The Time of the Lord's Fog

A rather well-to-do South African classmate of mine was a "barber" in my college dorm. Though it was the late 60s, the college required short hair, so, when I knew it was time for the dean to start making harrumphing noises, I dragged myself to his room and paid my twenty-five cents to be shorn. Because he was rich and I wasn't, we didn't talk much, so I occupied my time during the brief torture by looking at an original oil painting he had hanging on his wall. Billows of dense fog filled most of the canvas. Through this amorphous grey mass, one massive square Rustoleum-orange support of the Golden Gate Bridge thrust itself into the frame.

I love fog: Sounds are muted; sharp edges blunted; the world is a smaller more intimate place. The circle of vision and hearing seems a microcosm of all that is.

There are those rare times when you are closed in with Him; the world is a dim abstraction on your periphery; the din of demands a mere whisper. It is just you and Him, enclosed in a warm blanket of fog; a blessed moment of respite from the long views of future demands, the bright colors and shapes of this world’s distractions; the noise of immediate necessity. He, enshrouded, but central; bright and massive against the misty foil.

It is the time of the Lord's fog.

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