Dannion Brinkley was struck by lightning - twice. Apparently after the first time he didn’t listen to, or obey, the powers that be over/up there, so they socked it to him again, with both fists. After this second near-death experience, and a protracted recovery in hospital he got the message. He now knows his calling - or should I say yelling!
I recently heard him speak to a crowd of the converted. He has a large following in whom he seems to inspire awe and cheering. His southern drawl at what seemed like triple digit decibels just fueled their evangelical fire and it quickly descended into a mutual scream fest.
At first I couldn’t see what the adoring fans saw. But his quick right jab, followed by an equally swift left hook, at the absurdity of some of the traditional Christian beliefs - such as the one that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman to walk the earth (he deftly shot this old furphy down, pointing out that not only did Adam have a first wife -whose name was Lilith - but that the Bible actually tells us so! That’s the problem with just relying on the priests - proof perfect that we should always go straight to the Source!) - he got my attention.
He says the thing that souls miss most after they have crossed over to the other side is hugs. Who knew?!
Having been raised by undemonstrative Anglo-Saxon parents who, even though they made it eminently clear in other ways that they loved me, pretty much never touched me all my growing days. As a result, for many years, hugs languished down in the cruddy, rusted corners of my relationship tool box. Until my boy came along. As a teenager, he would wrap his arms around me and ‘hang’ there - just seeing how long I’d last!
I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t want to drag my poor sagging ass through the trials and tribulations of life on earth only to find that I failed to take advantage of this one time opportunity. So now I have a born-again commitment to hugging and I’m warning all my friends - my hugs will now be frequent and firm.
Even if you don’t believe in the afterlife, I reckon Pascal’s Wager has something to teach us. If we spend the rest of our born days hugging like there is no tomorrow, and it turns out there is an afterlife, we’ll be cool. If we don’t spread our hugs around and we find there is actually no tomorrow, all well and good. But if in the hereafter we realize we’ve missed the existential boat, then what?
So if in doubt, hug it out!
