Acknowledgments

First, last, and always, I want to acknowledge the Source of everything that is in this book, everything that is life—and of life itself. Second, I want to thank my spiritual teachers, who include the saints and sages of all religions.

Third, it is clear to me that all of us could produce a list of people who have touched our lives in ways so meaningful and so profoundly as to defy categorization or description; people who have shared with us their wisdom, told us their truth, suffered us our faults and our foibles in their infinite patience, and who have seen us through all of it; seeing the best in us there was to see. People who, in their acceptance of us, as well as their refusal to accept the parts of us they knew we really didn’t choose, caused us to grow; to get bigger somehow.

The people, in addition to my parents, who have been there for me in that way include Samantha Gorski, Tara-Jenelle Walsch, Wayne Davis, Bryan Walsch, Martha Wright, the late Ben Wills, Jr., Roland Chambers, Dan Higgs, C. Berry Carter II, Ellen Moyer, Anne Blackwell, Dawn Dancing Free, Ed Keller, Lyman W. (Bill) Griswold, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and dear, dear Terry Cole-Whittaker.

I want to include in this group my former mates, whose privacy I wish to respect by not naming them here, but whose contributions to my life are deeply grasped and appreciated.

And as gratitude for the gifts I have received from all these wonderful people swells my heart, I am especially warmed by the thought of my helpmate, spouse, and partner, Nancy Fleming Walsch, a woman of extraordinary wisdom, compas­sion and love, who has shown me that my highest thoughts about human relationships do not have to remain fantasies, but can be dreams come true.

Fourth and finally, I want to recognize some people I have never met, but whose lives and work have impacted me with such force that I cannot let this moment pass without thanking them from the depth of my being for the moments of exquisite pleasure, insight into the human condition, and pure, simple Lifegefeelkin (I made up that word!) they have given me.

You know what it is like when someone has given you a taste, a glorious moment, of what is really true about life? For me, most of these have been creative or performing artists, because it is from art that I receive inspiration, to which I retreat in moments of reflection, and in which I find that which we call God most beautifully expressed.

And so I want to thank... John Denver, whose songs touch my soul and fill it with new hope about how life could be; Richard Bach, whose writings reach into my life as if they were my own, describing so much of what has been my experience; Barbra Streisand, whose directing, acting, and musical artistry grips my heart time and time again, causing it to feel what is true, not merely know it; and the late Robert Heinlein, whose visionary literature has raised questions and posed answers in ways no one else has dared even approach.

For

ANNE M. WALSCH

Who not only taught me that God exists,

but opened my mind to the wondrous truth

that God is my best friend;

and who was far more than a mother to me,

but gave birth in me

to a longing for and a love of God,

and all that is good.

Mom was

my first meeting

with an angel.

And for

ALEX M. WALSCH

Who told me repeatedly throughout my life,

“There’s nothing to it,”

“You don’t have to take No for an answer,

“You make your own luck,”

and

“There’s more where that came from.”

Dad was

my first experience

of fearlessness.