PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

On a Friday night in July, 1974, forty-nine years ago, I experienced a most momentous spiritual encounters, the first of several that would bless me at various times in my life.

Because I was not then wise enough to know to record the date, I can only go with what I remember; a Friday night, in July.  I  believe that it was not the fifth, not so close to the holiday as that---but because I have no objective confidence in that recollection, I cannot fully eliminate the fifth.  Hence, I am writing this on the fifth for whichever of the four possible dates on which it happened.

I do know that midnight had just passed or was about to; and even though it was technically Saturday morning, for me---as an adolescent not concerned about such detail, Saturday morning started with dawn, or whenever my mother prepared breakfast.

I heard a Voice---gentle, courteous, maybe even lovingly paternal (as opposed to dutifully paternal, as was my father in my experience)---but not in any way an ordinarily human voice.  The Voice sounded like it was comfortable commanding stars and galaxies, and yet demonstrated a most polite gentleness to me.  The Voice told me to rise up from my bed, walk outside, and look up.  I did so.

I cannot remember walking through my parents' home to get outside.  The lamp-post at the northwest corner of their property provided some very dim light into the picture window of the living room, which was westward facing, and stepping outside placed me on the westward side of the ranch style house, and in the driveway.

The lamp-post might have intruded with some light pollution, but fortunately, the large maple tree in their yard stood between me and the post, and thus fully absorbed the light from the lamp, so that none of it reached my eyes.  I looked up.

To this day, and until the day I am called starward to Heaven, I will remember the effect upon me as I gazed upward at our Lord God's stars, created and placed there by our Redeemer, Christ, as the Apostles John and Paul tell us.* I do not think I can adequately, on this earth at least, describe the absolute and uncorrupted splendor of that array.  I know, from an undergrad course in astronomy, that we say very few of the stars that are actually out there; but, on that night, the feeling I had was that I was seeing them all.  

Being July, the nights in our vicinity were very sultry, and so the pavement beneath my bare feet was warm.  

I am not share for what duration of time I stood there.  I know that I felt time had stood still . . . until my parents, who could always be relied upon for a spoiler to one of my adolescent experiences, actually opened the front door and demanded that I return to my bed immediately.

Waking the next morning, I knew I would be subject to the standard parental interrogation.  Customarily, this consisteted of being required to provide a detailed explanation of the infraction, and then to have that explanation verbally cutted as lacking in convincing logic and objective or documented detail.  This kind of interrogation had br egun, as I could remember, as early as kindergarten. From the time my adolescence began, the interrogations would usually climax with my mother expressing, with a look of exaggerated pity---such as she reserved for those she believed to be, in her words, "mentally defectives"; or people whose heads she believed to be too large for their necks and bodies, one of her key obsessions and prejudices---and a question, expressed in the tone of voice with which one might address a lunatic---"Oh, honey, who put that idea into your head?"  (This question of hers became so much a part of my soul's terrain that, during my senior year, I literally pleaded, almost tearfully, to be given credit for my own mistakes, since they did not every credit me for accomplishments.**)  Knowing full well the interrogation that awaited me, and not being willing to subject such a marvelous experience to their tactless and skeptical commentary, I feigned a silence that they misunderstood to be a lack of remembring due to being sleepy at the time of the event.  They did sternly warned me not to attempt a similar experience if I were, at any time, awake at such a late hour.

I could not have known that in exactly two years (more or less, depending on the date of that Friday in 1974), I would finally escape from their shadow and the mockery of my mundane name (most often referred to as "Fairy Jerry") when my First Beloved, Cerulean, would help me to find my real identity in the c.b. handle, Starwatcher which, decades later, evolved to Starward, which is what it is now, and which will be inscribed on my tombstone or graveplate.  Regarding both forms of the name, the experience of that Friday night of July, 1974, was a precious gift from Christ, Himself, and prepared the way for July of 1976.

With thanks to the Regnant Christ, my Triuphant Redeemer and Lord for this gift, and the even greater gift of Salvation twenty years later . . . 

Starward