To the Pastor of the Light-Cross Church:

A dark, silent night was a blanket to me that evening. A drive home with Questions. A tiny, distant search-light revealed in small, fleeting ways the contours of the massive cloud floating so impressively motionless. With my forehead against the upper frame of the back door, my wife reaches back from the driver’s seat with her hand for me to touch, looking to me in the rear-view. Our infant has been asleep in his car seat since I-80, and this new silence feels profound to us. In this quiet hand-touch, we know this.

She turns right instead of straight. She is doing something I often do at times like this—something different. A wander, usually. She is probably not aware of how wonderful this gesture feels to me. Especially at night. At a time like this.

I’m generally though not exactly sure where I am. It’s a comfortable kind of dislocation—enough to get you conscious, but not afraid. It has been a season of asking the hard questions; of facing fears head-on; of suspending belief and disbelief together. I have claimed to know no answers. A massive cloud, floating, motionless. I am not certain if I am the cloud, or the searching light.

The moment is short: on a church, a Cross of light. Right now it is not what it usually is—not what it will be tomorrow. It is an object—once of wood; here, of light. A simple, geometric symbol of hope, elevated, and illumined. It is beautiful. And I am glad to have seen it.

I think of telling the Pastor of that church we just drove by, “Thank you for your Light-Cross.” Probably a letter. Maybe hand-written.