…Since the ancients believed in dreams,
waking appeared in a different light.

The same goes for the whole of life,

which was illumined by death and its significance;
for us “death” means something quite different.

All experiences shone differently because
a god shone through them.

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 152 by Friedrich Nietzsche

As the years pass memory of childhood and early adulthood fades.  I seldom and with difficulty remember how it was, living day to day as a Christian Evangelical believer.  These lines by Nietzsche which I have quoted before, remind me.  Living with a carrier-wave of concern, hidden in my psyche, of death and the judgement day — wherein my entire life is to be evaluated, pass or fail, by an all-powerful judge.  Judgment, and by extension self-judgment always figured into my psychological background.

This was debilitating.  How to confidently plan, attempt to execute a course for one’s life?  Planning and confidence were not possible because the after-life was the ultimate point.  This life was merely the prequel.

Living day to day appears in this dim light to the Evangelical Christian believer.  Not unlike the ancients which Nietzsche speaks of here.

God continues to shine through for me.  But not as judge, as the after-life arbiter of my soul.

God shines through in the photos that I captured just yesterday.

Summer blossoms transcendent in form and color!