Fingerprints of God_ The Search for the Science of Spirituality - Barbara Bradley Hagerty [34]
Years later, I would learn about a far more famous heartwarming. In 1738, the British Anglican minister John Wesley was flailing about in his ministry, his faith intellectually strong but spiritually comatose. On May 24, he attended a small meeting of charismatic Moravians, who were known for their recklessly joyous faith. At that moment, a door inside Wesley unlocked, emotionally, spiritually. That moment left a visceral fingerprint. Later, he wrote five words that captured the touch of God: “My heart was strangely warmed.”
So it was for me. The moment was seared into my memory, and later, when I wondered if I had really encountered God, that warmed heart acted like a Polaroid snapshot, confirmation that a spiritual transaction had indeed taken place.
I wish I could tell you that I was blinded by a piercing light, as Saul was on the road to Damascus. I wish I could that say I smelled roses, the aroma that mystics inhaled in the presence of God. I wish I could tell you that I heard a roaring in my ears, or words, perhaps, like the few simple, ghostly words that Augustine caught when he opened his heart to God. My encounter with the unseen was not nearly so dramatic—not then, at any rate—and yet that quiet moment whipped me around with hurricane force. It became the continental divide of my life, the line that separates “before” and “after.” In the next several weeks, the colors I saw were almost unbearably vivid—the cobalt Los Angeles sky at night, the husky green of the summer grass. Even the tan upholstery of my car was so gentle and calflike, I ached to touch it. Things I once enjoyed became dust in my mouth. I walked out of The Bridges of Madison County because I could not bear the pain on Meryl Streep’s face—she was an actor, for Pete’s sake, but I could not tolerate even fictional sadness.
And I was terrified by the implications of my decision. My family jokes that all truth can be found in the movies. Perhaps, perhaps not, but the most authentic spiritual moment I have witnessed is not in church but in the movie The Apostle. Robert Duvall plays a Pentecostal preacher who murders his wife’s lover and flees to Louisiana. He starts a new church, and his flamboyant, holy-roller sermons on the local radio station draw devout, poor, black parishioners.
No sooner has the dilapidated church been repaired and painted than a redneck crashes the services and threatens the parishioners. He arrives during a church picnic on a bulldozer, prepared to mow the church down. Duvall places the Bible on the ground, in his path, and the irate man leaps off the machine. When he stoops to snatch up the book, the preacher kneels behind him, gently placing his hands on the man’s shoulders. Quietly, the man begins to cry.
“I’m embarrassed,” he whispers, and then he surrenders to God. The man weeps for all he is leaving behind—his friends, his tough image, the internal compass that guided his life. He weeps in terror for the future—where will he fit into the world now, now that his north is no longer true? He weeps out of utter humiliation, a strapping man lying facedown in the dust before the dark-skinned worshippers he has so long despised. It was the most realistic conversion I have ever seen.
I say that because this is what I felt. I, too, had much to lose by my spiritual transformation that day in Los Angeles: my friends, my ambitions, the educated image I held of myself and presented to others. Would I have to check my intellect at the door and take everything on faith? How was I to survive, a believer in a world of skeptics, particularly journalists? How would I navigate my world with this new spiritual compass? And at what cost?
In the next few days, I