a paper thin covering

I first understood revelation as if a black sheet or curtain had been pulled in front of everything true, everything sure and trustworthy, and that covering was being drawn back a little at a time.  The autumn after I turned twelve I became painfully aware of this dark veil, as though a small fire had been lit on my side of it, serving only to reveal with brief flashes in what a great darkness we all lived.  Some of my family may remember this as a torturous time for me.  I suffered terribly with what I could not define, a longing for the light, true life.  Despair gripped me as it seemed no other was aware of this one needful thing, or had given up hope so long ago as to have forgotten it completely.  The wisest people I knew, those I respected, those I trusted, those who had been my saviors in times of trouble sought to ease my distress with elevated perspectives of the goings on in this world.  They offered world views that they had adopted in order to live contently in the darkness; of course they didn’t see it that way.  The problem was not that I wasn’t content with ‘my world’.  The problem was that from that which my eyes could look upon, to the wonders found in the furthest expanse of the universe, everything screamed of a government which no one seemed to recognize.  All of the marvelous and wonderful phenomena, the magnificent beauty found in the earth, in the depth of the sea, the far reaches of space, math, science, great understanding and every mystery clearly existed only to serve a hidden reality.  I would not be comforted.  Somehow I knew the authentic; I could never be convinced of the counterfeit.  The world we knew, bright as some of it might be, was that black veil.