“Yes, we are very tenderly received. There is always a part of one’s own
purpose waiting.”
“Have you seen Jack?”
“Yes; he is still a little bewildered, but will soon be in fighting trim
again.” This young man had been killed in an accident.
“‘In fighting trim’!” she repeated. “How funny!”
“No, it isn’t funny. We fight perpetually, and love it. It is a wonderful
thing to fight with the great forces, and to know why. Most of those in
your life fight in confusion and doubt, and suffer. But here we unite
ourselves to a definite and constructive purpose, and the fight is
glorious.”
“Do you see Granny?”
“No. She has gone on to a life beyond ours. She will come back, some day,
and I will see her.”
“You have helped me very much by believing that I lived,” he told her, at
another point. “It is very hard for us to be put aside.... We know here
how intimately our life and yours are lived together, and the one almost
intolerable thing is to have our dear ones live and believe that we do
not. It defers things so.... It hurts us when the apparent separation is
made real.”
“I hope you won’t get so far beyond that I can’t catch up,” she said.
“Never! You will begin farther along than I did. We shall go on together
now, for eternity. Since you know that I am with you, and especially as
we live and work consciously together, we shall grow together.”
“Did I do all I could for you, at the last? Did you feel my fear?”
“No, I did not feel your fear. But when one knows that the step is
coming, there is one blinding moment of dread.... You kept me a little
while,” he continued, when she said that she had tried to hold him here,
“but the thing had gone too far.”
“Was there anything we could have done that was not done?”
“Nothing. It had to be.” But when she inferred that the time had come for
him to take up work in the next plane, he protested. “No. Nothing like
that is ‘intended.’ There is no foreordination. It is all a matter of
forces, constructive and destructive. My material energy was too little
to withstand the material forces of destruction. My flesh yielded. That
has no real relation to eternal force.... One serves one’s purpose, here
or there. I am doing better work here than I could have done there, but
that has no relation or part in death. It is entirely a physical thing.”
“Did —— make you nervous?”
“No mere man could make me fail to respond to your call to courage. I
knew and you knew, that it might be the end of life there; but there was
no possible thing that you could have done, mentally, physically, or
spiritually, that you did not do. It was your courage that kept me calm,
even through that dread moment; your spirit that met me when I woke here;
your tenderness that soothed my first bewilderment; your purpose that
roused me to better, broader, finer work than I had ever dreamed before.
It has been you—you and I, one always—that have helped and upheld me, as
your faith has enabled me to reach and uphold you.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account