November 1, 2008
Saturday

Write about someone who has passed to the other side.
            — writing prompt for October 31 in A Writer’s Book of Days
                Judy Reeves, b. 1942, American writer and teacher

Last night was Hallowe’en (I went back to using the apostrophe — link to my previous stance on this included as an excuse to send readers to the piece with pictures of Lynn as Dorothy of Oz at 5 and at 18). Today in the Catholic liturgical calendar I grew up with it’s All Saints’ Day, and tomorrow is the commemoration for All Souls. The Lutheran congregation I practice in now views all the departed as saints (no “capital S” and “small s” distinction) and observes the festival on the Sunday closest to November 1.

I don’t see dead people, but I do think about them a lot. I was brought up in a tradition that prayed for the dead. Now I pray to them, in the sense that I call up their images, remember their place in my history, and try to feel the energy they are now.

And I do believe that that is what they are. She is stardust, she is golden, I wrote in 2001 of the spirited young woman whose funeral gave me the charged image and the questions that have been shaping the novel I’ve been writing for almost seven years. Tonight I got a little teary for her once again as her picture came up in a slide show honoring all the saints of our congregation’s twenty-year history.

An article in yesterday’s local paper reviewed an appearance in Harrisburg Wednesday night by Lisa Williams, a former punk musician who describes herself now as a medium and clairvoyant. I had never heard of her before, but evidently a lot of other people have, primarily through her television program, Voices from the Other Side. Hundreds of people, some of them probably people I know, turned out to see her, bringing with them the hope that she would be able to contact their departed loved ones for them. The article described her delivering information from a man who had died in a fire, a woman who wanted her daughter to get a haircut and take her vitamins, and a young man who wants his mother to redecorate his room and stop preserving it as a shrine.

Google Williams’s name with the terms “fake” and “fraud” and you’ll get half a million hits, more than you’ll get with more positive keywords. The reviewer noted that the messages Williams delivers from those she claims to be communicating with are overwhelmingly positive. Her consistent message is that “those on the other side are safe, happy, still love those they’ve left behind and often are spending eternity with other family members.”

And really, why wouldn’t she say things like this? What self-styled medium would draw big audiences (for a 5-figure appearance fee) if she consistently told people that their departed friends are miserable and are still angry with them for that breakup or for voting for George Bush (either one)? (You can, however, get her to think about you for free.)

I have had mystical experiences, many of them too private and too holy to talk about casually. Not long after my mother died, while I was meditating on the words of a hymn I like, I saw her taken into heaven (a phenomenon I would later learn has been described by Carl Jung), and just about two years ago I am certain that an old friend visited me and others in our dreams around the time that he died. 

Williams ended her presentation, the article reports, by “suggesting that we talk to our departed loved ones and look for signs they hear us.” I do that. I pray every day, almost always with colored pencils in my hand, sometimes recalling those already on the other side, but mostly calling up the names and images of the living people whose concerns are important to me. If you’re reading this, know that you’ve been included at least from time to time in one or another of those sessions, by name if I know you but otherwise in a little box labeled “Marking’s readers” and decorated with orange and cobalt blue, my two favorite colors.

I don’t really fault people for seeking Lisa Williams (or others like her) out. But I wish they would understand that (in my opinion, anyway) they really don’t need anything besides the silence within their own hearts to find the peace and the comfort that she sells.

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