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Visited by Jesus
I had just started to pray. Lying in bed is where I
most like to pray. I was just settling into it, when
I had something that I dont know what to call
a vision perhaps, or an appearance. It was in my
minds eye, not like I see you but it was as real as
Im seeing you, yet different. Coming slightly
from the right, Jesus was walking down a path toward me. I could not see his face; it was blurred.
But everything else was distinct and it was very
normal and very natural. And I responded normally and naturally: Hello, my friend. Then, I
thought, that was the way I would greet the children at the preschool where I used to substitute.
I would say, Hello, my friend.
Talking to him just seemed so natural and normal. It didnt even surprise me. And he has been
with me ever since, on the right side, always on
the right side. That was the side of my body that
was still good then. The left side had already atrophied significantly so that I felt little energy
there, but I still felt good energy in the right side.
So my guess is that energy had something to do
with my experiencing Jesus coming to the right
side.
A Glimpse of Eternity
What I experienced was this: imagine a totally
gray scene above and below the horizon line. Totally gray. Right along the horizon line was a little slit, as if someone had taken a knife or a pair
of scissors and made a little slit, a very short one
along the horizon. Coming through it was a pink
color, sort of a glow back in there. The shade of
pink was about midway between rose quartz and
raw salmon. It was sort of glowing as if coming
from a light source. And I felt myself being pulled
toward that little slit. But before I got there, I simultaneously heard myself and felt myself
breathe in very quickly through my BiPAP machine just a quick inhalation. And then I felt
myself moving back from the slit and thats when
I woke up and thought to myself: Gosh, I just almost slipped away! And the slipping away
would have been as if I had slipped through the
slit, but I never got to it.
On Loss and Grief
The doctor tried to hedge about the diagnosis,
but I knew it was ALS. And he finally conceded
18 THE LIVING CHURCH April 3, 2016
Jesus, certainly Jesus, understands and his presence will sustain me.
God Is Love
Through all of this, I have learned that the only
thing that matters is love. When you live in love,
everything else just falls into place. When you
live in God, everything else just falls into place. I
first heard the words God is love when I was
about 5 years old. I immediately felt, at the center of my being, that that was truth. Since that
time, I have always held on to those words as
truth, but in recent months they have become so
glaringly obvious to me.
Another way of saying it is that with love,
everything is okay. After my stroke a few years
ago, I heard my grandmothers voice saying, Patricia, everything is okay. And what she meant
by that was not merely that everything will be
okay, but everything is okay even in the roughest
of times. That means that the why question of
my illness is beside the point, is not even important, because, in loving each other, in loving love
itself, everything is okay. The bottom line is that
the only thing that matters is love.
The Rev. Fletcher Lowe is rector emeritus of
Church of the Holy Comforter in Richmond,
Virginia, and Patty McKellar was a member of
the parish. She died nearly a decade ago, on
May 15, 2006.
April 3, 2016 THE LIVING CHURCH 19