Many years ago, I was having a group of women at my house to pray the rosary and stood at the doorway to greet them when they pulled into the drive. After they came inside, an old Filipino woman asked, “where is your little boy?” I didn’t have a child and said so. She said, “He was behind you when you were standing in the doorway.” What did he look like? “Well, he looked like he was about eight years old, wearing shorts and t-shirt. He was holding onto the bottom of your t-shirt, and when you turned to go into the house, he ran ahead of you.”
I read it and it was interesting. But then you read her website and see her claims that the Earth has its own soul and so forth…so now we have to start wondering about the authenticity of the message…
She seems well meaning and I would like to believe her. I’d like to believe there were someone on earth I could talk to about my guardian angel, or through whom I could talk to my deceased grandfather. But it seems to me that now and for all time such stuff is the business of charlatons, crazies, and sorcerors. Even if she is totally legit, I think such things have to find you, as opposed to being sought. Otherwise my guardian angel would just speak to me directly.
In The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis said that the medievalists believed the air to be “thick with angels”. While he was, in context, speaking in hyperbole, we do know that angels were a far greater reality to people in the Middle Ages than they are today. Which makes neither age “right”. The Church teaches that each of us has a guardian angel, assigned at baptism, I think (not sure), but the guardian is far more concerned with our soul than with our physical safety–as indeed we should be ourselves. There are stories about angels protecting the lives of their charges, but there’s no way to know if they are true. We do know from the Old Testament that countries have patrons who are angels. But the expert on the reality of angels would have to be Padre Pio and he hasn’t told us much–just enough to verify that each of us does have a guardian angel.Going to this woman’s website and reading her remarks about the “soul” of the earth, as well as some of her other remarks, I’d say she’s highly imaginative and that this imagination may have had more than a little encouragement from a publisher whom we already know as not much interested in truth and very interested in profit.
There’s also this, from an article about her in Scotland on Sunday:Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindus, Muslims… it’s all the same God. So is Jesus Christ God? Byrne hesitates. “It’s the same God. I have never seen any other God.” Christ is God, then? “Mmm,” she agrees, a bit vaguely. “All I know is that God has given himself different names through the centuries. He keeps on coming. He’s there; he works through different people all the time.” To her, religion is, “a horrible word. But it is a universal word.”
Perhaps she needs to hear Abraham Lincoln’s words: “You can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.” Or maybe her publisher is “guiding” her public relations. Too bad. She’d do better to depend on her guardian angel there.
Many years ago, I was having a group of women at my house to pray the rosary and stood at the doorway to greet them when they pulled into the drive. After they came inside, an old Filipino woman asked, “where is your little boy?” I didn’t have a child and said so. She said, “He was behind you when you were standing in the doorway.” What did he look like? “Well, he looked like he was about eight years old, wearing shorts and t-shirt. He was holding onto the bottom of your t-shirt, and when you turned to go into the house, he ran ahead of you.”
I read it and it was interesting. But then you read her website and see her claims that the Earth has its own soul and so forth…so now we have to start wondering about the authenticity of the message…
She seems well meaning and I would like to believe her. I’d like to believe there were someone on earth I could talk to about my guardian angel, or through whom I could talk to my deceased grandfather. But it seems to me that now and for all time such stuff is the business of charlatons, crazies, and sorcerors. Even if she is totally legit, I think such things have to find you, as opposed to being sought. Otherwise my guardian angel would just speak to me directly.
In The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis said that the medievalists believed the air to be “thick with angels”. While he was, in context, speaking in hyperbole, we do know that angels were a far greater reality to people in the Middle Ages than they are today. Which makes neither age “right”. The Church teaches that each of us has a guardian angel, assigned at baptism, I think (not sure), but the guardian is far more concerned with our soul than with our physical safety–as indeed we should be ourselves. There are stories about angels protecting the lives of their charges, but there’s no way to know if they are true. We do know from the Old Testament that countries have patrons who are angels. But the expert on the reality of angels would have to be Padre Pio and he hasn’t told us much–just enough to verify that each of us does have a guardian angel.Going to this woman’s website and reading her remarks about the “soul” of the earth, as well as some of her other remarks, I’d say she’s highly imaginative and that this imagination may have had more than a little encouragement from a publisher whom we already know as not much interested in truth and very interested in profit.
There’s also this, from an article about her in Scotland on Sunday:Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindus, Muslims… it’s all the same God. So is Jesus Christ God? Byrne hesitates. “It’s the same God. I have never seen any other God.” Christ is God, then? “Mmm,” she agrees, a bit vaguely. “All I know is that God has given himself different names through the centuries. He keeps on coming. He’s there; he works through different people all the time.” To her, religion is, “a horrible word. But it is a universal word.”
Perhaps she needs to hear Abraham Lincoln’s words: “You can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.” Or maybe her publisher is “guiding” her public relations. Too bad. She’d do better to depend on her guardian angel there.