found things.
Apr. 3rd, 2016 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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nameseekingTwice in my life I've had spontaneous religious experiences. What does that mean?
When I was a child, I went to shul regularly--sometimes for holidays, sometimes for religious school. I was usually bored and impatient. One day, I was away from the main event, whatever it was--a dull service I was avoiding or an interminable lecture I was slacking off on. Or perhaps I was waiting for my mother, always active in the Jewish community around her, to accomplish some business with the sisterhood before I went home. I don't remember. It was a long time ago.
I found myself in a low-ceilinged room in the basement, where many activities and discussions took place but which was empty now. It was being set up for something, because the mobile ark was there--a respectful container for one of the synagogue's Torah scrolls, designed so that it could be moved around the building. It was beautiful, a vivid blue-green thing with bright impressionistic nature scenes painted on the front. I'd seen it many times before, though, so I didn't really care.
And then I did; alone there with the ark, I did care. I was out of nowhere awed, and I dropped to my knees in front of the Torah's container.
Then it was over, and I got up. The day continued. I don't remember what day of the week it was.
The second experience happened when I was nineteen, so it's much better-chronicled.
You can see, perhaps, why I'm conflicted.
When I was a child, I went to shul regularly--sometimes for holidays, sometimes for religious school. I was usually bored and impatient. One day, I was away from the main event, whatever it was--a dull service I was avoiding or an interminable lecture I was slacking off on. Or perhaps I was waiting for my mother, always active in the Jewish community around her, to accomplish some business with the sisterhood before I went home. I don't remember. It was a long time ago.
I found myself in a low-ceilinged room in the basement, where many activities and discussions took place but which was empty now. It was being set up for something, because the mobile ark was there--a respectful container for one of the synagogue's Torah scrolls, designed so that it could be moved around the building. It was beautiful, a vivid blue-green thing with bright impressionistic nature scenes painted on the front. I'd seen it many times before, though, so I didn't really care.
And then I did; alone there with the ark, I did care. I was out of nowhere awed, and I dropped to my knees in front of the Torah's container.
Then it was over, and I got up. The day continued. I don't remember what day of the week it was.
The second experience happened when I was nineteen, so it's much better-chronicled.
Something is running through a desert in my brain. I've had that happen occasionally recently, but due to a combination of my own mistrust of my brain and that very special Jewish guilt (how dare I contemplate cheating on Hashem, even though I've never had a meaningful relationship with Him!), I've tried to ignore it.
It's a jackal, or some kind of strange dog. After tonight's hallucination/conversation, I'm inclined to believe the latter. In any case, I was sufficiently tired and fevered that this time, when I saw it with my severely astigmatic mind's eye (I don't know if this is the Asperger's, the ADD, or just my obnoxious brain, but my visualization ability is nearly nonexistent), I zoomed in.
He/it started looking more like a strange (and blurry, stupid brain) dog than a jackal, and he (He?) said, "You. Mine." I shied away, but he kept saying it, and I suddenly, almost wordlessly asked him to break me so I could put myself back together.
I got a pause, then a sense of him nodding. Then he rummaged around in my brain and decided he'd speak to me in the voice [a friend] uses for Audrey II, and since then I haven't heard anything from him but vague murmurs at the back of my brain.
You can see, perhaps, why I'm conflicted.
