House of Darkness House of Light

by Andrea Perron

  We are all divine manifestation of God-consciousness and though we take solid form as mortals, we are essentially spirit; divine energy in action, in concert with the cosmos. Truth be told, we can fly. With realization came resolution for the child. She’d no longer perceived their living arrangements as being in conflict with the spirits. This was no longer an us versus them proposition. According to Andrea, she was convinced we were all made up of the same stuff… energy… and as a result, we are all essentially the same. She drew no significant distinctions between the living and the dead other than the fact that the spirits energy has already transmuted, thus assuming another form. She wanted to tell him this before he entered the house of the holy so he would understand. His presence was important to the process. She wanted him to level the battle field. Ah, the power of knowledge.

  “In fact, it seems that present-day science,

  with one sweeping step back

  across millions of centuries, has succeeded in

  bearing witness to that primordial

  ‘Fiat lux’ [let there be light] uttered at the moment when, along with matter,

  there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of

  the chemical elements split and formed into

  millions of galaxies . . .

  Hence, creation took place in time, therefore there is

  a Creator, God exists!”

  Pope Pius XII

  Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences 1951

  a turn for the worse

  “Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal,

  mercy shines with even more brilliancy than justice.”

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Their faith was evolving. In the process, it was also going blind. They could not see the benevolent force so often called upon for rescue, nor could they discern the invisible: the omnipresent source of grace and mercy from which they had required help; respite under siege. The children learned about the miraculous power of prayer due to the supernatural events occurring in their lives, but this faith was truly tested when their mother suddenly became gravely ill, a natural phenomenon. They saw tangible results as their heartfelt prayers were uttered then answered. A spiritual awakening occurred as a call for help went forth into the cosmos: pleas for assistance from beyond. This time was different. Carolyn was dying. A constant vigil began; five days and nights spent pleading for their mother’s life. Have mercy. Though the shared experience was not supernatural in origin, it was no less a crisis. It was the pure fear of losing their mother. As faith went blind the girls utilized others senses to practice the presence of God. Begging was allowed in any crisis.

  When the girls arrived home from school they found Carolyn bedridden; delirious with fever. She had been sick for several days and Roger was away on an extended trip in the dead of winter. A sudden turn for the worse duly noted, Andrea obeyed her sense of direction, detecting the impending doom. Racing from her mother’s room to the phone, she called for the ambulance. All of the children hovered around her, terrified out of their minds. It was obvious how serious the situation was by sight alone; the woman could not breathe, she could not respond to them, she could not even ask for help. Her deterioration was too rapid to ignore. In spite of contrary assurances made during the onset of illness. She told them she would be all right. She wasn’t. She was dying.

  Cindy lay weeping beside her mom, gently stroking her hair, drenched with sweat. It was twenty minutes before the ambulance arrived. A frantic family did whatever they could to comfort the poor soul while they waited. A glass of water offered… she could not drink, even when Andrea lifted her head up. Carolyn was too weak. Instead, a cool washcloth was placed on her forehead while the baby of the family held her mother’s hand, tenderly trying to convince her it was time to go… a siren song audible in the distance.

  There was no mistaking the critical nature of an illness taken hold; it was obvious Carolyn was suffocating. As the ambulance approached Cindy was overcome with a sense of panic and dread; terrified that, once they took her away, they would never see their mother alive again. Overwhelming sense of urgency caused Cindy to lean into her mom’s ear then ask a very difficult but necessary question: “Mom, if you die, if you leave us will you please come back? I know you can. We all know you can. Promise! Will you please come back to us? Mom?”

  As paramedics entered the bedroom carrying a stretcher, Carolyn spoke the last words, the only words she would whisper that afternoon: “I promise, I will.” It was the answer Cindy needed to hear. A man lifted Carolyn onto the gurney in what seemed like a split second. They immediately recognized the gravity of the situation. Death becomes her, rapidly. Neither of them asked Andrea where their father was or if they would be all right left alone. They swept her out the door as if she’d turned to dust… ashes lighter than air. She was gone, in what seemed a second, their mother was gone. The girls listened to the siren until it fell silent in the distance, too far gone.

  Andrea was just fifteen at the time but appeared older, old enough to take over, shoes she had to fill for the next five days as a surrogate parent. Those same shoes she had worn comfortably in the past. Roger called the house four days later and was informed of the situation. He was furious with his eldest daughter for not having called some adult to come and stay with them. Of course, he was actually furious with himself for having waited so long to call home. Andrea understood. She knew her father well, accepting of the fallout she did not deserve. He drove all night long and arrived the following morning as the girls were preparing to leave for school. He was exhausted, bleary-eyed, but cognizant enough to embrace Andrea as warmly as any father would the child he had wounded; as close as she would come to an apology for their earlier telephone conversation.

  Handing him the telephone number to the hospital, the children ran to the bus stop. When they arrived home later their house was empty again. Roger was gone. Andrea built a fire then began to prepare their dinner as the other children did their homework. The mood was dark and subdued. No note. No message. Naturally the girls wondered what was happening but no one spoke of the dreadful sense of things aloud. Rather, they held their collective breath and waited for word. When the car pulled into the yard a sigh of relief rung out among them: Oh, thank God. There she was, their mother seated right beside their father. She had finally been discharged from the hospital.

  Her own children were terrified to touch or embrace her. She appeared to be so weak and fragile, as the skeletal remains of an emaciated body ravaged by disease. It was as close to death as she had come at the time and everyone in the family knew it without being told. Cindy gently kissed her mother on the cheek then whispered, “I knew it. I knew you would come back to us, one way or the other! I prayed and prayed. I begged God. We all did.” Roger assisted his wife into their bedroom and there she lingered for another full week. He took over the household while she recovered. The day she emerged was cause for celebration.

  Memory fails Carolyn in this particular instance. She has virtually no recollection of becoming ill or of being hospitalized with pneumonia. That time has been lost; swept from her mind, as if it never occurred. Carolyn had been through so much. Her defenses were down with her weight. She was compromised, as was her immune system, placing her at great risk; highly susceptible to whatever disease might try to claim her. The spirits cannot be held accountable. They were never officially blamed yet they were culpable to a certain extent, as what Carolyn was enduring was related to their antics. She was run down, sleep-deprived due to the challenges faced within those walls. Even though the spirits didn’t make her sick their presence and all the stress factored into the illness and her markedly diminished capacity to fight off this aggressive infection. Simply too weakened to fight it on her own, it nearly claimed her life. Though her memory of this incident is impaired, the woman knew what it was like to stand on the threshold of death’s door. She thanked her rescuer for having made the call f
or help on her behalf. Andrea claims none of the credit. A merciful God gets all the glory for this one. The woman should have died. She was that far gone when they found her. Perish the thought. Counting losses including the loss of what would have otherwise been a horrific memory, she’d been victorious in battle, in a fight for her life.

  It is often said, some good comes from every evil. It was both a wake-up call and a rude awakening. Carolyn began taking much better care of herself, in body and mind; no longer allowing it to wander aimlessly where it could get into trouble, in the darkest recesses of existence. She began to feed and heal herself, because of an awfully close encounter… a brush with death. Her girls remain grateful she even survived the ordeal. Perhaps there truly is power in numbers, the collective prayer from the heart sent forth mercifully answered. Carolyn had finally returned to her family. She kept her promise… one way or the other… she came back to her children on blind faith alone. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.

  “Gratitude is born in hearts that take time to count up

  past mercies.”

  Charles E. Jefferson

  a wing and a prayer

  “Thou dost understand my thought from afar.”

  Psalms 139:2

  During their years in the farmhouse a conversion of faith occurred. Based on numerous supernatural episodes, every member of the family conversed with a power that protected those who requested help. It instilled in each one a sense of hope and an implicit understanding of something existing beyond this world. Theses conversions of faith were different for each individual; an amalgamation of concepts and sensory perceptions based on previous ideas and current observations. No one escaped unscathed or unenlightened in the process. There was no doubt about it; no question what or where or who God might be in any given moment: Everywhere omnipresent made perfect sense, given the circumstances. The journey as sojourn was incredible at times. A highly personalized evolution of spirit took root in the consciousness of seven mere mortals, members of a family incessantly subjected to the whims and fancies of the spirit world. As the Universe itself exists, their gradual realization remained perpetually susceptible to change, as change is the only constant. Bombarded by myriad images, an onslaught of shadows and light, each adjusted in their own unique way. Prayer was practiced in moments of panic but also in those rare, quiet moments of solitude when no one was there to hear the words, except God; moments when it was easy to touch the face of God. The girls would often practice the presence as a group. They prayed for each other, their parents and pets. Everyone requested assistance at one time or another. As adults, Roger and Carolyn had the fundamentals down based of how they were raised, what they had learned of religion and faith in childhood. Whatever stuck is what carried them at first, something to fall back on in a pinch, a tug, a scratch or a punch. In time they learned how to engage differently… directly. Crisis creates desire for connection. It stirs the passions and heightens awareness. It brings one closer to what is already there. According to William Wordsworth, “Faith is a passionate intuition.” It is the common sense of knowing we are not alone; a voice inside the head telling us the truth of our existence. It sometimes comes from somewhere outside ourselves but speaks from within or it comes from within as source. Either way, it carries messages received by those who listen: It ain’t really over when it’s over. This realization is, for some, no comfort at all. Instead, it is perceived as a curse; something to fear. As those who fear death know, the prospect of nothingness is terrifying. Everlasting life is a more daunting proposition. Welcome to forever. Learn your lessons well, my dears. You’ll need them later on to get you through the next round! Blessed be.

  Truth be told, their family got by on a wing and a prayer: feast or famine; joy or misery with frequent pit stops in between, depending on conditions and circumstances. Prayer became a passionate endeavor, not an escape from but an attachment to a force present within the house. However, it was not a pre-scheduled event. Whenever the children gathered they did so spontaneously, especially if one sensed a threat. Danger! They relied upon intuition about such things, all from a very young age. Each learned to listen closely to her own inner voice: from the point of connection. Looking inward reaching out, expressing that which is deeply embedded in a mortal soul, the big dig down deep is holy therapeutic practice. Mankind can achieve healing. A realization of oneness develops over time as we come to know ourselves as an integral part of the whole and the holy, achieved through pure direct communication, solidified by belief… a conversion of faith. This is the secret. This is a gift.

  The conversation was silent and became ongoing. From an early age they began practicing prayer ritual as it had been learned during their few years of exposure to the church; clasping little hands, bowing their heads, crossing themselves with a word: “Amen”. As they matured, so did the understanding evolve and prayer was incorporated as a natural aspect of consciousness. The messages conveyed were rather unconventional by standards of the church; not what one learns in classes or in a pew from the pulpit. Hail Mary, full of grace… Our Father, who art in Heaven. Rather, it became almost perpetual conversation, often passive, sometimes pensive and no penance involved or required. They spoke with God in much the same way they spoke with the spirits, as if they were one in the same. Well, as it turns out, if we can hear ourselves thinking, God is listening… from within… not so far after all.

  It is not a bit frightening to go through life on a wing and a prayer. Both are reliable forms of transportation (and better than a broomstick) when traveling in mind across the Universe. There is much to absorb and consider; much to teach and so much more to learn. Best to float along, as spirit does.

  “Far or forgot to me is near;

  Shadow and sunlight are the same;

  The vanished gods to me appear;

  And one to me are shame and fame.

  They reckon ill who leave me out;

  When me they fly, I am the wings;

  I am the doubter and the doubt,

  And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.”

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  all in good time

  “For death is no more than a turning of us

  from time to eternity.”

  William Penn

  History teaches the collective us about ourselves throughout the course of recorded time. In the past we collectively agreed to measure time, using techniques developed for the purpose of discerning our place in the Universe. They studied the stars; astral bodies that light the night sky. How fitting. Do we fit in the Universe? Of course! But how? From light years to milliseconds, we measure time obsessively. Galileo is thus related to Hubble is related to Einstein is related to Aristotle as God. Each contributed to an associative understanding, an accumulated knowledge which defines then clarifies the we for those moments spent here on Earth. The precision with which we measure time is all to the good. It works for us and that’s what counts. Infinity doesn’t care how we keep a schedule or count our days, as long as we arrive on time… as time is of the essence.

  ***

  Carolyn was moving right along with intention. Something pressing had her complete attention as she rounded a hard corner passing from the kitchen into the front hallway and there he was, the one the girls named Manny. She suspected it was Johnny Arnold but no matter. He was obviously engaged in some form of transaction; communication with another soul, invisible to her mortal eyes. The man was groomed and well dressed. He was leaning into the front door on a bit of an angle, jacket drawn back, his right hand tucked into the pocket of trousers. It was his typically nonchalant pose, something with which they were all familiar. Carolyn stopped abruptly to stare at the figure before her. He then turned toward the astonished woman, his genteel manner evident in each perceived movement he made and he focused on his unexpected guest. He gazed directly into her eyes: Engagement. It was time enough; she noticed his face now appeared more haggard and weatherworn with age, but soft and serene; he looked about forty, as she r
ecalls. There was no question about it. This was the same young man, the one she’d seen on numerous occasions leaning into the doorways, leg cocked to the jam; quirky little giggly grin on his lips. Recognition was instant… for both of them. He greeted the woman with knowing eyes then calmly turned again, through time, back into eternity. She remembers thinking that he had aged well and recalls feeling perceived as a spirit with whom he was equally familiar. And then he was gone.

  It was a moment of realization, cosmic incident creating a seismic shift in her perceptions of the spirit world from core to crust. It was a revelation; a blessed event. On some visceral level Carolyn understood her omnipotent role in the reality of their encounter; she had witnessed this same entity, a character with whom she was familiar, at a different stage during his life. He became something more than a solid apparition; his existence in the hallway, his interaction with yet another invisible spirit, his peaceful, knowing glance her way, all factored in as she thoughtfully considered what she observed. It posed more questions and answered nothing, which was the same outcome of every manifestation ever witnessed in the house. There are no answers in this realm; there are clues for a curious mind to ponder. Was he a reflection of a dream or perhaps his own memory in another dimension? Was he truly as real as he appeared? This mistress of the house had much on her mind. In those few moments following her passage through the portal, Carolyn came to another realization. Her obsession with research abruptly ended. It did not matter who they were… they are . . . it is all that matters. They still are… and were… and will be… and with these thoughts all time blended into a perfect patchwork manuscript of history no longer requiring the naming of names. Inquiry became irrelevant as a point of reference; still interesting, somehow far less significant as she straddled time and space tight rope walking, no net. A war had raged for years; not an overt conflict with the spirits as much as it was an internal struggle. In an instant Carolyn made her own quantum leap of consciousness, abandoning the corporeal confines of logical thought for an ethereal embracing of an intuitive process, liberating her immediately. She felt him look at her, and then he was gone, but not really gone: Never really gone. Omnipresent… like God. In the moment they shared on a bridge between dimensions, Carolyn learned far more than she ever had from any history book. His kind eyes contained the volumes of eternity… in the blink of an eye he spoke to her, revealing the integrated nature of the Universe. He was past, she was future but for an instant they were present together in time.