Having spoken at such length in the previous chapter as to what I believe—the very word Believe being brought into question—I feel it equally important to explore and define Why it is I believe, and believe as I do. It will add substance the the What and allow exploration and opportunity to address some of the erroneous secular assumptions that have become popular on the subject.

The first Why is an extension of my What discussion, being that I have had little choice in the matter. I can’t recall a time in my life before that of having an awareness of a greater purpose and source—a creator—behind all of this. My memory reaches back unusually far into my childhood, something I’ve often wished I could change, and there is one memory in particular I look to as one of my earliest and most profound revelations in that regard.

I had aged five years, and I’m sure of this by the house my family lived in at the time. We moved so often, by the time I was thirteen I’d had 16 documented addresses, never staying longer than a year at any, so I can know my age at the time of a memory by the setting at which it was housed. In this particular memory, we were in Louisville Kentucky, my father stationed at Fort Campbell, in a two-story brick house that had a magnificent (to my tine mind’s recollection) Southern Magnolia in the front yard. If you aren’t familiar with the Southern Magnolia, it is a large, muscular, clean-branched tree with large dark green leaves that appear to have been varnished on the top side. The blossoms are nearly grotesquely immense, being saved from grotesque only by their beauty. They are white with a touch of ivory, broad petalled, and could be worn as a woman’s bonnet.

I would sit beneath the broad spreading branches of this tree, in my own little boy-cave and often climb up through the open architecture of its trunk, arms, hands and fingers. The ground on this small heaven was rich with composting leaves and flower petals, my firs definition of an aroma called Earthy. But the greatest treasure I discovered there was the seed pod of the Souther Magnolia. It is that seed pod on which this story is hinged.

It is a thing that, in good condition, is the size and shape of a mid-sized, open pine cone, about 3 inches long. It is covered in a greenish felt, a thick suede, soft and intriguing to the touch. There is a staggered pattern of slits running its length, from which a seed will emerge. As it does, the seed remains for a while nested in that opening, a bright reddish orange jewel the size of a pea, dozens of them embedded in the pod. It was as intricately beautiful to me as a Fabergé Egg, and I knew without question that, like a Fabergé Egg, its creation was no accident, was purposeful, and that if I could turn my head quickly enough I would see who or what had done this thing, watching me be entranced, watching this bit of its creation having exactly the effect it was intended to have.

So I have lived, for the whole of my life, in the realm of a Creator. There have been times I have tried not to, tried to extricate myself from the bindings of its presence, but I failed every time. I could no more deny the existence of my Creator than I could deny the existence of myself, or than a child might deny the existence of his own father. He may alienate himself from the father, he may physically distance himself as far from the father as earthly possible, he will forever and always have a relationship with that father, even if it is a non-relationship relationship, it is still a relationship. We are no more able to separate or emancipate  ourselves from our creator than the characters of a novel can choose to eliminate the fact of the author from their lives. Their very existence is at the will of His pen.

So I instead maintained a fierce anger toward it, for the pains & sufferings I encountered, this before I understood more about those things.