Dear Zelda,

It has come to my attention that some people think I’m crazy. This letter probably won’t help matters any. I had intended to write you a letter of various questions, but then something happened. Do you remember telling me that story you told me? (Of course, you do — how could you forget?) You shared it with me that day in your old office at All Saints.

It only occurred to me just now that you always had to yell at me for going straight to your office instead of going to the rector’s office first before our meetings — which is what the sign by your office said to do, lol. That tells you everything you need to know about me, doesn’t it? I’d better retell that story, though, so this all makes sense.

You said, shortly after your first husband passed away, you decided to take a drive. Suddenly, you felt the strong urge to pull over. You got out of the car, and in a moment, a flock of white birds leapt out of the brush alongside the road and flew away. You said, those birds shouldn’t have been there that time of year. You said, you were sure it was your husband’s spirit saying goodbye to you.

Did I tell it right? You told me this story after you told me to ask for a sign when I needed guidance. (I still remember the first time I did; I still haven’t quite recovered from it.) Anyway, Tuesday, I headed for my usual coffee shop. Outside, I asked for a sign. I needed … direction. I asked, inexplicably, for a black dot, then I went inside and wrote for a few hours.

Afterward, as I left the coffee shop and stood at the threshold of the open parking lot, a murder of crows — two or three hundred of them — filled the blank sky above me and circled overhead. I stood there, in disbelief, watching this terrifying, whirling, more or less round, black dot — comprised of hundreds of smaller black dots — churn over me, noisily and restlessly, swirling in a slow ominous spiral, like a pot being stirred.

For anyone who thinks I’m over-the-top, the Universe is way more over-the-top than me. I thought of reaching for my phone and taking a picture, but it seemed sacrilegious. Anyone who needed proof didn’t matter; the point is faith. Besides, truth does not require evidence; it is evidence of itself. I thought of everyone who’d ever told the truth only to face stalwart disbelief or ridicule. I especially thought of women, the least believed of us all.

Zelda, I wonder myself if I’m crazy sometimes. After all, if you were crazy you’d think yourself sane, and if you felt completely sane, you might have no greater proof of being crazy. To investigate this, I asked my bestie if she thought I was crazy. After all, of everyone I know, she probably knows me best, or nearly the best. She didn’t need any time to think over her answer. She responded, immediately:

“Unbalanced or unstable? Absolutely not. Do I think you’re passionate and wildly imaginative and maybe a little skewed. Yup. You’re eccentric and self-absorbed (not always a bad thing!) and introspective and emotional and empathetic and compassionate and generous and thoughtful. By skewed, I mean … biased. You’re awake and alive.” I am whole-heartedly “biased”; so is she.

What would be really crazy, I believe, is to deny all the things I’ve witnessed. “There are more things in Heaven and Earth … than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” After all, if “God has placed eternity in our hearts,” as it is said, why not also the impossible in our lives? Surely, in time, anything is possible. Our experiences — what we see, feel, and cannot contradict — give us an entryway to our souls because they are our own, inexplicable truths. “With each and every circumstance / I lose knowledge and gain innocence.”

You could easily mistake me for a religious zealot on account of these stories, Zelda — but the truth is, as you know, I don’t understand any of this, either. That’s why I kept coming, even when I didn’t need to anymore. I have only ever loved things I could not understand — music for one, love for another — I don’t even understand myself most days. I am both questioner and question. There is no “mystery of the faith”; faith is mystery.

However, in the end, I wonder if this is about anything more than being in love with the world — not as I wish it to be — but as it is, in all its frustrating and cryptic beauty. “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” So much of what makes perfect sense to me I could never ever explain, no matter how hard I tried. There can be no question, though, that I am indeed a “Mad Man”; I’m in advertising!

I will write again, soon.  I need to. Though I can’t explain why, it is how I love. One way, anyway.

I miss you so much.

David

p.s. — We’re not supposed to figure it out, are we? Because, “if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable,” right? Or has this already happened?