The elusive "gut" and other strange things...

It's storming again here in the 'Ham - which reminds me of a thought I had just the other day that was left as undeveloped as the South Pole.

The subject revolves around seen and unseen forces. The seen forces in this case are the electromagnetic flashes of light my friends' brother saw this weekend when he was struck by lightning (Note: he had a remarkably quick recovery and was laughing about it less than an hour later - which is wondrous indeed). The unseen forces - clearly - are harder to pin down.

When yon friend-of-mine's brother was struck, she suddenly had an empty feeling in her stomach even though she had no idea what had happened. The way she described it to me, she just suddenly knew *something* had happened to her brother. And she was right, as we now know. Strange.

But is it so strange?

A product of a culture that emphasizes the empirical, I've always felt a little odd hearing people's stories about how they had visions or sudden feelings that actually corresponded with reality. A few months ago, I was working with a guy at my internship in London (you remember Dennis and the others? same place.) who told me he was led to work at ECCP and to attend St. Barnabas Church because of a vision he saw. "I had never been there before," he told me, "but when I got there it looked exactly as it had in the dream." It didn't help that right after that, he asked me how I was led to work there. "Uh...well, it was an internship that looked interesting to me and seemed like it fit my talents and such..."

The point is, these 'other-worldly' experiences happen every day, apparently just not to me. No - I realize, of course, that they don't happen to a lot of people. But is that because we're just not special, or does that mean that they don't really happen to anyone at all, and it's just in their minds? My experience suggests that neither is the case. In fact, it seems quite possible to me that my doubts about the reality of these strange experiences is precisely what prevents them from ever coming my way.

Hypnosis, I am told by my psychology teacher, works far more effectively for people who go into it believing it works. For the doubters, it rarely has the same power. Does this invalidate hypnosis? I don't think so - because clearly it still works for some. What it suggests is that a correlation exists between belief and experience. And this is nothing new - we've know this from placebo drugs and the like for years. "Correlation does not mean causation," I can hear my teacher saying now. So I will try and not draw anything more out of this phenomenon.

In dealing with issues involving the unseen, I point out two other observations.
1. there seems to be a heck of a lot more demon / angel activity going on in the Bible than anyone I know has ever experienced.
2. every now and then, I'll hear something about missionaries dealing with spiritual forces of good and evil, but it's always in places like Africa or the Amazon.

My question is simple: Why?

The answer, I'm sure, is far more complicated, and I'll be glad to give you my thoughts - another night.