Hi Lee: Your short vignette of an experience of the image of Christ is truly profound. Several things hit me when I read it.
1. Something familiar became deliciously transformed by seeing Christ through the prism of what you have been influenced by in reading JC–Joseph Campbell and Jesus Christ!
2. Your imagination took something familiar and transformed it, or perhaps discovered in it a symbol.
3. Your moving from the literal to the symbolic is one of the dimensions that mythic consciousness brings us to.
4. You did not ignore your feelings; and yes, I would suggest you felt God’s love/presence in the world and in yourself, perhaps simultaneously. Another writer on myth observes that myths are most vital when they align the outer world with one’s inner cosmos.
Your experience is so rich in pointing out both God’s love as a real presence and your shift into mythic awareness.
Much gratitude for this Lee.