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Foreword

Perhaps more than anything else, the most compelling premise presented in Josie Varga's Divine Visits is the fact that God in spirit can and does impact things physical. To be sure, there are times when the demands of life numb us to the ever-present reality of the Divine, but God never leaves us. It is only our awareness and consciousness that have erred and shifted in perception. The variety of ways in which people have encountered divine messengers, helpers, guides, mentors, and supporters should give us all hope in our own lives and an understanding that spirit cares and is very much cognizant of each and every one of us. We are not alone; we are never alone.

What may be surprising to a number of readers is the frequency with which divine visits occur in people's everyday lives. Whether it is Carolyn's story of her face-to-face encounter with a guardian angel during a blizzard or Lisa's experience with the consciousness of the Other Side during a heightened meditation or Uva, who was in reality an angel in disguise that assisted a family in need, these stories paint the image of a divine world very much concerned with the affairs of humankind.

The regularity of this phenomenon of divine visits resulted in my own book God in Real Life: Personal Encounters with the Divine a number of years ago as people from every imaginable walk of life and religious (and non-religious) background sought me out with a story that frequently began, “You are never going to believe what I am about to tell you…” But the truth is there are countless stories of how this phenomenon can and does happen and numerous examples of how even the most skeptical can't help but believe after having divine visitors of their own.

Collected here are stories that hold true to the biblical claim that oftentimes individuals who have encountered (the Bible uses the phrase “entertained”) strangers have entertained angels unaware. (Hebrews 13:2) This same assertion was echoed by famed psychic Edgar Cayce when he told individuals to become aware of how they treated one another: “…be ye mindful in every association and manner when ye entertain strangers, for often ye entertain angels unawares. (520-3)” In this wonderful volume there are a startling number of divine visits collected for easy reflection and contemplation. This fact caused me to wonder—as Cayce suggested—just how many divine visits forever remain unrecognized. In our own lives, how often have we entertained angels and divine messengers without becoming conscious of what truly transpired?

I had personally heard of literally dozens of divine encounters from all kinds of individuals before encountering one for myself. Although I truly believed the stories I was hearing, it was only after my own experience that I understood the depth of meaning that these encounters have for individuals firsthand. For a number of years I was very close to a woman named Angela Marsh Peterson. Angela lived for ninety-eight years and had a very full life. An amazing woman from many different perspectives, Angela's life included many of the possible experiences available to a woman in the twentieth century: motherhood, career, travel, the military, owning her own business, divorce, the death of a child, founding her own museum, teaching, serving as a house mother to college students, living overseas; the list goes on and on. Because of her incredibly varied life, Angela had been encouraged on, at least, a dozen different occasions to compile her life's story. Although there were numerous attempts, the story was never completed. Then Angela and I met, and something clicked. For more than four years we worked on her story, which was eventually published as One Woman's Century. Although Angela never lived to see the book in print, she did read all but the last thirty pages or so.

About one year after Angela's death, I was asleep, or so I thought, and I had a dream. In the dream I was slumbering in the bed; the lights were off. I could see myself, the room, the bed, and a flicker of moonlight through the window. All at once, as though bathed in bright light, Angela appeared in the bedroom. She was smiling, energetic, and no longer crippled over with her ninety-eight years. She thanked me for finishing the book, leaned over, and gave me a very brief kiss on the lips. As soon as her lips touched mine, it was like being shot full of electricity! I sat up immediately in bed, wide awake, fully conscious, and very much aware that I had just had a divine encounter of my own. Not only had Angela come to give thanks but her presence reassured me because at that time I was losing one of my very best friends to cancer. The Divine in spirit is interested with the concerns of the material world.

On a number of occasions, Edgar Cayce told stories of his own divine encounters throughout the years. Those experiences began when he was less than two years old and had “invisible playmates” that he eventually recognized as young children who had passed away and were not quite ready to move on to the next experience in consciousness. As a young boy, he had an encounter with an angelic woman to whom he told his dream to be helpful to people, “especially children when they were sick.” She acknowledged the dream, promised it would be answered, and then disappeared. As an adult and an accomplished speaker, Cayce occasionally had the experience of lecturing to a room of people and becoming aware of the fact that “invisible people” would come in and take seats where no one was sitting in order to listen to what was being said.

I believe that these stories give credence to the ever-present reality of the Divine in our lives. Sometimes they come in the form of chance encounters. Sometimes they are the flicker of a dream or a simple divine insight. Sometime they are an angel that we entertain unaware. Sometimes all we have to do is look beyond ourselves and we will find the very thing we need. But the fact is that the Divine is very much cognizant of us; perhaps the time has come, at last, for us to become cognizant in return.

Kevin J. Todeschi

Executive Director and CEO

Edgar Cayce's A.R.E./Atlantic University

EdgarCayce.org