Neil Chamberlain - a remembrance for 2013
I had a dream about Neil last night. (Is today the day we are supposed to remember?) I came upon him in an empty restaurant and I begged him, BEGGED him to see the last thing he had written. He nodded his head and gave me something, a manuscript or a video casette or something, but it slipped through my fingers. I wanted to see it so badly but suddenly it was gone, and I was searching through this vast abandoned Italian restaurant and he was gone too.
In my dreams he comes to me not like the neat religious fantasy I have concocted where a cartoon-faced Jesus takes the dead by the hand and leads them to a clean bright holding-pen in the sky. In my dreams Neil comes to me like the real life Jesus after his resurrection. Now appearing, now disappearing. You're always chasing him yet you see only the trace of him. Then you're talking to a stranger and as soon as you realize IT'S HIM! he is gone.
Perhaps the veil between heaven and earth is more wispy and strange than I have imagined. Likely God in his grace is more strange than I have allowed myself to believe. I would like to know the whole piece, to read the manuscript and see for sure, but it slips through my fingers.