=Hokomai;9612068]Several CAF members have recently challenged me to ‘try belief’ and just act as if I were a believer in the hope that I would believe ‘by believing’. I thought about this, but found it hard to even start, given my unbelief. I decided to list all of those things I would have to accept before I could even contemplate such an experiment. Here they are, in order of magnitude, as I see them. That is, if I could accept 1) and 2) I might be able to begin religious practice, but only if I accepted all 15 could I begin to accept Catholicism.
(You then listed your 15 points)
You’ve got an incurably intellectual approach to God. Yet God’s a Person (or 3 Persons to be a bit more accurate), and like a human person seeks a relationship.
Even the Trinity underscores this fundamental fact of an inter-Personal relationship.
Personally I think you need an “experience” of God before all these other points will even start to make sense. So I’ll comment on a couple of mine.
I’ve said before in another stream that the night my father died, he appeared in my room, starting with an apology and finishing with one almighty scream just before he disappeared.
You commented that you thought the experience was “real to me” while as far as I was concerned, it was just plain real, full stop.
Leaving that aside, there have been other experiences. One of these is “double whammies” (so called by my Catholic psychiatrist, who has experienced them also). It’s like a breath going through you in waves from head to foot, very pronounced, and clearly imposed from outside.
The first time this happened, I’d only been a Christian for about a year or so. I was on a “beach mission” at a place called Forest Glen Caravan Park near Nambour in SE Queensland. I was a Protestant at the time, and I was part of a Scripture Union team (non denominational group that run “missions” at holiday parks amongst other things).
Just before this camp started, I’d been going through a divorce, had been chewed out by the boss, felt out of my depth in this camp, was struggling with personal issues, didn’t feel particularly accepted, and wasn’t in the best of moods. And I was also thinking, “How do I know all this stuff is real, and not just a psychological prop?” You could say I felt a mite cynical.
It was the tradition to have a “camp leaders” Bible study each afternoon for about half an hour. It was quite warm, being summer over here in a sub tropical climate, and we were sitting in a circle on seats or benches under a large tent (marquis). Despite my cynicism, I was almost dozing off.
Anyway the camp leader was reading from Samuel (I think) when he read a passage referring to King David, and quoted “… a man after my own heart…”. Precisely as he read that passage, this “double whammy” hit me, and these waves of breath like pulses just coursed down me from head to toe.
I got such a shock I nearly fell off the seat. I looked around in amazement to see what the others were making of it, and of course they weren’t taking the least bit of notice, as it hadn’t happened to them. They were simply sitting there listening to the leader giving the remainder of his homily.
I spoke to my pastor about this afterwards, and he commented, “The Lord knew you’d been through a tough time, and just needed some encouragement.”
I had two more of these “double whammies” over the next year or two, both times in church, and both times they were used to highlight specific words being spoken by another. They haven’t happened since. But as I said other people get them too eg. my Catholic psychiatist.
Since that first “double whammy”, I’ve never been able to go back to my original atheism of years back. I’d just be kidding myself. There’s a spiritual world there, believe me, and any time it wants to, it can contact you. But it remains hidden from everybody else. When I got that first “double whammy”, not one other person around me had a clue what was happening to me.
Incidentally, if that was God, we move billions of miles in a couple of years through space as the earth spins around the sun, the sun spins around the Milky Way, and the Milky Way spins around the universe. But on 3 distinct occasions, He knew where to find me, what was about to be said, and how to highlight the particular comment on each occasion without anybody else being aware of it, remaining hidden the whole time. I still remember the relevant phrase that was said on all three occasions, word for word, and ***only because ***of the “double whammies”
On a more mechanical note, my old pastor commented that when people die, “clocks stop”. I’ve even seen a note on one of the forums here where a woman wrote in to say that when her father-in-law died, both her and her sister-in-law’s clocks stopped at precisely the minute he died. A formal study carried out in hospices and nursing homes in the UK found that it was common for clocks to stop synchronistically when people died (there were other phenomena as well).
Comfort for the dying: five year retrospective and one year prospective studies of end of life experiences.
Fenwick P, Lovelace H, Brayne S.
SourceKings College Institute of Psychiatry and Department of Neuropsychiatry, Southampton University UK, Neuropsychiatry Office, 42 Herne Hill, London SE24 9QP, UK.
peter_fenwick@compuserve.com
Abstract
Many cultures have reported end-of-life experiences (ELEs) as part of the dying process. However, few studies have examined the mental states of the dying in the weeks and days before death. Following an ELE pilot study with a palliative care team, 38 nurses, doctors and end-of-life carers from two hospices and a nursing home took part in a 5-year retrospective followed by a 1-year prospective ELE study. Interviewees’ reports (first-hand and second-hand accounts from relatives, patients and residents) suggested that ELEs are not uncommon. ELEs included deathbed phenomena (DBP) such as visions, coincidences and the desire to reconcile with estranged family members. These experiences seemed to comfort both the dying and the bereaved. Interviewees described other phenomena such as clocks stopping synchronistically at the time of death, shapes leaving the body, light surrounding the body and strange animal behavior. Interviewees confirmed that ELEs differed from drug-induced hallucinations and occurred in clear consciousness. Most expressed concern about a lack of specialist ELE training and education and recommended that ELE modules be included in their training courses. ELEs provided comfort and hope for the dying and consolation for the bereaved. Further research is required to find the true prevalence and range of ELE phenomena.
So I recently asked a local watchmaker if he’d ever had anybody come to him with clocks that had stopped when someone died. His reply was “often”. They stop to the minute of the person’s death. He said many people had brought clocks to him with this story. In most cases, they just needed a simple service and they went again.
So on a mechanical note (which should appeal to your intellectual atheism), why don’t you start by going to local watchmakers who repair clocks, and ask them if any of their customers have had this experience. There is no good physical reason why clocks should stop working when someone dies (particularly if they are a mixture of mechanical, crystal and digital clocks), which means God’s giving us a hint, virtue of our time pieces, that there’s more to reality than mere mechanical physics.
Go ahead and ask, and see what your own watchmakers tell you.
