Someone once wrote to me asking if I believed in spiritualism:
I have been puzzled for seven years now about a vision I had twelve days after my husband died. I suddenly became aware that he was standing before me. He wasn’t a ghost but was quite solid, and he stayed there for two or three seconds. He was smiling the special smile he always kept for me. I wasn’t afraid – just amazed. So I leaned forward and spoke his name – and he’d gone! I felt much happier afterwards and thought he had come back to say he was alright and to say goodbye. I feel he is still nearby and keeping an eye on me. I can see him still after seven years.
I too have had a similar experience. Such visions are recognised as belonging to an entirely different order than that of the imagination, leaving a deep sense of contentment. And they are far more common than is often realised. My belief is that the dead are often allowed to visit us, sometimes in dreams, and to reassure us in this way, and then they are gone, to set about their own tasks, for the work of redeeming the cosmos is unending.
I can almost hear James voice.
Such experiences are quietly, deeply, beneficial gifts and for me an awareness of the endless closeness of God’s Love to us human beings. If like Mary on Easter morning we take to heart that they are ours to receive, giving comfort and encouragement, and inspire thankfulness thank, they are not life boats to cling to.
The topic bring the words ‘to have and not to hold’, from the marriage ceremony that indicate a reality that is eternal. The freedom of the Love we are shown in the life of Jesus. Though our relationships change and the presence of a loved one is lost in a physical sense, they are alive with us in God’s Love.
Every Blessing fellow pilgrims,