Moments of Forever
by James Ian Walter
excerpted from his book Moments of Forever

Introduction: What are Moments of Forever? They are stories that touch the heart, the mind, the funny bone, and, perhaps, the Mystery....

Preface-The Voice of the Hand: A Hand from heaven touched mine, and a voice said, “Write.”...

The Spirit: About an hour’s drive from Auburn, the town of Warm Springs, Alabama, is a good spot for browsing and relaxing....

Bae: My aunt Bae never had any children. She thought of me as her son, and made me feel special, and I loved her for that....

The Question: What is life all about if one day I will die?...

Letting Your Spirit Grow, Step by Step: First, accept God’s grace and unconditional love for you, and give up trying to always be right....

Introduction
What are Moments of Forever? They are stories that touch the heart, the mind, the funny bone, and, perhaps, the Mystery. Most are stories from my own experience; some are written by good friends, or by strangers, or anonymously. Educated as both an Episcopal priest and a psychologist, I have found that experience has enriched my education. Education can open doors for us; it is experience that lets the sunshine in.

My stories are not linear. Life for me is disorganized, full of surprises and uncertain risks. Yet, it can be understood, a bit, in retrospect. A well-ordered and structured life, like certainty, would finally become boring. There are other connections in writing and life that are more important than organization.

I invite you to share with me here a few experiences that allow us to smell, for a moment, the aroma of what could be. Sometimes my stories are subjective, written in the first person; other times I have taken a third-person perspective. Though grammatically incorrect, it feels natural and good to express myself this way. In the third person I am speaking of myself as another person—that is, as the child speaking to the man, and vice versa. In the third person, he heard a voice, “This is part of the mystery,” and the spirit of the child replied, I wonder, I wonder.”
--Jim Walter

Preface-The Voice of the Hand
A Hand from heaven touched mine, and a voice said, “Write.”

In a mixture of desire and uncertainty, I responded, “But what shall I write, and how, and why me?”

The Voice of the Hand relied, “Because you must.”

Again I asked, “ But what and how and why and…”

The Voice interrupted, “Do not fret about such trivia. Listen to the heartbeat of your soul. There you’ll find how and what and so much more.”

Writing became a clarifier. Listening to my voice within, I heard the yearnings and struggle, as well as the laughter and the joy.

To write I must remain open to all my experiences—the good and the bad, the hurtful and the helpful, the raunchy and the sacred, the despised and the beloved, the honest and the hypocritical. Life is a taskmaster. It does not allow us to pick and choose.

Writing is a reflection of my soul, a light that removes shadows. Paul experienced something akin to this when he wrote to the Ephesians:

To me, though I am the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things. ( Ephesians 3:8-9)

The Spirit
About an hour’s drive from Auburn, the town of Warm Springs, Alabama, is a good spot for browsing and relaxing. After three hours of shopping there during one of our visits, my wife Katharine and I decided to take a break. We stopped at a local restaurant hoping to find a good hamburger. It was not a fancy place, but what it lacked in polish, it made up for in friendliness and good down-home cooking.

As I waited for my burger to arrive, I wandered to the rear of the restaurant, where music was coming from a back room. An elderly man was sitting there in front of a piano-organ “contraption,” and singing along to the marches and hymns and love songs he played. I lost myself in the music until I heard Katherine’s voice calling me back to reality, “Come on, before your burger gets cold.”

The warm, juicy hamburger filled me with contentment. I sat happily eating my meal barely noticing the elderly man, who was now pacing back and forth behind me. “Maybe he’s trying to make a decision,” I guessed, quickly returning my full attention to my food.

Suddenly a strong, clear masculine voice sang out, enunciating each word: “Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”

The singer was the same old man who had been pacing behind me, now accompanying himself on the piano-organ. Shoppers all around had stopped to listen, most with smiles of polite indulgence. Then the old man began the second verse, which is so filled with the simple but profound meaning of what God in Christ is really about: “Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear, and Grace my heart relieved…”

A small miracle was taking place among the onlookers. The smiles of indulgence were being replaced by expressions of fascination. We all knew and felt that the old man was singing for and about us. Not a noise was heard, except his voice: “When we’ve been there ten thousand years….

I took a last bite of my hamburger. The music stopped. The old man was gone.

Later that night, it occurred to me that my spirit and the old man’s spirit had touched one another. As he paced uneasily behind me, our spirits had shared our love for the hymn, and he was given the courage to sing. And as he sang, he captured for a moment, the spirits of those who heard him.

Then I remembered these words: “The wind blows where it will, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes. So it is with all who are born of the Spirit.”

Bae
My aunt Bae never had any children. She thought of me as her son and made me feel special, and I loved her for that.

She is in a nursing home now, and nothing I do can keep her from growing old. Nothing I do can take away the loneliness; I cannot stop her fear of losing touch with reality or make her feel as she did sixty years ago. There is nothing I can do, and yet she did so much for me.

Going through the music room one day at the end of a visit, I hear the song leader say, “Now let’s sing that most beautiful of all hymns, 'Amazing Grace,' one more time.” As the voices rise to sing, “how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” the thought comes to me: These people are not in the midst of sweet sounds and amazing grace; they are in the midst of loneliness, of fear of losing touch, of feeling forgotten, left out, cut off from their families, and they are probably wondering, “What’s happening?” and “Why is this happening to me?” These are questions that only loving and touching and sharing can answer.

When we reach the front parlor, I turn Bae’s wheelchair around to face me. “Is this okay, Bae?”

“ Yes, Love, it’s fine.” I pull the little sweater around her shoulders, trying to show how much I care.

Almost in a whisper, she says, “ Bye, my love.”

Every family should have a Bae.

There is a sentence in Paul’s twelfth letter to the Church of Rome which will forever remind me of Bae: “Abhor that which is evil and cleave to the good; and in love be kindly affectionate to one another.” Amen

The Question
What is life all about if one day I will die?

The question forced its way into my 10-year-old mind one night in the midst of my studies. I was sitting alone before a log fire in the big living room on Paegler Place, preparing my lessons for school. This was a familiar ritual for me, but that night was different.

As I paused in my homework, watching the slow changes of the flames, my mind began to wander. Suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, the question appeared: What is life all about if one day I will die? The thought shoved its way into my consciousness and demanded to be heard. I knew the question was not mine, it had a source from beyond my consciousness. It did not just make me uneasy—it literally jolted me with a power that compelled me to pay attention.

What is life all about if one day I will die?

I have no idea how long I stayed there that night, caught up in a query to which I could not respond. That question touched something in me that had never been touched before. It reached the core of my soul. Yet, even that is inaccurate, for the soul and its core are beyond our reach.

I wanted to tell my mother and father, but I didn’t. Somehow it was too personal, or maybe I thought it would upset them to learn that their young son was having thoughts about death. In retrospect, I now realize that the question transcended death. In all these years, the question has never gone away. Perhaps it is eternal.

In 1959, I was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church. Only within the last 20 years have I begun to realize that perhaps God placed “his hand on my shoulder” on that night long ago.

Letting Your Spirit Grow, Step by Step
First, accept God’s grace and unconditional love for you, and give up trying to always be right.

Second, take the risk sometime of letting yourself be open and vulnerable to those you love.

Third, let honesty be more important to you than politeness.

Fourth, give up denying and distorting your genuine feelings.

Fifth, love those who don’t deserve it.

Sixth, learn to laugh at yourself.

Seventh, listen to others without judging them.

Eighth, forget all the above and be your own true self.

Copyright ©2004 James Ian Walter

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