Transcendental Wisdom Goggles, please.

Last week I attended a South Sea Evangelical church service in a small village called Kilusakwalo. I wasn't there for a funeral. I wasn't there for a wedding. I was there simply because Solomon Islanders go to church and I live in the Solomon Islands.

I have secretly been looking forward enormously to going to church. I suddenly feel motivated by some internal spiritual clock to investigate different spiritual philosophies, faiths and religions. Here, I am able to fulfill my curiosity under the guise of cultural sensitivity. Brilliant. A cunning plan, if you will.

And so it was, with mixed motives, I found myself attending a village church service. I sat on the solid, wooden pew and looked around me at the village, dressed in their Sunday best and bare feet. A band played on stage and a man (with whom I had played a boisterous game of volley ball with the evening before) sang to his community. Outside sunlight mingled with tropical downpour. The people in the church had grown up together and gathered in this space every Sunday for their whole lives.

A man told us the story of King Solomon. King Solomon asked of God, "Give thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people and to know good and evil." God answered King Solomon's prayer because he had asked not for wealth or for the death of his enemies but for discernment in administering justice. It occurred to me that King Solomon was onto a good thing with the old discernment caper and that I too could benefit from an understanding heart and the ability to know good and evil.

Sometimes when I look out at the ocean or when I see a hundred tiny fluorescent fish through my goggles, I feel an elusive sensation. It's a sensation that goes as quickly as it comes. It feels a little like a hit of serotonin that rushes from my heart to my head. As I looked out the window that morning, thinking about King Solomon, while the rain came down and the sunlight broke through, I felt a sense of transcendence.

Transcendence and wisdom. Is that too much for a girl to ask?