If you’re looking for a break from the harsh headlines of anger and aggression across the land, order a copy of The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tendernessby Gregory Boyle. “Father G” or “G Dawg,” as he is often called by gang members of the streets of Los Angeles, is the local Catholic priest and founder of Homeboy Industries. My introduction to Father Boyle’s work was his bestseller Tattoos on the Heart, which I reviewed back in 2011 (see review here.) Father Boyle offers employment, encouragement, and “extravagant tenderness” to the homies and homegirls of LA.
“What began in 1988 as a way of improving the lives of former gang members in East Los Angeles has today become a blueprint for over 250 organizations and social enterprises around the world, from Alabama and Idaho, to Guatemala and Scotland.” Homeboy Industries website
To get a good feel for the style and language of the book, watch this short video of Father Boyle speaking to a group.
In The Whole Language, Father Boyle weaves his philosophy of boundless compassion with poignant glimpses of the colorful men and women of Homeboy Industries, complete with salty language. Saints and sinners are quoted in a beautiful flow of prose that touches the heart and spirit. And despite best efforts and encouragement, the adversity of poverty, addiction, and mental illness still takes a high toll of death and destruction in Homeboy territory.
Yet, it is clear that Father Boyle has made a positive difference for thousands of people across LA and the world. His legacy has just begun. I recommend reading The Whole Language like a daily devotional, a few paragraphs a day to set your mind and spirit on a good course for the hours ahead. You just may find the Grace of God through the Power of Extravagant Tenderness for yourself.
The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness is available at Amazon.
Despite patriarchal push back, it’s exciting to see the rise of feminine influences. In my neck of the woods of Northern California we have emerging priestesses, earth mothers, clergy, and yes, political leaders. Female artists abound in all disciplines. To which I say, “hooray!” One of my favorite poets is Chelan Harkin of Washington, whose book, Susceptible to Light, I reviewed in 2021 (Delight in the Divine with Chelan Harkin). When I was asked to create a meditation for the Curious Soulwebinar sponsored by Helen Nibs of Ripples of Light, I included a fun poem from Chelan’s latest collection, Wild Grace.
The verses of Wild Grace veer between passionate, playful, and painful. Harkin takes iconoclastic swings at male dominated images of Deity. She shakes her fists at patriarchal authority, encourages women to release their pent-up Divinity, and kicks chauvinists to the curb. Here’s an intriguing example ~
THE HOLY WORD “SHE”
I don’t think God has a vagina or has ever had a penis.
But to use that holy word, “She” to describe the divine is the sweetest shorthand to overturn everything.
She is gloriously subversive She is radical— Meaning essential, of the roots.
Rather than up and out, She brings us down and in.
She brings us into the fertile lands of our bodies, into the intersection of ancient wounds and wisdoms.
She is what motivates our untold stories into their telling.
She is what germinates truth.
She speaks of a God that understands Mothers.
She undoes a power-over paradigm and describes power that comes from a cracked open heart.
She knows feeling is essential to reverence.
She restores tears to worship.
She honors pain as much as purity, the sullied as much as the sanctified.
She is the vastness of the oceans, She is the soft fire of the moon.
She is the revolution birthing in our hearts.
My meditation, Beautifully Bold, is offered here for your enjoyment. It begins with opening the Chakras and then unfolds with imagery to inspire the listener to become their best Beautifully Bold self. Included is a playful selection from Chelan Harkin’s Wild Grace. Listen and enjoy!
Isn’t synchronicity fun? In 2018 I attended a casual church meeting and found myself chatting with a stranger named David. He said, “I’m reading the most fascinating book. It’s written by a Catholic priest who helps departed souls cross into heaven.” That was how I found my way to Father Nathan Castle’s book,Afterlife Interrupted: Helping Stuck Souls Cross Over, which I found fascinating and reviewed. (SeeConversations from the Afterlife.) Father Castle has spent most of his career in college campus ministry. But about once a week, he receives dreams, often of violent or sudden deaths of various people who are now “stuck” in a purgatory level of the afterlife. He later meets with prayer partners and opens himself up to lend his voice to the departed person who is ready to move onto another heavenly realm. The prayer team assists in that process. The book remained in my mind, and I often recommended it to friends.
Fast forward to 2024. I am now working as Assistant to the President, Dr. Yvonne Kason, at Spiritual Awakenings International (SAI) and we are getting ready for the big SAI Conference 2024. Father Castle is on the roster of scheduled speakers. Yvonne assigns me to host Father Castle’s session, which I find very exciting.
I immediately purchase Afterlife Interrupted, Book Two, which I find as thought-provoking as the first book. The plan is I am simply to introduce Father Castle and let him make a presentation. But it turns out, that isn’t really his style. A few minutes in, he asks if Yvonne or I would ask him some questions and turn it into more of conversation. Well, my excitement level skyrockets. This is like asking a 12-year-old girl if she would like to have a conversation with Taylor Swift. Father Nathan exudes a rare combination of joyful spirituality, humility, and wisdom. An impromptu interview ensues between Father Castle and me–which I think went well, but I’ll have to wait for the video to see.
We explored some of the material of Book Two. Through the years, Father Nathan has helped some 500 souls cross over, so curating the stories to include in a book, requires prayerful consideration. The criteria seems to be, what can the living learn from the dead? There’s certainly comfort in discovering that no one dies alone. Everyone has a guardian angel who helps them along, often quickly leaving a violent scene. There are teams of helpers providing aid and care as people adjust to the afterlife. Free will is respected. Everyone is at their own stage of soul development.
One of the stories we discussed concerned, Nadi, an Iraqi man, who died in a sectarian massacre of Muslim against Muslim. Nadi’s lesson seemed be that dogmatic beliefs are small-minded illusions of separation. He comes to see the Oneness of beliefs across the earth. When he is ready to move on, a beautiful flotilla celebration appears for him on a river. His father welcomes him aboard a boat, and they sail away.
All of the stories are moving and relay significant life lessons worth pondering. The final two are tales of suicide, one of a band singer, Bea, from the 1930’s who was sexually exploited by the men in power. Once she becomes pregnant, she “takes matters into her own hands” and ends her life. Rather than being condemned for her decision, she is met by the ineffable Margaret Hamilton, forever-famous as the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. Hamilton is a sympathetic guide who knew the dark realities of male domination of the entertainment industry. Bea moves to a better reality than she left behind.
We get another glimpse of suicide through the experience of Bob, who leapt to his death during the Depression when life just seemed too difficult. However, Bob’s difficulties didn’t disappear. He brings foggy despair with him to the afterlife and must deal with that before he can move on. He receives patient spiritual and emotional counseling until he is ready for another level. Ultimately, his advice to the living is to not lose hope. It was hopelessness that drove him to suicide, the proverbial “permanent solution to a temporary problem.” He urges people to seek help and rediscover hope.
Afterlife Interrupted, Book Two is a compelling peek into the heavenly realms, offering valuable lessons to the living. Father Nathan Castle continues his work with college students and is often a guest at spiritual conferences and podcasts. He also hostsThe Joyful Friar podcast which “explores the soulful, the meaningful, and the mystical.”
I’m so grateful for that casual conversation in 2018 that led me to meeting Father Nathan Castle in 2024. Ah, sweet synchronicity.
A book review by Dana Taylor of UFO of God by Chris Bledsoe
Chris Bledsoe has called North Carolina home his whole life, a man deeply embedded in the culture, the land, the opportunities, and the challenges. On January 8, 2007, on a fishing outing with his teenage son and four friends, his life was forever changed by bright orbs appearing in the night sky. Though Chris thought he’d only watched the three bright orbs for twenty minutes before finding his friends, he’d gone missing for hours. That’s how it began.
Chris Bledsoe’s memoir, intriguingly titled, UFO of God, leaves more questions than answers as to what Chris and his family have experienced in the intervening years. Unlike other modern UFO experiencers that seem to relate visitors from other planets, Chris’ story is more reminiscent of Biblical characters like Moses (Chris has his own burning bush) and Job. Or the tales of Marian visitations like Bernadette at Lourdes or the children’s encounters with Our Lady of Fatima.
In fact, Chris seems to be a modern Job. A man who acquired considerable wealth in the building business, enjoyed a happy marriage with a houseful of healthy children only to see the good life disappear with economic downturn. Then illness through severe irritable bowel syndrome, followed by rheumatoid arthritis, impeded his ability provide for his family. Add to that intense ridicule and shunning after word got out of his otherworldly encounter, Chris Bledsoe’s life hardly seemed worth living.
By Easter of 2012, despite on-going visitations by the mysterious orbs and other phenomena, he tells the heavens he is done. He’s going to ignore all paranormal activity, never speak of it again, no matter how amazing something might be. It isn’t worth the abuse his children endure at school and in the community.
And that is when The Lady makes her first appearance. Awakened from sleep by the command, “Arise!” Chris is escorted to another realm to meet a beautiful lady of shining white light who tells him he must continue in the mission. She promises to help open the way. He has to tell the world of changes to come.
Within a couple of weeks, Chris is invited to speak at a Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) meeting. One thing leads to another, and soon Chris is networking with experts from NASA, the CIA, scientific researchers, top brass military and more. Beyond that, he is now able to capture footage of various orbs and phenomena on devices that had previously been elusive.
What becomes clear in UFO of God, despite a policy of discrediting UFO experiencers publicly, is that the US government has been deeply involved in studying encounters for decades. Men employed by the government who devoted their lives to the investigation of UFOs reach out to Chris, offering validation and insights from their overview of vast data collected since the 1940’s. They allow Chris to name them in the manuscript. Jim Semivan, Former CIA Clandestine Directorate of Operations and Col. John B. Alexander, Ph.D, Retired US Army, both wrote forwards for the book.
UFO of God is Chris Bledsoe’s spiritual memoir; it conveys much of his angst and wonder. In many ways, at the end it feels like the story may just be beginning. An investigative reporter may come along some day and write a book that answers more of the readers’ questions like – What happened during the missing hours of the first 2007 encounter? What all did The Lady say? What were the scientific findings from Chris’s brain scans? What have family members experienced? Who else is experiencing similar phenomena? Is there a big picture to these encounters? Indeed, UFO of God feels like the starting place for a much bigger story.
It’s impossible to read Chris’ memoir without feeling compassion for a man and his family who suffered through so many physical and emotional hardships as the supernatural took over their lives. I hope for Chris that he is granted the ending of Job with a restored family and fortune to happier days.
For me the most tantalizing takeaway from UFO of God comes from Chris’ second meeting with The Lady. From Chapter 16:
“When the red star of Regulus aligns just before dawn in the gaze of the Sphinx, a new knowledge shall come into the world.” I was not sure what that meant. I have come to understand that around Easter 2026 there will be the end of an old way and the beginning of a new.
Hmmm. I guess we will just have to wait and see.
For more information watch this interview with Chris Bledsoe by Regina Meredith
As he points out, the pandemic brought the reality of death into heightened awareness for a society that had learned to take longevity for granted and consigned dying to hospitals and nursing homes, far away from daily life. Mike has been exploring Out-of-Body Experiences (OBE) since 1987. He’s come to understand that consciousness goes on beyond human body habitation. One of his life purposes is to be work with Retrievals, which helps souls lost or “stuck” in lower dimensions, aka the bardo in Buddhism, purgatory in Catholicism, or simply “limbo” in secular terms.
A large section of the book relates many of Mike’s Out-of-Body Experiences as he might have written them in a personal journey. They reveal a much more complex Afterlife than simply heaven or hell. Some spirits stay earth bound, while others reside for a while in other lower frequency dimensions, often in “Consensus Realities,” not so different from earthly societies. Mike’s astral body travels these lower realms as an explorer and also as a helper for the lost souls needing assistance going to the Light.
Other sections of the book offer insights into the value of having a “good death” for a soul to go directly to higher realms. He also declares reincarnation is as real as gravity on Planet Earth. It’s the way life works.
How to Have a Good Life After You’re Dead is a very interesting addition to the growing lexicon of books on other dimensions beyond the human 3-D reality. The phrase we are spirits having a human experience seems to be gaining more credibility all the time. Mike Marable shows us that death is merely a transition into another existence and that life goes on and on and on.
On the beautiful Niagara Falls evening of November 8, 2003, Dr. Yvonne Kason slipped on a piece of black ice and hit her head on the hard rock of the walkway. A flash of excruciating head pain quickly dissolved as she died. Her consciousness rose from her body and entered non-physical realms where she met her spiritual gurus and reviewed all her past lives.The tale of that Near Death Experience (NDE) would be riveting on its own. However, in Dr. Kason’s book, Soul Lessons from the Light, that story comes late in the book because it is the fifth NDE of her remarkable life.
Yvonne Kason was born and raised in Canada. Though her childhood included mystical experiences, she pursued a career as a medical doctor and planned to have a standard Family Practice when she graduated from medical school in 1977. Those plans were dramatically altered in 1979 when she survived a small plane crash on a medevac flight over the frozen wilds of northern Ontario. She had to escape the sinking plane and swim through frigid water in heavy clothing to reach a small sacred island, far from civilization. In that harrowing escapade, her consciousness slipped from her swimming body and watched the drama unfold, even as she also visited heavenly realms. That Near Death Experience eventually became the material for her book, A Farther Shore, published in 1994, and put her in the national limelight. Dr. Kason expanded her medical practice to counseling for people who struggled with Near Death or other Spiritually Transformative Experiences (STE’s), a phrase she coined that has been adopted into the common vernacular. She became a well-known speaker on talk shows, media interviews, and various conferences around the world.
While maintaining a high functioning professional life, Dr. Kason also developed a deeply devoted spiritual life through intense meditation practices and contemplative retreats. She experienced kundalini awakenings, visions, spiritual downloads, past life recall and pretty much all the clairs at one time or another. Thus, Soul Lessons from the Light is so much more than a spiritual memoir. It defines and explains a wide variety of mystical experiences. Chapter 10 lays out the abc’s of psychic/intuitive experience from “abstract intuition” to “UFO encounters.” Even though I’ve been studying mystical matters for decades, I had an ah-ha moment when I read her definition of a Kundalini Awakening and realized that was the name for something I experienced way back in 1983.
Because Dr. Kason has spent so many years helping people work through their life-changing spiritual experiences, she offers a perspective of professional guidance, even as she shares her very personal revelations.
Today, Dr. Kason is truly a walking miracle. For that 2003 fall on black ice caused a severe traumatic brain injury that left her disabled for thirteen years. The life she had carefully built, as a doctor, lecturer, author, and counselor completely disappeared. She struggled to perform basic physical and mental functions. Her income and ability to take care of her son became precarious. What she missed most was the ability to meditate and reach the blissful mental states she had known. Determination took her a long way toward recovery, but it was an eruption of liquid light in the center of her brain in 2016 during a meditation that healed her injury and allowed her to resume a high-powered life.
In 2020, she and Robert Bare, another NDE experiencer, were intuitively guided to co-found Spiritual Awakenings International (SAI), an organization dedicated to building a world-wide community of people who’ve had Spiritually Transformative Experiences. The SAI YouTube channel holds a growing library of fascinating people sharing their STE’s for the world to hear, often after decades of keeping their experiences a secret from family and friends for fear of being ridiculed or considered delusional. SAI’s third annual multi-speaker on-line conference is coming up on June 10-11, free to all (donations requested).
Soul Lessons from the Light opens the realms of heaven and earth for the spiritual seeker. As Dr. Kason says in her closing chapter:
Due to my personal experiences of multiple STE’s and miracles in my life, I know there is always hope for a better tomorrow. We must never lose hope. If we turn to the Higher Power in our hearts, the Divine hand might unexpectedly intervene, and invisibly reach out to offer assistance, healing, or guidance in our time of need.
Listen to Dr. Kason introduce her book and share the experience of her 2003 NDE at the Spiritual Awakenings International channel:
