It is the warm sensation of vodka slipping down your throat, only it’s in my belly and my head, just behind my eyes. It is the still frame of a party in a dark room, the dance floor illumined in flashes and beams of reflected light. It is the silence of a movie theatre, just before the compelling moment on screen sweeps your sensibility away with violent sound from every corner.

That is what these days feel like, when every hour seems to bring me closer to a fuller understanding of what is in store – complete inebriation, the pulsing bass thundering beneath my feet, the catch in my throat at the unfolding of suspense and romance.

The crest of the wave.

More and more each day, every conversation, every chapter I read informs my vision. Matt Hammet said, “The church needs more skeptics.” Those willing to seek truth, to investigate, to scrub the stained glass until the centuries of grimy tradition and convention are gone, until the light shines through revealing the big story going on.

I don’t see far enough to know where this path leads. I have a lot of questions. I’m playing follow the leader. But it feels like God. It feels like those scattered moments from my childhood when there were no voices, only wind, only earth underneath and a hundred questions blown away like umbrella seeds, twirling away and behind them the sky with its constancy. That’s what God feels like – everything is still there, but behind it all he is the backdrop.

There is an erratic ebb & flow to despair & hope. A capricious cycle that unfolds without our input. I believe in something beyond this corporal dimension that maneuvers our ships, helps to navigate through it all, and there is a goodness there, a quality of comfort. Something done well despite the chaotic nature of our existence. I trust in that, and will continue to do so as the warm sensation in my belly spreads to the tips of my fingers and outward, into word and song and touch. I might not always be right – I might not even be close. But I am small enough that it won’t matter, and big enough to chase hard after what does. God grace me as I seek it.