Transcendence, Near-Death Experience
The Day I Died…
“The sun shines not on us, but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies.”— John Muir
One of my early memories is of watching my colorfully-bound set of childhood stories from the Bible spark into flames in the fireplace of my father’s office in the basement of our home in East Aurora, NY. My mother, a devout Lutheran Protestant wed to an atheistic Philosophy Professor, had bought them for me, probably with money she had secreted away, for I am sure that she knew he would not approve.
I still remember the gold vining on the binding of the small hard-cover books, and also my sadness at watching that first one burn, knowing they would all soon follow. I don’t even think I could read yet, but I loved the aesthetic of them — the matching, small, almost-square shape of each of the books in the collection. Every one of those books contained worlds of pictures and stories which lived and breathed in the land of my imagination.
My father ventured through life with a Mensa level IQ, but not a lot of social intelligence. He really had meant to demonstrate that he wanted his daughter to…
