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I saw God in nature way before I ever saw anything in a book.
My introduction to God was great. A
rainbow colored river flowing with warmth. It was undefined, just
like the voice at the rainbow river, but I still felt it was that
something that was out there – something that was not the same as
myself or other people. It was good. But at the time I had no words
for it.
There were also images that seemed to
communicate something to me.
There was a painting someone had done,
and it was on display at the church. The painting was amazing, lots
of colors. There was a river in the painting, and it had colors as
well, so I imagined someone else had seen the same river I had seen.
I didn't know how paintings came about, but I imagined it was the
same river.
I looked at that painting every chance
I got. And sometimes I would just stare at it in wonder. The sky in
the painting was great too. It looked the way the real sky looked. I
remember going outside in very cold weather, shivering and looking up
at the night sky. This was rural Appalachia so there was not a lot of
light noise. You could really see the sky.
As I looked up at the Milky Way, the
vastness of the sky and all the stars, I felt that same thing I had
felt at the rainbow river.
Another thing was the view near my
house. The mountains were layered and you could see lots of hills. We
were halfway up one mountain and you could see the valley and the
layers of hills and mountains across the way. The mountains faded
into the western sky, there was no end to them, they just faded away.
In the fall especially, the sun would
set between two particular mountains. All the leaves were changing
and the mountain was alive with orange, yellows and reds. The sunset
also changed the sky to various shades of red, and combined with the
visual of the mountains. There was also a blue shade of the mountains
in the distant horizon as the sun set, as the reds in the sky faded.
The sunsets also gave me that good
feeling. Those colors became my new rainbow river.
The only frustrating thing was, I
couldn't talk to anyone about this. When I tried it wasn't understood
or taken seriously. It could also be that I didn't know how to
articulate it and also didn't know what I even wanted as a response.
Somewhere along the line I started
hearing about God. Parents, adults in general, going to church and
hearing the stories. I liked the stories. Noah and his ark. Father
Abraham, and Jesus. Joseph and his coat of many colors. That always
made me think of the river of rainbow.
God had created the world in seven
days.
And I knew that it was the same one
that had spoke to me at the rainbow river. So now I had a name for
the voice, a name for the feeling.
I still knew nothing about this God,
but I felt good whenever I thought about it, especially if any of
those images were close by.
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