by John Edward
At the appointed hour, Pope Genaro I, accompanied only by his communications man, a youngish priest who had been in the job less than a year, appeared and took his seat so that he could be miked up and a bit of pancake applied to the face and high forehead. He tolerated all the fussing and made small talk in English with Hampton and the crew. It all went amazingly well and put Dave off guard a bit; he had been expecting a more aloof or taciturn subject for the interview, but the pontiff seemed very much at ease and in control without showing any symptoms of entitlement or discomfort.
Not knowing how long he would have with the pontiff, Dave plunged right into his questions for the religious leader.
“Thank you for agreeing to speak to us, Your Holiness. Why don’t you tell our viewers exactly what the so-called Council of Faith was all about.”
Genaro spoke in concise, clipped sentences in perfect English. He explained that he had been inspired to call together the leaders of the world’s religions at a time that boded ill for all people of Earth, to rally the forces of peace from a spiritual perspective.
“After all, one could argue that all of our problems as human beings are of a spiritual nature. It is when we wish to disconnect ourselves with our Creator that we experience the deepest pain and frustration. For so many people in our world, the choices they make without proper guidance or prayer are wrong, destructive choices.”
“Was that the cause of the threatened upheaval in your opinion?”
“The cause was evil, the absence of good, the absence of grace. Evil will fill the moral vacuum wherever it exists. That is the purpose of evil, to turn men and women away from the light for a destructive purpose.”
“So, do you think religion is the answer?”
The pope smiled. He seemed very tired, his thin frame even more wraithlike than it always had been. His spokesman shifted in his seat off camera, but the pontiff waved at him to sit still. Despite his apparent exhaustion, there was a palpable sense of power and authority in the man. His answer surprised Dave Hampton.
“No. Although I am by vocation a priest and I live a religiously oriented life, I do not think religion is the answer to everything. I know this may shock you, Mr. Hampton—and your many viewers. But I will say that people everywhere may find answers in the religion of their choice. The questions we face each day as human beings—the choices we must make—almost always boil down to choices between right and wrong, good and evil. In small matters and large.”
Pope Genaro I took a sip from the water bottle the priest had handed to him.
“You made such a choice yourself. When the forces of darkness were reaching into men’s lives and causing many to lose their faith and opt for the negative, you could have fueled the dark side in your broadcasts. After all, it was a sensational situation, an apocalyptic scenario that would have made for some incredible television shows. Your ratings likely would have gone through the roof, as you might say.”
Hampton couldn’t help smiling at the man’s turn of phrase, and he was intrigued by his point. He kept his mouth shut and let the pope continue to speak his mind.
“Instead, you chose to emphasize the good, to seek out people who represented the positive outcome for humanity. In that way you played a part in the ultimate outcome of the crisis. You helped tip the scales of history for good, not evil.”
“I’m going to play that clip for my many critics, Your Holiness.”
“As well you should. I do not mean to give you credit beyond what is due. After all, you are but one man, as am I. But when we come together for the common good, as I did with the representatives of faith traditions with whom I often disagree, it can never be wrong. And the result is almost guaranteed to be positive. Do you agree?”
“All I know is that I felt guided in some way—I don’t know by what or whom—to seek out the positive energies that seemed to be in danger at the time. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was faith. It definitely was something that I still don’t understand.”
“But you will understand one day. I can guarantee you that,” Genaro said. “If you keep asking questions, keep pursuing the truth. More will be revealed to you and more questions answered than you can even conceive to ask.”
When the interview was over, Dave was still pumped—and would be for days to come. Then his producer panicked, came running over to the anchor. “There’s a problem with the playback. There’s no audio—and no video!”
The pope chuckled and reached out to touch Dave’s arm and calm him. “Perhaps this was a part of God’s plan all along,” Pope Genaro said.
“But I can get the message out to millions and millions of people!” Hampton protested.
The pope smiled and said, “Faith is not something that can be demonstrated in an interview. It comes from within and is demonstrated in our experience. All the preaching and all the TV broadcasts in the world mean nothing if the human heart is not touched.”
Dave Hampton heard the words, but he was still devastated by the loss of the interview.
“Every true teaching is meant to inspire and increase human understanding, not to tell people what they must believe,” the pope said. “The word of God is clear in every language and in every heart. That alone is our guiding light…”
Then Dave remembered Mama G’s words to him. He knew that his on-camera career was over. He also knew in that moment that his political career was about to begin. He would say nothing about it, but something inside him had changed fundamentally.
Los Angeles
Rae Loona offered her electronic airline ticket to the gate attendant. “Honey, if this flimsy thing will get me on a plane, I’m gonna fly far away!” She flashed her trademark smile and entered the jetway along with her fellow passengers in the first class section.
Tyler had insisted that she fly first class on the return to Atlanta. She had not wanted to leave on her own. Tyler wanted to stay behind for a few days for what he called a “retreat” farther up the California coast. He was insistent. She didn’t yet trust that the good doctor had fully recovered his senses and his spiritual balance. But she knew she had to trust him, and she knew that the events of the Academy Awards night had made a deep imprint on his soul—as well as on hers and on people around the world. Something was different, even in the quality of the air she breathed.
Her seat was in the third row by the window, and when she stepped onto the aircraft she saw that someone was occupying the aisle seat already. She brought on only one small bag, a colorful Grease-themed carryall that held her makeup, billfold, and various sundries that she rarely used or even noticed. So she clutched the bag to her and said, in her sweetest Nurse Loona voice, “Excuse me, sir, I—”
The man raised his head from the magazine he was reading and smiled brightly, then quickly stood to allow her to scoot into her assigned seat.
Rae’s jaw dropped nearly to the floor of the jet as she saw who was standing there, big as life, gesturing for her to take her place by the window in the luxury seat. She stuttered, “You’re—you’re—you’re—”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m John,” the tall man said. He had a full head of dark hair and an unmistakable face with a million-dollar smile and warm eyes. “Please take your seat. You don’t want to hold up these other nice folks.”
There was no question that Rae’s pulse rate had increased, just as before, from the moment she realized that she was right next to her all-time idol and the true love of her life—again. Having met him face-to-face at the Academy Awards, she had thought then that her life was over … or that nothing could ever top that moment. Now she felt the blood rushing to her face in embarrassment, and she looked down at her hands—the hands that had touched her all-time idol and true love.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she managed to say. “I guess I was just shocked to see you sitting there. And me right next to you. I thought … I mean, I didn’t think … Oh, I don’t know what I mean. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I think I do,” Travolta sai
d. “It happens to me all the time. In my business I get to meet a lot of people who I’ve never seen before except on TV or in the movies, and they don’t even seem real when I finally do meet them. My wife and I talk about it all the time. But then, after a while, I realize they’re just plain people, like me and my family.”
“I suppose you’re right. Well, I know you’re right.” A calmness passed over Rae Loona at that moment, and she felt at home. Despite the stream of passengers onto the aircraft, it was as if there was no one else there and they were sitting in her living room. She laughed, though a bit more discreetly than her normal loud cackle.
“So, I guess it wasn’t a coincidence that we met the other night,” he suggested with a rakish grin.
“I—I guess not…” Rae managed. Barely.
The flight attendant brought water for John and hot tea for Rae as the final group trickled onto the plane. Soon the door was closed and the large jet was preparing to taxi over to the runway for takeoff.
“I thought you flew your own planes everywhere,” she said,
“I usually do,” he said, “but this was an unexpected trip, and I had to leave the family behind, so I thought I’d just hop on one of these commercial flights and try to remember what it was like in the old days, flying with the hoi polloi.” He said it with a wink, so she knew he was teasing her.
She felt a strong sense of his humility as a person and genuine warmth and interest in her. He didn’t seem bothered by her staring at him and questioning him.
“If I were you,” Rae said, “I would tell me to shut up and mind my own business.”
“That’s the difference between us,” Travolta countered. “I’m just a regular guy who wants to be liked, and you’re a celebrity totally wrapped up in yourself and your own ego-world.”
Now she let loose with a huge cackling laugh that caused several passengers to turn to the source of the disturbance and the attendant also to glance her way. “Oh, John, you’re such a hoot,” she said. “I could take you home and have you for supper!”
“I hope you’re really hungry,” he said out of the side of his mouth.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the voice over the plane’s PA system announced, “we are third in line for take-off, so we’ll be airborne shortly.”
John leaned over to Rae and half-whispered, “Does that apply to those of us who are not ladies, nor gentlemen, either?”
“Oh, John,” Rae Loona said. In her mind, she was thinking: Lord, I have died and gone to Heaven! Please don’t let me wake up from this dream … ever. Then she thought, I wish Dr. Tyler Michaels were here to see me now. He wouldn’t believe it.
Silently, she said a prayer for her friend who had lost his wife and child so tragically, and who had regained life and purpose after all that. She felt her stomach drop as the jet aircraft lifted off from the tarmac into the sky.
In that same moment, she felt John’s hand touch hers, but she could not tell whether he was just comforting her or feeling the moment of uncertainty between heaven and earth as a passenger on a flight over which he had no control instead of in the pilot’s seat as he was used to.
“I’m not a control freak,” Rae Loona said, her eyes closed tightly and teeth clenched during the takeoff. “I just like things to go the way I want them to.”
“I’m sure that’s true, Nurse Loona,” John Travolta said. “And I’m sure you usually get your way in the end.”
“Yes,” she replied with a bit of a hiss through her teeth. “I usually do.”
Fast forward
Rae Loona stood beside Dr. Tyler Michaels, and both admired the sign that he had just hung up over this small building, which would be an inspiration for education as well as healing. In a remote area of South Africa, Dr. Michaels would begin his new life, inspiring “his” adopted kids in the worlds of both science and faith. He would teach and heal them. He had come to understand his calling in a new way.
Rae told him he needed to add a new wing to the building. “I think the ‘Rae Loona Pavilion’ has a nice ring to it, don’t you?”
He pretended to ignore her. “When are you going back to the hospital?” he asked.
“I’m going to follow in my sister’s footsteps—at least for a while—working with one family, taking care of all their needs. It means I’ll be on call 24/7,” she noted.
“It means they will be very well off, if they can afford you,” he chided her.
Both laughed, and they hugged.
“Will you see me off, Mikey?”
“Don’t call me that! How many times…?”
She pulled him closer to her once again. “I’ll call you that every damn time I see you. You’ll always be my Mikey, you big white ape man.”
They walked outside, arm in arm, in the sweltering African heat. In the distance on a makeshift runway, Rae’s new boss awaited her, standing beside his private plane. He called out to her: “You ready, Nurse Loona?”
Tyler laughed and waved as Rae sauntered up the steps to a shiny new private jet … with Academy Award-winning actor and producer Mr. John Travolta himself in the cockpit. Rae turned and yelled back to Dr. Tyler Michaels, “I told ya, Mikey. We are going places. Go-ing pla-ces!”
Tyler climbed into his jeep as the jet took off. He had to run into “town”—a village just a few kilometers down the road—for some supplies. As he drove, he passed a new hand-painted sign that read: ST. JEREMY’S HOSPITAL, SOUTH AFRICA.
* * *
Charlene St. John McAvoy Rask and Dawson became accustomed to working together every day in her company’s studio to record the theme song for the movie version of Dawson’s record-breaking New York Times bestseller, titled Fallen Masters. It was an inspirational novel based on the incredible story of how the two had fallen in love during the tumultuous events that challenged the entire world, now only a memory—though a vivid, life-changing one for them.
Charlene was expecting their second child. Their first, a boy born less than a year ago, had been christened Clive Stapleton Rask. He was a healthy, beautiful child, asleep now in a nearby room outfitted for him, while his parents worked.
Dawson rose from his worktable and went to her as she stood by the watercooler and looked out of a tall sun-splashed window. He put his hand on her full, burgeoning belly.
“Do you ever think what it would be like if we had never met?” he asked.
“I never think about things that are impossible,” she replied. “Or that which never was. I can now see clearly that every moment in our lives up until we first saw each other put us on the path to be together. And our adventure together—” Charlene and Dawson called their time in L.A. their “adventure.” She paused and turned to face him fully. “The Lady brought me to you, and your master brought you to me. Both brought us to the place where we could help Marcus share his message with the world. Now that was impossible!”
She smiled her billion-dollar smile that would one day grace another Super Bowl show. He pulled her to him gently and kissed her on the forehead—and then on those lips he loved so much.
Charlene thought briefly of the other loves in their lives–those here and those gone on. She thought especially of Ryan, and Dawson’s late wife Mary Beth … and she knew in her heart that the happiness they had with their lost loves would never truly go away and that somewhere they understood this new joy and were happy for both Charlene and Dawson. And as love finds love and all the paths of light seek each other out, they would all someday join in each other in joy.…
* * *
Marcus Ellis Jackson delivered the valedictory address upon his graduation from William and Mary College, where he graduated at the top of his class—two years early. Bobby Anderson sat in the audience at commencement ceremonies next to Marcus’s mother.
To no one’s surprise, he used the occasion to announce his intention to run for political office sooner rather than later … maybe even against the ever-popular ex-TV news anchor Dave Hampton, now a second-term Congressman from Vir
ginia.
“All of us graduates have a lot of people to thank for helping us get through our college education. My mom, Win Jackson, has never been far from my side—even when I didn’t really want her there, so close—every step of the way. And my dad, though he was taken away from all of us, has always been there, too. Always.
“I want to say a special word to my dad, because I know he is here, and he is listening. I can feel his presence and almost see him.
“Dad, you and Mom not only gave me life, but you saved my life when I was most in trouble. And you not only saved me, but, in a very real way, you saved the whole world. We are all in your debt.”
Tears filled the eyes of everyone in the audience.
Bobby Anderson, who had known Marcus Jr. from when he was a boy, felt his heart fill with emotion—and pride. He felt Win’s hand enfold his, and both squeezed hard. This was a family truly worthy of being called America’s First Family.
Marcus Jackson waved to his mother from the podium and gave Agent Anderson a big thumbs-up and a smile.
“That young man is going places,” Anderson said, half-aloud. But Win could not hear him amid the cheers and applause.
About the Author
Internationally acclaimed psychic medium JOHN EDWARD has captivated audiences worldwide, using his unique abilities to connect people with loved ones who have passed on. Deeply compelling, often startling, and occasionally humorous, Edward’s down-to-earth approach has earned him a vast, loyal following and guest appearances on many TV shows, from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to Anderson Cooper’s Anderson. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Crossing Over and What If God Were the Sun. John Edward resides on Long Island, in New York.
www.johnedward.net