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actions and questions. He would incorporate Shakespeare and art and often baseball into an examination of scriptures and parables. There was never a “shut-up and believe” mentality in our church. If I had questions I was welcomed into Dave’s office to talk things over. I would sit and run my eyes over the puppets and toys on the floor, the books on the shelves, and the stuffed armadillo on the table and we would talk about books and ideas and theology. And though it was the unknowns that always honed my attention, he wouldn’t bat an eye when I would come to him saying that I didn’t believe in a literal heaven and hell, or I thought that Jesus’s literal divinity was an uninteresting part of the overarching metaphor.

As we got older, imagination was still an integral part of my church experience. One evening at youth group we were playing a hide-and-seek game in the basement of our church with all the lights turned off. I had wedged myself behind a row of stacked tables and through the dust I could hear the muted giggles in the dark. I felt the whispered touch of my eyelashes on my cheeks as I shut my eyes and my body sighed into the surrounding darkness. My hiding spot was a good one and I knew that I wouldn’t be located for a while. The velvety folds of the darkness around me caressed my face. I opened my eyes again. Sitting in front of me was a dim shape, black and deep as the depths of unending space. It was as if I was gazing into the soul of the universe; never before had I been able to see so far. And though I still couldn’t see it any more than I could see the answers to my questions about heaven and Jesus’s divinity, I felt my dimple tug my mouth into a lopsided grin. Across my taste buds whirled salted energy and solar wind. I didn’t need all the answers; I was content to submerge myself into the cool refreshing pool of questioning. Because even though I knew it would take a while for my friends to discover me, I felt as though I had already been found. And the dark embraced me.

My mind glided through these church memories, since there was no new incoming visual stimulation as I trudged up the trail. A quotation from the oftensermon-referenced A Midsummer Night’s Dream slid into my head: “The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.” Maybe these shadows weren’t as threatening as my mind had made them out to be—it was in my creative power to determine what their purpose was. The monochrome was somewhat relenting and the cones in my eyes sparked to life to deliver painted signals to my brain. Purples and blues infused the gray. I glanced around and for the first time in five hours the spaces between the trees were air instead of ink. I was nearing the tree line. In the downy light, the leaves of the last of the trees brushed like feathers against the lightening sky.

And that’s when it finally occurred to me: maybe when the man had told me to beware of shadows he hadn’t meant be wary or careful, but to be aware of shadows.

I had embraced the darkness before, so I should be able to do it again. Here, as at 94