Chapter One, Sunday Afternoon

And God Said . . .

Paul Kazinski’s spiritual quest began with a dream, a dream in which God told him that it might not be a bad idea to take a little trip. God also mentioned—as an afterthought—that Paul should use the time to settle down a bit, to take a breather from his busy schedule. “Whatever sounds good to you,” God said, “just don’t make too big a deal out of the whole thing.”

Paul took God at his word, even though he had no proof that this guy really was anyone with divine connections. His ungodly attire—blue jeans, rainbow suspenders, and a white t-shirt, hardly raiment of splendor—did little to confirm his celestial identity, and his short, stubby body only added to his less-than-heavenly presence. Still, there was something expansive about him, something wide and deep, like an ancient river. He spoke with confidence, authority, while maintaining a certain distance and nonchalance. It was the ease of his tone, the deep resonance and melodious charm. Paul was convinced that this man, this being, had to be God. He sensed it somehow, felt it with a clear knowledge. After all, who else would have taken such pains to visit Paul?

One thing Paul found especially interesting about God was how he considered each of Paul’s questions before he answered, as though thinking about them for the first time, which was quite surprising for Paul, what with the eternal nature of God and all that omniscient stuff. But even when Paul asked about such mundane matters as diets and eating properly, God pondered the question with a sort of wonder, as though these ideas were being posed for the first time. And when God finally did answer, he spoke matter-of-factly—never suggesting that the issue was unimportant, but certainly striking a tone that delegated the matter to lesser realms, a celestial shrug sort of attitude.

“You know,” God said after one of his thoughtful pauses, “a healthy diet is probably a good idea—taking care of the body, eating decent food. Yes, that might be the way to go, makes growing old a little easier, I should think.” Then God pointed to a distant valley shoved up against a bluish mountain, where Moses toiled in his garden, tilling his field or raking leaves. “But don’t go overboard like Moses or the others,” God said. “They turn everything into a religion.”

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Paul wasn’t certain whether his meeting with God qualified as a dream or a vision. In much the same way that he couldn’t attest with absolute certainty to the true identity of the guy he thought was God, Paul was also a little foggy about how he’d describe his surreal encounter. Not much earlier, Paul had eaten a substantial quantity of psilocybin mushrooms, enough to make the idea of serious movement inconceivable. Even attempts at negotiating light switches and window blinds proved to be tasks too Herculean for Paul. In fact, the mushrooms warranted little more than lying in bed on his back, buried beneath a pile of blankets with his head nestled between two stacks of pillows to keep his face pointed toward the ceiling. His bedroom, dark in spite of a sunny summer afternoon, provided womblike safety against the risky world of consciousness.

So it was, within this state of heightened senses, where his atoms vibrated with a daring assault against common awareness, that Paul closed his eyes to shut in his ecstatic visions and shut out reminders of the physical, the mundane—the stains of everyday life. And in his dreamlike, visionlike reverie, he soared to magical, sunlit heights of super-charged, unrestrained, universal consciousness. And it was here, after God spoke to him about healthy eating and dogmatic prophets, that he mentioned that Paul should consider a journey, a pleasant holiday someplace nice.

“It’ll do you good,” God said as he looked past Moses to the mountainous backdrop.

Paul awoke from his prophetic bout of awareness and stared at a slit of yellow light that filtered through the top of the window shade. Angels the size of dust particles danced in the stream of light, rejoicing at such a perfect and harmonious day.

Paul stared giddily at the performing heavenly creatures as patterns of circles and ovals and spirals wove in and out of the sparkling stream. The celestial beings pirouetted to a vibrating orchestra, an ecstatic hum that transcended sound, that pierced his soul with a steady sensation, beyond touch, beyond sight. The light faded to green—iridescent, glowing, sparkling—then took on the shape of the forests, the green landscape of a lush and wild mountainside, like the forests of the Cascades, outside Seattle, away from the mad rush of flesh and concrete and steel and shouting and honking horns and carbon monoxide.

“The mountains,” he thought, “that’s where I shall begin my journey!”