Nova Scotia is fucked Part II
Making sense of angels and demons
By Peter Duffy
THE PRIEST listens intently to my bizarre story.
Haltingly, I describe to Father George Leach how, the Friday night before Remembrance Day, a malevolent entity all in black materialized on top of me and proceeded to assault me as I waited for sleep.
This is awkward and truly embarrassing and I’m hugely relieved that he seems to be taking me seriously.
George is director of the Jesuit Centre of Spirituality in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Halifax. He and I met a few years ago and hit it off, so I’ve turned to him now, hoping he can shed light on what happened to me that terrifying night.
I need to know, what was that awful thing and how did it even find me?
Because I’m firmly convinced it wasn’t a dream; that I really was visited by something so evil that it left me emotionally bruised and filled with alarm for days.
George asks me to try to remember what else was happening in my life at the time of the attack, something that might have triggered the emergence of this "symbol," as he calls my demon.
I ponder his question. "The only thing I can think of," I reply finally, "is my growing awareness of a hardness that’s creeping into my attitude towards people less fortunate than me, and how it’s appearing in my writing."
"If you’re moving that way," he says slowly, "it could be that you’re being warned, ‘What way am I living my life?’ "
The dream could be a call to be more compassionate, he adds. "In a sense, is it calling you back to something?"
"Father, it wasn’t a dream," I protest. "It was so profound, it had to be real. It was a demon of some kind!"
George asks for my definition of a demon.
"They’re not human," I say. "They’re evil forces that can take human shape. They’re from the dark side and, scariest thing of all, I don’t believe in them, so how can this thing even exist?"
George suggests my experience has made me aware of energies both inside and outside ourselves.
"We talk about energies," he says, "evil energies, good, bad, kind and compassionate energies. These energies are there. Call them angels and demons, call them energies, call them whatever words you want to put on it. . ."
I interrupt before he can finish. "But they’re really there?" I challenge.
"In the realm I live in, from Revelation, they are there," he assures me.
"So, what I saw, it could’ve been real?"
"It could be real in a sense it could be a real dream, or is it real from outside of you?"
There’s a war on, says the priest; there’s a certain battle of love, and lack thereof, happening all the time. What we have to discern is whether it’s happening inside or outside ourselves.
George agrees it’s entirely possible that I actually did have a visitor that night, in the Christian sense of the idea. "Those are possible. No question, those are possible."
What you must do, he repeats, is discern whether it was real or a dream.
"Either way, it affected you," he notes. "You came away embarrassed and with this feeling of terror."
I continue to push him. "But from all I’ve described, do you think it was real?"
"I can’t discern whether it was real or not real, from the way you talk. I know you want me to say yes. . . . All things are possible but be careful, whether it was real outside you or happening inside you, through a dream situation, it had an effect on you. That’s what’s important, I think."
"Was it a warning?" I ask, suddenly subdued. "Was it a foreshadowing?"
"It’s a temptation," he replies. "There’s a temptation, in other words, a prompting to not do the good; a prompting to not live out of love and peace but a prompting to live and be afraid, and not relate well and not do the good."
He reminds me that God wants us to live at peace with ourselves and others, unlike the forces of evil that live to continually chip away at us in small ways.
God won’t allow demons to overpower the human person, he says.
"God’s love is stronger than the dreams. Angels are stronger than demons."
I frown. "So where was my angel that Friday night?"
Perhaps that angel has manifested itself in another way, he says, pointing out that I seem to be working through the whole jolting experience by talking, first with my wife, now with others.
"That’s the goodness that’s coming forward out of this, so you could be much stronger."
By the time I take my leave of George, I’m feeling better. It’s been three weeks since that terrifying night and I’m more like my old self, except for one dread that I still can’t quite outrun.
Will "it" return?