Dear friends and even acquaintances,
     I would like to relate to you a recent experience if I may.
     My wife Chalagne often walks our dog at what she calls "the special place", a path in a park that Chalagne discovered shortly after 9/11, which reminded her of the words of Psalm 23 and which God used to bring her much comfort. She continues to go for walks there regularly, and I often go with her. The photo of the two of us above was taken there this past summer.
     This past Sunday, December 26, after church, we went to walk our dog and our daughter's dogs there. As we were entering the woods, Chalagne told me to watch out for a patch of ice. The next thing she heard was a loud thwack, and she turned around to see me flat on my back, staring up at the sky and not moving. She cried out "Oh Bill I love you", held my head in her arms. I didn't respond.  She said the feeling she had about my condition was that I was at the top of a pyramid, and could roll down in either direction. She started shouting "Jesus help us! Jesus help us!" Almost immediately she was aware that two tall young men stood behind us, dressed in jogging outfits. The one in blue took the dogs leashes. The one in white helped me to my feet. It was only then I began to speak. The man in white asked if I needed help. I said I was all right and that i'd feel better if I'd continue walking. I do not remember any of this. But as we walked in the woods I told Chalagne I didn't know where I was. We turned around and went back to the car. Chalagne sang an old church chorus we knew "I am healed. I am whole. From the top of my head to my soul to the tip of my toes. First Peter 2:24 says we were. And if we were, then I am."
     When we got home I was still disoriented and couldn't remember Christmas or anything else, although I was described as being in good spirits. I was taken by ambulance to a hospital and had a catscan. It was determined that I had a slight concussion. I was sent home. I kept repeating the same questions over and over for several hours, even making the same joke "Will I be able to play the harp?" and then saying "Did I say that joke already?" I did this hundreds of times.
     Around 10 PM I told Chalagne I wanted to call Reverend Wayne, a pastor from Ohio with a prophetic ministry who often writes to me, and has been an instrument of God to help me. After calling him, I stopped repeating myself, and at this point I remember subsequent happenings. A few weeks earlier Reverend Wayne had written this to me in a letter: "You are close to an experience with God that can be compared with the event Moses went through with the 'burning bush'. You are at the inception of a 'life-changing' realization that will effect the way you think and feel about everything you now believe to be important." This experience I am convinced was that.
   Somehow during this period which I do not remember, I sensed God's presence and His communication to me, and thoughts and feelings emerged along with my memory. I had an overwhelming feeling that God was taking care of everything and I didn't have to do anything (which has not been my natural feeling up to this point). I also had a deep awareness that God had given me my life back and that it now belonged to Him, not me. I intend to keep it that way. I also had an overwhelming sense of God's love, that God IS love, as I John says, and an intense sense of God's love for every person. I kept saying "God loves atheists as much as He does Christians". When I would think of particular people I'd start to cry with love for them. I had a profound sense of the importance of people, that they are made to help and support each other, and can do so much better when they draw from the well of God's love for them. There were a lot of other insights I kept getting as well that second day. Chalagne suggested I write them down,  which I did. I won't share them now. As my memory has returned, the spiritual intensity of the experience has diminished, but I can never be the same again, and I don't want to be. The feeling is somewhat like Scrooge the day after: "I'm not the man I used to be". As our Pastor, Russ Shopland says, God provides "readiness moments" in our lives, places of spiritual advancement. I consider this an important one. I hve resumed work on a song cycle I am composing on compassion. It is going very well.
   Someone told Chalagne afterwards that she should get a cell phone. She said she was glad that she didn't have one, because it made her call Jesus first, before 911. And if I could relate briefly a similar story that happened on the same day:
   When I called the Villuris, friends and members of our church who come from India (we are their son Sammy's godparents), after telling my story, i asked how her family in India was. Nita Agnes explained that her sister Theresa had decided to go to the beach with her aunt and uncle on December 26. She was standing on a rock embankment above the water when the Tsunami hit. Suddenly she was swept up in the water and couldn't touch anything solid. Like my wife, she also cried out to Jesus to help her. A fisherman pulled her out of the water. She and her family are all all right. Thanks be to God.
    As we approach this new year, 2005, let us remember the words from Romans 10:13, "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved". We are not alone. The best is yet to be! Whoever you are, wherever you are, either geographically or spiritually, may God truly bless each and every one of you.
Bill Vollinger