One Good Thing

An amazing supernatural story, and a very weird postscript.

Dear Readers:

When my daughter was little, she had an imaginary friend, Charlie. Charlie came to live with us sometime after we relocated from London to Washington, DC, when Emily was a toddler.

Charlie was a benign presence in our lives, as far as I could tell. Sometimes I was prompted to hold the apartment door open for him so he could come with us on a road trip. Charlie liked to be read to, if I recall.

{Amy and Emily. Charlie — not pictured}

But Charlie was quite obviously imaginary. I appreciated one of his functions, which was to round out a household that at times might have felt a little empty. (Later on, a succession of giant Tabby cats completed our little family quite well.)

This week I read a fascinating account of an extraordinary phenomenon: the rare but real (it seems) experience of some very young children who reveal evidence that seems to point that they have experienced past lives.

This is about toddlers who are barely able to talk, but who somehow describe complex and colorful experiences they couldn’t possibly know anything about. “Aija,” the child mainly profiled in the story, describes the horror of being “Nina,” a child experiencing the Holocaust. (Aija was two-years-old at the time.)

Researchers at the Division of Perceptual Studies within the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine are studying this phenomenon, which they call “Cases of reincarnation type” — or CORT.

Later on in the story researcher Jim Tucker sits with and Aija and her parents and patiently guides them through an interview about the experience.

The older I get the more understand that I don’t necessarily know how humanity expresses itself.

Can lives and actual lived experiences travel through time and manifest in other people? Well … why not?!

CLICK HERE to read this provocative and fascinating story, written by Caitlin Gibson and published in The Washington Post. I guarantee that it will make you see the world in a new way.

And now: a weird update!

Last week I shared with you my very visceral love of writing and sending letters.

Click here to read

I very much appreciate the positive response to a topic that is, frankly, easy to respond positively to. (I mean, what kind of monster is going to give me a thumbs down on that?)

Now I have a strange “PS” to share.

JUST after I clicked “publish” on last week’s newsletter, I heard from my brother-in-law, Jacques. Jacques was borrowing my husband’s dump truck (that’s the sort of Sunday afternoon thing we do around here), and when Jacques moved the passenger seat …

THIS

… fell out. (Note the atmospheric coffee/donut/axle grease stain on the upper left corner.)

I opened it.

Whoa. Weird.

This note was one I wrote in 2011, three months after my mother’s funeral, intending to thank the women in our church community who had helped to prepare and serve a lunch to mourners. I’d also enclosed a check to refill the luncheon fund.

The note and check were in an envelope with a stamp on it, but somehow … ended up riding around in a dump truck.

At church last Sunday I closed the loop by reading the letter aloud to the congregation and depositing the check in the collection plate.

(I wish them great good luck in cashing it.)

I hope you have a great weekend/week with just the right amount of weirdness.

(As always, if you have read this newsletter to the end, please shoot me a “heart” and/or a comment below.

Love,

Amy