I am sure he is praying for me. For several years before he died, I wanted him dead. He felt like a leech feeding off some liveliness of mine, and I wanted him off me. Never mind that I had leeched on him for years; I didn’t want him to leech on me. I tried shaking him off. He was not to be shaken. He adhered. So, wishing him gently dead, I let him.
Then he died.
I first missed him more than a year later. I was on a trip and wanted to talk with him once I got home about the startling moments. I realized that I wouldn’t be able to. I missed him. I felt it. Then, as if in response, I felt his praying for me.
I don’t feel it as keenly now, and I am sure he still is.
He let open a door for me, a door between my Experiences and the Church. My experiences were too . . weird… to talk about with most people, and certainly with any church people. Hush, hush, Martha. Pack it down. Never mind.
Then he came along. Although he came to offer spiritual direction for clergy members, he was willing, when I asked him, to be my spiritual director, too. Slowly a door cracked open. I let him into my confidence: the stories of the strangenesses that had been visited upon me. And some ongoing.
Eventually, what flowed through the opening became less torrential. He introduced me to the Society of St. John the Evangelist. My tension eased. There could be a place for me in the church institution.
Now I am wondering. With his prayers, might he still be a hinge? Now a hinge for a door between this mortal life and – to be orthodox, the Communion of Saints – beyond? Opening a way between these two phases of Being for a more recognized and overt communion?
I no longer feel a need to shake him off. Neither of us is now attached. We are lodged in different dimensions. Now, there may be a potential for us to work together as colleagues. He, from his post-carnate reality, is still a hinge, allowing a door to open between these two phases of Being, a door by which I may wait, watching for what might come through.