FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: AND GOD TALKED BACK

Jean Bell Mosley's new autobiography, "For Most of the Century," is only available in serialized form in the Southeast Missourian. Return each week for her continuing story.

Continued from last week.

While sitting there on the tree stump, I heard a bullfrog sound its primordial call. A far-off cow's bawl and a dog's bark told me that evening chores had begun somewhere. I knew I must move on and attend to mine but had no desire to do so. Enchantment had afflicted me. And something more.

Virginia creeper, climbing halfway up the hickories, never looked so red. A blue-tailed lizard crossed the path, its iridescence such as I had never before noticed. I was reluctant to move for fear that some mysterious spell would be broken.

I felt as though someone else were with me; however, no one was visible. I thought about God. Of course, He was with me all the time, I had been told. We spoke of Him much at home, at church, at school. I said prayers, but they were one-way conversations. I did all the talking.

I had not yet read Samuel's plea. "Speak, for thy servant hears." When I did, and still do, over and over, because I feel such a kinship with it, I laughed aloud. And a joyous feeling shivered over my body.

The shadows lengthened and still I stayed, seeing with new eyes that which was to be my particular rich inheritance, and wished that God could or would talk to me. I closed my eyes and said something like this: "Dear God, I feel so good now. I wish it would last forever. Is it just the pretty things around me? I'm going to look for them and notice them always. Are you around here somewhere, God? When I open my eyes again, I wish I'd get some kind of plain answer from you."

Several moments passed before I opened my eyes. When I did, a dazzling light met my gaze. It was brilliant. Soon I saw the light was coming from a clump of grasses beside the path, about twenty feet ahead of me. Forgetting all else, I ran to see what it was. The sun was striking against the reflector of a small brass carbide light, the kind railroad men, and some hunters wore on their caps at night. I remember saying, "Maybe Dad or Grandpa can use this." The spell was broken. Here was a shiny bit of earthly treasure I could take home.

When I passed the spot the next day, nothing special happened, nor the next, nor ever again there, because I moved on to other schools, other paths. But I never forgot that time. I hung on to it, not knowing exactly what it was, feeling as if I had had a great chance at something and muffed it and hoping maybe, just maybe it would come again.

From time to time in the remaining growing-up years, I thought with great concentration of the incident and would have liked to discuss it with someone, but I was too timid. People might have said, "Whom did you think you were? Paul on the road to Damascus? Moses, at the burning bush?" The moment had been too precious to have anyone laugh at it or rationalize it.

There is always God, I would think just as I did at ten, but my thinking was tinged with the thought that I did all the talking. No plain answering back.

This was my frame of mind, years later, when I was again walking a woodland path. It was spring. Wood thrushes were calling, chipmunks were scattering among the trillium and violets. "God," I whispered, "are you talking back and I don't hear?" I closed my eyes but did not ask again for a plain answer. However, when I opened them again, there was light shining in my eyes, just as it had that afternoon of sunshine reflecting on the brass reflector. Ahead was an oak tree, a post oak with broad leaves. Everything was still and wet with morning dew, but there was one single leaf out of the thousands around me, reflecting sunshine into my eyes so that all else was pushed from sight.

A piercing sense of joy shot through my body, calling me back into the sweet rhythm of the universe. Now it was even better, for I realized that God was talking back in one of His ways in response to my heart's longing.

God had used a carbide light reflector lying in the sun at the right angle and the right time to reflect into my eyes, as if to say, "Here I am," and I had not understood the language -- one of the many with which I now know He speaks. The arrangement of circumstances was a silent voice, but it was plain. Plain to me. That was the something more.

Self-creating indulgence, you think? I don't. I grabbed it and it has made all the difference.

What two-way conversations we have had since! Two little rosy-breasted finches are blown by a gust of wind on a bleak day and perch momentarily on a limb outside my kitchen window. An arrangement of circumstance. Part of the Plan. "Hello, God!" A wild rabbit hops up my back steps, turns around, and sits down on the very step where I am sitting motionless. "You've made a good day, God." My car slides on the ice and finds sudden traction on a discarded tow sack. "Thank you, God." A butterfly alights on my shoulder and rides along. "Good day for a walk, isn't it, God?" I look up, suddenly and unexpectedly, there is a single blue morning glory, perfectly framed in a square of the white trellis. "That's good, God. That's good."

And the divine contentment goes on.

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.