Wednesday, February 8

Author Sees Dead Father At His Hospital Bedside

Fairies Midsummer Nights Dream

Roger Lewis is an author and former Fellow of Wolfson College at Oxford University.  He has described himself as being more atheistical than Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens combined.

He wrote, "If it's supernatural powers I want, the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream suffice." (That's some of Shakespeare's fairies above.) So he's a definite non believer in any of this sort of thing.  When you are dead, you are dead. Full stop. But ...

Last year Roger Lewis was very ill, dying in fact, in a Cornish Hospital with pancreatitis.  The good news is that he survived though he now describes himself as being, "Craggy, pouchy, morose and look as if I was born is 1920 or 1820, not 1960. The slightest thing ties me out."

At the time he was 'dying' prayers were said for him in Llandaff Cathedral.

Was it the prayers that saved him? Or maybe his dead father?  For this is the remarkable bit ...

Lewis writes, "When I was fading away and it was touch and go whether I'd make it through the night, I saw my late father calmly sitting by my bedside as clear as absolute day. Perhaps this is why at no point did I feel the slightest fear about conking out. Indeed, I felt bizarrely happy, serene."

Bizarre indeed for a confirmed atheist.

But even atheists get some strange ideas. He is also convinced that Satan lives in his boiler!

On returning home from hospital in August of last year his boiler went kaput. To quote him, "Boilers never go wrong in sunny August, only on cold and damp January evenings. This is a scientific fact."

Strangely  his boiler also went wrong when he was previously ill in 2010.

When the vicar came to call he told him not to bother with him but to "exorcise the damn boiler" instead.

So, if an atheist can see his dead father and can believe that Satan is in his boiler, there must be hope for us all.

Roger Lewis Books Available On Amazon

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3 comments:

  1. Good post. I got a kick out of Satan in the boiler. Seems like an apt place for the devil.

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  2. Anonymous23:53

    There is no 'Satan in the boiler' and there are no coincidences. A hot boiler might represent the cauldron of life; emotion. Reflecting his low energy and lifeforce once before when he was ill. After having such a transcendental experience with his Father, he might have been encouraged to look further as to cause and effect of boiler ceasing up. A message might be to emit warmth of his emotions or it'll kill him. Superstitious fool.

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  3. Thanks Trish. And anonymous - I feel there is a touch of the 'superiority' in your comment! Because someone believes something doesn't make them a fool.

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