How Can We Feel Connected to God if We Don’t Even Talk to Dead People?
My late wife, Nancy, was worried about one of our kids when she took a nap. My mother, who had died of breast cancer two decades earlier, appeared in a dream and gave Nancy some great advice — advice that was completely contrary to Nancy’s instincts at the time. Nancy went to her nap a little grumpy and woke up glowing and nudged into a different psychological space.
A few years later, I was fast asleep when I was startled awake by my mother’s voice, “Ken!” I looked at the digital clock: 3:13am. Somehow I knew to pray for a woman who was in hospice care, dying of breast cancer. This woman’s sister emailed me later that day to say she had died — around 3am.
My wife, Julia, lost her husband, Richard, just before she was ordained as an Episcopal priest. In her first job as a priest in Lincoln Park, just outside Detroit, she was driving home one day thinking about all the things she wanted to tell Richard when she got home. This was her pattern when she was studying in Detroit months earlier, when Richard was still alive. Then she realized, Richard isn’t home — he died a few months ago. So Julia simply thought, “Well, no need to wait until I get home,” and started to tell Richard all about her day at work as she drove home.
