As a pastor and spiritual medium I am very often listening to the story of a person’s grief. I just want him back is a version of what I often hear. It’s a hard sell, once someone is gone from the embodied experience, to convince the griever that their loved one hasn’t gone very far, just changed condition.
Like water into ice, snow, vapor, rain. Same stuff, different forms. It’s the same with us: we’re kind of a vapor then we take on a body, then back again, many times over.
I know what people miss. They miss the person’s voice, their hands, their physical presence. They miss their smell, their smile, their quirks. All of the things that we love about each other as humans.
I’ve always found it so interesting how we seem to complain about each other endlessly while we’re here, but when someone dies we write about and think about and talk about all of their wonderful traits. It’s a strange disconnect, the gap between the many ways we drive each other nuts and the things we miss when someone is gone. Thinking maybe we need to work on that.
I have a chair, an old wicker chair given to me by a friend whose dad, whom we called PopPop, died a few years ago. The chair came from PopPop’s beloved summer camp on Lake George, which the family sold this past fall. My friend was so very kind and generous in gifting me with this piece of nostalgia, a reminder of the man I loved and respected.
It’s a dusty, campy old chair and when I woke up yesterday morning I was thinking of that song by Dave Matthews …
I hear you still talk to me
As if you're sitting in that dusty chair
Makes the hours easier to bear
I know despite the years alone
I'll always listen to you sing your sweet song …
One of the things I especially loved about PopPop was his hands. He had big, strong hands and he gestured with them a lot. I also love how he always carried a pocket full of pencils and pens.
I miss him very much, but I also hear from him a lot. He sends me all kinds of messages, songs, insights. I’ll get a buzzing in my ear and know he’s here and has something to say.
Everyone has access to the spiritual realm this way, not just mediums. I think that the more we cultivate a sensibility, while we’re here, around people as embodied spiritual energy, the easier it is when someone makes the transition out of the body suit.
Seeing each other as spiritual beings takes our thinking to a higher level. It requires trust that there is more to all of this than our limited human experience can know. It means you have to drop the ego and move higher up the spiritual food chain. This thing I am right now … it’s not that important. All this material stuff, it’s mostly a heavy weight on a soul yearning to be free.
Both of my sons are colorblind. Last year Nate got a pair of colorblind correction glasses and when Sam put them on recently he was very quiet, looking all around at the trees, sky, plants, our shirts. Then he said, Has it always been this way?
I have a sneaky feeling that once we die we see how things have been all along. We have new lenses through which to view all of life and I think we are surprised by the way it is. What matters and what doesn’t. The opportunities and powers we have possessed here that we never connected with. The truth that when we die we don’t go to some far off land of fluffy clouds and harpists. We remain near, wanting to help, guide, soften the blows of this hard embodied life. But most of us are so busy, so caught up in all of the material aspects of life, that we fail to notice. The world is humming and sparkling and alive with the folks we call dead. Sometimes I wonder who’s actually dead, especially when I sit in restaurants and walk the streets and see everyone looking at their phones all the time. We’re becoming zombies, with little or no resistance.
The purpose of life is spiritual evolution. The challenges we face are essentially our classroom. We are supposed to become better people as we get older. We are supposed to become more loving, more kind, more giving. This does not mean that we have to eschew success. Spiritual evolution and financial or personal success are not mutually exclusive. We can (and should) integrate all things on the human plane: fun, joy, financial stability, the manifestation of our dreams and kindness, respect, curiosity, education. It’s not necessary to give up the world to raise the vibration of your soul. In fact, it seems quite silly because the world is where all the teachings are.
The goal is to expand as we rise. To see life as so much more than this one brief embodied flight from birth to death. To see our existence on a continuum. When your thinking gets this large then you can see your loved ones as spiritual substance, too, and their death may even become a source of joy. They’re free and can be with you anytime, anywhere. I don’t understand any of it, but it doesn’t matter. The existence of these ancient spiritual truths doesn’t hinge on my (or your) belief or unbelief.
I know, this is big. It’s not easy to see life this way. It takes a lot of practice to move one’s thinking from the confines of the overwhelming material world to the infinite aspects of spirit. Bird by bird, as Anne Lamott wrote and Ted Lasso quoted so many times in that fabulous series. It’s a reference to a project on birds her brother had as a kid. He waited too long to start and then was overwhelmed by the enormity of it. “Bird by bird,” his dad told him, “just take it bird by bird, buddy.”
One day, one step, one new thought at a time. Your old friend is still sitting in that dusty chair, making the hours easier to bear. Teach yourself how to tune in.
xomo
How insightful you are. I worked oncology for 25+years and learned so much of what you’re talking about from those who were dying. We all see our loved ones at special times in our lives and it’s usually the family times…. Cooking thanksgiving dinner for instance, that makes someone say, Grandma is here. Thank you for your wisdom and spirituality that reminds us all that it’s this life that matters now. The beauty of life , and knowing it’s not what you have but who you have. That’s what matters.
Happy Thanksgiving.
The greatest greatest change in my life happened when Melissa opened my eyes to the understanding that those who have physically left this world are still here with us! They don’t teach you that Catholic Church School!