A few years ago I hid in the El Camino College Library to pray, wondering if the odd madness I experienced was just a phase or my new reality.
Regardless, I gave myself fully to God. Unwell in body and mind, I realized that healing would take time...and that He was able to heal if He willed. Either way, I chose life.
Even if I had to follow God with a broken body and unstable mind, I still chose to follow Him.
That day I realized how imperfect and fragile I was. God cast me down after I attempted to reach the heights of heaven by acts of will. That's why I found myself broken before the God of mercy and justice, wondering if He would still love such a person.
The sun touched my hands and face and heart, reaching down through the skylights, and the place became a cathedral.
Years prior to that day, I experienced God's presence in a real cathedral when I visited Vancouver...and years later, I became a Christian in the Santa Ana College locker room, surrounded by tall windows that reminded me of a cathedral as well.
Looking at the faces of other academics, I saw my own features, as if gazing into a mirror. Starving seemed to be conducive to the formation of the academic identity...the wasting away of one's real self until only an empty, hungry shadow of the former person remained, like a fallen leaf nipped by the wind of winter. But I sacrificed that life...or rather, that half-life...in exchange for true and eternal life.
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