“ … I believe that the time between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. is one where the veil between this world and the next is the thinnest. Often during this time of the day, I hear the sound of my name uttered by an unseen presence.” From the documentary, Life in a Day.

The movie quote seems to be ambivalent about whether that early hour is good or evil. The quote opens with this, “You might be wondering why I’m up at this ungodly hour.” I get the feeling that the speaker means ungodly in the usual ironic sense, that it’s difficult to get up that early but it doesn’t necessarily mean the absence of goodness. We speak of ungodly journeys and ungodly places but we don’t really mean ungodly. We usually mean unpleasant or uncomfortable.

Some say that 3 a.m., the hour of darkness, is the Devil’s hour. The exact opposite time, 3 p.m., is thought to be the hour of mercy, the alleged time that Jesus Christ was crucified. Others say that the time between midnight and 3 a.m. is the witching hour, although to be less wishy-washy about it we ought to say “witching hours.” The blues musician, Robert Johnson, is reputed to have sold his soul to the Devil at midnight, right at the onset of the witching hours, down at the crossroads.

I’m no stranger myself to the mysteries of the wee hours. If something in my everyday life is troubling me I sometimes wake up at 3 a.m. If nothing is on my mind I sometimes wake up at 3 a.m. anyway.

Although I seldom have a nightmare, if I do wake up from one it’s usually around 3 a.m. Perhaps the most profound epiphany I’ve ever had in my life came out of a 3 a.m. nightmare. Silently asking to be relieved of the emotional anguish caused by that terrible dream, for the first time in my life I experienced the bliss of The Silence. For months after, I regularly arose at 3 a.m. to meditate.

So, what is it about those dark hours? Some say it’s evil, some say it’s good. That’s nothing new for human beings. It seems we have a need to find two sides to every event, every belief, every thought. To not find an opposite side would be like turning over a coin and finding Nothingness there. That would be cause for wonder, wouldn’t it?

This might sound blasphemous, but I’m entertaining the thought that God and the Devil might be one and the same thing, each a construction based on our own individual interpretations of the one true universal Source.