Three decades ago I was sitting in an airport with John Stringer, then CEO of Hartford Hospital. Although he seemed a concrete thinker I took a chance: "What is the best near death story you've heard?" I asked

   You & I have heard dozens. John shared one that knocked me over.

   "One afternoon an out-of-state woman was brought into the ER following a turnpike crash. She 'flat-lined' & died," he said. "The doctors were about to give up when she opened her eyes.

   "I floated above my body & saw all of you working on me," the patient related to ER staff. Having heard such stories they just nodded. 

   "Wait," she said sensing their doubt. "A doctor came in wearing a brown cardigan sweater."

   In fact, a Dr. Johansen, dressed that way, had entered to help after the patient flat-lined. 

   "Then," she continued, "I floated up above the [ten story] hospital." Here's the clincher: "There is a single red tennis shoe up on the roof," she insisted. 

   Security was dispatched to the locked area. There it was. Not a pair of tennis shoes but a single red one lying on its side in the gravel.

   The woman added her report of "The dazzling white light" before returning to earth. 

   John verified that the woman had never been to Hartford much less to that hospital.    

   Does this account counter the idea that our dying brains simply concoct pictures? How could a body-based brain detach itself to witness something from far above itself?  

   We all want to believe that the sequel to body's death is our soul's arrival into the full energy of God's heavenly light. Many accept this on faith. This story shored up my occasionally wavering belief.

   God's otherworldly Light awaits us…and remains.

Rev. Erie Chapman

Photoart – The Light (c) Erie Chapman 2016