IF YOU BELIEVE, no explanation is necessary. If you don’t believe, no explanation will suffice. That’s an idea passed down to me by my grandfather, a spiritually inclined surgeon who penned Divine Purpose, his manifesto on the “sanctity of the human being.”
This idea informed every stitch and slit during his days as a doctor tending to wounded soldiers on the battlefields in Italy.
I inherited the idea that belief is an electrical current that powers our ability to act.
Easier said than done, but I didn’t waste time testing my beliefs, first as a child who wrote books in her spare time, inventing stories I believed worthy enough to manifest on the page in crayon or ink.
And then, as I got older, belief in the luck of the stranger, tested by rolling into unknown towns and accepting invitations for tea and coffee as if these street-side cafes were living rooms for the living.
Yes, I’ve dabbled in Tarot since the age of sixteen, acquired two Ouija boards around that time as well, thinking communication with the dead a reasonable exercise, at the very least. It never scared me to try—more thrill than fear.
If you don’t believe as a practice, you might find it hard to accept that I could read your mind if I really tried.
At a daylong workshop on psychic intuition, the instructor paired us up and asked one of us to think of someone from the other side. The other person was then tasked with visualizing what the other saw and felt.
I was paired with a woman who wore a lavender sweater and a necklace with a gold pendant dangling from it. She and I faced each other, and then I began to feel it—a tingling sensation in the back left corner of my head.
“Is your person your dad?” I asked her. She nodded yes, eager to hear more.
“Is he wearing blue pajamas?” She nodded her head again, both of us sitting up a bit taller with anticipation.
That’s when I saw it—the whole scene: A man in blue pajamas, lying on a hospital bed, surrounded by his loved ones, including her. And then, a scene from an office—a framed picture of a merchant ship on stormy seas, a file cabinet, an open closet.
“Is that your dad’s office?” I asked her. She said she could barely believe what I was seeing—everything true to her dad and his dying days.
How do you explain something like this? Why could I see it? And actually have the nerve to voice it. Her eyes welled up with tears. We squeezed each other’s hands.
And then the exercise was over, and the instructor called us back to the group for a debrief. The workshop eventually ended, and I had seen more than I ever expected. If I ever doubted anything before, I left a believer.
The woman waved goodbye to me from inside her car in the snowy parking lot. I felt like I’d perhaps seen too much—she seemed glad I’d made some kind of visual contact with her father, but it also made her sad.
I’ve never figured out what to do with this intuition, but I know that I’ve put it to use as a writer—what good is it to believe if we don’t try to put our belief into words and share them?
Readers are seekers. And writers are believers.
This idea informed every stitch and slit during his days as a doctor tending to wounded soldiers on the battlefields in Italy.
I inherited the idea that belief is an electrical current that powers our ability to act.
Easier said than done, but I didn’t waste time testing my beliefs, first as a child who wrote books in her spare time, inventing stories I believed worthy enough to manifest on the page in crayon or ink.
And then, as I got older, belief in the luck of the stranger, tested by rolling into unknown towns and accepting invitations for tea and coffee as if these street-side cafes were living rooms for the living.
Yes, I’ve dabbled in Tarot since the age of sixteen, acquired two Ouija boards around that time as well, thinking communication with the dead a reasonable exercise, at the very least. It never scared me to try—more thrill than fear.
If you don’t believe as a practice, you might find it hard to accept that I could read your mind if I really tried.
At a daylong workshop on psychic intuition, the instructor paired us up and asked one of us to think of someone from the other side. The other person was then tasked with visualizing what the other saw and felt.
I was paired with a woman who wore a lavender sweater and a necklace with a gold pendant dangling from it. She and I faced each other, and then I began to feel it—a tingling sensation in the back left corner of my head.
“Is your person your dad?” I asked her. She nodded yes, eager to hear more.
“Is he wearing blue pajamas?” She nodded her head again, both of us sitting up a bit taller with anticipation.
That’s when I saw it—the whole scene: A man in blue pajamas, lying on a hospital bed, surrounded by his loved ones, including her. And then, a scene from an office—a framed picture of a merchant ship on stormy seas, a file cabinet, an open closet.
“Is that your dad’s office?” I asked her. She said she could barely believe what I was seeing—everything true to her dad and his dying days.
How do you explain something like this? Why could I see it? And actually have the nerve to voice it. Her eyes welled up with tears. We squeezed each other’s hands.
And then the exercise was over, and the instructor called us back to the group for a debrief. The workshop eventually ended, and I had seen more than I ever expected. If I ever doubted anything before, I left a believer.
The woman waved goodbye to me from inside her car in the snowy parking lot. I felt like I’d perhaps seen too much—she seemed glad I’d made some kind of visual contact with her father, but it also made her sad.
I’ve never figured out what to do with this intuition, but I know that I’ve put it to use as a writer—what good is it to believe if we don’t try to put our belief into words and share them?
Readers are seekers. And writers are believers.
