While reading about alchemy (surprised?  Really?), I found myself learning about Jakob Böhme.  His name was familiar—he’s one of those many people I know vaguely about but having been raised in an uneducated household really knew nothing concerning him.  In any case, Böhme is considered a mystic who began as Lutheran, but who came to trust his own spiritual experience (the latter being more or less the definition of a mystic).  I read about how one day he experienced a vision while staring at sunlight reflected off a pewter dish.  Now, I have had visions but you’ll need to get to know me personally if you want to hear about them.  But at that moment Böhme believed the spiritual structure of the world had been revealed to him.  I couldn’t help but think of what had happened to me at the foot of the Mount of Olives.

It was 1987 and I was a volunteer on the dig at Tel Dor.  Visiting Jerusalem one weekend with friends, we came to the Church of All Nations, built around the traditional garden of Gethsemane.  It was hot and I was feeling tired and I went inside the church to sit.  I spied a purple stained-glass window high overhead with the sun shining through it, in a shadowy alcove.  In an instant of rapture, everything made sense to me.  It was as fleeting as it was shocking and to this day I cannot articulate the certainty I experienced in that one brief moment alone in a church.  It was an assurance that, despite all outward appearances, this does indeed make sense.  This experience has never been precisely replicated in my life, but those who know me know that there is a certain color of glass that, if I see the sun through it, instantly brings me serenity.

Sunlight can do such things.  One morning while out jogging at Nashotah House, the rising sun struck me directly in the eye.  Immediately stopped running, holding my head against a migraine that had suddenly developed.  I was sick the rest of the day, lying in a dark room with a damp washcloth over my eyes, head splitting apart.  I’ve been cautious with the sun ever since.  Some things are so full of glory that to see them directly is to invite danger.  Yet we’re compelled to look.  I felt that I understood Böhme.  And I know that if the sun is right, and a certain color of glass is at hand, and if I’m brave enough, I can almost get back to that place.