I lost my father 19 years ago. I've been a (reasonably) militant atheist for most of my adult life, but like you, am seeing the poison fruit of that belief system playing out in our society and am looking for something else .... and finding it.
It's great to read about your spiritual journey. Never forget that there is a big difference between Jesus Christ as revealed in scripture and institutional religiosity which can be and often is badly done. As scripture says, "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39)
Darling, your dad did not want you there when he died; it would have made his departure much, much harder. Dying is something we have to do alone. The presence of our loved ones makes it much more difficult. I held his hand for three hours before he died. He only let his spirit go when I had to leave his bedside to answer a call from your aunt Elizabeth.
He would have been (is?) very proud of you as you hang on to the cliff of life without him.
Hmmmm...no, I want my loved ones with me if possible. It is ok if dying is tough. It lasts forever so is worth the effort. We technically do die alone, even if we are in a group tragedy. However for the family to be there is a huge blessing.
It is no doubt a huge blessing but our viewpoints are not mutually exclusive. I was very glad to be at my mother"s bedside when she died. But she was quite old. When one dies in the prime of life, it's harder to leave our loved ones. Kind regards.
Just beautiful, Jenny. I had a moving experience when my mum died in 2016 too. I awoke through the night to a shimmering light over by my wardrobe. I could just have had sleepy goo in my eyes, but it was like, 'Boom! You're awake now!' No way I was getting back to sleep, so I got up and came through to lie on the sofa with a book (The Master and Margerita). Then the phone rang. It was the hospital. That shimmering light helped me so much to deal with the following month.
Beautiful essay. God speaks through dreams, as well as through quiet nudges, the “still, small voice,” as it’s called in scripture. I am tremendously heartened that in the midst of the woke madness, people like you and Ayaan Hirsi Ali are coming to faith. I will pray for you.
I’m often skeptical of people who say God spoke through a dream, but it happens so often, especially in places in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East that are hostile to Christianity, that I cannot deny it. Where are you now in your faith journey?
I’m excited for what’s ahead for you! Here’s some good news: you don’t have to choose faith or reason. They are not at opposite ends of a spectrum. You can have both. My urge is to share all kinds of resources with you but I don’t want to be annoying. Okay, just one. Shane Rosenthal’s podcast “The Humble Skeptic.” No wait, one more: Justin Brierley’s podcast “The Surprising Rebirth in the Belief of God.”
Interesting. This is the journey that C.S. Lewis followed, i.e. atheist to firstly, reason-based. If you haven't already, you may choose to pick up one of his books. He's my favorite writer. (Reading the entire Narnia series to my second boy as we speak. Lewis would say, however, its mostly for adults).
Thank you for sharing (so elegantly) your father’s death and your journey towards faith. Kimberly is right-you don’t choose between faith and reason, they blend in a way that enriches both. Your honest writing is a blessing.
A beautiful and honest piece. The trouble with sharing experiences of God is so many people will jump in determined to correct you and reframe what you witnessed. There will be others who say nothing, but hear you, and the seed is planted.
I feel as if I could be watching that Russell Brand style journey toward Truth, and it's captivating. Please keep sharing. In the meantime, I pray God's light will shine brightly your way. And remember, those who seek are promised to find.
Thank you, Jenny, for sharing your heart with us (and, boy, what a powerful dream you received!). A lot of times family members who are in the process of dying don't want to "leave" when a dear, dear loved one is in the room. It makes "letting go" so much harder for them. But it's also true that, often, someone who is in the process of dying will get a surge of energy flowing through them, right before the end, and it will appear as if they're no longer as close to death as they were the day before. (I know this only because I used to be a hospice volunteer.) I would say that your dad experienced such a surge, but my intuitive feeling is that he wanted you to leave the hospital so that he, himself, could more easily let go of you, just as you had to let go of him in your dream. You're blessed to have had the kind of dad who was able to let you know how much he loved you while he was still a part of this physical realm. Thank you, again, Jenny, for sharing your heart with us today. Blessings to you, dear one. May your continued journey to the Light of Living Wholeness be free of any pitfall or barrier!
Interesting piece. The morning my Mother died I woke up (fully awake) at 5 am and knew I had to go to the hospice where she was. Stayed with her playing music. She died at the same time as my house number. Coincidence?
The strange thing about us Catholics is that we never can quite shake our religion off. Despite all of our education and life experience it returns to us in times of absolute need like a life belt of certainty in violent seas. My father died nearly 18 years ago now and I had the privilege of holding his hand as he slipped away. I closed his eyes with my Mother and cried so hard for days that I thought I ruptured my spleen. Shortly after his death I could have sworn he came to me one night in my dreams and hugged me so tight before saying a final goodbye. Strange behaviour for a hard old Irishman who had worked on building sites all his life and had come from a two-room, stone cottage with nine other kids on the West Coast of Ireland. I don’t know if this strange association with faith and casual belief in an afterlife is just a product of childhood indoctrination or not, but can honestly say that I prefer to walk through life with it by my side. Especially more so during these dark and strange days where certainty and morality seem like very distant friends.
A desk clerk in a Christian Youth Hostel in Amsterdam stopped me as I came back to the hostel one night. “Are you a Christian?” she asked.
“Well, I’m a Catholic.” I answered.
“I didn’t ask you what church you went to,” the desk clerk said, “I asked you if you were a Christian.”
I continued to my room stunned, pondering the notion that a person could be one without the other. Her question became an instant burr under my saddle. It took over a year to find the answer.
My siblings and I all had the same dream in slightly different ways the night after my father died. Each of us was rocked by the dream. It was that of an explosion flash of light. My sister heard the words "you will all live together". The next day when it came out as we spoke that we all had this dream (experience?) it was like blink, blink, what? Like, what? And then never spoken of again because like most dreams human words don't exist to really explain what was seen, felt, etc.
Thank you, Jenny. It is such a gift to follow a writer such as your (special) self.
My guess is that as we move into this era of transhumanism and artificial intelligence that people are feeling a need to embrace traditional values and humility in the face of God.
I lost my father 19 years ago. I've been a (reasonably) militant atheist for most of my adult life, but like you, am seeing the poison fruit of that belief system playing out in our society and am looking for something else .... and finding it.
I love this comment, thank you.
So happy for you!
It's great to read about your spiritual journey. Never forget that there is a big difference between Jesus Christ as revealed in scripture and institutional religiosity which can be and often is badly done. As scripture says, "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39)
Darling, your dad did not want you there when he died; it would have made his departure much, much harder. Dying is something we have to do alone. The presence of our loved ones makes it much more difficult. I held his hand for three hours before he died. He only let his spirit go when I had to leave his bedside to answer a call from your aunt Elizabeth.
He would have been (is?) very proud of you as you hang on to the cliff of life without him.
Hmmmm...no, I want my loved ones with me if possible. It is ok if dying is tough. It lasts forever so is worth the effort. We technically do die alone, even if we are in a group tragedy. However for the family to be there is a huge blessing.
It is no doubt a huge blessing but our viewpoints are not mutually exclusive. I was very glad to be at my mother"s bedside when she died. But she was quite old. When one dies in the prime of life, it's harder to leave our loved ones. Kind regards.
I do agree with you on that.
Blessings to you
Just beautiful, Jenny. I had a moving experience when my mum died in 2016 too. I awoke through the night to a shimmering light over by my wardrobe. I could just have had sleepy goo in my eyes, but it was like, 'Boom! You're awake now!' No way I was getting back to sleep, so I got up and came through to lie on the sofa with a book (The Master and Margerita). Then the phone rang. It was the hospital. That shimmering light helped me so much to deal with the following month.
Wow -- that is an amazing story.
Beautiful essay. God speaks through dreams, as well as through quiet nudges, the “still, small voice,” as it’s called in scripture. I am tremendously heartened that in the midst of the woke madness, people like you and Ayaan Hirsi Ali are coming to faith. I will pray for you.
Very good. Hang tight, sister.
I’m often skeptical of people who say God spoke through a dream, but it happens so often, especially in places in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East that are hostile to Christianity, that I cannot deny it. Where are you now in your faith journey?
That's a good question! I'm still very early, I'd say. It's still more reason-based than faith-based, if that makes sense.
I’m excited for what’s ahead for you! Here’s some good news: you don’t have to choose faith or reason. They are not at opposite ends of a spectrum. You can have both. My urge is to share all kinds of resources with you but I don’t want to be annoying. Okay, just one. Shane Rosenthal’s podcast “The Humble Skeptic.” No wait, one more: Justin Brierley’s podcast “The Surprising Rebirth in the Belief of God.”
Interesting. This is the journey that C.S. Lewis followed, i.e. atheist to firstly, reason-based. If you haven't already, you may choose to pick up one of his books. He's my favorite writer. (Reading the entire Narnia series to my second boy as we speak. Lewis would say, however, its mostly for adults).
Makes sense to me. First comes Truth, next comes faith in it.
Thank you for sharing (so elegantly) your father’s death and your journey towards faith. Kimberly is right-you don’t choose between faith and reason, they blend in a way that enriches both. Your honest writing is a blessing.
A beautiful and honest piece. The trouble with sharing experiences of God is so many people will jump in determined to correct you and reframe what you witnessed. There will be others who say nothing, but hear you, and the seed is planted.
I feel as if I could be watching that Russell Brand style journey toward Truth, and it's captivating. Please keep sharing. In the meantime, I pray God's light will shine brightly your way. And remember, those who seek are promised to find.
Thank you, Jenny, for sharing your heart with us (and, boy, what a powerful dream you received!). A lot of times family members who are in the process of dying don't want to "leave" when a dear, dear loved one is in the room. It makes "letting go" so much harder for them. But it's also true that, often, someone who is in the process of dying will get a surge of energy flowing through them, right before the end, and it will appear as if they're no longer as close to death as they were the day before. (I know this only because I used to be a hospice volunteer.) I would say that your dad experienced such a surge, but my intuitive feeling is that he wanted you to leave the hospital so that he, himself, could more easily let go of you, just as you had to let go of him in your dream. You're blessed to have had the kind of dad who was able to let you know how much he loved you while he was still a part of this physical realm. Thank you, again, Jenny, for sharing your heart with us today. Blessings to you, dear one. May your continued journey to the Light of Living Wholeness be free of any pitfall or barrier!
Interesting piece. The morning my Mother died I woke up (fully awake) at 5 am and knew I had to go to the hospice where she was. Stayed with her playing music. She died at the same time as my house number. Coincidence?
The strange thing about us Catholics is that we never can quite shake our religion off. Despite all of our education and life experience it returns to us in times of absolute need like a life belt of certainty in violent seas. My father died nearly 18 years ago now and I had the privilege of holding his hand as he slipped away. I closed his eyes with my Mother and cried so hard for days that I thought I ruptured my spleen. Shortly after his death I could have sworn he came to me one night in my dreams and hugged me so tight before saying a final goodbye. Strange behaviour for a hard old Irishman who had worked on building sites all his life and had come from a two-room, stone cottage with nine other kids on the West Coast of Ireland. I don’t know if this strange association with faith and casual belief in an afterlife is just a product of childhood indoctrination or not, but can honestly say that I prefer to walk through life with it by my side. Especially more so during these dark and strange days where certainty and morality seem like very distant friends.
Thank you, Jenny, for sharing your journey. For you a dream, for me a salty question that thrust me on the path towards the living God.
What was the salty question?
A desk clerk in a Christian Youth Hostel in Amsterdam stopped me as I came back to the hostel one night. “Are you a Christian?” she asked.
“Well, I’m a Catholic.” I answered.
“I didn’t ask you what church you went to,” the desk clerk said, “I asked you if you were a Christian.”
I continued to my room stunned, pondering the notion that a person could be one without the other. Her question became an instant burr under my saddle. It took over a year to find the answer.
What was your answer?
My siblings and I all had the same dream in slightly different ways the night after my father died. Each of us was rocked by the dream. It was that of an explosion flash of light. My sister heard the words "you will all live together". The next day when it came out as we spoke that we all had this dream (experience?) it was like blink, blink, what? Like, what? And then never spoken of again because like most dreams human words don't exist to really explain what was seen, felt, etc.
Thank you, Jenny. It is such a gift to follow a writer such as your (special) self.
My guess is that as we move into this era of transhumanism and artificial intelligence that people are feeling a need to embrace traditional values and humility in the face of God.