Innholdsfortegnelse for April - May 2018 i Mysterious Ways

One of Mysterious Ways’ biggest fans is a tabby cat named Seth. He belongs to Dana Apple, an animal rights lawyer and contributor to the magazine. Dana has many pets on her seven-acre farm in Missouri. But Seth (below) is in a class all his own. He’s chubby, lazy and doesn’t get along with any other animal on the farm. Except Layla, a cat who mistook Seth for her mother when they first met. Every so often, Dana sends me a funny message on Seth’s behalf. Two years ago, my sisters and I were having no luck finding an apartment in New York City. We had to leave the place we’d lived in for years because the rent had gone through the roof. Every apartment we looked at was too small…

Queens, New York Jerich Marco Alcantara, along with his friends and family, left almost two hours early from Queens to get to his graduation ceremony at the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing in Manhattan. The ride on the E subway train should have been 40 minutes. But someone pulled the emergency brake, and the trip ended up taking hours. Did that stop Jerich from celebrating? Not at all, reports CBS New York. Jerich and his fellow passengers put on an impromptu ceremony, complete with graduation music. His friend Bobby doodled a fake diploma on Jerich’s phone and presented it to him, much to the delight of the packed subway car. A video of the subway ceremony went viral. By the time Jerich made it to the real ceremony, it was long…

Joy Whitlock PAPILLION, NEBRASKA I sat on the steps outside my parents’ house, confused. My boyfriend of two years, Kevin, had just proposed over the phone. It should’ve been the happiest day of my life. Only, I couldn’t give him an answer. Kevin and I had dated since senior year of high school. We’d met in marching band. Kevin professed his love for me by writing the lyrics of his favorite song—“More Than Words,” by Extreme—in a note. It was the sweetest thing. After graduation, Kevin joined the Air Force and started training in Mississippi. Meanwhile, I moved to North Carolina for college. The long-distance thing was torture. “I want you to move down here,” Kevin had said. “Marry me, Joy.” I loved Kevin. But could I really turn my…

Theologian and writer Frederick Buechner is no stranger to the mysterious. Take what happened to him after his friend Dudley died unexpectedly years ago. Frederick and his wife paid Dudley’s widow a visit and stayed overnight. That evening, Frederick dreamed that Dudley was in the room, dressed in his usual navy blue sweater and white pants. Frederick told Dudley he missed him and asked if he were really there. Dudley assured him he was. “Can you prove it?” Frederick asked. “Of course,” Dudley said. He pulled some yarn from his sweater and tossed it to Frederick, who caught it. The feel of the wool was “so palpably real that it woke me up,” Frederick notes in Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons. It was “as if he’d come…

Got a question for investigative genealogist Pamela Slaton? E-mail us at MW@Guideposts.org to share your puzzling adoption case. Secrets of Contemplative Prayer Senior Contributing Editor Rick Hamlin shares tips for connecting to the divine at Guideposts.org/PrayerSecrets Do Animals Grieve Like Humans? Read our exclusive Q&A with anthropologist Barbara J. King at Guideposts.org/AnimalGrief Mom Really Does Know Best! Our editors share their favorite mysterious mom stories at Guideposts.org/MomStories…

“It doesn’t get any better than this.” That’s what my friend Rich used to say. We worked together for 15 years at an engineering firm. Every now and then, in the office or at a get-together outside work, Rich would smile and utter his catchphrase. It made everyone laugh. He was such a happy-go-lucky guy. A few years ago, Rich was diagnosed with advanced-stage prostate cancer. It was tough to see Rich, who’d been so quick with a joke or word of encouragement, in so much pain. He passed away at the age of 62. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was close to God when he died. Days after Rich’s funeral, our coworker Fred pulled me aside. “You’ll never believe what happened,” he said. He showed me the…

Bonnie Roane I’d just moved to Williamsburg, Virginia, and my boyfriend, Nick, had come over to help me clean up my new place. My mind kept wandering to memories of my grandmother, who’d recently passed away. Each of us grandkids had chosen a few pieces of her jewelry to remember her by. I picked the sparkly metal butterfly pin she used to wear to church. I was thankful for the memento, but I wished Grandma were here. She would’ve loved my new house. A voice from the backyard snapped me out of my reverie. Nick was calling me. We’d unearthed all kinds of “treasures” in the yard over the past few weeks…well, mostly golf balls. “What did you find?” I said. Nick dropped something into my hand. Though covered in…

“The ladder that leads to the kingdom is hidden within you, and is found in your own soul.” Isaac of Nineveh, BISHOP AND THEOLOGIAN “Heaven is the natural home of our essential selves that we connect to from within— the entire, observable physical universe emerges out of that pure heavenly consciousness.” Dr. Eben Alexander NEUROSURGEON AND AUTHOR OF PROOF OF HEAVEN “Theoretical physicists say that there are at least 10 dimensions in the universe, possibly 11. We can perceive three… Jesus doesn’t take Peter, James and John to a faraway galaxy light years out of sight. They just walk up on a mountain and, here on this earth, Moses and Elijah stepped in to talk to Jesus in his glorified form. For that moment, the curtain was pulled back, as…

I climbed into my van, aka the Mom Mobile, and headed to the library where I worked evenings. Just on the highway, I got an urge to pray. Please, Lord, don’t let anything hit me! Why on earth had I prayed that? Okay, I’m a fearful driver. Highways, lane changes, parallel parking all make me nervous. I always prayed before getting on the road. But this prayer was so specific that I decided not to listen to my audiobook or the radio. I had to be super vigilant. I came up behind a beat-up pickup. The only other vehicle around. A bunch of two-by-fours was piled in its bed. Every time the truck hit a bump, the wood bounced. I peered closer. Nothing was tied down! No ropes or straps.…

I couldn’t shake the funny feeling to go to the Fast Fare convenience store on my lunch break. The store was a bit of a hike. I’d already packed a lunch. I didn’t need any more snacks or soda. But the urge wouldn’t go away. So I grabbed my coat and purse. Make it quick, I told myself. I’m a medical documentation specialist at a hospital clinic. I have paramedic and nursing experience, so I love nothing more than the hustle and bustle of a busy practice. Most days, I barely had a minute to breathe, let alone time for a lunch break. Yet here I was, driving to a convenience store because of some feeling. I entered the store. There was no one else besides the clerk behind the…

I saw him among the sea of partyers on the beach at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Blond hair. Athletic build. Total jock. Not my type at all. I usually went for the quiet, geeky types, like me. But this guy kept glancing my way, and I had no one else to talk to. I was standing awkwardly by the bonfire. My older sister, Elizabeth, and I had snuck out of the bungalow our family rented every summer. She’d disappeared the second we got to the party. Maybe she didn’t want to be seen with her lame 16-year-old sister. I wasn’t exactly the life of the party, though sometimes I fantasized that I was. The guy walked right up to me as if he knew I wouldn’t walk away, then…

Do animals grieve? The way we humans do? I’ve been asking my-self this question ever since my husband, Adam, told me the story of how his parents’ dog, Sandy, behaved after the death of his grandfather a few years ago. “We took Sandy to my Pop Pop’s house after the funeral,” Adam said. “She raced to his armchair and lay next to it. She stayed for hours. Somehow she knew. He was gone.” But how? To find out, I decided to talk to experts and others who have witnessed animals mourning. Like Meva Scarff, a Mysterious Ways reader from West Virginia. Meva was stunned by the way the cows on her farm seemed to express their grief after the death of her husband, Jim, about a year ago. Meva had…

I was on the phone talking to a Christian acquaintance—a nice, thoughtful guy in Atlanta. Like many prayerful people, he wanted to know more about meditation, and so he was taking an intensive course at a Buddhist center. I asked if he’d thought to consult a Christian expert first, someone who could talk in terms more directly connected to his faith. “Well, the Buddhists have been at it for much longer,” he said. “They’re better at explaining it.” While that may be true, Christian mystics have known and practiced meditative techniques for millennia. They might not have called it meditation. More often it was referred to as contemplative prayer or, more recently, centering prayer. But meditation it most certainly was and is. We have proof in spiritual texts dating all…

“The heart outstrips the clumsy senses, and sees—perhaps for an instant, perhaps for long periods of bliss—an undistorted and more veritable world.”—EVELYN UNDERHILL Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) was a philosopher and pacifist best known for her writings on Christian mysticism. Born into a wealthy family, she led a quiet life as the wife of a London barrister. Early on, she became fascinated by medieval saints, such as Teresa of Avila, as well as Greek Orthodox traditions and her travels to Italy—the only place that was, she said, “medicinal to the soul.” In 1911, those interests led Evelyn to write Mysticism, a guide on everything from voices and visions to the dark night of the soul. Evelyn’s later work, considered groundbreaking for its time, emphasized a mystical world that was accessible to…