Talking With the Spirits

It began when I was very young. I grew up in a 200 year old house in Pennsylvania. My room was in the back of the house with three outside walls. A huge black walnut tree loomed outside one window. The other side of the room had windows facing the open field while the headboard to my bed was pressed against the remaining windowless wall. The tree danced eerie shadows against the walls from the glow of a full moon. The shadows were unnerving at times for a young boy given to imagination. So I tried to pass off some of the oppressive shadows as just that. Imaginations. However, there were times when the shadows came without the moon and did not dance, but slowly moved across the windowed wall where the tree stood vigil just outside. There is no earthly reason for the shadows to be there. No light to cast the image. Just a clear sense of a presence that made me feel like some special form of gravity held me down and pressed me to my bed. I would watch, almost unable to breath. And then I would ask God to make them go away. I don't know why. I accepted there was a God from as far back as life could go. We were church people, so I had had some basics. There were times that the shadows were like reflected light but there was no mirror, no light to cause them. Like the dark ones, these shadows seemed to move as they willed. There was no gravity well with them. No euphoria either. They would just come quietly to visit. The dark ones never came when they were there. I told my mom of the presence and she said it was just a bad dream. But it wasn't a dream.

As I got a little older I simply accepted the reality of the spirit world. I had learned of the Holy Spirit at church and about Jesus and God and the Devil. Somewhere I knew there were other spirit beings as well. Some good. Some evil. I felt them in walks through pine trees or in the silence of a snow fall. I would lay on my back watching slivers of light drift down through the darkness and dissolve on my open hands. The spirits would somehow make me smile as if to say all would be right in the world. There were other times, crouched against a boathouse along the shores of Lake Erie, when the presence of evil was so close my lungs would not work. Waves turned brutal tossing foam across the sand and rocks almost to my feet. I cowered against the building as a darkness taunted me, telling me I was his and my life had no meaning. My life would not last. I asked the spirits of light to come but shivers came instead. And then he was gone. I walked home in the dark and never told anyone of this dark visitation until my college days.  

There was another night on the same beach,near the same boathouse. (I guess it would be helpful to mention I grew up less than a mile from Lake Erie and spent hours there in contemplation, more often alone than not. I would come in the late night hours when I should have been at home in bed.) This night I was contemplating the reality of a God I had learned of and of His Son Jesus. I knew the stories. I knew of His Christmas birth and the images of His death on a cross and the Easter Sunday resurrection thing. I didn't discount it, just never gave it that much thought. I had traveled the roads of Nietzsche and Descartes. I thought long about Plato's essay on "The Cave". Interesting literature for a 15 year old. But now I faced a question of belief. Was what I had learned in a Bible Study group true? Knowing I had sinned was no issue. The idea that I had value and purpose was another matter. That encounter with the darkness on this very beach had impressed upon me how little I mattered. How worthless my life would be. And to be honest my mother and many of my teachers had reinforced that thought. Then there was that lightness thing. Not the images from my bedroom, but suddenly I just knew it was true. God's love, Christ's sacrifice, His resurrection, life offered, purpose given. I believed. I struggled. The dark shadows still came across the windowed wall but they couldn't seem to stay. There were times I wondered if it really were true. The belief thing. Yet somehow I always knew it was true. God was present and life had value. I had value.

I had never talked about the dark and light spirits or the visitation of the darkness that night when I was told that life would be short and meaningless. I had a job. I had a girlfriend. I found a church to go to. The light and darkness still came on walks in the woods. They were with me in those moments of seclusion or lying in the snow. I told people of my encounter with God and Jesus and the reality of belief that swept over me on the beach that night, but never about the spirits. I learned that God's messengers, His angels, watched over me (Hebrews 1:14) and that there were forces of spiritual darkness (Ephesians 6:12). I believe I have encountered both for a very long time. But in the later 60's and early 70's these impressions might well have brought about questions of drug use, so I kept the spiritual visitations to myself. That is until I was at college. It was there I shared the accounts with my roommates. 

It was a dark autumn night in the dorm and my roommate's mom had an unexplained illness, so he asked us to pray. A number of our conversations between Ron, Ed and I happened after lights were out and we thought we were going to sleep. Then Ed shared his burden for his mom.  Ron suggested we get up and pray. So I lit one of those candles in a jar to give a little light and got ready to pray. Ed said he thought it was more of a spiritual thing than a physical sickness. That some dark spirit was near his mom. He didn't know why. He just felt that way. As we began to pray the room got noticeably colder. Ed pulled on his sweater and Ron and I reached for our blankets as Ed continued to pray. Then the room began to grow darker. In spite of the candle it just seemed oppressively dark. Ed began to stumble over his words. Ron began to pray with some of the same issues of mispronounced sounds. My mind went to the light shadows from my bedroom and that Hebrews verse and I silently asked the light to push back the darkness and for God's Spirit to allow us to pray. The room grew lighter and the coldness left. I shared my story of my encounters through the years and no one laughed. It is something I have seldom shared. People still struggle with the spirit world. It is written of as fiction or as a way to tap into some power beyond the normal, but it is seldom spoken of in real terms. By the way, two days later Ed's mom recovered. As mysteriously as the illness came, it departed.   

This post is merely the introduction to the one that comes next. There are spirits about us and we are naive to think they do not matter. 

See you next week.