by Kim Nentrup It was God to you. The expansive, eye-filling Lake Michigan, with its moodiness and its billion diamond sparkles at dusk. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, the sparkles became the different aspects of God, all the things one could ever learn about Him, and how they were significant, each one. You grieved each time you left the lake, because you knew that your mind could not remember the pure beauty of Him for a whole year, until summer vacation brought you back again. It was the next summer you lost your faith. It happened slowly, like a trickle of water over a slate-bottomed creek in a drought. First, after an evangelist's wife confided in you that she did not believe in hell, you realized you also did not believe in hell. God was pure beauty--hell was an inconsistent ugliness. Then you read and read and read about the origins of the Bible, and started to realize that it was no longer truth to you. You talked to a preacher ...
Flying Island is the Online Literary Journal of the Indiana Writers Center, accepting submissions from Midwest residents and those with significant ties to the Midwest.