Slices of Time

One of the old ladies in church today told me I look like a teenager. That was kinda scary. But I suppose to a nearly 90 year old, a nearly 50 year old can look like a teenager. Still, it's dignity I would like to embody as I age, not the restless search for the lost bloom of beautiful youth. That said, it is also a true thing that inside my head I still feel like I am 17. Perhaps some of that inner me is projected out onto my face, and my bearing, into my speech and my attitudes? And so, though it is not now, it is still present and able to be seen?

We have a couple of 90 year olds in our church, and they amaze me. They are younger acting, and healthier, than some who are 20 years younger than them. It is obvious we can do things to maintain our health but I wonder about other factors. How much does heredity play a part, or how about one's attitude towards life and the challenges it poses? How old we feel inside? And how much control do we as individuals have over physical aging? Do we have any?

I have often read that people who believe in a loving God who cares for them, and who have an active faith and prayer life, are often healthier. People who count their blessings and respond with gratitude for those blessings rather than bemoaning all that is missing or wrong tend to respond to life's challenges in more positive and creative ways than those who believe themselves damned and doomed. It makes sense! A relationship with the divine creates a bond of love, and when that relationship is nurtured like any living thing, it bequeaths a gift of life to us. Not that disease never happens, or tragedy, or hardship, but a prayerful approach, a faithful and grateful approach, an approach that believes the universe is benevolent rather than hostile can work miracles from time to time, and give us a resilience that cannot be gotten in any other way. I can testify myself that without faith in a loving God I would have killed myself by now. And I believe that bond of love transcends time and space. I believe that in love all things are one.

Sometimes when I am in the church alone, cleaning, I see ghosts sitting in the pews. Mostly I see old ladies, and they are oblivious to my presence. When I first started cleaning the church several years ago, I often saw a tall, slender pastor dressed in black. He has blonde hair. He looked back at me as if surprised I could see him. I don't see him so much anymore. Often I feel the presence of someone else in the sanctuary with me, but I am not seeing the praying ghosts so much anymore. I saw my mother's husband, briefly, shortly after he died. It was like he was stopping in for a quick glimpse of me, then blipped away.

I am sensitive to how people and places feel--it is something I perceive with my body. I think it is a more primitive form of perception, and one that is subtle and dependable, and key to survival. I trust it infallibly. The sanctuary of this church feels warm and welcoming. I feel love there. I feel the assembled prayers of many years, and I can easily understand why some spirits might want to bide their time there. It is a timeless sort of place, a beautiful old building on the National Historic Register, well preserved and loved. The emotions of joy and sorrow have been strongly expressed in that sanctuary for almost 200 years, and they have accumulated in the space like moisture inside a jar.

I have seen ghosts all my life. When I was a child, they scared me. Actually, for most of my life, they scared me. At some point, I realized they were not interested in me, and were going about their own business, and I wasn't frightened of them anymore. The building I work in has a ghost, a man in black I have seen from time to time. My sense is he had something to do with the theatre space upstairs. There is a historic house in town, dating to the Revolutionary War, and when I visited it, I felt the presence of something, and felt compelled to enter an empty and boring closet that had no door. Later I asked one of the park rangers about the ghost in the house, and he told me the ghost stayed in the closet upstairs. Apparently he was a traitor who was hung, and his skull was kept in a box on the mantle in the parlor downstairs. After the Park Service finally buried his bones, he stopped inhabiting the house.

When I was a teen, I had a friend who lived in a very old farmhouse. One night we were in her room, and her closet door opened. The closet was a very large one, a walk-in sized space under the eaves at the back of the house. When the door opened of its own accord, she calmly told me that it was "Seth", the ghost who lived in the house, he was its original builder and inhabitant. She calmly looked over towards the door and told him it was alright, that he could come out, and the door shut.

I slept over that night, and in the morning I awakened to discover I had walked in my sleep and found myself on the floor of that very same closet.

When I bought this house, I saw on older woman in a housecoat standing in the hallway, looking back at me in my bedroom. It felt like she had loved living in this house once, and was checking me out, making sure I was okay and that I would take good care of her home. I must be doing a good enough job because I have never seen her again. Another time I was standing in the kitchen and saw a Hessian mercenary soldier from the Revolutionary War standing there. This hillside was the site of their campground. My daughter insists there is a ghost in her bathroom, and her toilet does make odd sounds from time to time (Moaning Myrtle?), and it might not seem like much, but I mention it because my own childhood friend used to say the gurgling of the radiator in her room had to do with her ghost Seth.

I have read that spirits often stay in places they loved. I have often wondered if perhaps all time exists simultaneously. Picture time as a loaf of bread, and the different ages of time as slices. Maybe, sometimes, we simply can see the other slices. Or, something like that.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai