Roughly 20 years ago, I was sitting at the kitchen table of a small, San Diego apartment in a very tough situation.  My life was crashing around me, what with a wife and small child to support, a new business which was failing and a bank account that was dwindling to nothing.   My anxiety was keeping me from sleeping or even eating properly.   I was feeling guilty, stupid, frightened -- just about every negative I could think of.   
    Finally, around 2 o'clock in the morning, I decided that prayer might help, despite the fact that I hadn't tried it in years.   And that's when I felt "The Presence."
    Although I could not see anyone,  I had the very distinct feeling that there was someone else in the kitchen with me.  In my mind's eye, I  felt there was someone there and  he/she was smiling and making me feel that everything, everywhere was just happening OK.  I also felt an almost overwhelming sense of nurturing love.   Suddenly I felt incredibly fine.   Within a few minutes,  I was fast asleep in bed.   The next morning I began making decisions, and within a week I had a new job, a smile on my face and a desire to begin attending church on a regular basis.  
    I also had a feeling that what had happened was purely a personal thing -- a reaction of my own mind.  After all, no sandal prints were left on the carpet.  No one else was in the room.  I hadn't actually seen anything.   
    Flashing forward a few years, I found myself watching a BBC production of "Shadowlands,"  the story of C.S. Lewis and his romance with Joy, the American lady who became his wife.   In the movie, Joy recounts how she first met "The Presense" in her own life, under  mental conditions very similar to my own.   And then I knew that my Moment in the Presence (as I call it now) was not unique.  It had happened to someone else, who had not mentioned it to me, who had not known me, who was, in fact, deceased.  
    The moment was described again by Garrison Keiller in his humorous version of the Christmas story.   Keiller's  Christmas shepherds found themselves "in the presence" of angels, and their lives were never the same again.  Oh, they had good days and bad days, high times and low times, but they would always have the memory of the moment when they KNEW that heaven and earth are one, that  Love extends beyond the boundaries of our dimension, and that "all will be well; all will certainly be Well," as Julian of Norwich said.
    I forget about my moment quite often now.  The crush of everyday affairs and the minutiae of my life intervene, and I forget about the "Presence."  It often takes something rotten to happen to take my mind back to that time and place.   It takes a real bad day, a day so bad I actually begin thinking about my own death, and  then the moment comes.
    If death for me is a re-visiting of the "Presence," well then, death won't be such a bad thing really.  It could just be the best day of my life.