INTRODUCTION

Within the context of this material anomaly means events in my life that either should not have happened, but did, or events which did happen but ought not to have.

By should not or ought not I mean that, according to present day understanding of the scientific principles underpinning the functioning of the universe and the life it contains, the following recorded events are not rationally sensible or comprehensible.

I realise that some of such as the ‘marriages anomaly’, will be put down to coincidence. I would have done so myself with that particular anomaly had the events not happened over such a long period of time or involved so many people. Some critics will also say that the evidence i produce is merely a matter of my interpretation and another person in the same place at the same time would not have experienced or observed the same things as I. My reply to that is that I am not too sure, except in those events that could only have been witnessed by myself that the criticism is balanced. But having said that isn’t that the way of all life. Everybody experiences every event differently. The fact that everyone interprets their experiences differently does not mean the events did not happen at all. Also as many of the events described did involve other people who, in some ways, shared the experience of those events I think the criticism is invalidated.

I have decided to write this record because, on reflection over the last few months( I am just three weeks away from my 71st birthday) I have concluded that my life has included many events that be considered ‘not normal’ or anomalous. There are so many of them that one could be forgiven for thinking that I have a mental disorder, am socially maladjusted (which, to a degree, I am), or I am from some other planet and am living my life for different reasons than the other people on this planet. You be the judge.

None of the following is, necessarily, in the right time sequence.

THE MARRIAGE ANOMALIES

I am a child, about 7 or 8 years old. My father has just finished telling me and my siblings about the time he spent, during the depression years of the late 1920s and 1930s, living as a tramp in the South Island of New Zealand. This is a very remarkable event (that he should tell us) because my father discusses nothing of his past or family with us.

Her has told us that he travelled the length and breadth of the island in all kinds of weather and did all manner of work to keep body and soul together. He drove cattle over the Rainbow pass and stopped at Tophouse and he drove a truck over the very rough and unsealed Crown Range and watched a flock of sheep, startled by the appearance of his truck, leap of the road and plummet into the gorge hundreds of metres below. He also told us about his stints at grain harvesting.

As he worked his way north he was able to get work as a labourer for contractors operating traction engine powered grain harvesters in both North Otago and North Canterbury. He also got work in Mid-Canterbury but because of an altercation he had with a farm owner he decided to move north poste haste.

The story now moves forward 6 or 7 years. I am 14 or 15 years old and my mother and father have been separated for about 5 years. My father has had a major health problem and, for its day, massive surgery which he was not expected to survive. Survive he did, if only just, and he has shifted my brother and myself south, from Auckland (where I grew up) to Christchurch. He has done this to recuperate he said. Here he meets a woman who will eventually become his second wife. Her name is Marion West.
Twelve months on and Marion, now calling herself Maryanne, moves with the rest of us back to Auckland where my father revives his business and where he and Maryanne live until her death about 25 years later.

Now we move again and I am 24 years old. I have moved back to and live permanently in Christchurch. I have been married for about six months and my wife Annette and I have her old and cantankerous grandfather living with us. I have just learnt that before and during the depression of the 1920s and 1930s he owned and operated the company which did much of the grain harvesting, via traction engine operated equipment, in North Canterbury.

Then, about six years later, I meet Annette’s cousin Marcia and her husband. They were at my wedding but I don’t recall them. Surprisingly they live only a couple of hundred metres from my house. They are involved in the Anglican church and because of previous experiences I have had no desire to meet them; I had no wish to become involved with religious people.

There are many events associated with Marcia, her husband, Annette and myself and some of them will come up later. But in the context of these anomalies they are not relevant. But after ten years of marriage Annette and I separate. Marcia and I become a couple and eventually we wed. So I remain in the same family with the same grandfather and the same traction engines.

Through Marcia and her husband, before any separations, I was introduced to a group that they and their vicar had been part of for the previous couple of years. In this group was a couple that Marcia and I became very good friends with; they are Margaret and Marius. We remain friends with them until Margaret’s death about 35 years later and Marius’s move to Australia. We had been friends for about 15 years when I told them that I had been married into the family, twice, that had possibly employed my father during the depression. “How strange,” said Margaret, “my grandfather owned the threshing mills (traction engine powered harvesters) in the North Otago region.

Some ten years later I was once again talking to Margaret and Marius about my father and happened to mention that he had married a woman named Marion West.

“I knew a Marion West,” said Margaret. “She worked with me in the library (Margaret was a librarian). She wore bright red shoes and lipstick and had a dress full of holes like a fishnet. She used to go to all the older men and offer them sweets. I think she came from Leeston and her father was a minister of some kind.”

Well even without the Leeston and minister bit anyone who knew Marion would have accepted Margaret’s description.

Marion did come from Leeston and her father was the minister of the Leeston Methodist Church. My father had gone to the library every day to keep up with the news and search the job columns for work. I had often wondered where he had met her.

But many years before this event, in the 10th or 11th year of my marriage to Marcia, the police came to my door to tell me that my father had died in a northern town called Tapawera. They said that we should go there and visit the district nurse as she knew where he had been living.

We arrived there at about 9pm on a very wet and dark winters night. The nurse took us to the small flat where my father had been living and showed us inside. It was too dark and late to do anything but the nurse did show us one bag, a small hard exterior case, and said that the police had searched through this but it was only full of old receipts. So we left and went into Nelson to find accommodation intending to come back the following morning.

We woke to a fine sunny day and Marcia said that she’d had a dream. In the dream she had seen two silver poplar trees that had been planted too close together and had grown together. All the leaves of the trees were turned so that their silver undersides could be seen and Marcia said that she also had some leaves in her hand with the silver side facing upwards. She had also see a white bible and on the inside of the back cover had been the words ‘To Peter’.

“Well that is quite interesting,” I said, “as, though you probably don’t know this, my father always said that when he died I would find his will in the back of his bible.”

I don’t know why he chose to do his will this way as he was not the slightest bit religious but it seems he had got into the habit of always carrying a bible with him.

Even so we never did find his bible or will and still wonder to this day what had happened to them.

As for the rest of the dream I said that I had no idea what it might mean, if anything at all, and we had our breakfast and headed out to Tapawera.

On arrival we agreed that Marcia would clean up the inside of the flat and I would deal with all the outside stuff which included a garage, a trailer and a home built campervan on an old post office truck chassis. We had not been working long when Marcia came out and told me to come inside and have a look at what she had found. She took me to the kitchen and pointed outside. There in a part of the section that I could not access from where I had been were two silver poplar trees. They had been planted too close together and were growing as one tree. We decided to go out and have a look around. After fossicking about for a short while and finding nothing we went back inside and Marcia said, “now have a look at this.”

She showed me dozens of plastic coin bags of the type used by banks to hold silver coins. There must have been close to a thousand dollars in coins and these bags had been hidden in all manner of places about the flat. “This is what I have found so far,” said Marcia, “ and I still have a couple of places to clean yet.”

Well that seemed to take care of the silver poplars in the dream, what next?

I finished what I was doing and late in the afternoon went back inside. Marcia said that she had only one thing to look at and that was the case with the receipts. I said that I didn’t think it worth looking into as the police had already searched it but she upended it anyway and a huge heap of receipts fell out onto the bed. Then there was a surprise for us as while the last receipts hit the bed so did a large roll of bank notes. When we counted it we found that it was exactly the same amount as my father had withdrawn from his bank account on the morning of the day he had died. Was this that money? It was $2,500.00.

Now this case in which we had found the money was one which, in those days, people used to hold beer flagons as they walked home from the pub. They were called Pita bags and this is pronounced as Peter bag. They came as units that would hold either one or two flagons and my father’s could hold two so would have been called a two Pita bag. Was this the too Peter of the dream?

Marcia and I returned to Christchurch with the trailer and a few items that we wanted to keep as keepsakes. All other things had been sent to auction and had paid for the undertakers services. We thought that was the end of that; but not quite. We had put a notice in the deaths column of the local press just in case there was any other person interested. I really didn’t think there would be as my father was somewhat less than popular.

remarried?” He asked. “Well no I did not,” I replied.

He told me that my father had remarried about six years previously but the marriage had not been a good one and they had separated after about three months. They had, however, never divorced. My solicitor had received a communication from her solicitor claiming ownership of anything that may have been with my father when he died and he told us that she would be arriving to claim it within a few days.

I put the phone down and told Marcia what I had just heard. Immediately she said that she thought this was the meaning of the white bible in her dream as one always has a white bible at a wedding. “She will have to have the trailer,” said Marcia, “but the rest has to be yours as it was willed to you in the back of the white bible and through the two pita bag.”

HOME

I have many memories from the earliest days of my childhood such as:
I recall travelling to Wellington with my mother on the overnight rail express and also some of the events that took place while we were in Wellington. My mother said this was impossible as the only time she had taken me to Wellington was to show me off to my father’s parents when I was only six months old. I recall another time which must have been even before going to Wellington. I am lying in my cot, too small to stand, waiting to be fed by whatever it was that came and did that. I had no words for it at that time but that is what I knew happened. I also recall being small enough to walk under our dining room table without banging my head and without having to bend. I obviously had not been walking long.

From the earliest times in my life I have had an image in my mind of a long waterway, at least a kilometre long and about fifty metres wide. It is either manmade or a natural feature that has been enhanced with paved walkways along all edges. It also has palms planted at about 30 metre spaces along all sides; or they are manmade objects that are designed to look like large palms. There are also large lamp standards. These are metal or concrete poles about 15 to 20 metres high on top of which are great round lights somewhat like flying saucers. These lights are reflected in the water of the waterway.

I have always thought of this place as home.

THE CIVIC THEATRE

I am five or six years old, an aunt has arrived from somewhere and has asked my parents if she can take me to the movies. I have not been to the movies before and have no idea what to expect. She takes me to the Civic theatre in Queen Street in Auckland; not that I knew it as that at the time. I was far too overwhelmed by the event to even care what it was called or where it was.

Once we were inside, and I can still clearly recall climbing that wonderful staircase, we got ourselves seated and then my aunt tells me to look at the ceiling. It is the deepest of blues like a moonlit sky and covered with small lights that looked like stars. I was spellbound, but not for long, because as I looked away from the ceiling I noticed the walls. They were covered with three dimensional images of all kinds of strange beings; some that looked like angels with strange shapes and others that fitted no mould I had at the time. These creatures were coming out of buildings that were also moulded in 3D and they looked like minarets and other eastern buildings; though I didn’t know that at the time. I was frightened by what I saw. I didn’t know what they were but felt as if I had seen them before and that they had some power to harm me.

This day at the movies was a mixed experience. I was excited by the newness of it all and loved the movies. But all the time we were there I was afraid that the beings on the wall were going to somehow do us some harm. It was many years before I went back to that theatre and would go to any other theatre rather than that one. I would even wait for a movie to come on at another theatre rather than go there.

From the age of 11 or 12 years I became very interested in the middle eastern antiquities and by the age of 30 or so had realised that the most influential religion of that part of the world, up to about 400AD, was Zarathustrianism. However, it was not until I was about 50 years old that I learnt that the person who had funded, designed and built the civic theatre had himself been a Zarathustrian and it had been his intention to incorporate as much Zarathustrian symbolism into the decoration of the theatre as possible.

SHORN BY IVAN BOWEN

I am 18 years old and I am working on a dairy farm in the Waikato. I am there with my mother and her husband.

During the first 18 years of my life I have had almost no religious education or experience; something I now value very highly.

My father was not the slightest bit religious and my mother was really only a social Christian and only went to church occasionally. My mother, however, thought that children should go to Sunday school and that her friends and neighbours should know that this was happening. So off we went. This stopped rather suddenly though when my mother realised that we were spending the plate money on sweets rather than the church. I suppose, in all, that it lasted for about two years. Then there was Uncle Tom’s Choir. I have no idea how my mother got me into this as my voice could only be called average at the best of times. But she did manage it and she also managed to get my sister in. She was in the Friday night choir and I in the Sunday night. The Sunday night choir was called the Sankey Singers as most of the songs, though not all, that we sang camr from the Methodist hymn book compiled by Sankey.

My parents separated when I 10 years old. I had been in the choir for about 2 years by that time. The Sunday after the separation my father gave me the option of leaving the choir and I did. It was meaningless to me, I was not religious, had no belief in God and had no idea what it was we were singing about. What was the old rugged cross and why was it so important? Who on earth would want to wash in the blood of a lamb, any lamb, even if it was pure white? And what was so bloody amazing about Grace? That pretty much summed up my knowledge of Christianity.

I had been farming for about 12 months and had made friends with a guy working on a farm down the road. We went to young farmers club and the movies together and he often came to me and complained about his boss and the way he treated his animals. I didn’t have much to do with the man but any time I met him he didn’t seem all that bad. A bit religious, but doesn’t that apply to most farming people?

My friend comes to me one day and says that his boss has arranged for them all to go to a sheep shearing demonstration in a nearby village one evening the following week. He would like me to go along to keep him company. At first I say that I won’t go. I don’t like sheep, I have no need to see one shorn and anyway I’d rather read a good book. I am surprised by my friend as he begins to plead with me and it is quite a sad sight. He says that he has to go or his job won’t be worthwhile but he does not want to go on his own. In the end I give in and agree to go. I come to the opinion at a later date that this was all the result of pressure from his boss and he was almost certainly told that he did not have a job if he didn’t succeed in getting me to that demonstration.

In those days there were two brothers, Godfrey and Ivan Bowen. They had invented a new method for shearing sheep that was far more efficient than any previous system. Godfrey had made a name for himself travelling the world and demonstrating this new method; Ivan had not.

We arrived at the country village hall at about 7.30 in the evening; there were hundreds of people already there and, unlike myself and my friend, they were all well dressed. I thought this very strange as we are only there to see some sheep shorn.

We all sat down and I found that we were in the middle of a row of people that had about ten mothers on each side of us. Eventually a man came onto the stage dressed in black singlet, shorts and gumboots. He was introduced as Ivan Bowen and at that point I began to think that maybe it would be a good evening after all. In one hand Ivan held a shearing handpiece and in the other a sheep. He set about shearing the sheep and in short order had done this and he was passed another and in all he had been on the stage less than five minutes and was gone again. I supposed he had gone to get more sheep but as time went on I realised that the sheep shearing was over and I began then to think we had been had and, if that was the case why were we not going home?

I was beginning to get quite restive when, after about a twenty minute delay, Ivan came back onto the stage. This time he was dressed in a very nice suit and I instantly knew I had been had and that I was the sheep that had been shorn as in his hand he carried a book that was obviously a bible; that was why everyone else was in their Sunday best.

I am furious and I stand and tell my friend and his boss that I am going home and I begin to manoeuvre past all the knees to one side. I am urged by all to sit down and they shsh me and say be quiet the man is speaking. My friends boss suggests that if I don’t sit down and shut up there will be no ride home. As it is about 30 kms to home and dark outside I figure that sitting down is probably better than pride.

I am so angry that I don’t hear much of what Ivan is saying and he has been talking for 15 to 20 minutes when he stops for a brief break and drink of water. Then he begins again. This time I have settled down a little and I am more aware of everything around me. But something strange begins to take place. I hear what Ivan Bowen is saying but he keeps fading in and out and so I only get about a third of his words. These run together in my head and seem to make up a coherent message that I seem to be the only one hearing.

The words say, “Do you want to be my son? Do you want to know the things I can teach you? Do you want to see the things I can show you? Do you want to be my son? There is no pressure on you to say yes or no and if you choose not I will leave you alone. Do you want to be my son.”

I have no idea what is happening except that I have been given some kind of choice. This is certainly not what Ivan Bowen was saying to the rest of his audience and I am sure they would not believe me if I were to tell them what has happened. The one thing I am sure about is that if I reject the offer I will never know what I have missed. So at about the same time that Ivan is winding up and asking people to come to the front of the hall and give their lives to Jesus I have made up my mind and make it plain to whatever it is that has made the offer that I accept. At this the voice disappears and my hearing returns to normal. The first thing I hear is my friends boss asking me, almost demanding, to go forward and give my life to Jesus.

I tell him that I am not going to do that and he says that I should seriously reconsider my position as we are not going home until I at least go and talk to one of the counsellors. Stalemate. He asks me if I have had any sort of experience that evening and I tell him I have but that it has had nothing to do with Jesus; that name was never mentioned. Half an hour later most people have gone home, even most of the converts and there were a few of those. Things are getting a bit titchy and so I decide that I had better bend a bit. I go and have a talk with one of the counsellors who becomes quite surprised that I had such a powerful experience, even though I didn’t tell all, and he cannot understand why I wont give my life to Jesus.

Nothing changes as a result of that talk but we did get to go home.

This story does continue and quite a few people in the next few weeks tried to convince me that I should give my life to Jesus. But I don’t and the completion of the story will come at a later date.

VARIOUS ANOMALOUS EVENTS

Annette and I are arriving at the church we belong to. This is part of the continuing story. I have been a member of the church, initially Open Brethren and latterly Church of Christ, for the last 12 years. I am 30 years old. I have been very zealous with connection to Ivan Bowen’s group and also Youth for Christ involvement. I preach on street corners, in Cathedral Square and I also preach from the pulpit 4 or 5 times a year. I am, however, uncomfortable in this role as I see no need to gives one’s life to either Jesus or Christ.

I accept that I have somehow been accepted as a son of God. But I do not like the continual begging, pleading called prayer that goes on in the church and the never ending kowtowing to the almighty overlord that is nothing more than a projection of the ancient warlord and infallible godlike rulers of Mesopotamia and Egypt. I despise this as it is coming from people who live in free and democratic societies that have been won for them, over the centuries, by people who freely gave their lives for the ideals of freedom and equality. I also wonder why people don’t keep quiet for a while, who knows they might actually hear God speak to them.

I had spent about a year helping out with Ivan Bowens group as they toured various towns throughout the North Island. I had become involved in this through the counsellor I had met on that first evening. Ivan came to me one evening toward the end of this year and said that he thought it might be a good idea if I dropped out of the group as I didn’t seem to express many signs of being filled with the Holy Spirit. I asked him what he expected and he said that I might speak in tongues, show signs of ecstasy or pray fervently. I said that I thought all this to be rather irrelevant as none of it proved the depth of any experience I may have had. I had earlier told him about the experience I’d had on that first evening and I was now somewhat surprised by his attitude. I asked him if he thought his signs of the Spirit were somehow superior to God speaking directly to me.

That was, however, the end of my affair with Ivan’s group.

But this event and others during my time in the church, led me to continually question why I was there at all. Much later in my life I concluded that I was introduced to the church because it is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and my reaction would be the key to whether I progressed or not.

I am still married to Annette and we are driving to church. We are almost there this Sunday morning and are about to turn into the street in which the church is when I turn to Annette and say, “When I am 33 years old I have something to do.”

“Why do you say that,” she responded.

“I have no idea. I don’t even know why I have said it,” I reply.

I am 32 years old and I am at work. It is my lunch break and during my breaks I often read passages from the bible. I am sitting in the sun on a low brick wall and the bible is in my hand and open at the first chapter of Romans. I am about to begin reading when into my head comes an image of Jesus confronting Satan on the mountain just after his baptism by John.

Satan is saying to Jesus, “If you be the son of God turn these notes to be read.”
Hang on a minute, I think, that should be ‘turn these stones to bread’.

The phrase was repeated, quite adamantly, in my head.

“If you be the son of God turn these notes to be read.”

My eyes fell on the bible and I began to read. But to my surprise, rather than the conventional Romans message, the words suddenly took on different meanings in much the same way as happens with cryptic crosswords and I found myself reading a totally different story altogether.

This new message said that there had been much heated debate in the mystery school communities about the Mediterranean and lack of agreement had resulted in the need to hold a convocation with representatives from all parts of the Middle Eastern and European world to try and resolve the issue.

The issue at hand was, should the ancient teachings continue to be taught and recorded in the old manner, which was through guilds and trades such as masonry and carpentry, which led to the teachings being worked in many of the old cathedrals and other sacred buildings, or should the old methods be scrapped in favour of a new way. That new way was a system of encoded writing which would be used to form a new set of sacred books that would be the foundation for a new structure which would be available to all people and not require mystery schools or teachers.

In the end there had been no resolution. One group had carried on with the old system and became the monastics and mystics of Christendom as this was the only way they could survive the purges carried out by the new system as it tried to cleanse itself of the old ways. The others became the priests and teachers of the new system and the purgers of the old. They taught the mystery in open churches by preaching from the new writings and such symbols as the Stations of the Cross.

I am working in the factory with one other person. We are commercial knitting machine operators and I am 32 years old.

I am sitting among some very large and very expensive knitting machines; all of which are functioning fine. I am musing on some of the events of my life, such as are mentioned in the writing, and their relevance, if any, to the bible stories and my place in the church. As I reflect a quotation attributed to Jesus comes to mind.

“Let the dead bury the dead you follow me.”

Jesus was referring to Sadducees and Pharisees and other legalistic and literal minded people who could not get rid of their old ideas. The new is life, he is suggesting, the old is dead so let it die and be buried.

Then another passage came to mind.

“The kingdom of God is all about you and you see it not.”

Again he is referring to the old priests and their old order.

Then a quotation from the Apostle Paul comes to mind. He is attributed to have said,
“Be you transformed by the renewal of your mind.”
He also said, “When you are in Christ you are a new person, the old has passed away.”

These passages all ran together in my mind where they formed one sentence.

“The kingdom of God is all about you and you see it not so be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Let the old and dead get on with their old lives, they are dead anyway; as good as buried and in them there is no life. You are in Christ as a new person in a new world and for you the old world has passed away and no longer exists.”
I understood this as a confirmation of my Sonship and that as a result I now lived in a world and universe foreign to the church and conventional Christianity. So I should let all that old stuff go and move completely into this new world that I had been offered.

As I came to this conclusion a brilliantly bright white light flashed throughout the factory and I felt an intense emotion of love throughout my whole body as if each cell was embracing each other cell in fondness for each other. I raced over to the other person working nearby and breathlessly said,
“Did you see that!”

“Did I see what?” he asked.

“Oh! Nothing,” I reply, backtracking as fast as I could.

I never spoke another word from then through to the end of the shift. I was deep in thought about the event right up until I arrived home and then I went to say hello to Annette and tell her what had happened and discovered that I could not. Although I could grunt the odd word or two I could not string together a complete coherent sentence. I continued trying for about an hour and then wrote her a note asking her to take me to a friend we had in the church.

On arrival at our friends house I again tried to communicate only to find that nothing had changed and so I wrote another note and asked him to take me to the church and baptize me. I was sure that would cure the problem. He got on to the phone and rang a few other church members to come and be witnesses as this was a rule of the church- no baptism without witnesses. Then we set off and arrived at the church to find half a dozen members already there waiting for us.

The baptismal pool was uncovered, no sprinkling here, and we donned the baptismal gowns. Prayers were said by the witnesses and into the pool I went. I went completely under the water and when I arose from it, miracle of miracles, I could speak and converse in sentences again; what a relief. I was very surprised, however, to find that even though everyone there had seen the change in me none of them seemed to be the slightest bit interested in knowing how it had all begun and unfolded. So after trying for about ten minutes to explain everything I realised that I was looking at incomprehension on their faces. For them God was found in the bible and he did not act directly like that. I felt as if I was talking to the dead.

So I just said, “Let’s all have a cup of tea and biscuits,” and we did.

I am 33 years old and I am very angry. I am standing in my kitchen swearing at God and mentally shaking my fist at him. I have left the church, very shortly after the above mentioned incident. I had an argument with the Pastor one Sunday morning during the service. In the end he hadf cast me out of the church breathing the words, as I went,
“You are of the Devil and so I send you to him so that the Lord might chastise you.”

I was pleased to be out, for many reason including the above, and thought I could find my own way to the answers I wanted without the blindness of the dead.

But now I was beginning to wonder where all this was going. There had just been a massive flood in Bangladesh and over 100,000 people had been killed.

“If there is a God,” I was shouting, “Explain to me the point of all this kind of misery.” I ranted and raved on for a bit and wept quite a lot and then I said,
“If there be a God then explain all this to me. Explain the meaning of everything and if you can and I am able to enlighten even one other person then I will quite happily go to hell!”

I Shouldn’t have included that last bit. Oops!

That evening Annette came rushing through the door. She had been to her cousin Marcia’s place, the cousin I hadn’t met yet, and had been telling them about some of the ideas I had about God, my point of view regarding the cosmos as a whole, and the way I sometimes read meaning into biblical passages.

“They want to meet you,” she said. “Their vicar is there and they are all very interested in what you have to say and think you could contribute to what they are learning. They want to hear more from you.”

I don’t know why I gave in that night; I had resisted for years. But I found myself saying,
“O.K. I’ll go around. But I can’t see a vicar wanting to listen to me.”

It turned out that we had a very long and interesting conversation and they all, the vicar included, did seem to be very interested in what I had to say. In the end they invited me to meet a special person in their group. His name was Stephen.

“What is so special about Stephen,” I asked.

“Well actually,” the vicar replied, “He is a spirit that speak through a medium and about 2,000 years ago he was Stephen the first martyr for the Christian church.”

Well speak of the Devil I thought to myself. The pastor has got his wish and faster than he imagined I expect. I supposed that the next thing would be an introduction to witches and warlocks. Well the pastor had said he was sending me to the Devil and I had said I would happily go to hell and it seemed I was well on the road. But hang on I thought. This isn’t fair I haven’t been shown the answers to anything yet. To make matters worse the vicar is the parish priest of the church of St. Nicholas and St. Nicholas is the patron saint of pawnbrokers and his symbol of this, which is displayed on the church building, is the pawnbroker’s balls. Well I must have sold my soul to the Devil; wonderful!

ANOMALOUS REALITY

As well as being interested in the antiquities I have, since childhood, read up on physics and cosmology (used to be called astronomy before we all knew how impressive the universe really is). As an aside to these two studies I have developed an interest in U.F.Os. I have never developed an opinion about what they might be but have never really doubt their existence as people experiencing them are involved in some event and not all people are bad observers or prone to confusing what they see with Venus, weather balloons and the like. In fact I think many so called authorities who are forever down crying these things are themselves the victims of illusion and very poor rationalisation.

I had just been doing some research into the ideas proposed by the New Zealand commercial pilot, Bruce Cathy, and had concluded that he was probably wrong; at least what he said couldn’t be proved. It was late, about 10.30pm, and Annette had already gone to bed about an hour earlier. I now went to bed also.

As I worked night shift our bedroom was very heavily draped and no light could get through the windows and so it was always very dark. At that time we both smoked cigarettes and we both had a last cigarette in bed before we went to sleep. So I sat in the pitch dark and smoked my cigarette and all that could be seen was the glow of the hot ember.

Suddenly the room was filled with a large flying saucer. Our room was 4x7 metres but this object was at least 30m in diameter. It was grey metallic and of the classic double saucer shape. I could see the underside which was all metal and some of the upper surface which included a small windowed cupola at the very top centre. Obviously it could not all fit into the room and it hovered just a little over an arm’s length away from me and I could not touch it. The largest part of the saucer was outside and, interestingly, there it was not night and dark but a light and bright sunny day. Above the object there was blue sky and white clouds. I reached over to shake and wake Annette but she would not stir; I could not get her to wake and yet I shook her quite vigorously (this type of thing is reputed to happen quite often according to other U.F.O reports). I thought that I must be dreaming and so to try and find out if I was or not I plunged my cigarette ember into the palm of my hand and kept it there as long as I could bear. The object then disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared and the room was once again pitch black. Strangely, having put out my cigarette, I then went to sleep. In the morning I woke to one extremely painful hand which took many days to heal.

THE STAR ANOMALY

Then came the event I had prophesied for myself when I was 30 years old.

I was now 33 years old and I was working in the factory on my own. This was in itself unusual as it was contrary to New Zealand labour laws and the company I worked for was usually very particular in this respect. I ran 10 knitting machines and they were each very large with hundreds of cones of yarn to attend to. Each machine had thousands of moving parts which were all prone to break down at the slightest provocation and could cause havoc with the fabric they were making if they did.

This Saturday morning they were all running smoothly and so I decided it was time to sit and have a cup of tea. I drank a lot of tea in those days. I was about to go to my table amongst the machines to do this when I heard a voice.

The voice said, “Draw the creation.”

I looked about expecting to find someone had crept into the factory and was pulling my leg. But there was nobody there. Somehow I knew that even before I looked.

“Draw the creation,” the voice said again.

Feeling very stupid I said, “I cannot draw,” (I am really an awful artist).

“Draw the creation,” came the response.

I said, “I cannot bloody well draw”. I said this with as much force as I could muster considering I was talking to empty space.

“You can draw a bloody straight line can’t you,” the voice responded quite sharply.

“Well, yes, I can do that,” I agreed.

“Well then,” came the voice, “go and draw a straight line and I will guide you from there.”

Three hours later, after much guidance, the voice said to me,
“Now look at what you have.”

On my piece of paper I had drawn a six pointed star the same as the star of David. Crossing the centre of the star, from point to point, was a three line cross similar to the Catholic Pax sign. The star sat inside a hexagon inside a circle, inside a square. The circle was actually two circles one just a fraction smaller and sitting inside the other. These two circles were joined by extensions of the pax sign which divided the circle into six segments. These segments were then each divided in half and so the star was encompassed by a circle divided into 12 parts. Each alternate segment was shaded black so that there were six white and six black segments. The voice told me to think of the dark as being the night and the white as being the day. I should also name and number each pair ( one light and one dark) as being a complete day period. This mean that each pair made up one of six days.

“Where is the seventh day?” I asked.

“That is the centre of the circle and cross; it is a point, a rest. The point at the centre, then, is the day of rest,” said the voice.

With that I suddenly realised that the factory was silent and that all my machines had stopped. I thought that they would all have had breakages and created faults in the fabric, having been so long untended, and so I went to attend to them expecting the worst.

The fabric was piled up under them and had come close to being entangled in the massive weight rollers under each one. They had also run out of yarn but had not run off the needle beds. I was amazed; there were no breakages or fabric faults and all the fabric knitted equalled the amount I had been required to knit for those particular orders.
It took me about 1&1/2 hours to clean everything up and get the machines fit to run again. I then restarted them on new orders and went to have my lunch (not that I felt like eating much but I needed a cup of tea). I was somewhat awestruck about the event and was feeling a little sick. I really had no idea what was going on. Was I mad? I had no sooner sat down than the voice spoke once again.

“Add these words to your symbol.”

It then had me add about thirty words to various parts of the symbol. These included the seven day names and the numerals 1 to 7 it also included the 12 signs of the Zodiac, but there were also many more. When this was all completed the voice again said.

“Now look at what you have.”

Now I really did become a little frightened and began to wonder what I had got myself into. There before me, as plain as day, was the biblical story of Noah and his ark. It was not text as we know it but symbolic and being symbolic emphasised the unreality of the original story. As I realised this I also began to see other biblical stories in symbolic form also. I even saw the dove which landed on the Head of Jesus, and yes, there it was sitting on his head.

Although I had obviously seen the star of David before I had never seen a star like this one, or one with the same detail, names, signs or various other things around it. It was many months later that I learnt that the star I had drawn was the foundation of the Kabbala, an old Jewish mystical system of teaching and learning. Up to the time I learnt that I had never heard of the Kabbala nor had I had anything to do with any mystical forms of teaching.

At the end of this session with the voice I went through the same process with my machines with exactly the same result. Never before and at no time after that did I ever manage to go right through a shift with so little effort required to produce the fabric required of me. I couldn’t even, normally, go and hour without some sort of problem occurring.

I left that factory frightened but also feeling as if I was walking six feet off the ground and as if I had entered a totally different and new world.

THE MEDIUM ANOMALY

I am thirty four years old and I have left Annette. It is a story for another time but Marcia and I have just decided to live together. We have also just visited a friend and informed him and he has loaned us the keys to his caravan which is parked in a camping ground on the outskirts of Christchurch. This is very welcome for short term accommodation as we have nowhere to go. But there are no plates or knives and forks and he can’t remember what bedding is in it. We have no bedding, no plates, cutlery or groceries; we have a very large amount of nothing.

We are sitting in a restaurant having our first Chinese meal together. Over the coming decades there will be many more of these. Suddenly Marcia says,
“We have to go and see the medium.”

It is obvious that Marcia is feeling very stressed and although I really do not want to go I agree after a fairly short debate. I don’t have much time for mediums and consider most, if not all, to be charlatans. This is not the group medium but one we had visited only once before with some other members from the group. He did not have a spirit in the form of the group medium but was more of a fortune teller. He had made quite a name for himself in Christchurch and the group leader had heard of him and wondered if he might be able to add anything to our understanding of Stephen. We had only been the once so why would he be interested in us now; we weren’t even going to let him know we were coming.

On that previous visit 10 or 12 of us sat around his lounge room on the various chairs provided and the medium went round the room and spoke a few words to each person in turn. In general it was not of much consequence.

Marcia and her husband were sitting directly opposite Annette and myself and there were about 4 people between us on either side. When the medium got to me he said that I had some very important task to undertake and that I was going to go places and learn things that people had been unaware of for many thousands of years. In fact I was going where no man had ever been before. I didn’t know what think about that except that he could have said it to anybody. He then made a few comments to the people between Marcia and myself and then he stopped before her and said,

“You have to help your husband with his task. It is very important that you do this. He is the only one who can do this but you have to be his power source. You are like his battery.”

Marcia looked at him rather nonplussed. Her husband wasn’t doing anything of any consequence. The medium looked at her quizzically, then he turned and pointed at me and said,

“He is your husband isn’t he; you are married?”

Marcia said no I wasn’t and looked rather embarrassed as must I have.

“Then you soon will be,” said the medium and then he moved on to the next person as if nothing had happened and a bomb had not just exploded in the room.

So now here we were. We’d had our Chinese meal and then driven into the suburbs and arrived at the mediums house. We knocked on the door and it was flung open by the mediums wife who greeted us with,

“Thank God you are finally here. Come in, come in. He has been pacing the floor for hours wondering why you haven’t arrived.”

We enter the house and straight ahead, on the kitchen breakfast bar and on the kitchen table there are piles of all manner of things.

“Here,” said the Medium, obviously very pleased to see us, “Take all this you are going to need it.”

There were blankets, sheets, pillows, pots, plates and just about every other thing one needs to set up house.

“You are going to need all this over the next few days or weeks while you get yourselves set up,” he said.

After a cup of tea and some cakes and a discussion about the events we leave somewhat astounded by what has happened and we head out to our friends caravan. That was only the second time we have met the medium and his wife.

THE PETER AND EILEEN CADDY ANOMALY

Marcia and I have been together a couple of years and we are now living in a rented flat in the city. We spent nearly nine very eventful months in the caravan park but eventually the weather and some of the antics of the park owner got the better of us and we moved into town.

We had been in the camp a very short time when the owner came to us and said that he thought we would be much more comfortable, during the coming winter, in a van he had and could let us use. Our friends van was small, old and cold and we appreciated the camp owners offer so we shifted house that very day.

The caravan park was right by the sea at the entrance to a large lagoon that was fed by the largest river in Canterbury. With the weather coming straight off the sea it could be very damp and cold. The winds could be raw and we often had cold fogs that hung around for days. So the bigger more modern van would be much better for us.

We had been in this van for about a fortnight and had already learnt a few tricks for surviving a winter in a caravan but we were having problems with gumboots and raincoats. If we left them outside they became wet and unwearable and if we took them inside they made the caravan damp and uninhabitable. We were just discussing this problem when the owner knocked on the van door and came inside.

“See that damaged caravan over there,” he said, pointing to a van sitting under a large pine tree in the centre of the camp ground. “That van had some of the tree fall on it and it is quite badly damaged,” he continued. “The man who owns it seems to have walked away from it but he owes me rent and the amount he owes keeps increasing as long as the van stays here. I really don’t think I’m going to get anything out of him. So I have decided to take the awning from the van as it at least is in good nick. You can have the use of the awning if you wish as it will fit on this van. That would mean that you will have somewhere to keep your wet weather gear and a dry place for other storage.”
We thanked him very much and couldn’t really believe our good luck and so the awning went up straight away.

After moving to the city we met a young woman, Vicki, whose male friend, Paul, is spending some time at Findhorn which is a community on the Firth of Moray in Scotland. It calls itself a university of light which is teaching people about ‘green and new age’ philosophy among other things and how to communicate with spirit. This community was founded by Peter and Eileen Caddy and had grown in and then out of the caravan park they had lived in after they had left their former spouses. The caravan park, like ours, was somewhat run down but where ours was on the banks of a lagoon theirs was beside the Firth of Moray. Other than that there were many similarities from the river alongside, to the shingle banks separating them from the sea, to the wet, cold and foggy weather. By the time we met Vicki Findhorn had been operating for many years and had outgrown the caravan park and the university now owned some of the surrounding land.

The Findhorn foundation published a few books about the Caddys and the affairs of the foundation and we had read one of these and had commented that the Caddys and ourselves seemed to have shared many similar experiences.

With Vicki and a few others we formed a committee to arrange and fund a visit to Christchurch by Peter and Eileen and it happened quite quickly.

When they arrived they spoke in the Christchurch town hall and held workshops in the Christchurch Arts Centre. Peter Caddy gave a lecture in the Great Hall and Marcia and I attended this. Peter spoke for about an hour and most of what he said we had already read in his book. But towards the end of his talk he said,

“Eileen and I had not been in the caravan park very long, probably about a fortnight, when we realised that we had a problem with our wet weather gear. If we left it outside it got wet and if we brought it in it made the caravan mouldy. We were just discussing this when the camp owner knocked on the door and came in.”

“You see that van over there,” he said. “It has been damaged by a large tree branch falling on it and the owner seems to have abandoned it. He owes me rent and I will probably never get it so I am going to take the awning from it. It is almost new and in very good condition, will fit this van, and so you are quite welcome to have the use of it to keep your wet weather gear in.”

THE PAUL ANOMALY NO.1

Paul, the friend of Vicki, having left Findhorn had now arrived in Christchurch.

Marcia and I had a small pop up style camper trailer and we often spent weekends in it at the camp ground where our new life had begun. We were there on this occasion and Paul was spending the day and evening with us.

Although Paul had spent most of his time at Findhorn trying to learn their spirit communication techniques he admitted that he had never really understood what they were on about. He had earlier described their procedures to us and we said that we did that all the time and that there was nothing magical or very special about it and anybody could do it; we called it receiving. We had agreed that on that coming weekend in the caravan park we would explain all to him and assured him that even he would be able to do it.
So we had spent the day explaining receiving to Paul and we told him about some of the times we had used it and the results we had achieved. Now we were sitting in the camper at about 7pm. About us was the clutter required to live in a small van and the only place left for our portable radio, no TV in those days, was right by my right elbow.
We were explaining to Paul one of the methods we used for receiving and we gave him a demonstration. We asked a question and within seconds we had received an answer which was, without a shred of doubt, a response to our question. Pauls eyes lit up and he got quite excited.

“Good Lord,” he said. ”With powers like that we could rule the world.”

I immediately felt an urge to switch on the radio. As soon as I did a pop song blared out very loudly. Among the words which immediately issued forth were these,
“We are not as smart as we like to think we are.”

The song ended and I turned the radio off. Paul’s face had gone very pale and he looked chastened.

“O.K.” he said, “I get the message.”

THE PAUL ANOMALY NO.2

Paul had lived with us for a year and during that time we had written a book together. The joint authors were Marcia, myself, Vicki and Paul. Together we would have receiving sessions during which we would record any intuitions, insights, or receivings concerning the characters in the book and their adventures. The purpose of the book was to enlighten other people about the techniques of receiving. While in Findhorn Paul had been told, by a fortuneteller, that he was going to meet a man, that he would have conflict with, who would take part with him in writing a book. Paul and I did clash quite often and so I guess I must have been that person.

The two main characters in the book were an Australian man and an Iranian woman. They had formed a relationship and were waiting for a residency permit for the woman which would allow her to live in Australia. In the meantime they were having numerous interesting adventures as a result of trying to receive from spirit. The woman had two children, in Iran, and she was having trouble with her husband, also still in Iran, who wanted custody of the children.

Paul eventually left and we had heard nothing of him, or the book, for about a year. There was, one evening, a knock on our front door and on opening it we discovered a man and woman standing there.

“We are looking for short term accommodation,” they said.

“I beg your pardon,” I responded.

“We want somewhere to stay for a short while,” they came back.

“What makes you think that we are likely to put you up?” I asked.

“Well your name is in the visitor book at Tauhara as being available for putting up people such as us,” they said.

We told them they had better come in and after much question and answer it became clear that during his travels about the country Paul had visited Tauhara which is reputed as being some kind of spiritual centre overlooking Lake Taupo. Here there was a visitors book and alongside his comments about Tauhara he had noted that we would put up travelling spiritual pilgrims. This was the first we had heard of it and he certainly did not have our permission to do so. We were quite angry about it but this did not help this couple who had landed on our doorstep. So we told them they could stay the night and we would rethink it in the morning. In all they stayed with us for about 10 days. They were both quite nice people but the woman had a knack for upsetting me by condemning just about everything I ate as being very bad for my health.

During conversations with them it became obvious that the man was an Australian and the woman was an Iranian. She was having a battle with her husband, who was still in Iran, over the custody of their two children. She had applied for a residency permit for Australia and while they were waiting for this to come through they had decided to have an adventure in New Zealand.

THE SOFA ANOMALY

The Caddy’s have come and gone but Paul has not yet arrived. We are still living in the flat and just before Paul arrived we had moved into the first house we owned together.
While we were living in th flat we began running seminars for anyone interested in learning some of the things we had received. We mainly attracted ‘new age’ people. Both Marcia and I had difficulty handling some of the ‘somewhat less than rational’ thinking of some of these people; many of whom believed in fairies at the bottom of the garden and that all you had to do was believe hard enough, called positive thinking, and you could make anything happen. It was called manifestation but in many cases it was just bludging off other people.

It was a Saturday afternoon, about 1pm and I was just finishing painting the kitchen. The owner of the flat has provided the paint and I have provided the brush power; between us we have made the flat quite presentable.

The first of our seminar people have arrived just as I am cleaning up. He has been here before and he knows what the flat used to look like and he is familiar with me.

“Well I’m glad to see that you have manifested some paint” he says, “I’ve manifested some for my flat as well,” he continues, “but I can’t seem to get it to manifest onto the walls.”

“That’s what brushes are for,” I snap at him.

And with that he disappears into the lounge. By the time I have cleaned the brushes, washed up and got ready for the seminar I have had time to think about this encounter and am somewhat riled at the stupidity of the fellow.

Marcia and I had not been together, or in the flat, long enough to have gathered together much in the way of lounge furniture and most of our guests sat on bean bags, kitchen chairs, or on the floor.

So feeling that some strange indefinable injustice needed to be rectified I storm into the lounge in which there are now 8 to 10 people waiting.

“Manifestation,” I blurt out, “I’ll show you bloody manifestation! What we need here, I think you would all agree, is a bloody sofa to sit on.”

Immediately after the last word comes out there is a knock on our front door, which just happens to open into the lounge. So in the presence of all seminar members I open the door to find my landlord standing there.

“My wife and I,” he says, “Have just bought ourselves a new lounge suite and it has just been delivered. We find that we are not able to fit it all into the lounge along with all our old furniture. We wondered if you would like our old sofa?”

A BEVY OF MINOR ANOMALIES

Is there such a thing as a bevy of anomalies, minor or otherwise and is there such a thing as a minor miracle. When does the miraculous event become so extraordinary as to become a major miracle. Miracles, by their very nature, are neither major or minor; they must all be of an equality as they are all outside the bounds of normality and break the known laws of physics and are outside space and time.

Miracles are anomalies and the anomalies that I have been describing also stand outside time and space explanations. That does not mean they did not happen but it does mean that we need to seek an explanation other than the present assumed laws of the universe.

In fact all that I have described so far and any I describe from this point on are merely those in which other people other than ourselves took part (with the exception of the star anomaly). They can, therefore, be researched and the validity of my report proven.

Even with the star experience I did notify a friend immediately after leaving the factory and he and other friends will verify that until that day I had never done anything like that and that I had no knowledge of the Kabbala.

The following anomalies are events that happened but they don’t quite fit the pattern of the previous examples in that they might be put down to our over active imagination. We would not accept that but have no way to verify our report.

Marcia and I had been at the motor camp for just a short while and it was now a weekend and Marcia’s youngest son was staying with us. He was just 5 years old but at this point he was down by the lagoon trying to catch some fish with his toy rod and line. He had been gone a wee while and we were enjoying the warm, though wintery, sun. Suddenly the young man reappears looking quite distraught.

“There is a boat out in the water,” he says. “The people have fallen into the water and they might drown.”

We ran to where he had been fishing to see if there was anything we could do to help but there was nobody or boat in the water. We put it down to childish fantasy and went back to our books and sun.

Half an hour later a helicopter flew overhead and we can hear it hovering just off the coast. We go to see what is happening and just at the mouth to the lagoon a boat has overturned and people are in the water; they are being rescued by the helicopter and local boaties.

We have been at the camping ground for about two months. During the first couple of weeks we used my company van as transport but Annette had claimed that and so for the rest of the time we have been without transport. To get to the shops or visit people we have had to rely on Marcia’s older sons friends or our own friends and so we have not actually travelled very far. Every day I have walked to work and in the evenings walked the same 5 kilometres home again; except I didn’t.

Each morning and evening I would set out to walk the distance and every time a car would stop and I would be asked if I wanted a ride. I never put my thumb out and I was never pick up by the same car twice. But the whole thing was becoming quite burdensome for both of us. I was fortunate in that I got out to my work but Marcia was stuck in the camp almost 24 hours a day every day of the week. So we decided the time had come to buy a car but as neither of us had access to our bank accounts, as they were joint with our former spouses, we were somewhat short of money and all we had was a small amount we had saved from the time we had moved into the caravan. This amounted to the princely sum of $250.00.

We agreed that we were not going to get much of a car for that money and would be lucky if it was even registered or warranted. But we went to a friend in the camp and asked if we could borrow his newspaper and we looked in the cars for sale column, anyway. Would you believe it there was one car there, a 1957 Morris Oxford, and the car sales yard wanted exactly $250.00 for it.

“That has to be our car,” I said to Marcia.

“Yes,” she agreed, “but how are we going to get into town to get it. It’s 30 Kms and it is now nearly midday. It will probably be gone before we get there. We can’t afford a bus or taxi fare as well as buying the car; so what are we going to do.”

She had no sooner got the last words out when her son arrived in his friends car. We dashed out and told them we needed to get into town poste haste and they agreed to take us. That problem solved.

We arrived at the car sales yard to see a number of people gathered around the car in question and they had the motor running; well that worked anyway. I went straight into the office and said to the salesman,

“Here’s your $250.00 I have just purchased the Morris Oxford. It was warranted and registered and it did have faults but it was ours.

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The caravan park was an odd place; we liked it but it was odd. It was owned by an ex builder from another part of the country and he had brought all his building equipment, tools, machinery, timber and miles of bric-a-brac with him. He intended to build cabins and motel units but never got around to it. Then he bought a cheap lot of concrete building blocks and there were stacks of these all over the place as well. The place looked more like a house wreckers yard more than it did a camping ground. But we liked the owner and his wife and we got on well together; it became a special place for us, warts and all, and we often went back for weekends and other holidays long after we stopped living there.

The camp was well outside the city limits and not connected to the city sewage disposal system and used septic tanks instead. These had to be pumped out from time to time and this was normally done by a contractor and then disposed at a council dump by him. But the camp owner was short on cashflow.

It had been a very dark and stormy night with wind raging and the rain hammering down. The next morning, which turned out to be bright and sunny, Marcia got out of bed and went to the laundry/toilet block. There were a number of people already there and they seemed to be waving their hands about and be concerned about something at the end of the camp.

“What’s going on?” asked Marcia.

She was told that during the night, when nobody else was about or could hear because of the storm, the owner had pumped out the septic tanks and pumped the muck on to a piece of waste land at the bottom end of the camp.

Marcia was furious. Apart from the smell and the fact that many of us took exercise walks over this land, the health risks were enormous. She went back to the caravan, stomped inside, picked up her bible and said,

“Well you have shown us some pretty remarkable things so far. So what have you got to say about this filthy mess?”

She let the bible fall open wherever it would and put her finger on the page that opened. She then looked at the verse she had her finger on and it said.

“Now is the time to leave the land of Shittim.”

There is a procedure that most people use when shifting and looking for a flat and it all takes some time. We followed none of that procedure.

I arrived home from work and Marcia was already packed and waiting to go; she had informed the owner that we were going and she told me the story and demanded that we leave immediately.

“We have been given our marching orders by the Shittim passage,” she said. “So we had better get going.”

We had no idea where we were going or where we would spend the night. I suppose at last resort we might have booked into a motel but that would have eaten into our valuable and meagre savings. I knew of another camping ground that I thought might be worth a try but it was in one of the suburbs of Christchurch and so quite a long way off. We set off and eventually found ourselves travelling down the road that led to the camping ground; but we never made it.

“Stop,” said Marcia, “I have just seen a sign outside some flats back there which said that one of them was for rent.”

I turn around and drive back to the flats and they look like they could be quite nice and therefore a bit out of our range. But we decide it is probably worth a try. We certainly didn’t have enough money for rent, bonds and advance payments. We knocked on the door and an elderly man opened it. We told him that we were interested in renting his flat and he said that it was around the back but that we should come in and talk about it. We went inside and met his equally elderly wife.

We instantly liked them and we all got on well together and they gave us tea and cakes while we talked. Eventually they got around to discussing the flat and they said that they liked us and as we were short of money they would forgo the bond and fortnights advance rent and all we would have to pay was the first week. Well this was very nice of them and how could we refuse their offer. So we went round the back to see the flat we were going to rent. It certainly was nowhere near as good as those on the road front and it would need a lot of tidying up. But who were we to argue having been told to Leave the land of Shittim; this seemed to be it and so we said yes we would take it. It was certainly better than a manger when you can’t get into the inn; it was our home for the next three years and it was here that the sofa anomaly took place.

We have, long ago, shifted out of the flat and are in our own house. Our friend, the Anglican vicar mentioned much earlier and leader of the group to which we had belonged so long ago, had gone to the West Coast to visit the man who had been the medium in the group; there had been no group sessions for many years. Marcia and I are sitting in our lounge, on another sofa, wondering what the vicar and medium are discussing. We decide to do some receiving to try and find out.

We do a meditation during which we ask ‘the universe’ (at that time we don’t even know what it is we are communicating with) to tell us what is going on in that house on the West Coast.

At the end of the meditation we pick up various printed items and allow them to open where they will. Marcia has opened a copy of a newspaper which is a monthly publication of the church to which another friend belongs. It is full of information about the doings of the church but also has some inspiring writings from other branches of the church. On the page that Marcia has opened to there is a fairly long poem. It is about trees and birds and how the birds nest in the trees and it seems to be likening the trees to the evolutionary tree of all life and the birds to some aspect of the ultimate creator which in some manner behave as messengers between the creator and ourselves. The poem also includes five musical notes.

We were none the wiser but accepted this as our receiving and decided that all we could do was wait and see what transpired.

When our vicar friend returned home he found that his wife had dreamt a dream that she found to be quite potent for some reason. In it she had seen five stones. Then, the next day, the vicar visited a local school as part of his normal work and there he found that one class of children had created a large paper flying saucer to which there were five streamers attached. Then, that evening, he visited us.

We told him what we had done and what we had received and he was quite stunned by it for it included the five notes.

He told us that during his discussion with the medium there had been a trance session and the spirit, Stephen, had come through and spoken in what appeared to be a foreign language (not the first time this had happened). But during that same trance session they had also spoken about U.F.Os as the medium had recently experienced something and had wondered if Stephen could enlighten him about it. Stephen had said that the U.F.Os were messengers come to help.

Marcia and I had, form some years – for various reasons, called U.F.Os ‘the birds of the air’ and our poem spoke of the birds of the air roosting in the trees and how they were there as messengers from the universal creator. The vicar’s wife had seen five stones, there were five stones in our poem and we had five notes (an anagram of stones). The vicar, some years earlier, had become very interested in the Kabbala, not my form of it, and referred to it often in respect of his own studies. One name for the Kabbala is the tree of life and various parts of the Kabbala are called stones, among other things. Was Stephen suggesting that he and the messengers were in some way connected to the Kabbala? But what really unsettled the vicar was the five notes for these were the same notes that were so important in the movie ‘Close Encounters of The Third kind’ which was all about U.F.Os.

I have been transferred, by the company I now work for, to Wellington; Marcia and I have lived there for nearly a year. During that time we have been visited by her youngest son, by the vicar and a couple of other friends from Christchurch. During our stay we have put an enormous amount of time and effort into studying the Essenes; we had become very interested in them and their philosophy. Marcia’s son was with us for the school holidays and this day we had been doing the touristy things with him and he was tired and had gone to bed. We were discussing how we had concluded that the Essenes had to have been Kabbalists and have been familiar with the Kabbala symbol known as the tree of life. We concluded that they must have structured their organizations and meetings as if everyone in the monastery were a finger on the hands of God and as if they themselves were those hands. We went to bed quite late that night as we had discussed this matter in depth because our own philosophy was trending in the same direction.

In the morning we were woken by noises coming from the lounge and on investigation found that they were being made by Marcia’s son. He had obviously been awake and up for some time as he had a completed coloured crayon drawing before him. At this time he was about ten years old and just beginning to learn an art he became quite good at as he progressed through school; but even at this time the work he has produced is very good In his drawing there is a tree with brown bark and green leaves and there are human figures by the tree and over all there are two hands coming out of clouds above the tree. Marcia’s son says’

“This is Adam and Eve and this is the tree of life and those are the hands of God.”

We are astounded, but also a bit wary. Had he actually been asleep when we thought he was or had he been listening to us.

With that thought in mind I go to the gate and collect the mail. There is a letter from our friend Margaret in Christchurch. In her covering note she says she is including a photocopy of a page from a book she has just been reading. She doesn’t know what we have been up to but wonders if it might be of interest to us. She asks us to let her know what we think.

On the photocopy there is both text and a picture; the text is there to explain the picture. But for us the text is of little consequence for the picture says it all.

It was just black and white with the black meant to portray the darkness of space and set in this darkness were points of white meant to represent the stars. Then, set among the stars, was a picture of the earth; it was one of those that had been taken by the American astronauts on their journeys to and from the moon. On one side of the planet was a naked woman and on the other said a naked man and the planet was cradled in two hands as if these hands were those of the creator. The hands, however, were not ordinary hands, for although at first glance they looked quite normal closer inspection showed that the fingers, knuckles and nails were made up of images of animals, birds, fish and plants and all were depicting the evolutionary tree of life.