Weeks pass like years. Day to day, the news cycle accelerates, as if an unseen force is turning a giant time wheel and cranking it faster, and faster. If we aren’t careful, our waking hours can be saturated with a seemingly unending drama of pandemic, social unrest, climate calamity, and poisonous politics. Respite must be actively sought. And sometimes life intervenes in surprising, even shocking ways.
I begin most mornings with a cup of tea, a view of the sky’s bloom, and some meditative prayer. Often, my routine includes review of a verse from the Bible or another religious text, usually accompanied by a brief recorded reflection from one or more cell phone apps. Last Tuesday I listened to the story of how Christ called to Nathanael, knowing the man’s name without previously having met him or been told about him. “Where did you get to know me?” Nathaniel asked. “I saw you under the fig tree,” he was told. What would you do, the narrator of the daily prayer asked, if today your name was called? How would you respond if today you were directly and publicly spoken to by God?
The question gave me pause. Part of me wondered if the Creator or prime mover of our world might not already be doing that, regularly, and I was just deaf to hearing my name called. But a public call-out and acknowledgment, with my name mentioned before a crowd of strangers? I wasn’t sure if that has happened. I didn’t quite know how I would respond.
Evening. The same day. I had just finished work and quietly slipped into the room where my wife was participating in an interactive webinar on spiritual clairvoyance and communication, an event that she, my sister, and one of my daughters had all joined as part of their unique yet shared journeys to explore, listen, learn, and connect. Together, they were convinced that my mom, a beautiful soul who died over a decade ago, might speak to my sister through one of the webinar mediums. I’m not closed to dialogues with the dead; I talk to Mom in my head regularly. But the concept of hearing from her through a public webinar seemed far-fetched. Even if Mom maintained a consciousness in some way similar to the one she had when she was alive, surely she must have better things to do than compete with other spirits for the chance to say hello through a medium.
What happened next happened quickly and without fanfare. As I entered the room, the idea of a necklace came to my mind; I quickly texted my sister (in jest, I must admit) that mom had a piece of jewelry for her. No sooner had I tapped ‘send’ than the woman doing the reading asked if anyone participating in the webinar had a mother whose name began with a hard “c”. She specifically mentioned Mom’s actual first name. When my sister raised her electronic hand indicating that the name meant something to her, the medium proceeded to describe Mom in ways that only someone who knew her should have been able to do.
“She’s talking about some type of jewelry,” the medium said. “She’s saying something about a necklace, I think. Does that make sense to you?”
It did not, to my sister. I, on the other hand, perked up. In the text, I had made up the bit about the jewelry; there wasn’t any special necklace that I knew of. I had simply thought about the word necklace. Nothing had been communicated to me about a necklace in the weeks, no, the years, that preceded. I was just being a smart-alecky big brother.
So I sat off-camera, attentive to what was to come next. Two thousand miles away, my sister did the same. There was no prompting from the medium. She relayed things my mom was supposedly saying. It sounded like it could be Mom. Still, lots of people have moms (dead or alive) who might talk about subjects such as spirituality and childhood. “Do you have a sibling?” the medium asked. My sister told her she had two. A few additional characteristics of Mom were shared, almost as if there was some effort being made between medium and the great beyond to demonstrate that this interaction was legitimate. “Your mother is a lovely spirit,” the medium noted. “She is talking very quickly too.” I shrugged. That seemed reasonable, as ten years without direct contact is quite a while. But it was honestly like watching someone on TV describe a separate TV show that only they could see and hear. Although interesting, it wasn’t exactly riveting.
Until I had my own fig tree moment. “She’s saying the name Mark. Do you know someone with that name?”
Ah. Yes. Well – that would be me.
I suppose there could be people who profess to be mediums but have highly developed abilities to manipulate others and guide them into subtle yet vital revelations. There must also be certain themes that are common to communications between mothers and daughters. And there may be information rapidly available online about participants in a webinar that, with the right staff and equipment, could be used to deceive. Many years ago, however, I knew someone whom I believed could communicate with spirits. I don’t pretend to know if the medium during the webinar last week was, like the person I knew, the “real deal”. I only know this: in the context of my life that day, what happened during the brief span of three to four minutes was remarkable. In the morning, I had been asked what I might do if God directly called my name. In the evening, it seemed that some cosmic force had done just that. Publicly. Had it been Mom? God? Another spiritual being? It requires too much effort to discount the experience as hoax, strange coincidence, or some combination of both. It is much easier to accept the events for what they probably were.
When Christ told Nathanael that He had seen him under the fig tree, Nathanael was shaken. “You are the Son of God!” he proclaimed.
“Do you believe because I saw you under the fig tree?” Christ asked. “You will see greater things than these.”
Another Biblical passage teaches that three things of importance abide in our lives: faith, hope, and love. My years thus far have been blessed with an abundant share of love and hope. Perhaps my future will fill with opportunities to embrace the third component of that sacred triad. To make that possible, I’ll need to create more space for that wonder amidst the tidal flow of distractions in my daily routine.
Because there are news cycles, yes. But sometimes there is actual news.