On a glorious day in 1972, D'Arcy Fallon wandered onto a windswept Northern California bluff and bumped into Jesus.
The chance encounter led to a passionate relationship that lost its fervency three years later.
Fallon renewed her search for inspiration from the inside, determined to find out who she was and what she wanted.
She stopped imploring strangers to embrace Jesus, severed ties with the restrictive spiritual commune where she had lived and ended up divorced from the husband she had met there.
With self-effacing humor and naked honesty, the 50-year-old author and award-winning columnist lays out these spiritual and personal epiphanies in her slim but mighty book, "So Late, So Soon" (Hawthorne Books).
Mustering the confidence to start "So Late" took much longer than the four to five years to write it.
"I don't think I had the self-esteem to really feel all right about saying this is my story, and it's important, and it has value, and I want it to go out into the world. I may not be on Oprah, but it's a story that's close to my heart."
The former Lafayette resident stumbled onto Lighthouse Ranch located in tiny Loleta while hitchhiking the countryside. Having grown up in a rootless military family, Fallon's sense of impermanence primed her to see the light.
"I think I was just a lost kid," she said in an interview at her parents' Benicia home. "I just fell into it. I didn't have anything going on. I wish I could say it was something really deep and cosmic, but I really tripped into it."
At times Fallon experienced the tug of a higher presence while living in compact, public quarters at the ranch.
"I think there were times when I legitimately felt connected with God."
Through time she grew removed from the rituals, including a foot washing experience she found particularly humiliating.
Lighthouse members roamed the coastline and country evangelizing for the Lord. They took menial jobs and professed exuberance for Christ. Fallon eventually moved with her husband and a few other members to New York. The marriage disintegrated when he became more entrenched in Lighthouse and she didn't.
Family life today brings her much joy. She's married to a "wonderfully sweet" Midwestern man and has a 16-year-old son. She rarely steps into a place of worship, and doesn't know if "Jesus is the only ticket."
Even though she's ambivalent about Christ, the memoir purposely avoids coming across as bitter or indignant even when showing how the sect stifled individuality, especially its women's, to match the elders' view of acceptable gender behavior.
For wives that meant obedience, subservience to men and traditional household duties. Women were to heed the advice.
Because of her experience, Fallon remains wary of church social activities aimed at women.
"I'm not gonna do it ... whether it's the ladies luncheon or women's Bible study or now we're going to study Proverbs 31. I think that stuff is subversive, and I'm very suspicious."
Although Fallon wouldn't describe Lighthouse as a cult, she said church elders applied psychological pressure.
"They would say: 'If you leave, God won't bless your life.' Can you imagine saying that to somebody? The nerve. Don't you think that's kind of cultlike?"
Fallon revisited Lighthouse twice, which created a sense of uneasiness.
Since the book came out in May, she has received emails from former Lighthouse members saying they liked it and that the book reflected what happened there.
"I do feel extremely blessed, and so blessed that the book has touched a nerve with a lot of fellow travelers."
Life's next chapter finds Fallon teaching journalism at Wittenberg University in Ohio as soon as the book tour concludes.
Although she remains cautious about organized religion, she experiences God's presence in nature.
"I guess I do believe in God," she said.
"What's her name? I don't know."