{"id":96643,"date":"2022-09-11T21:42:07","date_gmt":"2022-09-12T03:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=96643"},"modified":"2022-09-11T23:24:28","modified_gmt":"2022-09-12T05:24:28","slug":"thats-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2022\/09\/thats-me.html","title":{"rendered":"“That’s me!”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Schiavonetti, \"Soul Leaving Body\"<\/a>
\u201cThe Soul Leaving the Body,\u201d\u00a0by Luigi Schiavonetti (d. 1810)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A couple of days ago, I finished reading William J. Peters<\/a> (with Michael Kinsella<\/a>), At Heaven\u2019s Door: What Shared Journeys to the Afterlife Teach About Dying Well and Living Better<\/em> (New York City: Simon and Schuster, 2022).\u00a0 I found it interesting.\u00a0 Here are five of the passages in the book that I marked during my reading:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the first two of them, William Peters recounts some personal experiences of his own.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In February 1993, I contracted a rare blood disease \u2014 idiopathic thrombocytopenia, a potentially deadly bleeding disorder with no known cause.\u00a0 I found myself floating above my physical body in the intensive care unit at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland.\u00a0 I remember looking down from the ceiling and listening to the nurses talk about the four patients in the ICU.\u00a0 I heard one nurse describe a healthy, young adult male patient with a rare blood disease.\u00a0 She walked over to his bed.\u00a0 I looked down at his face and, to my utter surprise, I shouted to myself, Holy crap, that\u2019s me!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I remember a doctor, a hematologist, approaching my body in the hospital bed.\u00a0 He gently called out my name and I remember thinking as I watched the scene from above, Do I really want to go back into that body?<\/em>\u00a0 As I pondered this question, I decided at least to try to answer the doctor.\u00a0 \u201cYes, doctor.\u201d\u00a0 As I spoke those words, I found myself refilling my physical body almost like sand pouring into the bottom of an hourglass . . . and the sensation in my physical body returned.\u00a0 I felt totally exhaausted, but my consciousness was back in my human form. . . .<\/span><\/p>\n

I did not share this experience with anyone, but I do remember realizing that I am not my physical body.\u00a0 It was abundantly clear that whatever I referred to as \u201cme\u201d had an existence independent of my flesh and blood.\u00a0 (16-17)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Afterwards, having understandably become interested in working with those who were at death\u2019s door.\u00a0 Peters began to volunteer at the Zen Hospice Project of San Francisco.\u00a0 At the hospice, he worked with indigent people who were terminally ill.\u00a0 While engaged in that work, he had a shared<\/em>-death experience with a man that he calls \u201cRon.\u201d\u00a0 Ron was rapidly declining.\u00a0 Eventually, he slipped into semi-consciousness.\u00a0 On the particular occasion in question here, Peters was reading to him from Jack London\u2019s famous adventure novel The Call of the Wild<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Suddenly I realized I was floating above my body.\u00a0 I glanced over and I saw Ron hovering above his body as well.\u00a0 As we looked at each other, I could see Ron\u2019s bright eyes; his face was vibrant and alive with health, unlike the shell of a man lying on the bed.\u00a0 This new Ron flashed me a big smile as if to say, Check this out.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t this cool?\u00a0 This is where I have been hanging out.\u00a0 Everything is wonderful up here.\u00a0 A few moments later, I was back in my physical body, rooted to my chair, and reading to Ron, as his eyes remained closed.\u00a0 He passed away not long after.\u00a0 (17)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Everything that we have learned from our research on end-of-life accounts and the consistency of these accounts suggests that a benevolent afterlife awaits us at the other side of death\u2019s door.\u00a0 (21)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As he grew sicker, Adela and her mother became his full-time caregivers at home.\u00a0 She recalls the moment her mother came into her room, adjacent to her parents\u2019.\u00a0 Her mother said, \u201c\u2018I think he\u2019s gone; he\u2019s not breathing.\u2019\u00a0 I walked in, and he was not in his body anymore.\u00a0 But I saw him, as clearly as I see you now, slightly elevated but in the corner of the room, a light behind him.\u00a0 I said to him, \u2018Go into the light,\u2019 and I smiled.\u00a0 He started laughing.\u00a0 It was the most beautiful, amazing moment between us, so many rich layers of things coming together right then.\u00a0 I was laughing, and he was laughing, and then he turned and he went.\u00a0 He was gone.\u201d\u00a0 (51-52)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I was an intern, and I was doing my ER rotation, we lost someone one day.\u00a0 I actually saw their body rise, the form lift out of his body.\u00a0 (99)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"He's<\/a>
The cover of the latest Bradshaw book<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

My wife and I were able to listen, last night (Saturday night), to a very good online presentation from Jeffrey Mark Bradshaw<\/a>, one of the vice presidents of the Interpreter Foundation, about his new book, Freemasonry and the Origins of Latter-day Saint Temple Ordinances<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 I think that many people out there will find the book interesting.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The third of the three temples currently located in Scandinavia is this one, just outside of Helsinki, Finland. The other two are in Sweden and in Denmark. A fourth temple has been announced, this one for Norway.\u00a0 (LDS.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

We had a pleasant surprise this evening, not long after returning from spending time up in Bountiful with my wife\u2019s father (soon to complete his ninety-sixth year):\u00a0 Friends from Helsinki, Finland, dropped by, unexpectedly.\u00a0 We had a short but very pleasant visit.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"SCOTUS<\/a>
The Supreme Court Building in Washington DC. Is he really admitted to practice before the Supreme Court? Maybe. I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Final note:\u00a0 I owe my readers a partial potential retraction and I owe Mark Anthony a limiting correction and an apology.\u00a0 In my post yesterday<\/a>, I mentioned my inability (during what I freely admitted was, at most, a modest and cursory online search) to find any references to \u201cMark Anthony the Psychic Lawyer@\u201d as an actual attorney<\/em>.\u00a0 I\u2019ve since been told, though, that Mark Anthony<\/em> is only his partial<\/em> name.\u00a0 It\u2019s the name that he uses as a psychic, but not the name under which he practices law.\u00a0 Mark<\/em> is apparently his first name, while Anthony<\/em> is his middle name.\u00a0 Unfortunately, my informant doesn\u2019t know what his last<\/em> name is.\u00a0 And, since I\u2019m not all that exercised about the matter, I don\u2019t plan at the moment to do any further searching for him as an active attorney.\u00a0 I still have reservations, though.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 A couple of days ago, I finished reading William J. 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