My grandma passed away a couple of days ago.  (Read a wonderful tribute to her here, by my husband.)  Her passing was not unexpected, since her health had been failing for a long time and she was always in pain.  Somehow word got around to members of my church, and our “prayer chain” was praying for Grandma both before and after she “made her transition” (as we say in Unity; it’s an awkward phrase but much more accurate than the blunt and erroneous finality of “died”).  I had been worried about Grandma making her transition.  She had said on a number of occasions that she thought there was nothing on the other side of death, and she was afraid.  I truly believe that the prayers of my friends in Unity, as well as the prayers by Grandma’s family and friends, helped make her transition smooth and joyful, with little or no confusion or fear.  That is the sense I get when I extend my mind, probing for information about her transition; that it went well, with no delays, and that she is currently enjoying a much happier state (more on that later).

I also have felt the power of those prayers in my own life, as I have experienced worry about her pain and grief in her passing.  I am no stranger to unhappiness; I know well the pain of grief, which is often harsh and bitter.  To my continuing surprise, though, throughout this experience, I have felt gentleness where I expected harshness and bitterness.  It’s as if I am wrapped in a warm, soft, thick, but very light blanket or shield.  I feel sadness, at the loss of Grandma from my life, but no pain.  I feel safe, I feel whole.  I feel peace.  It’s not just as if all the sharp edges of this experience have been blunted; it’s as if they have been removed completely.

Religions teach that prayer makes a difference, both for the person who prays, and the recipient of the prayer.  It seems like an empty cliché in our culture, though, when people say they’ll pray for you, or when they ask you to pray for them.  It’s often the only thing we can do in difficult circumstances when we want to help others; so to skeptics, it can also appear to be an empty gesture – more of a comfort for the person praying than for the recipient.  I’ll admit that I often felt that way too.  I did not want to be skeptical, but I was too full of fear to place much faith in my own considerable positive experiences.  So I have been taught – yet again, this time by my friends, and in a way that I did not anticipate – that prayer works.  It is a balm for the soul and an effective method for experiencing God-centered, gentle, true reality.  Words cannot really describe this reality, for a number of reasons, but mainly because it is full of paradox, and hence lies outside the experiential realm of logic and a mechanistic universe.  It consists of concepts that in our limited material reality we do not connect to each other – it is a perfectly consistent, unshakably rock-solid truth that nonetheless feels as insubstantial as thin air, for example.

When I received word that Grandma had made her transition, and I wondered how her soul was doing, the picture that came to my mind was of Grandma when she was a young beauty – a gorgeous green-eyed brunette, fresh and radiant.  She had a huge smile on her face – she couldn’t seem to stop smiling- she felt weightless with no pain, worries, or cares.  I had the sense that she was incredulous, too – after so many years of pain and decline, it’s a very big change to feel healthy and vivacious again.  I don’t know how much of this might be true, and how much is from my imagination – but I prefer to believe that it is all true.  I know it is all possible.