RIVER CITY JOURNAL: JUST IN TIME FOR HOLY WEEK, A VISION YOU CAN CALL YOUR VERY OWN

If you've had an otherwise full life but still want something sacred, here's your chance.

When I was growing up on Kelo Valley in the Ozarks west of here, events that seem so ordinary today were monumentally important in the scrapbook a young boy keeps in his mind about his young life.

Something so mundane as a car coming down the hill from the blacktop highway a mile away was reason enough to get in a dither. The approaching progress of visitors crescendoed like the climactic movement of a symphony. First came the distant sounds of tires crunching on gravel, then a great plume of dust roiling behind the car, and finally a close-up look at the car itself as it came that last hundred yards through a small lane overgrown with blackberry briars and persimmon saplings.

An occasional forest fire, an invasion of rifle-toting hunters during deer season, hay baling, butchering a hog -- each of these events were enough to cause a boy's head to swim, trying to soak up the heat of embers in the underbrush, or the crack of powerful gunshots, or the sight of a wagon loaded too high with hay, or the spurt of blood and guts -- heck, you don't need one that with your Post Toasties. Sorry.

In those days before electricity brought us so many ways to amuse and abuse ourselves, there probably was no more electrifying week as those seven days of a revival camp meeting at Shady Nook. Yes, that's the same Shady Nook one-room schoolhouse where I first met Dick and Jane. During the day from Monday to Friday, it was a school. On Sunday mornings and weekday nights during a revival, it was a church.

Did anyone every talk about church and state at Shady Nook? If they did, it would have been something to the effect that God-fearing youngsters make better students. Mrs. Rayfield, my first-grade teacher, would probably agree with that. Mrs. Wiley, who played the pump organ for church, certainly would. Mrs. Wiley and her husband had an apple orchard on Greenwood Valley just up the road from Shady Nook. In the springtime, her yard was filled with blooming plants and bushes. Her living room was filled with cardboard boxes of apples that had wintered indoors and fruit-tree seedlings ready to be planted.

Brush arbor. That's what you call the place for an outdoor revival. At Shady Nook, some of the men would cut leafy branches and arrange them atop a framework of hickory poles. Some chairs, a pulpit and a few Coleman lanterns completed the worship space where souls were about to be saved and miracles were about to be wrought.

Sometimes, a child evangelist would come and preach for more than an hour at a time, whipping his listeners -- just about anyone who lived on Greenwood or Kelo valleys -- into such a fear of hellfire and brimstone that we could scarcely contain ourselves in our temporary, soon-to-be-dust bodies. Invariably, a young man from one of the Greenwood Valley families would achieve such ecstasy that he would writhe on the ground. If you think TV or movies can make your skin crawl, you haven't experienced a battle between satanic demons and heavenly archangels on a moonlit night under a roof of oak boughs.

I didn't learn until I was a young adult the young man had epilepsy.

Most revival evangelists, I quickly learned, had been in direct contact with God. They had heard his voice. Or felt his touch. The really lucky ones had seen him. Visions, they called it.

For a long time, I thought I must be really messed up, religion-wise, because I hadn't had -- as far as I knew -- a single sign from on high.

Truth be told, I still hadn't had a vision until just the other day.

Once a quarter, I get a pocket-sized journal called The Anglican Digest. It's full of tidbits from church bulletins, sermons and religious publications, all "taddled," as TAD puts it.

The Easter edition had the usual stuff until I got to Page 55. That's where I saw the black-and-white image you see here. This came by way of St. Francis Church in Menominee Falls, Wis., according to TAD.

I followed the directions, which I'm about to give you, and wondered what would happen.

Simply put, I had a vision.

You can too. I let several folks here at the newspaper try it. They had visions too.

Here's what you do: Concentrate on the four small dots in the center of the image for about 30 seconds (count slowly to 30 while you focus on the dots). Then close your eyes and tilt your head back. Keep your eyes closed. A circle of light will appear. Continue looking at the circle.

What do you see?

As we prepare for Palm Sunday and the rest of the Holy Week schedule that leads up to Easter, I hope you get goose bumps too.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.