Wednesday, late evening/Thursday 12:10 a.m.

(Strip mall parking lot in front of drugstore)

The air was heavy with humidity. It weighted the wind with fierce wet slaps–insults–insolent to all life in its path. The air was saturated, ready to bleed rain from its cloud molecules. The night sky poised ready to release, to burst its skin and wash away from the World all evidence that humanity had ever soiled it.

Christian waved to Curtis as his truck headed out of the mall parking lot and turned onto the street towards the farm.

Christian pulled his arms through each arm hole and connected the velcro fastener in the front of Curtis’ vest.

Christian smiled thinking about his friend, Curtis. Curtis was one of the kindest people that Christian had ever known. “He’s always watching my back.” He spoke outloud to himself. 

Alone on the sidewalk in Curtis’ neon vest, Christian walked slowly, deep in thought, following the asphalt across the back of the mall towards the forest.

Christian stood in the entrance of one of the loggers’ roads. The sky was hidden above the trees. The forest covered the ground in pine needles.

Thank you, Father, for this day. Thank you for this forest. Thank you for this moment. Thank you for this run. 

Christian believed it was important to be in a thankful mood whenever he talked to God in his mind. Christian faced a large pine tree and smiled to himself. He pulled out a hairband from his pants pocket and tied his hair into a ponytail.

He talked to God all the time in his mind.

He put his right leg up against the bark and stretched, bending forward until his face rested on his knee. He did the same with his left leg.

After about ten minutes of stretching, Christian started running in a slow trot. Then gaining momentum, slowly at first, and then, pacing with his breath, Christian began to run.

Christian smiled to himself. What irony I possess. I pray to God, not sure that I can understand His existence myself. Yet I pray so many times each day like He’s my buddy–like He is my invisible friend, like a child talking and setting tea at the good table as a place for his unseen companion, whom only he could hear. 

Christian: Running always makes me feel closer to something bigger than I understand. I think. I believe the words. I have faith in the unseen. But, there is this mystery. We have innumerable evidence of something so powerful that it has created galaxies–black holes–and stars with planets, moons amid unseen solar systems our minds cannot fathom.

Yet human beings long for a God that they can understand–a God that resembles man. I believe that the need for a higher being in charge has always been a part of us.

Am I wrong to doubt that God hears my prayers? Am I arrogant enough to believe that God hears my prayers?

The air felt cold against his face and arms. His feet paced his breath. Christian thought about all that had happened today. The SCOTUS ruling would stop abortion. It also might end childhood poverty in the United States. He also knew that illegal abortions will be the only other choice. Some women will die because of it. 

He thought about his Dad on the stage in the basement of their new church. Maybe, we have finally landed where my Mom and Dad could live their lives, fulfilling a dream that his father held close in his faith until it was accomplished. Now he was a preacher with a congregation and a church to guide.

Christian had no explanation to describe his own need to know, not just believe, in his search for God. He had been enmeshed in the teaching that had been handed down for generations as his father had been taught. He grew up in Christianity. It was a happy state of being. As a boy whose parents followed the US Army directives, his family never set up a permanent physical home. Maybe, at last, they had found one.

As a boy alone in strange new posts around the world, Christian would find ‘his running church.’ He wanted to be good, like Siddhartha, to understand his World, and to believe in the faith he was taught. Christian groomed in himself the quest to know God. ‘He walked with God and was not,’ was his mantra, his hope that he could live his life knowing God the same way that Enoch had.

“He ran with God and was not.’”

Christian laughed at himself.

Christian believed that Enoch became so pure of mind and heart that he actually turned his molecules into pure light–his bodily cells into pure energy.

Jesus glowed when he prayed. That was the clue that haunted Christian’s thought: Jesus glowed when he was communicating with God. The disciples had seen Jesus glowing as bright light when he prayed before and after his death.

Maybe when Jesus glowed as pure light, he moved into another energy level, maybe where Heaven is found. Enoch left this Earth by transcendence into the clouds, or was it a transformation into another unseen dimension of being here on Earth? Is that what Jesus had done? An energy of a God phantasm that we cannot understand with our ant brains, that we cannot comprehend with the mind of man the invisible God? Like flying in your mind, like weightlessness, one floats in the mental state and turns into pure contemplation and disappears without a sound. 

His father was wise to know that the United States has a turbulent time ahead. Dad foresaw that his new congregation might need reassurance. Dad was trying to lead them safely, he thought, for the church to see the good to come.

He thought about the rioting and how long it would last. He feared that the Nation would sever itself, break into pieces trying to relieve all the pain that men had brought upon women first, and now upon themselves.

Running in the woods he remembered that tonight he had told Curtis that he wanted to be an archaeologist. He had never said it outloud before. I want to be an archaeologist.

He said it over and over in his head. “I am going to be an archaeologist.” He called out to the trees. Rabbits looked up to watch the noisy intruder who ran pass them. 

His pace mimed the happiness in his heart. This was his desire. He had been taught that positive thinking was how you bring a desire to yourself. You find your courage to have faith. Express your desire and move confidently that your request will be fulfilled in God’s perfect time.

Christian could hear his Dad’s message: “You will be led, step by step, until your request will be fulfilled.”

Curtis was right that Christian had to tell his father that he didn’t want to be a preacher, that he wanted to study to be an archaeologist instead. That was the first step. 

It was one of those universal invisible rules that whether you are good or bad, you can choose to use these simple steps to follow to create one’s own path. That was what Christian had been taught. One only needed faith the size of a mustard seed to manifest the life of your choice–just have faith.

Running down the loggers’ road, Christian felt like a bird cruising in the wind. He doubted that his feet were touching the ground. He was happy. Just simply happy in his new home, in his friendship with Curtis, in his dreams of a future finding evidence of God as an archaeologist. He smiled again to himself thinking, not thinking. Stray thoughts soon took over— the Algebra test tomorrow. Football practice after school. Denny’s after game camaraderie with his team. DNA and the riots.

He didn’t have the answer, but his Dad was right. God works in mysterious ways. He loved his parents. He would never try to rebel, or reject their faith. He loved his parents whose church believed in Heaven.

His father loved God. Always a good man of faith, he had served in the military for twenty-one years, often as an unpaid chaplain. His father wanted a degree and a church of his own.

His father could tell my friend, Curtis, with confidence, that he believed in Heaven.

The wind picked up from behind him. The wind was so strong at times, it was hard to stand upright against it. Christian felt bursts of moist wind pushing him forward. Running without a race, faster and freer than he had felt all day. Not thinking. Not anxious. Faster than he had ever run, a new pace, not afraid, not anxious, not thinking.

The wind carried him forward. He ran through the shadows cast by the trees all around him through the night towards home.

Boom! 

The crackle of lightning echoed. Thunder roared from the dark sky. The night exploded with a gushing rain. Sheets of rain pummeled the streets, muddied the ground. Suddenly, the winds punished the trees as they bent before its power, blinding sight, forcing submission of all things below. The relentless sheets of rain pounded the street, and the rioters fled for cover as lightning sent piercing flashes of light across the night sky.

The raindrops felt like rubber pellets shot from a rifle. Fire and rain came from the heavens to punish the Earth and its inhabitants–the streets, the woods, the foliage, the rioters. Blasted them.

Christian fell forward and laid, face down, on the forest floor.