I became aware of what appeared to be a ball of yarn, spun of threads clear as glass. I instinctively reached out and was suddenly aware of Mary reaching for the ball. She appeared as surprised as me. We reached for one another to reassure ourselves that the other was real. I felt a rush of joy and relief. We'd found one another. I was no longer alone.
I have no sense of the length of time we spent looking into one another's eyes before we became aware again of the strange object between us.
What was it? Where were we?
Mary had no idea. She found herself there, alone, an instant before she became aware of my presence. She'd been terrified. She didn't understand what had happened or where we were. She was still afraid but felt much better that we were together again and no longer alone.
We absorbed all we could of our surroundings, trying to make sense of anything, but nothing was familiar. Nothing was definable other than one another and the ball that we took turns rolling around between us, beyond which there was the sum of all that was not ourselves, which seemed no different than nothing.
Then we both sensed another presence. So, there was more than ourselves, the ball, and the undefined sum of all that was not the two of us. We couldn't see this new presence, but then we couldn't see, hear, or experience any of the senses familiar to us - the entirety of our interaction with our world. But we were no longer in our world.
Even though we could no longer see or hear one another, we'd become so familiar with one another over our billions of years together that we didn't require sight or hearing to experience one another's presence. We felt the emotions and knew the other's thoughts, although our thoughts remained muddled and confused. We longed for the clarity we once had.
This other presence was far larger than ourselves. But we felt no fear. This presence brought great comfort instead. We felt nourished, cared for, and loved. Mary expressed a thought as the same first formed in my mind. There was something deeply familiar about this presence from too early in our lives for us to have developed any clear memories. Mary asked me, Mother? And I sensed the truth of her thoughts. We were together, and we were not alone. We felt loved.
YOU ARE READING
The Words - An Autobiography
Sci-fi"What if God was one of us?" Credit to Eric Bazzilion, and thanks to Joan Osborne for singing his brain-rattling words. Much earlier, my mother promised that if I applied myself, I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up. Then, from somewhere, I r...
