Iwona I was born into an atheist family. I was baptized for tradition’s sake, but no one in my house was interested in faith. Once, when I was about 5 years old, my parents welcomed the priest after Christmas carols and pretended to him that they were believers. I don’t know why. This priest asked me to make the sign of the cross. I heard in kindergarten about a gesture called the „sign of the cross”, so I tried to recreate it, but I couldn’t. Then the priest got angry and shouted to my parents:
– Why doesn’t this child know how to pray?
To this day, I respect him for having the courage to expose their lies so sharply. After that event, they probably felt a little guilty, because in the evening my mother told me to kneel and fold my hands. She said that this is how you should „pray to God.” When I asked:
– And who is this God? Where is he?
she replied:
– Over there! – And she pointed at the ceiling, leaving me confused.
My father, however, tried to teach me the prayer „I believe in God the Father”, which I was completely unable to remember.
– Well, associate it with this story! What’s so hard about that!? – He was irritated.
However, I did not understand the words „martyred under Pontius Pilate” and I did not know what story my father was talking about. He never told me about it.
This was the end of my religious education at home.
Another important thing happened at that time. From an early age, I showed considerable artistic talent and, like other children, I liked to paint for my parents, expressing my attachment to them in this way. In my heart, painting equaled love.
One day, while I was playing in my room, suddenly, out of nowhere, a thought occurred to me:
“I wonder where mom keeps all those drawings I gave her?”
This question was strange, as if someone from outside put it in my head, because I wasn’t thinking about anything related to creation at that time.
“She probably keeps them in a special place,” I said to myself and shrugged.
“Look behind the desk,” said a mysterious voice.
This time I had an even stronger impression that I wasn’t saying it myself in my thoughts, but someone or something was saying it to me.
“Behind the desk…? Why would they be there?” – I was surprised. However, I decided to listen to this suggestion.
Indeed, to my surprise, I found drawings behind the desk. They were dirty and dusty. It then dawned on me that my mother did not respect them and therefore what I did for her. So, disappointed, I decided:
“I will never paint anything for my mother again.”
It was tantamount to saying: „I won’t love my mother anymore,” because, as I mentioned above, for me painting equaled love.
After I consciously said these words to myself in my mind, I suddenly saw an image. Not in my imagination, but not physically either. Rather, I saw it in a spiritual realm.
I saw a beating red heart suspended in an unknown space. Then the tiny piece of that heart that was responsible for my love to my mother, died, turned black, and stopped beating, even as the rest of the heart continued to move. I know it’s hard to imagine.
Then the image went blurry. My mother once asked me why I didn’t create for her anymore, but I didn’t answer because we didn’t communicate openly in our house. And when my anger subsided and I forgave her, I wanted to bring back that natural love for her. I wasn’t able to do it. My love disappeared in a supernatural way, like a flame once extinguished that only a living fire could restore.
After this event, our relationship was not good and nothing was happening in my spiritual life. In religion classes, we memorized the seven deadly sins or the six truths of faith over and over again.
God made Himself known again only when, at the age of 14, I went to a plein-air painting session with an art club.
I was assigned to a room with two girls. I knew Gabrysia from my circle, but I didn’t know Kasia, so I initiated a conversation. I brought up the topic of sleep because I thought everyone could say something about it.
It turned out that these two girls had a lot in common. They mentioned lucid dreaming. I didn’t know what it was then, so I quickly fell silent. Then they talked about philosophies and philosophers, about war, about conspiracy theories, and finally about ways to commit suicide; about what it’s like to drown or shoot yourself in the head. I was surprised that they were interested in such extremely negative issues. I felt terrible listening to them, but for some mysterious reason it didn’t occur to me to leave. Like I was trapped. It was as if a heavy curtain was stretching before my eyes, forcing me to stay there, even though I could visit other friends behind the next door.
It was long ago evening and the ordinary light of an electric bulb was burning inside. And yet I still had this feeling of deep darkness in our room. At one point I even interrupted the girls’ conversation with the words:
– It’s so dark in here. We need to find an extra light switch. There is no way there wouldn’t be one more lamp.
I got up and walked around the room. I felt all the walls looking for a hypothetical switch, but unfortunately I found nothing. So I sat resignedly on my bed and continued listening to the conversation.
The girls moved on to the topic of the afterlife.
– It’s good that there is nothing on the other side, because if there was, it could have ended badly for me – said Kasia.
Gabrysia nodded.
They talked about walking in their astral body and the third eye chakra. I didn’t even know such concepts back then. The Internet was still in its infancy and I didn’t really use it, so I didn’t come across similar content anywhere.
The room became increasingly dark. Eventually it became so black that the blackest darkness of this Earth would look like a sunrise next to it. I felt like it was filling me from the inside with hopelessness, despair and sadness. I put it down to being tired from the long journey I had behind me, but I couldn’t stand it. I guess that’s why, in an act of desperation, I mentally asked God:
“Jesus. Make them stop talking. Come and take away this darkness”
I didn’t make this request seriously. I didn’t believe in Him and I didn’t expect any answer from Him.
Then Kasia and Gabrysia started talking about demons. They recalled the case of Anneliese Michel. However, they presented possession as if Satan could attack us at any time he pleased. It scared me. And then suddenly two other girls entered the room.
One of them was Marta, my best friend at the time, and the other, Ania. I knew her from the art club. Marta took a seat on the bed next to me and didn’t say anything, while Ania sat down between the people talking to listen to them. They continued with the devil theme.
“We’re just a pile of meat with a few buttons to push,” Kasia said. In this way, she wanted to present the concept that we act like robots and do not have a soul, and our reactions are only a chemical response to incoming stimuli. What she was talking about was a mixture of atheism and occultism.
Ania grimaced when she heard this sentence. Therefore, interrupting their conversation, she referred to the topic of possession:
– It’s true that it’s all terrible. But fortunately, there is someone GOOD who defends us.
She used the word „good” as a name for God. She emphasized them clearly. And when it fell, I saw a great light coming out of her mouth. This light was thousands of times stronger than the sun, and yet it did not blind me. Then I finally realized that I was seeing something outside our reality and that the darkness wasn’t coming from here either. I looked at the window panes in front of me. Light passed through them. Somehow I understood that if it were material, it would turn into dust. Sorry for the funny comparison, but this event reminds me today of the scene from the first part of Shrek, when Shrek kissed Fiona and she transformed, and then an explosion of light shattered the stained glass windows in the entire church.
Right after that, I felt my eyes open. They were already open, but they opened again. I looked to the left and there, in the corner of the room, I saw a figure.
I saw her too, not in my imagination, but outside, spiritually, although I was aware that physically no one was standing there.
“But… He doesn’t exist,” my mind protested. At the same time, I felt that I had a soul, through which I thought:
“Oh, God.”
It seemed obvious. I perceived that spiritual world as real, and my life on Earth was more like a theater that was intended to last only for a moment and was about to end.
I realized that I already knew God. Long before I even got here. We had always been friends and I couldn’t deny that He was standing in front of me. I saw Him as a human shape made of light, and the only word I could think of to describe this light was „living” or „living.” No other word suited this sight. And it was only many years later that I read about the „light of life” in the pages of the Bible.
There was not an ounce of darkness in God, I could see Him straight through. I just couldn’t see his face, as if it was hidden from me. Besides, if I had to assign a gender to Him, I would definitely call Him a man, even though in fact He had no gender.
He came – „GOOD”, as Ania called him. However, it was not so much that goodness radiated from Him, but He was goodness itself, the source of all goodness. He made such an impression on me that I looked at Him speechless.
After a while, he opened his arms, as one usually does in a hug, and started walking across the room. I followed his movements with my eyes, both spiritual and physical. I felt Him taking the darkness with Him. Right in front of the wall He disappeared somewhere, or rather I stopped seeing Him.
By his appearance, he answered my offhand prayer: „Come and take away this darkness.” I don’t know why he did it. He left behind a living light in our room and absolute peace in my heart.
Kasia’s words moved Ania very much, because during the rest of the session she went from person to person and begged everyone:
– Tell me we’re not just a pile of meat with a few buttons to push! Please!
No one could calm her down. I felt that this task was mine, but I was afraid to talk about what I had seen, lest I look like a crazy person. Now I regret that I remained silent. It was only many years later that I contacted her, and she listened to me kindly, even though she no longer remembered those events.
I did not become a believer then, I suppressed this extraordinary memory of God. I did everything to push them into my subconscious, push them away, forget them. It was so far from everything around me, from my limited knowledge gathered during school catechesis, that I was afraid of it. It only came to light many years later, when in high school, during a PE lesson, I was sitting against the wall and accidentally listening to a conversation between two girls:
– … how she talked about this darkness blacker than night and this spark of light…
I was immediately fascinated by what they were saying, but at the time I didn’t understand why.
– What are you talking about? – I asked.
to be continued…
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The photo illustrating the post shows two paintings – both by Wiola. The first is a portrait of Wiola’s mother, which the author created when she was 4 years old.
