God Reality? A Testimony (2)
September 6th 2009 22:43
My parents were publicans and naturally wanted their son to spend as least amount of time in hotels as possible. Therefore it was my grandmother Gertrude who shouldered the greater load in raising me from about three until the age of six when she died. Just before grandmother’s death, I’d been staying at the hotel for a week owing to her admission in hospital. She passed away on the Friday and for reasons of their own, my parents decided to wait until Monday when we were at home to tell me.
We had left the hotel on Sunday evening. The family home was a weatherboard cottage in a seaside village south of Sydney, and it was about 8.00pm by the time we’d travelled the 80 or so kilometres. As usual, I had fallen asleep in the backseat of the car, and what transpired as we pulled in to the driveway I have put together from memory and what my parents have told me.
Mother reached over from the front and shook my leg to wake me and that’s when I suddenly began to scream and thrash about on the seat. My recollection of this event has grown vague with the passage of time, but apparently, I carried on for a couple of minutes before settling down, then flatly refused to get out of the car. What I do remember, what I’ll never forget, is the all-pervading sense that something was wrong, seriously wrong? Of course, the wrong was my grandmother had died.
My care then became the concern of hired help. One particular minder, a young woman whose name eludes me was rather lax, and I spent many an hour left to my own devices.
There was a day not long after my seventh birthday; I was wandering about the house looking for things to play with when I found myself before the book cabinet in the lounge room. Opening the cabinet door on a plethora of books, one in particular grabbed my attention, leather bound with gold embossing: The Holy Bible.
This particular Bible was an illustrated Catholic version that I later found out belonged to grandmother. Again, my recollection of the exact series of events is vague, but there’s a print of Jesus talking to a group of small children, and what I’ll always remember is the feeling of wonder that flowed through me at the sight of this picture. Whether twelve months spent tottering on the precipice of doom had something to do with it, but this was to prove a profound and immutable spiritual event.
Over the coming weeks I went through that Bible, not much from the Old Testament, mainly the Gospels. Now, I had never spoken to anyone about those dream events, locking the memory away with the thought that there must have been something wrong with me. While reading the Books of the Bible, however, something clicked inside: I wasn’t the only one who had bad dreams and visions. And here, well documented, is a place beyond the reality of life. (Cont.)
We had left the hotel on Sunday evening. The family home was a weatherboard cottage in a seaside village south of Sydney, and it was about 8.00pm by the time we’d travelled the 80 or so kilometres. As usual, I had fallen asleep in the backseat of the car, and what transpired as we pulled in to the driveway I have put together from memory and what my parents have told me.
My care then became the concern of hired help. One particular minder, a young woman whose name eludes me was rather lax, and I spent many an hour left to my own devices.
There was a day not long after my seventh birthday; I was wandering about the house looking for things to play with when I found myself before the book cabinet in the lounge room. Opening the cabinet door on a plethora of books, one in particular grabbed my attention, leather bound with gold embossing: The Holy Bible.
Over the coming weeks I went through that Bible, not much from the Old Testament, mainly the Gospels. Now, I had never spoken to anyone about those dream events, locking the memory away with the thought that there must have been something wrong with me. While reading the Books of the Bible, however, something clicked inside: I wasn’t the only one who had bad dreams and visions. And here, well documented, is a place beyond the reality of life. (Cont.)
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