In some instances, I would become the music with the world falling away until I did not exist. I became one with the music and merged with the universe. Music tended to be for a shorter time and the intensity of emotion quite strong, perhaps only a few minutes. For painting and writing, the intensity was less and the duration perhaps lasting a half hour. For sculpting, the experience lasted at least a half hour and could continue for several hours. People would come and go, talk to me and I never knew they had been there. With sculpting, the piece and I would become one. We would talk to one another, telling each other how to proceed next. As the sculpture proceeded, the piece and I would merge with the universe and later come back and talk again. And so it would go for several hours. I have two unfinished pieces in my office, we still talk to each other after all these years.

What I finally recognized was that in becoming one with the universe, it was something that transcended myself, the surroundings, and the art being created. It was a transcendental act of creation. The feelings were pleasant, joyful, ecstatic, stunning, awe inspiring. Sometimes they were nice, slow waves of ecstasy that lasted for several hours. I never thought of them as being religious experiences. They were never associated as being any specific religion. Then when I was about 50 that began changing. I had become Christian, a Lutheran, because my wife, Juli, wanted our children and family to go to Church. Her family was Lutheran and my heritage from Sweden was Lutheran. My Uncle Pere, from my mother’s side of the family, was a Lutheran Pastor who baptized me in Sweden. It was a good fit.

I had a very good singing voice. I didn’t care for most of the hymns but several I liked. Once in a while singing them, I sang them very beautifully. While I was singing, I knew it wasn’t me. It was God singing through me because I couldn’t sing that well. God wanted to sing that song and sang it through me. I could feel the difference. The same thing happened twice when I had the opportunity to read the text from the Bible on Sunday from the lectern. It wasn’t me reading the text. God wanted to read the text and read it through me. Again, I could feel the difference. So, I became very comfortable being with God, either merged with the universe or having God flow through me. I don’t talk much about it because it is only my personal way of experiencing God. It tends to be a friendly relationship rather than the ones we read from the Bible, and it is easy to be seen as simply crazy or looking for attention. However, it does let me say I believe in God.

With my Level 3 Brain Cancer at age 57, I get most of my spiritual experiences when dreaming and when I’ve been resting. When I’m in healthy conditions, spiritual experiences still happen when playing guitar and singing. They are short, only a few minutes. Many people with cancer who spend a lot of time in the hospital, radiation, and chemotherapy have experiences that change their values and the way they live. It usually involves some new spiritual realization, good or bad ones. I have been lucky, mine have been good ones. My daughter, Gretchen, has spent more time in the hospital and has had her own set of experiences. It gives her and I a new base of commonality.

This January, I had a dream. In the dream, I was sleeping and then woke up. There were all these very small penguins crowding around me and softly cooing. It was God. I have never seen God like that and asked what was happening. He said that He was everywhere and that He loved everyone like the very small penguins around me. He said that people could be with Him anytime, anywhere. People usually didn’t slow down enough or weren’t tranquil enough to see or feel his presence, but He was always there and that He loved them. In the dream it seemed so easy to feel God’s tenderness and love. After actually waking up, I couldn’t feel God’s presence even though I suspected He was present everywhere and in everything. It reminded me of when I merge with all the universe how small I become to be everywhere and in everything.

The dream reminded me of a new particle in physics called the God particle. It was a new sub-particle that was everywhere and in everything. After doing research on the internet, it became clear that there was a new sub-particle that had something with those features and a wonderfully catchy name. It was not really the God particle. It did not have the soul-like qualities like God does, the sub-particle pervasiveness throughout the universe, or the natural ability to love.

Jesus and I also have a friendly relationship. This February, I had a dream. Jesus was in front of me, with his back to me. He was kneeling down on one knee. He was wearing a gray robe that he is usually pictured in and the one I usually see him in. The setting around him was warm, golden tan moving toward black in the background. I was kneeling behind him and outstretched my right hand and touched his left shoulder in the small of his back with my palm and fingers.

We didn’t say any words. In my mind and through my body I felt what part of Jesus’ power was like. His Being was quietly very powerful and incredibly strong, pervasive with everything that existed. Jesus was not self-centered at all but was uniquely himself. He had no interest in himself. He knew himself, who he was and what he was. He was God in human form that we could recognize and that we could touch without crumbling to dust. The strength of his power was immense. Then in Jesus’ mind he told me that all my sins were forgiven me. In my mind he was saying “All your sins are forgiven.” I immediately starting weeping uncontrollably as I could feel hundreds and thousands of dark, hard shells flowing down and away from my body. It felt that all my sins were being washed away in a smooth, torrent of long dark shells. I never knew there were so many or that they were so heavy. It was a totally unexpected and stunning experience.

I remember thinking how traditional the phrases were, it was totally unlike anything I would say. Touching and feeling what Jesus was like was unimaginable. I had no idea anyone could be like that. Not even the Son of God. The way Jesus is described in the Bible pales in comparison. The powerful Jesus in Michelangelo’s Day of Judgment in the Sistine Chapel doesn’t come close to showing who Jesus is and what his power is and what his power is like. And then the dark shells washing away and uncontrollable weeping was so unlike me. I don’t know what the shells were washed away with. It was not blood, it was not water. But they just ran off me in torrents. It was an extraordinary dream. I can say that even though I know that my sins have been washed away, back in normal life they are still hanging on. My wife, Juli, would say there a few new dark shells being added.

After being in the hospital for 16 days and two brain surgeries, I got out of the hospital a day after Thanksgiving of 2006. One of my epiphanies was that God had let me come back for three reasons. I wasn’t quite ready for what He wanted me to do in the after-life and I needed more refining. The other two things were to visit shut-ins and to play guitar with my son, Weston.

At 23, Weston was learning to play guitar. As a special needs person, he was not making any progress. I knew that if I played with him every day, he would make progress. And for his talents 18 months later, he is making steady progress. It has become something he and I can do together now that I can’t play golf anymore which had been a major part of his and my life.

I had not been visiting any shut-ins during January, February or March of 2007 because of my weakened conditions from surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Then in early April, I felt a distinct call from God that now was the time to visit shut-ins. As the Bible phrase states, Tomas immediately began to visit shut-ins. It was time. By June, I was visiting sixteen people who previously had very few visitors. Six months later, most moved or died.

Visiting people that had no one or only one or two people seeing them had become very important to me in the hospital. My pastor, Jon Buuck from Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd managed to find me, which was difficult. Pastor Jon would visit every day I was in the hospital. Often my friends and relatives were not allowed to visit me because I was in ICU for so long. Only my wife Juli and Pastor Jon were allowed through. What Pastor Jon showed me changed my values. In my life, visiting shut-ins did not rank on my top 100 list of things to do. Now it had become my Number 1 Item. The reason we can love ourselves and love others is because someone loves us first. Without someone who loves us first, and continues to love us, we shrivel up and die.

I stopped visiting shut-ins in mid-December of 2007. The radiation and chemo-cold to my body was difficult to tolerate in the Winter. I could start to tell that the brain cancer was coming back with more memory loss, lack of cognitive abilities, and less motor control. In February an MRI scan suggested that could be the case. So we started a new two month intravenous chemotherapy treatment that I had told my wife, Juli, I would allow. Now it is April 4, 2008 and I have not visited any shut-ins. It is disturbing to me since that was a prime reason for my being alive. I had another dream two days ago. Visiting shut-ins is alright but it is no longer a prime item for me.

On April 2nd this was my dream. I was in a garden of an estate with several friends and a manager of several estates. He changed our topic of conversation and said he would like me to do a sculpture. I said that was interesting but I hadn’t done sculpture for 28 years and perhaps there would be someone more capable of doing what he wanted. He said that he was still interested in knowing what I thought. I said that it would cost a minimum of $5,000 but I would have to know more about what he wanted to give him any kind of a price. He got a call on his cell phone and disgustedly said “No, he’s still talking about price.” So I asked him outright “What type of piece is this going to be, where is it going to be located?” The manager said “It’s going to be the gates to an estate like this one.” So we went over the gates of the estate. I looked at them and said “These are nice gates. There is nothing wrong with them. The cost for them was about $30,000. If you replace them with a sculpted set of gates, nobody can appreciate the gates because there is too much foliage and it will be too close to the road. And it will cost a lot of money.” The manager received another cell phone call and exasperatedly said “No, he’s still talking about money.” The person on the other end of the cell phone said “Get him off talking about money.”

I said “Alright. I would design in materials that haven’t been used yet. This would be in a public place. Not a private location. Safety, traffic, and visibility would be an issue. The sculpture would need a space of at least a million cubic feet. We need a special viewing gallery. Traffic would come to a standstill going by, especially at night.

“Consider the most famous entrance gates, the ones by Michelangelo and Rodin. They took over a year to design, they cost a fortune, were almost never completed, and even then took 20 to 30 years to make. The gates became famous for themselves and not the entrance for any estate. The sculptor’s named enhanced the reputation of the gates and the person who paid for the gates, that patron’s name lives in obscurity. Let’s say you really want some sculpted gates. I would charge $250,000 for the design, a $1,000,000 for the mock-up and a 20% fee for overseeing the construction. So tell me, what is your patron thinking?

The manager said “Budget is no problem, there is none and you can have as much as you want. You can work in whatever materials you can imagine and whatever size you want. The gates or whatever sculpture you make can be placed wherever you want. In short, there are no limitations.” I replied “This sculpted gate will do nothing to enhance the patron’s estate or his reputation. What is it that he gets out of this piece?” The manager replied “He wants you to breathe again.” It occurred to me then that the patron didn’t care about the sculpted gates. He cared about me and my creating again.

The manager and I had broken through my worldly concerns as I came to realize the implications. I asked “What if I wanted to make a Grand Canyon.” “That would be OK.” “How about the Alps or Rocky Mountains and Banff?’ “Also fine.” “The Aurora Borealis?” “Not a problem.” “The Crab Nebula?” “Whatever you want.” “What about another Earth? Solar system? Planets? Animals? People?” The manager nodded his head. “That means the sculpting tools are entirely different. You’d make the earth with gravity and volcanoes and use meteors like the fingers of God.” “Yes” said the manager. “God wants me to be a creator destroyer? Not a viewer or a watcher? How do you minimize the destroyer damage?” “As carefully as you can” said the manager. “You’re not restricted to 4 dimensions. You can use as many as you want.”

I began to understand that this would be an afterlife beyond my wildest dreams. It occurred to me that God was and the universe was far more than I could imagine. It posed a whole new set of questions. But to be a creator destroyer amazed me. Michelangelo said that when he created, all he did was release the form that was in the stone. Picasso said that art is not creating, but destroying. You could not make anything new without destroying the old.

Still dreaming, I said to myself “Until I get there, what can I do? How do I do this?” The answer came easily a few moments later “I can do concept art.” I had gone beyond computer water colors and had a new calling that replaced visiting shut-ins.

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