From The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, for Monday Jan. 6, 2014:
Joyce's Dubliners ends with a story set at a party for the Feast of the Epiphany, "The Dead," and that story ends: "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
Showing posts with label the dead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the dead. Show all posts
Monday, January 6, 2014
Sunday, November 3, 2013
"The Soul" & "Speak To Us" /Poems by Katie Ford
The Soul
It disappeared.
It reappeared
as chimney smoke
that burnt through carcasses
of swallows stilled,
and that it portrayed no will
was why I followed that smoke
with this pair of eyes.
It was that it didn’t need
or require my belief
that I leant upon it
as a tired worker
upon
a gate.
Source: Poetry (November 2012).
  |
11 / 2 / 2013 |
 |
Poem of the Day: Speak to UsBY KATIE FORD
For all of my years, I've read only living signs—
bodies in jealousy, bodies in battle,
bodies growing disease like mushroom coral.
It is tiresome, tiresome, describing
fir cones waiting for fires to catch their human ribs
into some slow, future forest.
My beloved, he tires of me, and he should—
my complaints the same, his recourse
the same, invoking the broad, cool sheet suffering drapes
over the living freeze of heart after heart,
and never by that heart's fault—the heart did not make itself,
the face did not fashion its jutting jawbone
to wail across the plains or beg the bare city.
I will no longer tally the broken, ospreyed oceans,
the figs that outlived summer
or the tedious mineral angles and
their suction of light.
Have you died? Then speak.
You must see the living
are too small as they are,
lonesome for more
and in varieties of pain
only you can bring into right view.
Source: Poetry (November 2012).
 KATIE FORD |
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Where Do Our Loved Ones Go After Death? Would You Like To Connect With The Dead?
Kevin Riordan: Reaching into the spirit world for the holidays
A holiday spiritual event was held at the Gibson House Community Center in Marlton, NJ Medium Lisa Miliaresis relays messages she was receiving from deceased individuals for members of the audience. ( Charles Fox / Staff Photographer
A holiday spiritual event was held at the Gibson House Community Center in Marlton, NJ Medium Lisa Miliaresis relays messages she was receiving from deceased individuals for members of the audience. ( Charles Fox / Staff Photographer
Kevin Riordan, Inquirer Columnist
Lisa Miliaresis feels a special sort of holiday spirit.
After death, "our loved ones are still here," the Mount Laurel psychic, 53, declares. "I speak [their] language. I view myself as an interpreter."
I meet Miliaresis, a grandmother who works full-time as a benefits administrator, at an annual event called Spiritual Continuum for the Holidays. Her friends Janice Gilpin, a Reiki practitioner who lives in Medford, and Kimberly Friedman, a meditation instructor from Marlton, are the event's cohosts.
I'm not sure what to expect, but the women radiate a cheery calm I soon find myself sharing. I'm skeptical about transmissions from beyond the grave, but meditation certainly has changed my life. And the Christmas tree in the corner and the home-baked cookies on the table at Evesham Township's Gibson House Community Center make for a festive atmosphere.
"People are stressed out, and this is an opportunity to sit back and relax," Miliaresis says, explaining the rationale for a holiday gathering that involves candy canes, good cheer, and contact with the dead.
From the News Desk
"It's about remembering how connected we really are. We're soul-connected," Friedman says. "It's about setting an intention for the highest good, creating a sense of oneness . . . and sharing that during this time of year."
Sunday's session also raised more than $1,700 for a Goodwill Industries of Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia client and employee.
"This is the third year Lisa's group has done this for us," says Kathy Morris, human resources director at Goodwill's offices in Maple Shade. She's well aware that some people regard believing in psychics as akin to believing in Santa Claus, but notes that the Continuum for the Holidays offers more conventional feel-good activities.
Miliaresis and her colleagues "are a wonderful group," Morris says. "The first year they [raised money for] a single father with two children, last year a single mom with five, and this year a single mom from Burlington County."
At Gibson House, 70 women middle-aged and younger, and about a dozen mostly older men, share 90 minutes of guided meditation, Reiki ("vibrational energy work," in Gilpin's words). and "channeling," which is Miliaresis' speciality.
Admission is free, as are the refreshments, but a donation box quickly fills with bills. Many in the room are clients of one or more of the event's three organizers. Others are instructors, practitioners, therapists, trainers, coaches, or students of disciplines including yoga, fitness training, and weight loss, as well as more esoteric fields such as "body reactivation" and "past-life regression."
"We are all children of God," Miliaresis says, earnestly requesting that the dead deliver "messages of the highest good. May they come through love."
Then her manner of speaking changes abruptly. It becomes rushed, urgent.
"An initial 'F' comes through. It does sound like an Italian name. I get 'father figure.' Do you understand?" she asks the group, seeking someone who will identify with the vibrations she's receiving. It's patter familiar to anyone who has seen the popular cable TV show Long Island Medium, without the accent or the drama.
Miliaresis explains to those assembled that she is hearing the shouts of people who have "transitioned" to the other side, and describes the information "coming through."
"They want you to know they are fine, and in a good place and have healed."
The whole thing might have been easy to caricature - Christmas cards from heaven, or some such - were it not for the seriousness of the three leaders and the sadness among some in the audience.
Not for nothing did Friedman circulate among the rows of chairs with a box of tissues.
Several people tearfully seek messages from departed loved ones. One couple has lost a 25-year-old son to drugs, and a young woman in the front row says she hopes for a word from a friend who died just that morning.
To all, Miliaresis offers reassurance. And to those facing the holidays without a loved one they wish they could speak to again, comfort. Perhaps a bit of joy.
Kevin Riordan:
Raising money and holiday spirits in Marlton: www.philly.com/spirits
Contact Kevin Riordan at 856-779-3845 or kriordan@phillynews.com, or follow on Twitter @inqkriordan. Read the Metro columnists' blog, "Blinq," atwww.phillynews.com/blinq.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)