I’m looking forward to meeting many of you at the National IANDS conference where I will be leading a workshop on writing about spiritual experiences and speaking on Saturday. There will be plenty of time to talk with people in the IANDS bookstore. The bookstore will be giving away a couple of free copies of Angels in the OR and many other books by experiencers. I’m grateful to readers of Angels in the OR in my area and readers as far away as Australia.
This summer a few more podcasts on my new podcasting channel have been uploaded, as well as several new podcasts interviews from other podcasters. You can check out my interviews on Healing Powers with Laura Power and Path 11 Productions.
I’m also pleased to share a book trailer that a former student helped produce for my book. I love supporting their creativity!
It is strange to not be back at the campus teaching this fall, but I am on faculty leave to write a book to help college students find more success and healing while at college. The research is proving interesting. I will share more later!
For now, here is a short poem inspired by living with the knowledge of a near-death experience for 25 years.
Photo by Mabel Amber on Pexels.com
All This Talk About Death
We go on folks….we go on.
The credits are rolling,
surgeons are packing up their tools,
loved ones are falling to their knees,
and there you are in spirit going on,
finally, aware of how your worries
shouldn’t have been worries.
You should have loved them more,
hugged them more frequently,
reminded them to be happier,
taken them out to enjoy the sunlight and moonlight.
You should have danced more,
laughed more, praised more,
and joked around a bit more.
You are excited though,
hovering there above your discarded body
because it makes more sense to continue
than to become nothing when you are something—
a spark of God that you dimmed
and brightened depending on your circumstances and mood.
And, now, you can be fully who you were meant to be,
who you too often limited in the realm of fear and time.
—-Tricia Barker, 2019
Tricia Barker 