AS IF TO TOUCH THE VERY FACE OF GOD

Some nights we’d lay there in the stillness, with the North Pacific rolling beneath the deck, and the only sound you’d hear would be the rhythmic beating of your own heart. You could almost hear the pulsing of your own blood, as it flowed within the channels of your veins.  It was as though you sensed the waning of your own life, as the minutes and the seconds of existence ran their course and ticked away. 

   On these cloudless nights the stars were bright as campfires in the snow and thick as sparks when you stir a fire at night.  Sometimes the moon had a golden ring, and if the moon were full, the sea glowed with a green translucence as its teaming fathoms rolled beneath our bow. On more than one occasion as we drifted in calm, we’d float along in the midst of resting whales.  You could hear their steady breathing, and once in awhile they’d blow, or a whale would roll and a giant leviathan arm, would reach up into the moonlight just as though it were in prayer, as if to touch the very face of God.  OBIE’S QUEST