Not ghosts with unfinished business who wander looking for some lost path to heaven, nor ghosts who don’t realize they’ve died and so ‘refuse to move on’. Both ideas seem contrary to God’s way of letting men live. My ghosts are always permitted, sometimes invited by God to visit their loved ones - either from heaven or from purgatory, to bring some good about - like saints who appear to aid us, like my three relics guarding our little home; like the holy souls in purgatory - who never sleep, and so welcome the chance to wake us early in the morning. There are other ‘ghosts’ as well, mere impressions that hover when the soul has long gone to it’s eternal home, remembrances of a life that was so strong the world is marked forever by it - so strong the place itself does not forget. But they’re not true ghosts, just images and reflections. And of course I believe the devil does as he will with the souls he’s collected, sending them out as he is permitted, to haunt and make miserable and misdirect if at all possible.
As a Catholic, belief is free within bounds, and anything that doesn’t contradict revealed Truth is open to absorb. I absorb a good deal - and ghosts are both my favorite and least favorite of these mysterious beings. What do you think of them?
I like ghost stories, and ghost movies, and the Day of the Dead . . . I don't know if I'd like to meet an actual ghost, anyway. Not if they're the kind that are lost or cast out from heaven. The impressions would scare me at first, but I'd be comforted in reminding myself that they are just that, and not actual malignant beings sharing space with me.
ReplyDeleteIf Yarrow laughs and greets Patrick, I wonder if Afon sees saints and spirits. He laughs out of nowhere sometimes, looking off into a corner, as if he sees something delightful.
I wish we had birches. They're my tree. I want forests of them.