In my previous post, “Beliefnet’s Interview with Joan Wester Anderson,” I mentioned that I would be interviewing Joan Wester Anderson the Friday before Christmas to get my Beyond Blue readers in the mood for the nativity story.
Joan is one of my very favorite people because she’s so real and generous and loving—always trying to spread hope of God’s love to anyone she meets. As I mentioned earlier, she is like the Dalai Lama of the angel world—with 15 books out, two of which stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year, and all the radio and TV shows she’s been on. All of her accolades warrant a big head. But she’s not that way at all. She’s sweet and down to earth.

Joan and I connected awhile back, when I was thinking of compiling “St. Therese” stories, much like her angel tales. The editors of Loyola thought we would make a great team. Ultimately we never did the project, which was best given that I had a major breakdown a few months later. And Joan needed to focus on her family. I’ll never forget what she said: “I’m trying to concentrate on my grandkids now, because I’m trying to make up for all those times I fed my kids cookies to keep them quiet as I was on the phone doing a radio interview.” Whenever I get frustrated by these two miniature people keeping me from work, I remember her response.
Because we are only three days away from Christmas Eve, my favorite night of the year, when I light all the candles in our house and think about miracles and angels and holy stuff, in general, I thought Joan would be a fitting interview for today.

1) Joan, I posted the interview you did with Wendy Schuman of Beliefnet back in 2002, and the responses were interesting. I hate to throw Beyond Blue reader Larry Parker at you, but I think he asks a good question when he wrote this:

Her answer to “how do you get in touch with your guardian angel” smacks a bit too much of the Prosperity Gospel. I mean, really. Why should G-d intervene to let you get a parking space ahead of someone else who misses it?
Frankly, why should G-d care?

How would you respond to such a question?
Why should God care, Larry? I don’t know. But He does, because He told us so in countless comments in His Bible. Nothing is too small for Him to notice or care about. And remember that He wants us to approach Him as little children would—joyful, confident and innocent—so obviously He concerns himself with the little things in our lives. In other words, he gets down to our level, like a Daddy would. (When Jesus taught the people how to pray the Our Father, the Aramaic word he used for “Father” was “Daddy.” This is apparently the relationship he wants us to have with him.)
Now this relationship is hard for many people to believe or sustain. Harder still is the idea that each of us possibly has his/her own guardian angel, or at least has access to help from the angels. So one way I suggest that people “test the spirits” is to ask God or his angels to give us something—a little sign, a comment from a stranger, yes, even a parking place (especially if we’re running late!). This builds our faith, opens our closed emotional doors, if only for a moment, and shows us some possibilities. The parking place isn’t what’s important; it’s the personal “hug from heaven” that hopefully reassures us that’s there’s more going on around us than meets the eye.
As far as the Prosperity Gospel is concerned, I’ve never really understood it that well. Yes, I think we are meant to be joyful here on earth no matter the circumstances, but bad things do happen to good people, and a closeness to God is not an exemption from trouble. I’m not real sure where the P.G. fits in the question above.
2) Other responses of your interview were testimonies of angel experiences, such as Barbara’s, which I’ll feature as separate post coming up. Do these angel stories in some way comfort you, especially in times of doubt or confusion, when you can’t see God’s hand in anything?
The only thing I know for sure about life is that it is constantly changing. So when I go through a period of doubt or confusion, I know I just have to hang around for awhile, keep busy and eventually things will look a little better. During times like these, I sometimes do go back and read some of the stories that I published a long time ago (my first angel book is fifteen years old!) and have half-forgotten.
Sometimes just remembering the circumstances of how that story reached me, or something in my notes triggers a good memory, and I am reminded again that God was there then, and He is here now. This is handy when I can’t summon His presence via my feelings and I have to walk by faith instead.
3) When you were asked where the angels were on September 11, you said this:

Right where they always are, with us. There are stories already circulating about strangers guiding people down the stairs of the WTC buildings, then disappearing. The question really is: Why didn’t the angels step in and save those victims? I don’t know why–people have free will, it’s out greatest gift, and God will not thwart it. But He can also bring good out of any kind of evil, and although we may not see anything good yet, I am sure it will come.

Is that how you would answer the person who is severely depressed and wants more than anything to end his life? When he cries out to God and can’t hear anything in response, how does he go on believing in miracles?
Truthfully, I would be scared to death to answer or attempt to influence anyone who was contemplating suicide; the responsibility, given that I’m an untrained non-professional, would be enormous. Nor do I think that stories of miracles, no matter how moving, would/could reach someone so deeply in pain.
When my five children went through the teen years, I worried that one or more of them might one day become depressed and think about suicide. I put all my fears on the table with all of them, and I made them promise two things to me: one, that if they ever thought about suicide, they would wait just one day before taking any harmful actions. Just one day. I always kid that I raised my children using “guilt therapy” so they OWED me that one day. The second thing they would do would be to tell a trustworthy adult how and what they were feeling. They all promised, and none of them ever experienced more than the normal emotional ups and downs.
So if I were dealing with someone who was deeply depressed, I think I would acknowledge that this situation is beyond me, and take that person for help. If I were talking with him, I would simply ask him to hold on for another day, and ask if, in the meantime, there is anything I could do to relieve his suffering. Lame, I know, but the truth.
4) In an e-mail to me you asked me a question that I’ve been stewing over for a few weeks now:

When you contemplated taking your life, how did you rationalize what would happen afterwards, i.e. condemned to hell? I’m talking about your spiritual life, not the impact it would have on your kids.

This is what I wrote to you in response:

I guess I was in so much pain that I figured God would understand why I wanted to be dead. And I felt pretty abandoned by him, so burning in hell seemed like it would hurt less than going on with life. Boy, I guess I was really low.

My therapist at the time tried to play up the whole “damnation to hell” with suicide, partly because she knew I was so Catholic, and if anything would keep me from doing it, that would. But I guess that just tells you how sick someone is when they are severely depressed … I didn’t really care if I was going to hell, because I was convinced hell was better than what I was feeling. For those who do commit suicide, what do you, as a good but compassionate Catholic, believe happens to their souls?
Years ago, the Catholic Church changed its official stance that people who commit suicide are committing a mortal sin and are thereby lost forever in hell. Now the belief is that, although taking a life is a serious sin, people committing suicide are not behaving rationally and thus cannot give full consent to this sin. To me, this is much more humane—and probably much closer to the truth—than the former stance.

This question comes up from time to time from my readers, and I’m always interested in their experiences. One young man had been mourning his sister who had taken her own life; not only did he grieve her loss, he also worried that she might not be in heaven. He told me that one night he had a strikingly-clear dream that his sister was on her way to a banquet and invited him to go along. He was struck by how beautiful and happy she was, but when they got to where the banquet was being held, she told him that she had to wait awhile until it was her turn to go in. She was not concerned about this at all, and looked forward to great happiness inside the banquet hall, but it just wasn’t her turn yet.
Now, people can argue that dreams are just meaningless fragments, but if we consider that God used dreams again and again to communicate with His people in the Scriptures—and God does nothing by chance—dreams may be a very accurate way of perceiving the truth. This young man recognized that the banquet was most certainly a symbol of heaven and that his sister, for whatever reason, had to wait awhile to enter, but was calmed and comforted by her obvious peacefulness. I have come across other very similar stories, and I do believe that this take is more in line with the compassion of Jesus.
5) Christmas Eve is the anniversary of the miracle that inspired your work with angels. How do you celebrate it? Any special rituals or traditions to remember that fateful night?
It was my son’s “adventure” with an angel on Christmas Eve in 1983 that actually opened my eyes to their presence in our lives. Of course I believed in angels because I was taught about them, and they are mentioned in Scripture over 300 times. But angels inserting themselves and their help into the ordinary problems of human beings? It had never occurred to me.
But that event started me on my path of researching and writing about angels, and brought me into a new career just when I had decided to give up journalism. Looking back with the clear view of hindsight, I realize now just how specifically God had prepared me for the work I started in the 80’s, work I still do today. So of course Christmas is a special time for our whole family, because it is the anniversary of when my new work for God began, and it’s also the anniversary of the best Christmas we ever had.
Actually, Christmas vacation itself was difficult that year. It was so cold that our cars wouldn’t start, parties were cancelled and we all got rather sick of each other and were relieved when it was time to go back to college or work. But later, when I heard the story of Tim’s rescue and realized how close I had come to losing my son, I realized that there was a diamond buried in all that mess, and that Christmas of ’83 was by far the most beautiful ever.