that intimacy and then lost it.

I put it down when I went to grab for something else that it was said I also needed: “a modern perspective”, and the understanding of today’s vociferously great and enlightened men.

It is I that moved, and not that ageless Book pronouncing light and love.

I am a tourist so often, wandering about on the distant dark side of the moon.