Indholdsfortegnelse for June - July 2017 i Mysterious Ways

I’m on a plane to San Francisco, 30,000 feet above the earth. I can’t even see little houses from my window way up here, only a blanket of clouds obscuring everything below, and the blue sky above. We passengers, wedged in our seats, stare at laptops and phones and in-flight entertainment as the country slides past below. Is this what the Wright brothers envisioned for us when they first took flight? The first time I flew, I was barely five and traveling with my dad. I was excited to meet the pilot, get my plastic wings, play with the buckle on the strange seatbelt. Then came the roar of the engines, the vibrations and the pressure in my ears. What had at first fascinated me turned horrific. I was in…

Psychologist Lisa Miller, best-selling author of The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving and founder of Columbia University’s Spirituality & Mind Body Institute, has devoted her career to examining the influence of spirituality on our physical and mental development. Mysterious Ways sat down with her to discuss the surprising health benefits of faith and how to maintain our childlike sense of wonder.… How did you end up studying the science of faith? I grew up in a Jewish family in the Mid-west, a region that’s overtly spiritual. As a child, I remember being aware of this grand symphony of life. When I studied to be a psychologist, I kept waiting for people to talk about spirituality. No one said a word. Then I started…

Esther Nisenthal Krinitz didn’t set out to tell how she survived the Holocaust when, at the age of 50, she began creating tapestries in her Brooklyn apartment. Her first pieces portrayed her idyllic childhood and the Jewish community in the village of Mniszek, Poland, before the war. “When she saw how moved my sister and I were, she kept sewing,” her daughter, Bernice Steinhardt, recalls. “She was stitching her own memories into the memories of her children.” What follows is an incredible testament to human survival in the face of evil. Road to Krasnik The Nazis arrived in September 1939, subjecting the Jews of Mniszek to forced labor, brutal abuse and summary executions. Three years later, they ordered the Jews to march 20 miles to the Krasnik train station, en…

Petaluma, California It was an impossible choice. In July 2014, single mom Cathleen Cavin and her young daughter, Cali, visited Petaluma Animal Shelter and fell in love with twin kittens, Ozzie and Butter. Their landlord, however, would allow them to adopt only one. The Cavins picked Ozzie, never dreaming that—someday, somehow—the siblings would reunite. The Dodo reports that two years later, Cathleen went on a date with Brian Herrera, a widower with a young daughter of his own, after months of chatting online. Cathleen was shocked to discover he owned a cat that was identical to Ozzie. The two compared adoption records: Brian had adopted Butter just four days after Cathleen took Ozzie home from the shelter. The couple was already falling in love, but the discovery confirmed that they—like…

Every night, in the wee hours, the bedroom door creaked open and little footsteps tiptoed down the hall. Like clockwork, I moved over to make room on the sofa and my two-year-old, Jake, slid in next to me, wanting a hug. We fell asleep just like that, in each other’s arms. I needed that hug as much as he did. I was a single mom, working nine to five for a computer company. It was hard to leave Jake with a sitter during the day. I called him Sweetest Kid because, well, he was just that. Jake was just so lovable. I felt guilty about every hour we spent apart. Our tiny apartment in Huntington Beach, California, had two bedrooms, but most nights I fell asleep on the sofa after…

Even today, 67 years later, Marilyn Micll strules to find th wods for what happened that night. “I don’t know that I’ve ever recovered from it,” she says. “It was just very traumatic.” “Something ike hat ou on’t orget,” says Frances Maguire, who was only nine years old at the time. March 1, 1950, was drawing to a cold, blustery close in Beatrice, Nebraska. Marilyn Mitchell (then Marilyn Paul) had finished dinner with her family at home. She was exhausted after a long day working at the dry cleaner, where the 18-year-old hoped to earn enough money to go to college. An accomplished pianist, she reamed f tudying t he ulliard Music School in New York. For now, West Side Baptist Church was her concert hall. “I’m going to take…

The crisp, clean scent was intoxicating. Like a cool breeze wafting in off the ocean…but where did it come from? I was alone in a stuffy eighth-floor law office late on a summer evening, finishing up my work as a document specialist. Occasionally one of the attorneys would also be working late, but not tonight. I was sitting at my computer, getting ready to log off and head home. Suddenly I froze. Raised my head. Sniffed the air. That scent… Wait! This was something familiar, a smell I knew. In my mind’s eye, I saw him so clearly. Thirty-five years hadn’t dulled his features in my memory. Those blue eyes, that smile, and the golden-blonde hair that cascaded past his shoulders. Kenny. My high school boyfriend back in the 1970s.…

The next time you go out to eat, take a close look at your server—he or she might just be the next box-office superhero. In the late nineties, Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt was scraping by on tips at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. in Maui and living in a van by the beach. In Vanity Fair, Chris revealed the startling way he went from Hawaiian beach bum to Hollywood leading man.… A high school wrestling and theater star, Chris saw his life change dramatically after his family fell on hard times. Aimless after graduating and with few job prospects, Chris jumped at a buddy’s offer to fly him out to Hawaii. Chris lost himself in paradise. He shared the van and a tent with five others, spending…

Andrew Mace Grandma always remembered all the anniversaries and birthdays of everyone in our family, never failing to send a card or note for a special occasion. Even her own death. When she died at age 95, she left our family a “letter from Heaven” that we found among her papers. The whole church was filled for her funeral service, where we celebrated her extraordinary life. Afterward, my immediate family gathered for a meal at her home. No one felt much like eating. Grandma’s empty chair at the table reminded us how much we would all miss her. Finally, it came time to clean up. I grabbed some sticky notes to label the leftovers. Only after putting on the first note did I notice someone else’s handwriting on the back:…

My alarm went off at 3 a.m. I sat on the edge of my bed and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark, then crept out of my bedroom. On a mission. To encounter the divine in the deep of the night. I’m not a fan of the dark. As a kid, I rarely slept without a night-light. That’s one reason I love living in New York City—there’s always a light on somewhere. The darkness holds unknown terrors, nightmares, endless tossing and turning. I never thought of the nighttime as sacred. Until I came across something online. All about how some believe God works most actively under the cover of darkness, particularly between the hours of 3 a.m. to 6 a.m.—“the fourth watch of the night,” so called…

I was deep into the pastor’s sermon when I felt a tug on my sleeve. “Grandma, I have to go to the bathroom,” my 5-year-old granddaughter, Becca, said. Now? We were at one of those big, hip mega-churches with hundreds of people hanging on the charismatic pastor’s every word. There was no way to leave without causing a commotion, and I was already feeling out of place. I’d attended a few times with my son’s family and loved the energy. But I didn’t know a soul here today. I was on my own because my son had a last-minute conflict and needed someone to take the kids to church. I excused myself, and Becca and I snuck out to the closest bathroom. “No, Grandma, the other bathroom,” Becca demanded, pointing…

In the dream, 18 months before I came to the Nevada desert as a last resort, I stood at the window of a cozy lakeside cabin staring out at the tranquil blue water. How did I get here? I didn’t know. But I wasn’t alone. By a large stone fireplace, a tall, lean man watched over me. Although I couldn’t discern his features, I felt him smiling at me with pure radiance. He knew me better than anyone could. I was happy. Peaceful. Hopeful. Alive. Then I woke up to another day of pain. Now I was receiving treatment at a facility in Reno, Nevada, for the illness that had stolen so many things—my job, my fiancé and most of my friends—before I even knew what it was: Lyme disease.…

In the dark, I could barely make out a long cord at my feet. I bent down and saw it was actually a fuse— the type you see in the movies or cartoons attached to dynamite. Everything else was in shadow. I didn’t quite know where I was.… Things seemed familiar but just beyond my grasp. I followed the fuse down a long hallway and into another room. It was so dark, I got down on my hands and knees to avoid tripping over anything. I crawled a few feet and came to the end of the fuse, where it lurked underneath something. Suddenly— BOOM! A blinding flash. At once I woke. What a nightmare! I lay in bed, trying to figure out what it could mean. I went over…

Want to experience the Garden of Eden—minus the serpent? Travel no further than Pittsburgh’s Rodef Shalom Biblical Botanical Garden. Behind western Pennsylvania’s oldest synagogue, you’ll find a paradise blooming with more than a hundred plant species, many referenced in Scripture—from fig trees, cedars, and papyrus reeds to pomegranates, dates, and olives. A miniature Jordan River links ponds representing the Sea of Galilee and Dead Sea. Rabbi Walter Jacob, who with his botanist wife, Irene, created the garden more than 30 years ago, calls it a place of meditation for all faiths, where people can “spend quiet time with themselves and God.” Learn how to grow a biblical garden in your backyard at guideposts.org/biblegarden…