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Thanks, dear readers, for sending me signs that you have received from loved ones who have died. I try not to include signs that are either clearly contrived or not really signs at all but just ordinary coincidences. The point of including these “God Winks” is to support those of you who believe, as I do, and as our faiths do, that death is not the end of us.

However, for the skeptics among us who are not ready to jump into the deep end of the spooky pool, I must also say that believing that our soul’s journey is not ended with our physical death does not conclusively prove that the dead can contact us. Unless they are direct verbal communications from the dead to us, they could be just suggestive coincidences or our grief-stricken efforts to transform natural events into supernatural events. I also worry that patronizing mediums can block healthy griefwork by convincing us that death is not a fundamental end to our life, but rather just a change of address or password or phone number.

And yet, my message from Father Tom that I have written about (“Who is Sol?”) has indeed convinced me that this contact from the other side is possible. The evidence, if it is indeed evidence, that our loved ones are at peace and that their love for us is unbroken by death is comforting in a deep and enduring place.

I cannot explain why God winks occur for some and not for others. I prefer to base my faith on belief in a loving and all-powerful God who has implanted within us a soul that is merely on loan to our body and that one day is called by God to return to its luminous and sacred source.

Keep sending me your God winks. They warm my soul with hope that human finitude is true only for our bodies and not for our immortal souls.

This is from J in Islip, Long Island:

My aunt passed away two years ago at the age of 105. She had been a fixture throughout my entire life, and I loved her so dearly. I was blessed with the ability to spend a great deal more time with her toward the end of her life. During one of our many conversations I asked her if she got to Heaven before me would she send me a message that she was OK. She replied, “If He lets me.”

A little over a year after she had passed it suddenly came into my head that she had never sent me a message and I cried out to her, “You never sent me a message. Are you OK?”

That night I was on the couch watching TV and suddenly the washer started to play the music it plays when a cycle is done, but I was not doing laundry. I went to bed and was then awakened in the middle of the night when the battery-operated motion light I had on the bottom of my bedroom door turned on for no reason. I was frozen in fear. I thought, “How could someone be in the house without me hearing any noise?” I laid in fear in my bed not moving. Then there was a loud bang in the kitchen. With that I jumped up, threw on the light and started making a lot of noise thinking if someone had broken in, they would hear me and run away.

I went out to the kitchen and threw on every light inside the kitchen, the living room and the outside lights. There was nothing. I couldn’t understand and my heart was pounding. Needless to say, I went back to bed leaving all the lights on.

When I got up again in the morning and went to the kitchen, I noticed it. My great grandmother’s rug beater was on the floor. This rug beater was a cherished possession of my aunt that she had hanging in her kitchen. After she passed, I hung it in my kitchen. It was Velcroed to the wall. I could see no way that this would have fallen off the wall. I hung it back up and to this day, one year later, it has never fallen off. The Velcro is tight.

I have absolutely no doubt this was a sign from my beloved aunt letting me know she is OK. There is just no way that the washer music and the night light and the rug beater falling off the wall could have all happened on one night – the night I cried out to her for a sign. She made sure I knew. It must have been because God let her do it.

MG: BOO!

Or

PRAISE THE LORD.

PICK ONE.

(Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including “Religion for Dummies,” co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman. Also, the new God Squad podcast is now available.)

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