Memories of Sand

Taking communion had been an act of magic for me, a technology of the sacred. I had believed just enough to step forward for the ritual, and that was enough. I had believed just enough to step forward for the ritual, and that was enough. First, the voodoo head washing had changed a deep-seated part of me. Then Christian communion had connected me to something that was bigger than myself. Nothing happened until I took some action. Action and results—the two go together. You can call it religion, you can call it spirituality, you can call it magic. Maybe what you call it doesn't matter. What matters is that you don't settle for being cut off, that you take the power, that you demand the completeness of human experience. To taste fully of all that we perceive, to expand our hopefulness beyond the heavens is our birthright. We aren't here only for confusion and disillusionment. We aren't born merely for death. We are here also for transcendence, to savor the numinous, to wander through the shifting corridors of meaning, and to follow them wherever they take us. If we go too far, we can stop. We can backtrack, we can recant, we can be inconsistent, illogical. What we must not do—no matter what the scientists tell us—is allow ourselves to be cut off from our own experience of life as it presents itself to us. If we do, we will have lost the very ground beneath our feet. —pg. 263, emphasis mine.

tarnished