Leaks From Your Unauthorized Biography

It is a very cold and very clear night in Ottawa and you’re standing outside at a bus stop. The snowbank behind you reaches to your shoulder and although it is usually a busy street, there are no cars or people anywhere. Everything so quiet it’s as if sound is travelling on a different frequency. You’re in your twenties and heading to a bar. Tonight might be the night you fall in love.

You were like that.

You believed that every person you encountered was a gift– a messenger, a catapult, a spirit that would disclose the one true love that was destined to blaze through your life. You did not yet know what shape this love might come to resemble. But you knew, you just knew it was your fate.

You looked up.

Light in the sky. Washes of blue and green. Organic, primordial, as if a living thing coming into being…The colours would come together and disperse, appearing like tentacles at one point, and then undulating ribbons fading in and out of view. You had never seen anything like it. And then the light unfurled toward you, as if a long, pointing finger was about to touch something deep and unknown within. You flinched– put your arm up, turned away.

Like a caveman trembling beneath a meteor.

A moment or two passed and your material circumstance had not changed. You composed yourself. And as you looked back at the lights they began to recede into the infinite fold from which they had emerged. And then nothing, just the still, laden night around you.

You were not sure what had happened.

You felt displaced, as if you had just broken from a dream that tried to take you further than you were willing to go. You were in a state of awe, inhabiting a moment that existed beyond mortal reach, and you felt small and unknowing.

So you stood there like that. Alone in the quiet, winter night with your thoughts for another twenty minutes or so, before the bus arrived.

You got on, and thirty years passed in an instant.

Now you live in a different city during a time of plague and madness. Everybody isolated, bored and angry, spending their days searching for enemies instead of peace. You were not immune. You’ve been tangled up like everybody else, burning in the desert, but you knew something still called. Your life has been characterized by the miraculous, there was nothing that couldn’t happen–each day a mystery beyond all account.

How did love find you in this world?

Is love the sky above opening for you, revealing the light unseen?

Is that faith?

Is it the same thing?

When Rachelle was pregnant with your son Jones, you used to imagine him a comet. A celestial body that had been travelling toward you and your wife from the dawn of time. Always in transit, always moving closer to being. And he was delivered into this world a glowing buddha. He illuminated the hospital room with a life force so pure and powerful that you were once again– like that night back in Ottawa– awe-struck, humbled by a greatness far beyond your comprehension.

Now, you try to connect the dots. You imagine those lights in the sky were an encouragement, a foreshadowing. A sign. Get on the bus, keep looking for love, keep hope’s certainty burning within.

If you seek the light, the light will find you.