SEPTEMBER 8
I know that we live in the lives of those we touch. I have felt
in me the living presence of many I have loved and who
have loved me. I experience my daughter’s presence with
me daily. And I know that this is not limited to those we
know in the flesh, for many guests of my life shared neither
time nor space with me.
—ELIZABETH WATSONAll of us experience a kind of spiritual communion with
friends who are not necessarily in our immediate physical
presence. When we get together after long absences, it seems
“as though it were yesterday.” Is this perhaps partly because
we do carry one another somewhere in our unconscious
minds, though we are separated?
If with the living, why not with the dead? And this sense
we have of knowing those whose words we read or whom
we hear about, so that if they walked into the room we
would know them—is this, too, evidence of a communion
of spirits?
The world of the spirit is a world without walls—of time,
of space, of physical reality. We can close our eyes, retreat
into ourselves, and be at home with the throngs of people
we know and love. Surely this is in some way akin to the
“communion of saints” of which the mystics write.
When I am alone I can choose some company to be with me.