Spiritual Lessons

An Interview with Matthew Parvis, Ph.D., author of Glimpses of Heaven: Spiritual Lessons of Midlife.

What makes Glimpses of Heaven different from other books about midlife?

First of all, midlife is not a crisis, which is how most books – spiritual or psychological – approach midlife. Midlife is not about middle-age or the middle point of years lived. Midlife is that point between the life you used to have and the life you will have next. Midlife happens any time that your old life is gone and you have to, willing or not, create a new one. Midlife experiences include divorce, moving, job changes, and any other experience where we start over emotionally, physically, or spiritually, and it's usually all three at once.

I had a mother of a college student tell me her son, after reading the book said, "I didn't think this would apply to me but it does. I just moved out on my own for the first time and I'm having a midlife experience!" People give the book to their grown children who are going through divorce and last week a mother in her 80s and daughter in her 60s were both wanting to read it at the same time. They bought two. We are having midlife experiences throughout our life and each time we go through one we are given new spiritual lessons.

What do you mean by the "spiritual lessons" of midlife?
That relates to the main title, "Glimpses of Heaven." Any period of change as I've described involves a death of something, a permanent loss of an identity, role, or phase of life. From a psychological viewpoint this means we must move through the "stages of grief" before creating a new "normal" life after the loss or change. We need to heal, recover, and re-launch. From a metaphysical viewpoint each of these experiences offers the individual an opportunity to consciously face and actively participate in the divine creative process. There is a story I tell in the book that actually comes from pioneer hypnotherapist, Milton Erickson. He describes the "room of a thousand demons" where new monks must face their personal demons - fear, anxiety, abandonment and such. The only thing that will enable them to reach the door on the other side of the room is to "keep their feet moving." The illusionary "demons" come to distort our thinking, shroud our heart, and keep us suffering in our drama. If we choose to go through the whole transformative midlife process with awareness there are these incredible "glimpses of heaven." In such moments each person has the opportunity for great growth, deep wisdom, new learning, and a greater sense of the reality of God.

Why did you write “Glimpses of Heaven?”
This book wrote me. I was working on three other books and living an entirely different life on Maui when everything collapsed in my own life. In order to more fully understand what I was going through I kept writing about the process from three perspectives: my physical experience, the psychological and emotional process I was going through, and the metaphysical principles I was consciously applying to "keep my feet moving" into a new life. I felt both called and qualified to write the book. I have a Ph.D. and 20 years experience as a therapist. I've been the minister of a large New Thought church. I was going through one of life's more significant midlife experiences. I had the opportunity of being able to live it, observe it, and write about it from a personal, spiritual and psychological point of view.

Many writers I admire, Henry David Thoreau, Richard Bach, Robert Fulgham, even Dave Barry have all written from their firsthand experience of life. I think Thoreau put it best when he wrote, "I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives." It's really simpler than it sounds: I tell the stories collected along my journey. Each chapter is a stepping-stone laid out in careful order to light the path from the life that was to the life that will be.

If you could give people one principle or idea from this book that would be of use to them right now what would it be?

I wrote in the book that there are two kinds of pain: "the pain we go through that removes the obstacles to love and lets us experience greater love, joy, and compassion and the pain we stay in when we attempt to control the outside world to make ourselves safe." This book is obviously about the former process. If you will stay present to and honor both the spiritual and psychological processes you can develop the needed wisdom to create a new life of great joy and genuine peace.

Matthew Parvis, Ph.D. is the minister of Lighthouse New Thought Church in Marietta, GA (www.lighthousenewthoughtchurch.org). Glimpses of Heaven: Spiritual Lessons of Midlife may be ordered from amazon.com.