The Wisdom of Wittingshire

Jonathan and Amanda Witt keep a blog, Wittingshire, where they post what used to be called wisdom. It’s a mishmash of learning from life and books: vignettes of the quotidian (Amanda is gifted with these); fair, temperate dissent from Darwinism (Jonathan is a fellow at the Discovery Institute and author of The Gods Must be Tidy! in our July/August issue); classic poetry (every Sunday); delvings into literature and history; postings of current news and essays of interest to readers of science; the occasional stunning photograph; etc.

Amanda had this response to my Reminders of the Resurrection. An excerpt of her comments follows:

It is easier to grasp the concept of life after death, if we see the moments leading up to death. But few of us nowadays do. It is shut tidily away in a hospital room, and we are presented with a dead body after the fact.

“Before the widespread use of heavy sedation,” Dallas Willard notes in The Divine Conspiracy, “It was quite common for those keeping watch to observe something like this. The one making the transition often begins to speak to those who have gone before. They come to meet us while we are still in touch with those left behind. The curtains part for us briefly before we go through.”

Hallucinations? Misfiring neurons in a dying brain?

You can say so, if you wish. But it looks an awful lot like someone walking through a doorway: “While still interacting with those in the room she is leaving, she begins to see and converse with people in the room beyond, who may be totally concealed from those left behind” (Willard).

Ask your older relatives. They’ve seen it. They’ve heard one side of a conversation, as their dying Grandma spoke to someone they couldn’t see. They’ve seen her face light up, or her eyes gazing in wonder at some seemingly empty spot near the foot of the bed. Ask them about it. Ask the nurses at your local Hospice—better yet, volunteer.