exactly how to describe what happened to me as I walked slowly back home that night, but I must try, for what happened changed my life, changed everything … forever.
As I walked, it was as though I heard a voice gently yet very powerfully speak my name and say, “Kevin, I want to talk with you.” I was startled by its clarity and impact, and I clearly remember faltering to a halt and listening, questioning … “What?” almost shocked, but in so low a voice I could scarcely hear it myself.
For a long moment there was nothing. The whole world seemed silent. I was just about to start walking on when I heard it speak again, very clearly, still gentle, but somehow even more powerfully than before.
“Kevin, I want to talk with you!”
For another long moment I could hear nothing. Cautiously I whispered, “Who are you?” but deep down inside of me, I already knew. This time the answer came almost immediately.
“I am God, Kevin, and I want to talk with you.”
I didn’t know it then, but that voice was the one voice I would come to long for, had already yearned for, more than any other voice in the whole world, for my whole life and, I know now, beyond even life’s end.
I began to walk again, but this time, it appeared I wasn’t alone. Of course, then came the inevitable questions. I feel myself smiling now, almost with tears in my eyes, because so many of those questions I still ask to this very day, 45 years later. (Oh! And also, because talking to him is like talking to an answer, and a question, and a great big magnifying glass with a wonderful sense of humour all at once.)
“How do I know you’re really God?”
“Because I have just told you so.”
“Well, what I really mean is, how do I know that I’m not just talking to myself?”
“Do you really believe that, Kevin? Besides, I’m the one who started this conversation.”
Then came the kind of trying to trick him, and trying to think of something he couldn’t possibly know, or trying not to think about anything at all, then, thinking-about-something-totally-different-really-really-fast, and then thinking about something different entirely while asking him to tell me what I had been thinking about when I’d thought about something really fast while trying very hard not to think about what I had just thought—before. Which he quickly pointed out was just plain nonsense and really rather silly as he was God and already knew everything about me. I had to concede the point.
Stymied but still quite suspicious, I slowly began my long walk home as we continued our conversation. I also remember feeling a slowly growing acceptance of this odd new inevitability and somehow feeling as if I remembered this voice from before—from another time.
I’m so glad now that I was still young then. Glad I could still be a “Green Beret” and a “Wild Untameable Savage.” (And I was, too!) I’m grateful for all of those evenings after supper and a bath when as a child I sat with my brother and sister on the floor, my toes burning on the electric heater in my father’s study, as he read to us of Narnia and of Aslan—“The Great Lion,” “Son of the Emperor Over the Sea,” “The King of All High Kings.” I am so pleased now that the cynicism and sophistication of many years had not dulled my ears nor deadened my heart to wonder and mystery.
I found out that night there was another world, but unlike Narnia, this world was not a bedtime fairy tale. This unseen realm was very real and had just invaded my life, and I would never be the same again—I couldn’t be the same again—ever.
I remember asking many other questions and that we talked about them all. Other than one, I don’t remember specifics about particular questions, but I would suppose they were all in the nature of what any lonely ten-year-old would ask God in the middle of the night as he walked down the middle of the road on his way back home. I do remember he always answered me, though, and that many of his answers seemed to be questions I had to answer for myself. This vexed me somewhat, but he always answered nonetheless. We walked together that night, he and I, and slowly we began to speak as friends would speak, of many things, the voices in the distant wind long forgotten.
The one question I do remember asking was “Why? Why are you talking with me?” His answer, try as I may, was something I cannot quite recall.
However, before we got home that night so long ago, he did tell me one thing that I do remember. It was something I have kept in my heart always and will keep there till I am at his side forever.
He said that I could believe in him or not but that he would always talk with me—always—no matter what.
Not very long after, I noticed something. Something wonderful. In that dark and frighteningly empty hole so deep in my heart, there mysteriously appeared a wondrously beautiful sphere of purest crystal, and inside it burned a single flame of fire. No wick, no candle, just a light in that terrible darkness—a flame that nothing in this world or any other could ever possibly extinguish—the very life of God in me. I can see it clearly still to this very second, and I long for it to consume me utterly and completely—the very fire of God in my heart of hearts.
And our conversations? They have continued, unbroken, to this very day. He has kept his promise to talk with me always, no matter what. And we talk as friends would talk, and I still have so very many questions to ask, and he remains as vexing as ever, “The Great Answer and a Question and a Great Big Magnifying Glass with a Wonderful Sense of Humour All at Once,” only now … I’m not alone. Now I’m never alone.
1: The Set-Up
I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Kevin John René White. Legally my name is John René, but both God and my mother call me Kevin. Now I’m pretty sure the two of them pack a whole lot more wallop than any government on earth (especially my mother—ask God … he’ll tell you), so that being said, I shall call myself Kevin.
What I’m going to tell you is rather odd, but that’s not surprising seeing as how I’m the one who’s doing the telling. What is surprising, however, is that I’m alive with enough brain activity to write anything at all!
That also being said, everything I’m going to write down here is the honest truth about some extremely unusual events. I know they’re true because they happened to me, which means I was there when they happened, so I should know better than anybody—right? Except for the parts where I wasn’t born yet … and I am a little sketchy on the parts where I was crawling around in diapers (don’t remember—very embarrassing time … rather messy actually).
Now before I really get going here I think perhaps I should mention something. I am not the only one in my family that’s a little bit … well, odd really. It just seems like I got a double portion of this weirdness, so it’s actually quite normal that I turned out the way I did (I mean, being a tad whacked and all).
The parts where I wasn’t born yet go like this:
During World War II my father served in the British navy as a dive bomber and a reconnaissance photographer aboard the HMS Trumpeter. In civilian terms that meant he and his pilot pal flew around the Atlantic Ocean picking fights and taking pictures of everything that had an enemy flag attached to it. At least everything they could find. My dad would hang out the tail end of a British fighter plane and say “smile” to all the guns and crew on the enemy vessels while his pilot pal made steep dives so Dad could drop his bombs and take good pictures of what type of guns they had. This intel was then sent to headquarters monitoring enemy activity in that area of the Atlantic. While Dad was occupied
