A friend likes my Rome book but wants to know more about this God who tiptoes onstage at the close. What did He feel like? What difference has He made? Readers will want to know!

My friend is right. My depiction was timid. In hindsight I think I see why.

God took me by surprise. I was on my work-bed typing, as I am now, in the hollowed-out middle of the night, when ideas can dance. Ideas are shy when they’re young, longing to be liked, not laughed at. They’ll gain confidence with practice – either that or quit the dance – but for now there’s an attractive supplication in their awkwardness, pleading for tenderness like a budding blossom.

God was my biggest idea ever, so big he affected me, like a dream, as palpable fact. Folks waste words debating the actuality of divinity. “Do you believe in God?” pollsters ask. The question is nonsense. Either God is – you know it – or isn’t – fact, not hypothesis. Does someone I’ve never met exist? Not for me.

Before showing up that night, God did not exist for me except as an individual delusion and collective convention. Anyone who’d claimed to see God was, well, you know, a little, sorry. The God we prayed to each Sunday in my childhood was a tribal pledge. Reciting syllables in unison validates membership. Ours was not to doubt like poor Saint Thomas: God was in the book.

I forsook that God as I fledged. It was no big deal. I did not renew my membership in His club, that’s all. I joined other clubs, more than enough to fulfill my need for inclusion and occupy my time. I didn’t quarrel with God, I moved on, and He didn’t chase me. Case closed. Fast forward fifty years and He shows up – companionably – on my work-bed – the God of my youth or a new one, more real? I had no idea.

Revelation need not entail conversion. What happened to Saul on the road Damascus happens, but not necessarily. God didn’t knock me off my horse, cause me to change my name and profession, quit my old ways for new. He didn’t scold me for waywardness or scald my mistakes. This God came to me as a friend, encouraging, urging, nudging, embracing, not berating. He loved me – and was keeping His eye on me – as friends do – expecting my best and better. “Our most intimate friend, wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne, “is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best, of our nature.” Friends “cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams,” said Hawthorne’s friend and mine (and puppy Henry’s namesake), Thoreau.

Our encounter was intimate and, yes, embarrassing, as intimacy often is. Lovers, blushing at an onslaught of fervor, struggle to suppress their grins. My God was good, the best, three thumbs up, but really, Carll, at your age? I was tempted to shut up about Him, even to Jane. Change can be worrisome in those we know well.

I might have – kept God a secret – were it not my profession to fess up. This God did not demand publication; He and I could keep it between ourselves. But wouldn’t that be to funk my project, which was to discover one human in his hour, whims, wiles, warts and all? God did not dare me to proclaim Him, I dared myself.

God and I are mates now. He hasn’t returned in person, but I can feel His face – observing, sometimes wincing, rooting me on. I do not have to believe in Him, I know He’s there. I am not ashamed.