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In reply to the discussion: My husband died last night. [View all]IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)near death experiences. One surgeon - you know they don't tend to be crackpot fundies - said that once before he operated on a man who had little chance of surviving, he hid some small object on top of the ceiling bar light, where nobody standing on the floor or lying on a gurney could see it. Sure enough, the patient died and remained so for several minutes real time until revived. Later the patient described floating out of his body and hovering above, where he could also see what the doctor had hidden. To me that's the most convincing proof of the spirit/soul surviving outside the body.
I've never had a problem with atheism myself. It's the crackpot fundies who bother me. Although I consider myself fully RC, at the same time I have an unusually strong dose of animist and universalist too. Main thing is that I try to avoid making God in my own image, and I feel no imperative whatever to shove my theology down anyone else's throat.
This might sound off topic at first, but it really isn't: lately I've been re-reading the collected letters of CS Lewis, who was a pretty deep thinker. It's fascinating to trace his personal development over the years, as shown by the heavy correspondence people of that era maintained. Anyway, somewhere into his mid to late 20's he'd decided that Buddhism was a fair approximation of his newly found Christianity and that the West should basically leave them be. That's interesting to me partly because many liberal educated Christians believe the gap in the written record between Jesus' childhood and his 30's may well reflect time spent in Asia absorbing Buddhism.
Last departure story here is about a dear friend living in a nursing home where I worked. One night when I was off duty her daughter called to tell me that Joy had passed, and with it came a remarkable story. Joy had all her marbles; she was just too frail to live alone and the daughter had to work. But they talked on the phone every night.
That particular night they were chatting happily away when all of a sudden Joy asked her daughter, "Who are all these people?" Knowing her mother had a private room and visitors were discouraged at that late hour, the daughter asked "What do you mean, Mom?" Joy exclaimed, "The room is FULL of the most beautiful people!" And then she dropped the phone because she was gone. That happened at least 30 years ago and still gives me a happy tingle when I think about it.
What grieves me now and then is that I can't volunteer with area hospice where I retired in an extremely remote area of the Bible Belt. People here are xenophobic as geese. It took almost 6 years before I could even approach a table at a carry-in w/o clearing the bench. Well, I was on tv a few months after moving here, rebutting the station manager's obtuse editorial, and I write letters to area newspapers as well, so most people consider me a socialist/pinko/commie damnYankee heretic invader. Things eventually got a little better, at least so most people would sit with me in the cafeteria and at church, but basically every other door is still slammed shut and locked to me. I've made about 3 real friends, and the rest who speak to me now are no more than congenial acquaintances if that. It's partly fear of association. After some of my better letters to the editor of our local paper, which enjoys an extremely wide regional circulation, I've received letters of congratulation - unsigned!
So I eventually caved on the notion of doing hospice volunteer work because it would absolutely devastate me if a family refused my services at such a time. I've got a pretty thick skin but know my limits, and that would be an all too likely result which would really break my heart. Only recently have I managed to convince people to eat what I bring to carry-ins; I'll be ready for hospice myself before they'll be ready to let me volunteer in that capacity.