Seven years ago, I spoke at the annual conference, held every year at the Mother Church in Philadelphia, of the Church of Ageless Wisdom. My grandmother, Rev. Elizabeth Hand, founded the church in the 1920's and eventually had it incorporated in all fifty states. There are also congregations in England and Canada. When my grandmother died in 1977, Rev. Mabel Byers, a parishoner, a loyal student and beloved friend of my grandparents and our family, became pastor of Philadelphia mother church. Rev. Byers has always been Aunt Mable to my siblings and me. We love her, and we think it is fitting that she leads the Mother Church. When she asked me to speak, I was at first reluctant, but I quickly realized that such a talk could serve as a tribute to my beloved grandparents and my mother, who had recently passed away. I agreed, and I am very happy I did so.
I do want to say that even after having been exposed to this world all my life, I am still not sure exactly what I believe. I do believe in the four phenomena of parapsychology: telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and telekinesis. Beyond that, I am not sure exactly what is going on when someone gets an apparent communication from a deceased loved one or a remarkable healing takes place. I am convinced, however, that whatever is at work is something beyond what science can explain.
I am very comfortable with the language of metaphysics, to which my grandparents and mother dedicated their hearts and souls. During my talk, I spoke in that language.
When Rev. Bayer's, Aunt Mable to my siblings and me, asked me to talk at the
conference, I was a little hesitant at first. The last time I gave a talk
about matters, the topic was: Psychic Phenomena: A Young Person's
Perspective. All you have to do is take one look at me to know how long ago
that must have been! But Rev. Bayers has a charming way of getting what she
wants. Of course, all she had to do was ask me. I have a story to tell about
growing up in a family of renowned metaphysicians and am happy to share it
with all of you. It's an honor and a privilege.
What was it like having Rev. Beth Hand for a grandmother? Rev. Ralph for a
grandfather and Rev. Muriel Hand for a mother? My grandmother was a
remarkable woman, way ahead of her time, who founded a church and
incorporated it in all fifty states during her lifetime. My grandfather was
a trance medium and a great healer. And my mother, Muriel Hand, became Arch
Bishop Primate of the Church after my grandmother's death and was an
accomplished channeler, numerologist, astrologer, hypnotherapist and teacher
all her life. Of course, to me, Rev. Beth Hand was Nanny and Rev. Ralph
Hand, Ada. My mother always said I coined the name. I guess I was trying to
say "Da Da," and it came out like "Ada." Whatever the reason, the name
stuck, and my siblings and I called him Ada for the rest of his life. And,
of course, Rev.Muriel Hand was my beloved mother, my Mom.How did these
remarkable people shape me? What did I learn from them?
How did my experience growing up differ from that of my friends and peers?
These are things I would like to talk about this afternoon, the values,
family values they imparted and that helped to make me the person I am
today.
It goes way back to childhood. From my earliest memory, I knew that my
grandmother was a minister of The Church Of Ageless Wisdom and that my
grandfather could heal while in a trance state. As a kid, what an adventure
it was to go to church with Nanny and Ada! For a little kid from the country
and then a small town in the suburbs, going into a big city like
Philadelphia was always an adventure, a feast for the eyes. A whirl of
sights and sounds and people of all colors, sizes and shapes! Just driving
over the Walt Whitman Bridge was dramatic enough! All the way down Broad
Street, the longest running street in the country, we would all help Nanny
call on her Indian guide, Tall Pine, to help us with the traffic lights.
Sometimes Tall Pine would turn them all green just as our car approached,
and sometimes he was off busy doing other things perhaps a bit more
important! I think my earliest urge to travel, a love which remains with me
till this very day, started on those trips to Philadelphia. I loved the
diversity of the city, and I still do. Asians, African-Americans, people
from other countries speaking different languages, people who hustled and
bustled to all the important places I imagined they were going to.
I also saw this same diversity in my grandmother's church. People of all
colors and from all backgrounds made up her loving congregation. My siblings
and I had a lot of aunts and uncles in that congregation and they treated us
very specially. We always got plenty of hugs and were fussed over and doted
on. Often, they would slip us a dollar bill -- and this was in the late
Fifties and early Sixties, when a dollar bill was actually worth something.
I think once Aunt Vera even gave me, the oldest, a five dollar bill! How we
loved to attend that church! To watch our grandmother up there in her full
pastoral garb. She looked so majestic, so regal! To observe the authority
and ease with which she ran the service, to watch her deliver the sermon we
had often seen her type up on her reliable old Royal typewriter-- we spent
many a weekend at our grandparents-- and could watch her prepare first hand
for Sunday. To listen to her rich contralto, she sang with Janette McDonald
and Nelson Eddie, soaring over the rest of the congregation during the hymns
and and closing the service with the Hymn Of Peace. It made me feel so
proud! And to observe how all these people from such diverse backgrounds
formed a community that not only worshiped together but also clearly loved
and cared about each other and who were friends even outside the Church.
What a special privilege that was! As a child, I never really thought much
about it. When I got a little older, I realized from my experience with the
Church Of Ageless Wisdom that people from different backgrounds not only can
respect each other and work together but also genuinely love each other.
Of course, I came of age in the 1960's when the great moral battle being waged
in our country was the Civil Rights Movement. Thanks to my grandparents
church, and thanks to my mother's example, I never had to deal much with
racism or prejudice. It made perfect sense to me that all people are equal
and that everyone should be treated with respect. Neither my grandparents
nor my mother ever droned on and on about racial equality to me and my
siblings. They just lived it and taught by their example. Those trips to the
city and those visits to the Church instilled in me one of the most
fundamental human values one can have,respect for other peoples'
differences. Over and over again in our diverse society this respect has
served me well.
And the wonderful things we observed growing up in that church! I was there
when the famous UFO researcher, George Hunt Williamson, talked about flying
saucers and the space intelligencies. I still have a book he wrote and
autographed for my grandmother. As a child, it was so fascinating
to speculate that we weren't alone in the universe, that intelligent beings
were not only visiting us but had superior knowledge which they could share
for our betterment. And I heard them share it not only through my
grandfather but also other channelers who visited the Church. That experience
fostered a fascination with life on other planets and UFOs which also
continues to this very day.
I think my mother did a wonderful job balancing our activity in the Church Of
Ageless Wisdom with our so called normal lives as kids. She decided to raise
us Episcopalians so that we could easily fit in with all the other kids. But
she was not ashamed of her parents work, believed in it completely
and exposed us children to it by degrees and by occasional visits to the
Church which were always fun and exciting for us all. However, we did
appreciate the fact that we were different, because we were told that most
people didn't understand the teachings of the Church, that most people didn't
casually talk with the dead the way we did or witness miraculous healings. We
realized that in this respect our family was different. Even our father
didn't believe what we believed. Somehow, we knew better than to discuss
theses things with our friends. Only later, when I got older, did I share my
Nanny's and Ada's story, my beliefs in the hereafter, healing, flying saucers
and metaphysical arts with friends, most of whom were fascinated by it and
many of whom became converts themselves.
I guess one incident stands out as a turning point in my beliefs. As a kid,
I used to get swimmer's ear rather often. If you've ever had it, you know
how painful it can be. One Saturday evening when I was staying with
my grandparents, it suddenly came over me and was very uncomfortable. We couldn't
go see our family doctor until Monday, so my grandmother said: "Kipp, why
don't you sit with your grandfather and let the spirit doctors take a look
at it?" I was about twelve years old, right around that age when children
start thinking more on their own and wondering for themselves just how true
all the things were that their parents taught them. I sort of believed in my
grandfather, but I also sort of didn't. I even remember thinking to myself:
This probably won't help but it can't hurt either. My grandfather loved
African violets, and he spent countless hours downstairs in the basement of
my grandparents' home tending to his beloved plants. He brought me down to
the basement for the healing, because it was quiet and the darkness was
conducive to going into at trance. As I had seen him do many times, he put
on a blindfold, started breathing rhythmically, his head sank, jerked up and
Dr. Faulkner began to speak through him. I remember Dr. Faulkner's saying
that my ear was indeed infected and that he and the other spirit doctors
were working to clear the infection. Just as he spoke these words, I heard a
crackling in my ear. I guess I must have been more skeptical than I thought,
because I remember being startled when I heard it. And the crackling
continued until my ear was clear as a bell. That was the very last time that
I ever doubted my grandfather's ability to heal.
Shortly after that I sat in on a circle of healing for a man who had much
more than a simple case of swimmer's ear. He was deaf! I believe he was a
friend of Rev. Enrique, a friend and student of my grandparents. It must
have been spring because there were lilacs on a table. I remember people
commenting on how wonderful they smelled and Rev. Enrique's saying: "That's
God's perfume!" I have never forgotten that! It seems like a simple insight,
but it is actually a profound spiritual truth. God is the source of all
creation. Man can imitate the scent of lilacs, but no matter how skillfully
made and no matter how expensive the perfume, the scent pales in comparison
with what God has created.
Before he went into trance, my grandfather told me I might feel pins and
needles during the healing and I did, but I could tell from his face that
the man being healed really felt the great power that healing. He put
his hands to his ears at one point, his face seemed to betray an agony, which
was little bit scary to me, but it was the healing power he was feeling. He
moaned and groaned, and at one point, I wondered whether the spirit doctors
manifesting through my grandfather were helping or hurting him. But it soon
became clear that they were helping him, healing him of deafness. At one
point with tears in his eyes he told us that he could hear our voices loud
and clear and that his hearing was restored. I remember toward the end of
the evening that my grandmother whispered something from all the way across
the room and he heard her. I think I must have been in my early teens at
that time and I walked away from that evening having learned two great
lessons: From Rev. Enrique that God is the source of all creation, and from
my grandfather that God can heal, even deafness.
As I got older, into my late teens and college years, many of my friends and
I started to question some of the religious teachings we were raised with.
We had many discussions, which we called "rap sessions" in the jargon of
the Sixties. I remember how the arguments went. The Bible is two
thousand years old. How can anyone know whether all those miracles
really happened? Maybe they are just myths, stories made up long ago by
gullible and superstitious people. I even had friends and professors in
college who questioned the existence of God himself. Not I!! I knew that
those miracles in the Bible must have happened because all my life I had seen
things that looked very much like those miracles. God didn't stop healing two
thousand years ago. I knew the power of healing was real because I had seen
it with my own eyes! My friends also debated life after death. How do we
know there's a soul that survives death? How can you believe in life after
death when there is no modern evidence for it! Are you going to base your
beliefs entirely on a book that was written two thousand years ago? Well,
again, you see, I knew better. I had sat with some of the best mediums of the
time,including my grandfather, and had listened to countless stories from
my mother and grandparents attesting to the fact that the soul survives the
death of the body and that communication with the so called dead was
possible.
The summer after my senior year in high school in 1969, I worked the midnight
shift busing tables and washing dishes with my best friend, Wayne Jordan, at
a Howard Johnson's at Exit One of the New Jersey Turnpike. And if any of you
can remember when Howard Johnson's had the Turnpike franchise cornered, then
like I have just done, you betray your age! Wayne loved science and planned
to major in Chemistry in college which we would both be beginning in the
fall. He and I had long conversations into the wee small hours of the
morning that summer about religion, God, the power of prayer and life after
death, and Wayne was skeptical about everything that I told him. Finally,
after listening to me go on and on for weeks, he said: "Kipp,my mother's
been diagnosed with terminal cancer. If your grandfather can heal her, I will
believe in everything you've been telling me this summer." The next day, I
told my mother about Mrs. Jordan, and she was immediately was on the phone to
my grandmother. My grandfather selflessly drove to Mrs. Jordan's repeatedly
over the summer for healing sessions. When she was next examined, doctors
were amazed that her cancer had not only stopped spreading but was rapidly
retreating. That was the summer of 1969,and I am happy to report that Mrs.
Jordan is still very much alive in the summer of 2003! And my friend, Wayne,
is still a believer!
Indeed that summer, my friends were so enthusiastic about the truths they
were witnessing that they begged me to take them to Camp Silver Bell in
Ephrata, Pennsylvania, a spiritualist retreat you've probably all heard of
and which my grandmother helped to found in the 1930s but she which she
hadn't been to in years and years. Unlike my friends and me, she and my
mother didn't need to flock to mediums to know what was true and what
wasn't. But my mother and my grandmother loved me, and with some bemusement,
they took my friends and me to Silver Bell. I remember that my grandmother
drove down to my house that day, and as we are about to leave, my mother
turned to her and said jokingly: "Well, mother, are we ready to go a
spiritualizing!?"That day changed the lives of my friends. We sat with a
trance medium who brought through uncles, aunts, and grandparents with
convincing messages for each of my friends. He also brought through my
great-grandmother, Camie, who identified herself by name and referred to
family matters only she knew could have known about. I remember Camie's
telling us kids once that she had won a pancake eating contest at a county
fair when she was a girl. She referred to that contest during the seance, and
I was moved to tears upon hearing the story again. I¹ll never forget that
day. My friends walked away from Silver Bell with a new found faith, and I
walked away with a faith confirmed.
I started Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the
fall of 1969. It was at the time affiliated with the Southern Baptist Church,
and I was a little afraid I might be tarred and feathered for my beliefs,
because I had a big mouth and the zeal of a convert. But I became quite well
known and respected on campus because of them. It became my mission to
witness to as many people as I could about the reality of God, the power of
prayer, of healing and the survival of the spirit after death. I spoke to
countless people, my peers as well as professors during my college years. I
held seances in my dorm room. I held seances at night in the classrooms, and
I even held a seance in the Southern Baptist chapel itself at Wake Forest.
In the spring of my Freshman year, I taught a course for the campus night
school in psychic phenomena during which a woman from the community
developed powerful clairvoyant ability. I was featured both in the local
paper, The Winston-Salem Journal, and on local radio shows. That year, our
campus newspaper reported that my course was the most popular night school
course out of thirty some that were offered.
Over the years with all the losses we face as adults, my belief in the
spiritual truths I learned from my beloved grandparents and my mother has
served me well. I thank them so much for the legacy they gave me. Without
their witness to metaphysical truth in my life, I really don't know where I
would be. I am a Pisces with an ascendant in Cancer, but my moon is in
Capricorn,and that has always kept me earthbound, grounded in reality.
Otherwise, I might have been swept away along time ago by all that water! I
am a skeptic.I believe but, like Doubting Thomas in the Bible, I need proof!
It was through my family, my grandparents and my mother, that I kept on
getting the proof I needed, not only to believe myself but to lead others to
the truths my grandmother and mother preached from the pulpit and that
my grandfather taught while in trance.
My family values? What are those wonderful family values I have been talking
about? That God exists, that He loves us and reveals himself in our lives
every day- in the lilacs at spring, in the beauty of the fall when, as
my mother always said, we see death all around us but the colors of its face
take our breath away, in God's power to heal, both the mind and the body,
in God's promise that this life is not all there is, that there is an
immortal soul which survives death and is reunited with loved ones and
continues to evolve,to grow from strength to strength in God's Heavenly
Kingdom. Family values? That there is but one race, the human race, that we
are all brothers and sisters in God's eyes. Family values? That there are
many paths to God, as my grandmother always taught, that all religions
contain truth, that they can all lead one to God. Just imagine a world
without racism or any kind of bigotry based on peoples' skin color or ethnic
background! Just imagine a world where everyone respected all religions and
recognized their basic validity! It would be like enjoying the fruits of
God's Kingdom while we are still struggling here below here on Earth! My
beloved grandmother, grandfather and mother made it possible for me not only
to imagine this kind of world but to work for it, to try to live it in my
life by my example. My grandmother, Rev.Beth Hand, did. My grandfather, Rev.
Ralph Hand, did and my mother, Rev.Muriel Hand, did every day of their
lives. They remain for me my first teachers, my heroes and role models. They
left me with a wonderful legacy for which I will be grateful as long as I
live, until that day comes when we are reunited in one of the many mansions
of God's Heavenly Kingdom, and I can embrace them with great joy, knowing
that what they taught me made my life good and worthwhile.
