Article September 19, 2005 Issue

On a quest to know God

"When I caught the spiritual glimpse, I knew who I was and where I was."

By Emily Byquist

DURING MY TEEN YEARS I had a deep yearning to know God. The constant unpredictability and inequities of the human scene were too complex to give me any lasting peace. It was the 1960s, a time of great turbulence during which we questioned and challenged the status quo of everything—politically, morally, and socially. Drugs were an integral part of this counterculture movement, which I happened to be part of.

By early August, in 1969, the now–famous Woodstock music festival was approaching, a weekend of concerts in Upstate New York. Before I went, I made the decision that I didn't want to do any more drugs—which is humorous, in hindsight, given what took place there. While I yearned to do good and make the right choices, human reasoning as to why I shouldn't take drugs was insufficient for me to make any lasting change.

So off to Woodstock I went. Shortly after my friends and I arrived, I separated myself from them and went to a hill. There must have been many people around, but I felt a great sense of solitude. I sat and looked at my surroundings—the grandeur and beauty of nature, the sun glistening on the rolling hills. And, at that moment, I saw that there was an infinite Spirit behind what I was seeing—that God was not in nature, but behind this grandeur was an intelligence that was pure Spirit. That God as Spirit, or intelligence, had created it, maintained it, and therefore it was evident in my experience. When I caught this spiritual glimpse, I was clearheaded, I was articulate, I was myself. I knew who I was and where I was. A spiritual sense of life had come to me with such clarity that I never took drugs again. I knew nothing about Christian Science at this time.

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