While on the road

Greetings to all in the blogosphere. Mom and I have made it to Connecticut to spend a little time with my brother and his family where my niece is bringing me up-to-speed on the Jonas Brothers, and her plans to marry a red-headed Irish man who is either two years younger (the same age as her little brother) or "two to seven years older". The trip has been uneventful for the most part although I've learned that, while my mother likes to look at maps, reading them and imparting the information is a different thing. Clearly, her Myers-Brigg personality and mine are not the same :-).

On our trip, we've had a chance to discuss lots of things...including this interesting and bizarre faith journey I've found myself on in the past nine months. We've been listening to the C.S. Lewis book "The Great Divorce" and that got my mom onto asking me a question about this story of what heaven and hell may be.

"Do you think your father is on the mountain?" (The mountain being "heaven", the destination for the spirits in this purgatory plain in the story if they are willing to drop whatever baggage they have and head in that direction).

The question made me tear up as I pondered the "Where in the hereafter is Ed Gage?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

Back at Christmas time, I had very strong sense of my father's soul at peace and play. I could feel his joy at being free from the pain and suffering of the progressive supranuclear palsy that afflicted his body in this realm, and the freedom to laugh and play with dogs and enjoy those things that had always given him pleasure.

But these days, I have a new feeling. One in which I think my father has gone and grown into some kind of life that is beyond my knowledge. I haven't lost touch with my memories of him. But I think he's entered into something new that has taken him to some level beyond the great beyond, if you will. And I have to acknowledge that what I have lost touch with is a sense of my dad's soul. Sad? Yes, it does make me sad. But I have my memories of him. And, again, by the grace of God, I am open to the knowledge that whatever is occurring for my father's soul at this point, it is good and he is at peace.

And the peace of God passes all understanding. That seems to be a truism. Mine is to keep my heart and mind open to that. For it is in that meeting of known vs. unknown that I discover the "what I need to know now". Amen.