I had no recollection of my supernatural encounter ending -- no memory of turning off the radio or hanging up my headphones or setting my alarm. I couldn't remember these things but they had obviously taken place. I didn't know what had happened or why it had happened. I felt I knew "who" had reached out to me, although it would be years before I fully understood or embraced what had taken place that night in my cell.
As part of my graduate work, not long after this event, I was assigned to read about the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages. [Note: Morton was pursuing a degree in Literature through the prison college system.] They were described as individuals who had a direct experience of the divine in this life--- people who had literally found themselves in the presence of God. The experiences recounted by the old mystics mirrored mine in startling, important ways. It gave me comfort to know I wasn't the first person to have had an encounter like mine. I wasn't insane; I was blessed.
That night in my cell I hadn't sensed an individual vision of Jesus or seen the traditional icons of Christianity. No disembodied voice told me to build an ark because it was going to rain. What I had seen and felt and heard was divine light --- and divine love ---and the presence of a power that I had sought, in one way or another, all my life.
I explored the possibility that something else had triggered this -- what had I eaten that day anyway? What had I done? But after months of questioning, after analyzing and reanalyzing everything I could, I found nothing concrete that would have induced that moment, nothing that could provide a reasonable earthbound explanation for what had happened to me. In the end, I fell back on Occam's razor --- the old philosophical theory that the simplest explanation is probably the best.
In other words, I realized that I had cried out to God --- and received exactly what I had asked for -- a sign. Nothing more, nothing less. It was that simple and that profound.
I didn't change overnight. I was -- and still am-- a human being with deep flaws. Like everyone else on earth, I still have the capacity to make unfair judgments about others, an inherent tendency to make mistakes of pride, an ability to unthinkingly inflict casual cruelties on others. I am a work in progress. But I want to be a person who deserves to be in the presence of God.
I still don't know exactly what happened to me on that dark night in prison. But I do know this --- after the night that my cell and my soul filled with light, I am a different man, a better man, a more forgiving man: a man of faith.
That light has stayed with me through years of challenges and disappointments, through fresh heartaches and the settling of old scores -- through the discovery of new love and the letting go of old hatreds. That light has found its way to the center of my life. And the center is holding. Back then, I didn't know how much I would need that solid base to survive all that was yet to come.
I don't know that I have ever read a better description of the true Christian experience, one that begins not in church but in despair and desperation; one that continues to dwell in and with the believer from that time forward, leading into greater and deeper growth in joy and in peace; one that does not abandon the receiver in times of sin or stress, but that works within to draw us out of the pit and to set our feet on solid ground. I recommend Morton's book to everyone who needs strength and encouragement. Tomorrow, more reflections about his experience.
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