In the summer of 1984 life was good for me. One day I found my self sitting by the pool where I lived with my father in Houston, happy and content just to be. 1919 S. Kirkwood was a safe place to live. The crime was petty in those days, nothing much to speak of except for a couple of car burglaries. Kids’ looking for change in the ashtrays but that was about it.
So here I was sitting there all happy and everything when I decide that I’ll get up and go inside. I remember the guy sitting there with me says, “Where’re you going Colin?” and I can remember telling him, “I’m gonna go inside for a while man. Take it easy.”
I can distinctly remember walking down the sidewalk back to my Dad’s apartment, looking through the black wrought iron fence that enclosed the pool area, gazing over the banana and palm trees packed into the brown sandstone flower beds.
The apartments were distinguished by the upscale pool area with its patio covering attached to the clubhouse where my friends and I always gathered, and its ample barbeque area just to the side. It also was a one of the first apartment complexes in Houston to have the cool brown stone waterfalls. I can still see the place just like it was 1984. In my minds eye the children are all screaming and running around like mad inside the playground area right adjacent to the pool area. As I walk by they all seem to know me. Some people are suspicious of this of course.
These people don’t know that when my 5 nieces and nephew come over to visit my Dad they insist that I take them to play here on the monkey bars and pretend that we all live in the playhouse. Yeah all these kids know me by name. They aren’t afraid of me cause they know I won’t hurt them. I’m fun. The world we live in doesn’t know me. They suspect the worst. They watch the evil on the ten-o-clock news and think that maybe I am evil too. I ignore them knowing that it is just the world we live in. I know, they’re right to be concerned.
When I get back to our apartment my Dad is sitting watching a football game on the TV. I guess that’s what he is watching, that is one detail about this afternoon that I can’t quite remember. It could have been just about anything. I was just happy to be alive that day. I know that I said hello as I walked by and went into my room where I plopped down on my bed filled with the delight of it’s comfort, the joy of having, belonging, of just being alive.
So there I am lying on my back, hands behind my head looking at the ceiling and I began to speak. “You know, my life is all right. I have a car, all kinds of friends, a girlfriend who loves me, I don’t have a job but I do have a roof over my head with plenty of food and beer if I want it, I think I ought to thank God for how good my life is.” So I say “God I just wanna thank you for such a great life but it’s been so long since I have talked to you that I’m not sure what I should call you anymore.” So I go through all the names that I can think of to call God beginning with “Father God in Heaven?” and I proceed speaking out this list of names as follows: “Father Son and Holy Ghost?, Father Son and Holy Spirit?, My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?, Buddha?, Allah?, Hare Krishna?” After a second I say “Nah I don’t know you by any of those names, My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” And then for a moment my mind goes completely blank and I sort of query, sort of say, “Friend?” and this, this voice, how do you describe the voice of God? It was definitely male as we know male! This “voice” came resounding into the room, through the room, through me, as through creation it’s self and joyously replied “FRIEND!” I mean every single particle of everything within my immediate area of consciousness danced in either ecstasy or shear terror I don’t which but everything moved. The light it’s self which shone from the light bulb in the ceiling fixture fractured for that moment that the voice of God traversed my insignificant place in time and space.
Man I tell you what I came flying up off of my bed and on my face begging God not to take me now I’m not ready. I found my self covered head to toe with sweat and terrified and as soon as it happened and I realized that God was not going to kill me I said “Wow God that was cool! Hey can I have a million dollars or something?” I grabbed a New Testament that was lying around tried to read a little, vainly tried talking to God again and make ridiculous deals with Him, and then it began to set in and Wow. God spoke to me.
Still trembling I walk into the living room and ask my Dad if he had heard something like a sonic boom or something, and he says no and ask me if I had been smoking that stuff again. So I say to my Dad, “no Dad I promise I haven’t smoked any dope or drank anything in two or three days!” and I then blurt out everything that just happened in my room and Dad is like, “hmm.” He doesn’t deny that it just happened; he doesn’t confirm it either though. Just finds it interesting.
You know I am 20 years old and I can see myself leaving the apartment walking around all dramatic and everything but you know, it really was dramatic to me. People I knew at the time fell into two categories after that day. The ones that said, “Man F**K YOU, get the hell away from me!” as they scurried away looking around corners and under bushes and then there were those who were cool with it and said as much. I believe they said, “Wow, that’s cool man.”
Well as the years went by and I screwed my life more and more, I found my self again on a couch in 1989 after a small change in lifestyle, really reading a Bible. I had been reading it like any other book and was enjoying the story when I got down to John 15:13 and I read this: Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. 14: You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15: No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. (Bible, Revised Standard. John, from The holy Bible, Revised Standard version)
Now I am thinking to myself, “why does this seem so familiar to me?” then it dawns on me what God had said to me all those years ago.
Today there is absolutely nothing that can convince me otherwise. God did speak that day. It was not someone crouching down outside my window with a sub sonic woofer; it was not my father outside my door playing a trick on me. Dad never fooled around when it came to God anyways but that is beside the point. The point is God has not changed. What he did two; three thousand years ago He can do today and will do so if He wants to. He has not become deaf. He has not become dumb. We did not make Him, He made us and He will reveal Himself to who ever He chooses whenever He chooses.
I myself know that I am no one. I mean I have been the greatest of fools but if God would take the time to speak to an idiot like me, imagine what He might be saying to some one who really seeks Him out honestly. Someone who really cares, someone who really loves Him like He loves us. That is, someone who lives and dies, just for Him.
Who knows, maybe He just wants to hang out with His friends.