...

12:00 (as in midnight). my husband, son, daughter and cats are peacefully snoring all around me. i am reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (finally, two years after everybody else, and thank you R. and G. for the fantastic library service). and i get to this point in the story (on p. 15) where she is lying on the bathroom floor of her lovely home, sobbing for the umpteenth night in a row for the imminent demise of her marriage and life-as-she-knows-it, when suddenly, revelation strikes: in the throes of more despair than she can bear, Elizabeth starts talking to god. out loud. she cries: what should i do? what should i do? WHAT SHOULD I DO?...

and god answers. god says "go back to bed!".

12:01. i almost shriek. delight. revelation. hallelujah. after 35 years of sort-of-not-quite-maybe-i hope-do-you-think-that-perhaps faith issues, i have certainty at last: god exists.

how do i know? because every time (many times over the years) that i have come to the edge of the cliff, the point where all seems lost, but most painfully hope, when the dark night of the soul had spread all the way down to the little toes, and flinging my agnosticism/ buddhism/atheism and other suits to the wind, i have cried in despair: what should i do? WHAT SHOULD I DO? someone has answered. and every time this someone has said (in the calm and kind voice that Elizabeth describes on p. 16): "go back to bed!".

Q.E.D.

12:06. i am standing in the dark kitchen. the cat is rubbing up against my leg in an effort to convince me that the real reason i came downstairs is to give her a snack. my heart is beating too fast and my mind is whirling. "so there really is a god then... and she seems to be strangely obsessed with sleeping... alternatively, maybe i should try talking to her at some other time than in the middle of the night... maybe god is just a 'here and now' kind of girl... but this is amazing, absolutely amazing, i have to tell it to someone. right now. maybe i should wake up marc, would he get mad if i woke him up to tell him there is a god? or should i turn on the computer, e-mail someone about this? there must be someone out there who is still awake and who wants to know about this right now, because it just blows your mind, doesn't it? and it can't be coincidence, it's too big, it's too too big. so what should i do with it? what should i do?????"

12:07. god speaks. "go back to bed!", she says.