Image:  “between the worlds” 36X36″ acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas.  copyright D. Ellis Phelps, 2014

I cannot teach you how to pray in words….And I cannot teach you the prayer of the seas and the forests and the mountains.  But you who are born of the mountains and the forests and the seas can find their prayer in your heart…

The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

Since 2006 and the transition of my in-laws and my parents from their forms of flesh to their light bodies, I have spent a great deal of time between the worlds.

These incarnate beings I learned to love and hate and love again have come to me in the most profound ways, letting me know their presence beyond the veil is one of large, ongoing aliveness, letting me know their pain, their need for my offerings of love and forgiveness.

My father-in-law’s scent:  spice.  My mother-in-law:  heavy perfume.  My father:  cedar.  And by arrangement with my mother (a la Houdini):  pine.

My father has visited me in dreams, willing me to do his bidding on this plane, else he could not rest.  My mother has spoken me awake, me certain she stood beside my bed.

What I have understood from these communications is this:

Who we are on this side, we are on the other.  This is why we pray for the dead, so that The Light knows its own and it is only by Grace (by prayer) that between the worlds, between lives, we are received and we are known.

How do you communicate between the worlds?  Have you experienced the out-of-body  presence of someone you have loved or not loved?  How do you process the messages you have received?