A Larry Comes

Tell me, what good is it to have God visit you if you can't tell anybody about it? Or, if not God, then somebody looking very much like him, or how I had pictured him. Perhaps, to be safe I should call him god, you know, lower case "g."
No, that won't do. There's no escaping it: it was the Almighty all right, our capital "G" Father-of-the-Son God. I don't think there's any doubt about it. Let me rephrase that: There is no doubt about it.
Yes, yes, I know it sounds crazy, but now and then things happen to you, incredible things, thing you cannot explain but that you cannot deny—not to yourself anyway. For they did happen, and you know they did, whether the whole thing sounds crazy or looks crazy or feels crazy or is crazy or not. Took place. Occurred. Yes sir. So when in truth I did lay eyes on him, did talk to him, did meet him, how can I deny it? I can't.
My mistake was sharing it, and perhaps that's the lesson to draw from all of this: Keep your mouth shut. Especially around close relatives and people in white coats.
It was a Tuesday, a rainy one. My room had that dampness about it, that musty smell that only ventures out after three days of rain. Seeps out of the walls and floor and ceiling, dryness fully pervaded now. Our house is big and grand and all that but not well sealed, not round my room anyway, so if the rain doesn't turn back after a day or two, it tends to pick up courage and come on in—into my room. In musty spirit, anyway.
I had finished the chapter I was reading and I had placed my bookmark where I had left off. I closed the book in my lap, leaned back and closed my eyes. Picturing. Picturing. A moment later He knocked on my door and I went to open it.
I fumbled with the locks and the bolts and the safety chain and didn't even stop to wonder (I never do) that I was so carefully sealed. He knocked again, louder this time, or was it that I was closer to the door (of course, I didn't know that he was He yet), and told Him to hold His horses. Finally, after a few more hold Your horses and wait ups, I got all the locks undone and I opened up and then looked very long and still at Him and He looked very long and still at me and nothing was said.
Strange thing when strange things happen: not for a moment did I think it strange. It was simply taking place.
My first notion was exactly this: Here's God. My second notion was exactly this: No way. Then I wavered back toward the first. He looked so very familiar. Like a Doré Moses, and for just a fraction I thought perhaps this is Moses, no? Standing there, but no stone tablets about him, no frown or fury at dancings around golden calves, no exasperation or suffering (which rules out the Son, too, doesn't it?—though He, the Son, was never a real prospect; my visitor had nothing of "the meek" about Him at all). No, this was more, He was more, you know, of the and the Earth was without form and void variety. Let there be lightish. But not very talkative. Just stood there looking back at me. So finally, "Wanna come in?" I said. "Sure," He said.

Ulf is a Swedish name that once meant Wolf. So, yes, Wolf Wolf, that's me.
I was born Ulf Ronnquist one snowy night in late October, in one of those northern Swedish towns that are little more than a clearing in the forest.
Fast forward through twenty Swedish years, ten or so English ones, and another twenty-four in the US and you'll find me in front of an immigrations officer conducting the final citizenship interview, at the end of which he asks me, "What name would you like on your passport?"
And here I recall what a friend had told me, that you can pick just about any name you want at this point, and I heard me say "Ulf Wolf."
That's how it happened. Scout's honor.
Of course, I had been using Ulf Wolf as a pen name for some time before this interview, but I hadn't really planned to adopt that as my official U.S. name. But I did.
I have written stories all my life. Initially in Swedish, but for the last twenty or so years in English. To date I have written six novels, four novellas and two scores of stories; along with many songs and poems.
My writing focus these days is on life's important questions (in my view): Who are we? What are we doing here? And how do we break out of this prison?