Innehållsförteckning för April/May 2019 från Mysterious Ways

I’ve been at Mysterious Ways for more than five years. In that time, I’ve written about every miraculous topic under the sun: dreams, visions, soul mates, near-death experiences—you name it. One thing sticks out. Something I’ve heard from hospital chaplains, hospice workers and NDE survivors: Death is not something to be feared. It wasn’t until my grandmother passed away this past January that I saw the truth in that. My grandmother—Nene, as I called her—lived a life full of faith and spunk. She was born in Turkey to parents who’d survived the Armenian/Assyrian Genocide, and she spoke Aramaic, Arabic and Turkish. I speak only English. Somehow we communicated just fine. At 98, Nene’s health declined. But she was still cracking jokes about how I was going to marry a kasho, a…

I am 74 years old. I have glimpsed the afterlife three times in my life. First at age seven. Then at 17. And again at 54. For many years, I’ve wondered why I was allowed to live. Read my story and then you decide: Why did I come back? Auvergne, France, 1952 I was at my grandparents’ estate outside Vichy. Their house was at the top of a hill, surrounded by wheat fields and stone walls dating back to the fourth century. My favorite pastime was picking wildflowers. I could wander for hours, lost in my own little world, the stalks so tall that they’d brush my shoulders. One summer day, I was collecting sweet pea blossoms for my grandmother. I scaled a small wall, touched down on the other…

An Army private during World War II, stationed in the South Pacific, hears the voice of his mother thousands of miles away in Baltimore, telling him to duck just seconds before a bullet whizzes over his head. At that precise moment, his mother, at the hospital recovering from brain cancer, sits up and yells, “Duck, James!” A boy whose mother died when he was a toddler is visited often in his dreams by a woman with curly brown hair and blue eyes. She comforts him. The boy has no memory of his mother and no photos of her. Until, as an adult, he sees a picture. An image identical to the woman in his dreams. A struggling young woman is visited in the middle of the night by her deceased…

chapter 1 THE MEETING WAS NOTHING SPECIAL. In her quest to find herself during that year of no dating, Isabella would check out different churches on the weekend. Christian Temple was a big church in Baltimore, a little far from where Isabella lived in the suburbs of Maryland. But it made for a decent base while she looked for a church closer to home. Ray was just one of many parishioners Isabella would chat with after service. He was tall, dark and handsome. He was also 12 years her senior, a widower with two adult children who adored him. Not at all like the immature, slick guys Isabella had serial-dated in the past. But a vow was a vow. Isabella didn’t want a relationship. Ray didn’t seem all that interested…

Everyone who lived through World War II has a story to tell. My story is about my family’s farm dog Tippy. Maybe you’re wondering what a farm dog has to do with a world at war. All I can say is that Tippy was no ordinary dog. I grew up on a 113-acre mixed-crop farm in southeastern Texas, halfway between Houston and San Antonio. My dad, James, and my two older brothers, Harry and James Jr., grew peanuts, cotton, corn and tomatoes. I helped my mom, Effie, with her kitchen garden. Mom was a master gardener. She kept us fed year-round with potatoes, peas, sweet potatoes, turnips, radishes, lettuce and greens, plus a mouth-watering assortment of fruit. The Great Depression had hit our part of Texas hard. The war made…

This is a fraction of a millionth of the sky. It holds over 10,000 galaxies—and that’s only what we can view. There are more galaxies in the dark spaces of this image that lie beyond what our telescopes are currently capable of seeing. What’s even more awe-inspiring is that this image was captured when scientists focused the powerful Hubble Telescope on what looked like an empty corner of the universe, a seemingly blank, dark space the size of the tip of a pencil. When you look at this, are you overcome by a sense of wonder at your own smallness? If so, you’re not alone. According to Father James Kurzynski, author, hobby astronomer and developer of the Vatican Observatory’s faith and astronomy workshop, that’s exactly what’s supposed to happen. Space…

I was tidying up my desk at home when I came across them—my old scripts. I believe that there are no coincidences. Looking back on my life, I could easily see how one thing led to another. Hobbies that turned into jobs. Interests that developed certain skills. It all made sense. Except for one thing that didn’t quite fit. The six years I spent writing and producing murder mysteries. It was a passion that started the summer I joined a writers group at my local library. The librarian mentioned she was looking for plays to be performed at the town’s centennial celebration. That’s how I wrote my first script—Who Stole Widow Murphey’s Cow? The dark comic twist at the end took everyone by surprise. People loved it. The show was…

Kay Wilson Seiler A few years ago, my husband and I had to go out of town for a funeral. We’d be gone for a night and into the next day, so we arranged for our neighbor Belinda to come by to feed our cat, Sweetpea, in the morning. When we returned home from our travels the next evening, the phone rang. It was Belinda. “I was going to come over in the morning like you asked,” she said. “But something kept urging me to stop by last night instead.” She arrived to find that Sweetpea had somehow knocked over the coffee table in the family room. Everything on the table—magazines and knickknacks—had fallen onto the hot grate of our floor furnace. As Belinda walked in, the pile was smoldering!…

In theory, anything is forgivable. We can make a decision to forgive and change how we treat the offender. But we might be unable to emotionally forgive, for fear of being hurt again. Forgiveness is important, but whether we reconcile and move forward with the relationship depends on both parties being trustworthy.Everett Worthington, PSYCHOLOGIST AND AUTHOR OF FORGIVING AND RECONCILING We have a right to justice, to the truth, and to not forgive someone for a dastardly task. But, spiritually speaking, we cannot be more stringent than God. If God says there are no sins that are not forgivable (except the denial of his Unity), then who are we to say there are unforgivable sins? In all religions, there is an emphasis on it being blessed to leave the solution…

PING! My phone chimed. I swiped open Letgo, an app for buying and selling used goods. Someone was interested in the car sunshade I’d posted. I coordinated a time and place to meet the buyer. Meanwhile my mind wandered to my father, Adolph—or Molly, as I used to call him. A mispronunciation of a German word for “chubby.” A hardworking, practical Austrian immigrant, Dad would’ve been proud I was trying to sell something I no longer needed. Dad died in 2016. He’d lived with me for the last nine years of his life. One of my favorite memories was our trip to New Mexico. That’s where Dad bought the pastel drawing of parrots that hangs in my entryway. He liked to say it reminded him of the three of us—my…

“Each moment contains a hundred messages from God.”—RŪMĪ (1207–1273) Did you know one of the best-selling poets in the United States is a Sufi mystic from the thirteenth century? Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, aka Rūmī, was born into a scholarly Muslim family in what is now Afghanistan. He worked as a religious teacher until he met a traveling mystic in 1244, who convinced him to lead a spiritual life instead of just studying it. So began Rūmī’s career as a poet—he wrote more than 40,000 verses about everything from love to death to the interior life. Rūmī believed that one’s relationship with the divine must be active. Instead of simply reciting poetry, he sang it while spinning in circles. Today Rūmī’s quotes show up everywhere from pop songs to Pinterest, inspiring…