Anyhow, it seems like a very long time ago. But the point of even remembering the conversation, I think, is that there was an important fact behind the Christian girl’s ‘salvation’ story which I simply hadn’t understood at the time — and, to be honest, I don’t think she or the Christian did, either. It’s true that her story was stupid and dishonest, but that doesn’t mean the experience she had in the church that day didn’t happen, or that its effects on her weren’t real. I’m not putting it very well, but I was both right and wrong about her little story. I think the truth is probably that enormous, sudden, dramatic, unexpected, life-changing experiences are not translatable or explainable to anyone else, and this is because they really
are unique and particular — though not unique in the way the Christian girl believed. This is because their power isn’t just a result of the experience itself, but also of the circumstances in which it hits you, of everything in your previous life-experience which has led up to it and made you exactly who and what you are when the experience hits you. Does that make any sense? It’s hard to explain. What the girl with the meadow on her boots had left out of the story was why she was feeling so especially desolate and lost right then, and thus why she was so psychologically ‘primed’ to hear the pastor’s general, anonymous comment in that personal way. To be fair, maybe she couldn’t remember why. But still, all she really told was her little story’s dramatic climax, which was the preacher’s comment and the sudden inward changes she felt as a result, which is a little like telling just the punch line of a joke and expecting the person to laugh. As Chris Acquistipace would put it, her story was just data; there was no fact-pattern. On the other hand, it’s always possible that the 25,834 words so far of my own life-experience won’t seem relevant or make sense to anyone but me — which would make this not unlike the Christian girl’s own attempt to explain how she got to where she was, assuming she was even sincere about the dramatic changes inside. It’s easy to delude yourself, obviously.