The scaffolding was gone, no tarps, nothing between the floor and that vast expanse of paint crashing overhead. That ceiling was loud as its maker, but it wasn’t only the size of the thing or the volume of paint and figures that overwhelmed. No. The details were spectacular, too. Vibrant sibyls twisting and turning; God straining to touch Adam’s hand, their fingers separated by only a breath of space; Jonah, presiding over the altar wall, leaning back in his chair, knees jutting out as if sculpted in marble; God, robed in pink, twirling, swirling, tumbling, building up enough energy to create an entire universe. Had one of those panels truly been painted in a single day? Did it matter? And it wasn’t only the scenes that captivated, either. No, worse—even worse—was that Michelangelo had developed skill—no, not skill, but mastery—of painterly techniques, and not only of figures, as one might expect from a sculptor, but of design and line, brushwork and color. Santa Madonna, those colors. And the foreshortening? Arms, knees, hands reaching out into space while bodies receded backward. A sculptor carves into physical stones; a sculptor doesn’t need tricks of the eye to make figures recede into space. A sculptor does not need foreshortening. So, how had this sculptor learned these techniques so . . . so . . . so. The first half of the ceiling, which had once felt like such a mess, now felt as if it had always been planned, as if it, indeed, depicted the devolving of humanity after the Fall. There wasn’t a painter alive—not a painter in history— who could’ve conceived that ceiling better.

While I’d been trying to explode perfection down the hall, here had been Michelangelo exploding the thought of even hoping for such a quaint idea. It was as if perfection didn’t exist, couldn’t exist, would never exist because the world was this explosion of energy on that ceiling and nothing could stop the flood, and we’re all riding the wave from the force of God’s hand creating the universe, flinging us all forward through history.

Do you want to know the worst part—as if there haven’t already been enough worst parts? The worst part wasn’t that everything for which I’d ever aimed, ever tried, ever wanted had been rendered obsolete. The worst part wasn’t that that ceiling was better than anything I’d ever seen, ever done, could ever . . .

The worst part was that shiver, trilling up my spine not because of jealousy or disappointment, no—it was worse, far worse than that—but because I, too, was swept away by the force of that ceiling.

The worst part was that I loved it.

That’s when I saw the truth: God does grant miracles; he just doesn’t grant them to me.