The Knight Before Christmas: the Smashed Tree Miracles

A framed knight given to me by my life coach, Joe Mancini, helped me find to true spirit of Christmas in 2021 by smashing my Christmas tree. A security camera caught him in the act, so I was inspired to produce this video. Enjoy!

Meeting Jesus: First-Hand Accounts from Near-Death Experiencers

Here are amazing, first-hand accounts of people who say they met Jesus through near-death experiences.  They saw His Light and felt His unconditional Love, and you can feel His Love too -- without a health crisis -- watching their stories.  

You Are Always Connected to God:  Ed Salisbury

Jesus Touched Her Shoulder:  Linda Jacquin

 

Changing the Mind of Jesus:  Chris Russel 

The Power of Jesus:  My Friend Alexa's Story Is Here.   

Learn More

• View More Videos:  Visit Bill’s YouTube Channel.


• Read More Amazing Stories:  Visit Jody and Jeff’s NDERF Web site.


• Learn from Experiencers and Researchers:  Connect with the the International Association of Near Death Experiences


• Learn What These Experiences Say About Different Religions:  God Is Love and We Designed to Love Him and Others

Is It God or Your Imagination?

It was the night before a new prayer group.  I was curled in bed and peering in the dark. What was it going to be like?  Who was going to be there?  What was I going to  . . . an answer to my second question appeared as if a slide projector suddenly beamed on my visual cortex. 

I saw the back of a woman’s hand, fingers fanned out as if she was worried what her nails looked like.

Still curled and peering, I then saw a long and thin, wispy scarf.  Who is this woman?  I strained to see her face, but it was a blur.  She had no face. The slide projector went dark.

God proved again He can move in mysterious ways.  The only thing clear to me was I was going to meet this woman at church the next day.

But I wasn’t thinking about her as I sped up the pothole-patched road to church.  I was wondering why I was always late to a church that was only minutes from home.  It was really embarrassing when others drove an hour or more and got there on time. 

The room was nearly full, with people seated at round tables.  I slipped into the nearest free seat and looked down.  The minister had already asked everyone to introduce themselves.  Voices ebbed and flowed in an unmemorable stream until a woman at my table said, “I used to think God spoke to me, but then I came to believe it was all in my imagination.”   

As I looked at her, neurons in my visual cortex caught fire.  This was the woman!  She was wearing a long, blue wispy scarf just like I had seen the night before.

“Oh, honey,” I wanted to say as goose bumps tingled. “God Loves You so much. When I was with him last night, you were all he wanted to talk about!” 

But I didn’t speak with her.  When you say stuff like this, some Christians will jerk back the welcome mat quicker than a jilted atheist. Heck, I’d question someone I didn’t know who started talking about what they saw or heard in their head.  I often question myself.

But I wasn’t exactly silenced by these doubts.  I was fascinated by what I was seeing and silently explored further, knowing I was getting into something way beyond the woman next to me.  I’ve learned that sometimes what I see in others isn’t necessarily meant for them. It often is meant to show me something.

I thought about the image I had seen of a woman’s hand paired and a worry about what her nails looked like.  What meaning was there in this?  I also wondered what I was meant to see when I saw a blur for her face. 

A while later as I worked to write this post, I found my answer in a novel recommended by someone who didn’t know what I was struggling to understand:  Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C.S. Lewis. (Thank You, Joe!)

The main character, Orual, was a self-absorbed woman who hid her ugly face with a veil and longed to be reunited with her beautiful sister Psyche.  Orual blamed the gods for the wrenching separation. 

Late in the novel, however, she begins to understand the gods were not at fault.  She had caused her own suffering and estranged herself from her sister and the gods.  

“I saw why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer,” said Orual. “Till that word [which has lain at the center of our soul for years] can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces.” (page 294)  In other words, we have to know our selves before we can know God and experience His presence.

In Orual’s case, the jealousy she had towards her sister and her husband had to be dug out of her.   It took so long because she was more than a good person—she was a revered queen.  But when it came to her relations with the Divine and the sister she loved, she was so absorbed with self-justifying and cynical beliefs she had alienated herself from what her soul sought most.   

On the night before my prayer meeting, when I saw the back of a woman’s hand with fingers outstretched, I believe I also saw how the hand was blocking God from getting closer.  This is exactly what we do when we become self-absorbed, worrying or obsessing about anything. 

But experiencing the presence of God is not really a matter of confessing your sins.  Far, far from it! The spell is broken and Orual’s true face is finally revealed when a Divine voice tells her the beauty she revered in her sister Psyche also shines in her. 

In other words, if you want to feel the presence of God and hear His voice, there is one essential thing to do.  Both stories and my own lead me to sing the same refrain:  Embrace Your Divine Nature and Get in the Light.  Draw near to the people and places where you feel God’s Love shines the brightest.  Read the stories of those who tell of the Light that has come into this world. Take time to be still and recognize the Divine Light God has poured into you!  And multiply the Love in and around you with acts of kindness. You’ll be amazed at what happens next.

You may start hearing whispers of an inner voice and seeing weird things like fluffy scarves.  But how do you really know God is speaking to you?

It’s a big leap, and I’ve gone many rounds with this question.  After a couple of years, I’ve developed an approach that seems to work. 

First, hold what you’ve experienced up in the Light and ask:  Is there something uncanny about what you’ve heard or seen and what’s going on around you?  Is there an amazing thread of logic or symbolism in it?  Did it seem to come out of the blue or have a certain “otherness” about it?  Is it in harmony with what you know of a Loving God?  If these questions don’t settle it for you, ask to see things more clearly. 

Of course, you may feel a Divine hand is at work but still think it’s all in your imagination like the woman with the fluffy scarf did.   For all of us who have stumbled over this thought, I now have an answer.  It was given to me—appropriately enough—by an angel who speaks in Todd Michael’s amazing book The Evolution Angel (page 15):

“All communication with Spirit takes place through the imagination.  The imagination, the part of the mind that can synthesize images, is one of the highest faculties of the mind.  Don’t knock it.  It is the end product of several billion years of painstaking evolution.  Second only to love, the ability to imagine makes human beings sons and daughters of the great Creator.  All creation, all great accomplishment, and all communication with the Spirit begins within the imagination.”

What to share your thoughts?  You can now leave comments here without setting up a Google account!

Confessions of a Christmas Addict

Anyone who knows me well, knows I’ve been nuts for Christmas since I was a kid.  I get a big charge out of Christmas lights and decorations.  Imagine a long-ago August in Maryland, and watch a kid in shorts and corrective shoes sneak into an oven-hot attic to steal a peak at shiny Christmas balls.

Fifty some years later, my feet have high arches and I have nearly enough Christmas ornaments to deck the Rockefeller Center tree.  

As a kid, Christmas was the closest thing to heaven I knew.  The world glimmered.  Our house was filled with beautiful music and decorations and Mom-made sweets.  Oh, how I scarffed her almond-ball cookies covered with colored sugar.

When Christmas finally came, my heart’s desires -- discovered in the Sears Wish Book catalogue --were stacked under the tree with crinkled-ribbon bows on top.  And I was surrounded by relatives who loved me with an unconditional love.

Say what you will about the excesses and commercialism of Christmas. I won’t argue with you.  But beyond it all, the remnants of a simple childhood joy still flicker when I see the glow and sparkle of Christmas lights.  

Of course, I long ago realized the absurdity of trying to capture the real Joy of Christmas by collecting Christmas decorations.  But when Christmas came around, I’d still deck the halls inside and out as if I had drunk too much eggnog.  What the heck, I’d say.  It was something I enjoyed.  It wasn’t like I was trying to out do Martha Stewart, and I wasn’t crazy like Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation.

One Christmas about five years ago, however, the glittering slope got slippery.  It started out as innocent as the first snowflake of winter.  I had a peaceful vision for decorating my front yard.  I’d make a pond by laying blue lights on the ground, and then I’d gather a herd of those animated wire deer with clear mini lights.  They’d glow as they drank and frolicked by the pond.   

Alas, other deer hunters had bagged them weeks before Christmas.  I drove from store to store, returning a couple of times to each, hoping new shipments would come. But they didn’t.  My obsession consumed hours of what little spare time I had.  

I thought it was a near miracle when I finally found a pair of deer in a Lowes store.  They were expensive -- $160. But I didn’t hesitate. I piled them into a shopping cart, which wobbled as I merrily pushed them to the checkout.    

The chatty checker was a nice young woman, who somehow read me like Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Present.  When she saw the total rung up on her register, she said “Wow, I hope you spend this much on presents.”   Her words beamed through my Christmas fog, and I wobbled with the cart to my car.

In fate's perfect way, the head of one of the deer didn’t fit, so I returned them both to Lowes. The message couldn’t have been clearer if it had been chiseled on stone and dropped in my lap.  I should give the money to people who could really use it.  

Since then, I’ve gone out Christmas Eve to some of the poorer parts of town and given away envelopes of my “decorating” money to people I meet, like a young couple washing their clothes at a Laundromat, a grandmother in a wheelchair pushed by her grandson shopping for Christmas presents in a Salvation Army Store, and an elderly gentleman shopping for one in a rundown grocery store. 

The glow from these decorations is brighter than any string of Christmas lights ever made. And it lingers warm like flannel around my heart well after the Christmas dishes have been cleared and I’ve wished my family a final “Merry Christmas” and “good night.”    

If only more people could do the same.  Think about it.  In 2005, about $8.5 billion was spent on Christmas decorations in the U.S.  Imagine how much brighter the world would be if we gave this much extra to the homeless, hungry and those in need at Christmas. 

I confess I still enjoy decorating my house for Christmas, and I bought some LED lights this year.  Hey, the Bible says you shouldn’t put your candle under a basket.  And I’m saving energy . . . .

OK, maybe I’m backsliding.  This thought came to me in the mail yesterday.  I got a $40 speeding camera ticket the day I rushed to find a bigger Christmas tree.   You can bet I’ll put all the more in the Christmas Eve envelopes.  I don’t want to miss Christmas this year. 

Sandi Rogers' Near-Death Experience

My friend Sandi Rogers had the glow and warmth of a 1,000 watt bulb.  She was lit by an awesome near-death experience. Many have seen the Light like she did.  But Sandi’s story is one of the most vivid I know for showing the Light’s power to vanquish despair.

The first part of her story, however, is so sad I can’t type it without a tear.  On April 30, 1976, after failing to commit suicide the night before with a drug overdose, she put a .38 caliber pistol to her chest – aiming for her heart. 

After years of abuse and heartache, she had sunk into despair’s subbasement.  As a young child, Sandi  experienced her parents’ wrenching divorce and saw her mother struggle alone to feed and clothe her family.  The stepfather who followed was no savior.  He sexually abused Sandi at age 13.

Her suffering only intensified like knots twisting into bigger knots.  As an adult, she had a series of bad relationships, marriages, and pregnancies and miscarriages.  By age 25 when she picked up the gun, Sandi had been raped twice by different men, married and divorced three times and hospitalized for drug overdoses six times.   She hated her existence and lost her faith.  How could the God of Love let this happen to her?

As a nurse, Sandi knew exactly where her heart was.  Determined not mess up this time, she carefully aimed and pulled the trigger.   Before the ambulance got there, she got the surprise of her eternal life.  She found herself in Heaven.  “I came into the presence of a brilliant, wonderfully warm and loving Light,” she said in her book Lessons From the Light: Insights From a Journey to the Other Side.  

Sandi then had a complete life review. She saw and felt everything she had experienced as well as saw and felt what those who came in contact with her experienced.   “As I relived each of these terribly painful events in my life, the Light, which was with me as I watched, felt all of my pain and sorrow and never judged me, but instead understood and loved me.  The love I felt from the Light was overwhelming and I never wanted to leave.” 

But she soon learned her suicide wasn’t going to be her ticket to Heaven.  She was told she had a choice.  She could stay with the Light for a while only if she later returned to the physical world and went through the same experiences that led her to pick up the pistol.  Or she could go back then and return to her life.  If she did, the Light told her she would have the family and love she craved.

Sandi chose to return, but she didn’t come back the same person.  The Love and Light she experienced stayed with her, and many who came to know her afterwards knew her for her radiant soul -- full of a passion for spreading the Love where it is not and sharing the wisdom she learned from her experience. 

The promise God made to her did come true.  Sandi met and married the love of her life – Jack Rogers – and together they had two dearly loved children. 

About thirty years after her experience, Sandi’s life was threatened by a medical condition associated with last suicide attempt.  Knowing what she knew was waiting for her on the other side, you may be surprised she fought hard to stay here. In a small way, I fought with her. Every time I could find a medical report that held promise, I sent her what she called a “Don-gram.” Despite all I sent, the advances didn’t come soon enough and Sandi died on April 28, 2000. 

So many were blessed by her life and the insights she shared. And I have to say she showed us perhaps the greatest lesson in the way she fought to stay here. After her suicide attempts, she understood how precious life here is.  For our souls, our big reward isn’t on the other side.  It is here on earth.  It’s in bringing Light to where it is dark and bringing Love to where there is fear. In other words, it is being a co-creator with God.  ”God’s paradise for us is Love,” she wrote in her book.  “We can create paradise again if we learn to love one another as ourselves.” 

Our reward is also found in the often mysterious roles we play and in the knowledge we gain from our struggles.  “From the point of view of our conscious mind, life’s not fair,” she wrote in her book.  “Hardships are necessary for the growth of our spiritual bodies. . . . Knowledge is more valuable than gold. It is something of value you can take with you to the spiritual world.” 

I’ll be the first one to say it’s difficult to read this when life’s thorns stab hard. But when they do, Sandi’s story gives us hope we will find meaning and the Light can conquer despair.    

Adventure in Prayer: The Colonoscopy

Hoping I could get out of a colonoscopy the next day, I called my gastroenterologist.  I told him I had just been wacked in the head with a speaker.  Going forward with the procedure didn’t seem like a good idea.  But he wasn’t concerned when I told him I wasn’t dizzy, didn’t need stiches and had no evidence of a concussion. 

It still didn’t seem like a good idea the next day.  As they wheeled me to the procedure room.  I was exhausted and I was sure my body was only going to feel worse afterwards. 

When I got to the room, I was assaulted by brash hip-hop music blaring from a boom box.  That did it.  Angry thoughts swirled in my head like hornets around a poked nest.   How thoughtless can you get?  Patients are stressed – even if they hadn’t been knocked in the head the day before.  I need to be soothed with classical music, Christian, new age or soft rock.  Elevator music would have been better than THIS!  How could the doctor let the tech play this crap?  And where WAS the doctor?  How much longer was I going to have to wait?

I soon realized that being steamed like this was only going to make the ordeal worse.  At this point, I started to pray.  “Lord, I don’t want to be like this,” I said.  ”I don’t want to hate this woman and her boom box . . . Please help me.  I don’t want to be like this . . .”  Over and over again, these words swirled like the angry thoughts I wanted them to replace. 

“Wait a minute,” I finally said to myself.  “God isn’t deaf. He knows what’s needed.”

There was nothing more I could do.  It was up to God.  I had placed myself in His hands.  I went quiet and then found myself listening to the lyrics of the hip-hop song.   I laughed at what I heard.   The singer was singing:  “Let’s Get It Started!  Let’s Get It Started!”

I turned my head and looked at the tech.  “Do you hear what he’s singing?” 

“Yes,” she laughed, “I was just thinking about the words . . . Let’s Get It Started.”  

Before I knew it, we were chatting and laughing about all sorts of things -- the doctor, weather, Wall Street . . . I can’t remember what all.  When the doctor finally came, I was in the peaceful place I had longed for and I had affirmed a woman I had minutes earlier scorned.

As for the results, I'm good until the next time and very thankful -- not only for my health but the beautiful lesson I learned:   If you ask, look and listen, you may hear the Music and see the Light of Love.  It is everywhere -- even in music you can’t stand and places you can’t imagine the Light will shine.

** I see a lot of you who come here are searching for a prayer as you face a colonoscopy.  So please know that, as I type each letter here, I pray God's comfort will wrap around you like a warm blanket and the hands of the doctors and nurses who will care for you will be guided by His Loving and Healing hands. And I pray you will be blessed in some way as I was. 

Adventures in Prayer: Do You Hear Me Now?

It was another cloudy day in Maryland. I was driving with weary hands on the wheel. So much was going on at work. When you can see the light in everyone, you want to be on everyone’s side. It’s a lovely desire. But trying to live it out can be difficult, particularly when -- as is often the case -- things are sorted and you’ve seen everyone’s shadow, including your own.

This day, I was worried about who was on my side and how I was going to keep my balance. So I prayed, “Lord, open the doors that need to be open and close the doors that need to be closed. I love this prayer Nancy Clark taught me because it’s a great way to ask for help when you haven’t a clue what help you really need. When you hear the rest of the story, you may think I should have stopped right there. But wanting more, I added something new to the prayer. “And Lord” I said, “I really want to hear your voice more clearly. Could you speak louder?”

I later walked into my office, all the more weary when I remembered it was the day of the big office picnic. There was lots to do to get ready. In midmorning, I rolled our portable PA system out of the closet to do a sound check. It’s a hefty thing built to bring sound to hundreds. The main unit is about four feet tall. On top of this, I locked into place the speaker unit. Its two long hinged strips of speakers in metal cases. They are not very thick or wide but each one is about two feet long. I flipped up the top strip of speakers and I turn the system on.

Not everything was working right, so I bent down to fiddle with the dials. Having trouble reading them, I pushed the unit back a bit to get a closer look. Mistake! The top speaker swung down and wacked the top of my head. Blood streamed down my face, and I ran to the office kitchen to get a paper towel. My coworkers surged just as fast to help, one called an ambulance, one put ice on my head, one started cleaning up the blood on the floor, and within five minutes, I got medical opinions from three doctors in the building. Luckily, the bleeding stopped quickly and I didn’t need to go to the hospital for stiches.

It didn’t take me long to remember my morning prayer when I asked God to speak louder. Boy, did He answer that one! Sure, life is sorted, there are shadows, and not everybody is going to Love you. But don’t get hung up on any of this. Deep down, we are all made of Love that wants to surge and help others. So when things get rocky and you want to keep your balance, keep your mind on this and let your own Love flow. You were meant to swim in it.

Now, I have to laugh at my prayer. And I can’t help but think that God has a sense of humor. In any event, I know what I’m praying next time I want to hear God’s voice or to see Love at work in others. I’m going to pray my hearing and eyesight improve!