And then it happens, that moment when you look up from your place on the floor and see the holy spirit standing as a column of light, inches from your fingertips, yet if you were to reach out you could not grasp its light. A thousand times on your knees praying through the pain and then it’s there like Christmas to a small child, only a small child is joyful at the sight of Santa, where as you know this last bout of loss and pain, of praying and suffering, have simply broken your brain. 

Or has it? Is it ok to see God? You pray each day, remain faithful, remain devout, pure in heart and mind and word and yet when the light is there, when that holy instant does occur the fear of mental illness, that dread of a cracked psyche, over the love of the light, seems far more powerful. You shutter, look away, look back and decide. Do I believe in God or do I believe in my own madness? And yes it is easier to believe in madness when so many Mother Mary’s walk the halls of mental institutions, flanked by bearded Jesus’ in their medical robes.

But you do not believe you are God, only part of God, a fractal so bright and so in love with God that God is…real…to you. And so you look up and up into the light and you know why Joan led the French and Valentine advocated love, and why Jesus defied the Romans, because the beauty of this light, of this love, asks for nothing but your everything, and your everything you will not hesitate to give. So you shake off the notion that you are lunatic, unstable, overmedicated, and you rise and love, and serve, because the light is so bright that to do anything else would be unthinkable.