Lily Dale

    One afternoon in the summer of 1979, I went to Lily Dale with a high school friend (we also went to college together), Lynne, and a co-worker of hers. Lily Dale is a spiritualist community in Western New York. At the time, people would go to Lily Dale to visit the mediums who lived there – and the mediums would connect with the dead - giving messages and essentially, telling your fortune. It is my understanding that the same is true of Lily Dale today.

      As usual, I did not have a lot of cash to spend on such things, but I remember visiting three different people, for $6 each.

     I think that of the three of us, I looked the most skeptical, and so I was the one who got the direst predictions of them all, “I see you in a long, dark tunnel, but there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.”

     One medium told me there was a young man at my shoulder presenting me with a flower. Did I not know who that young man was? The only young man I knew who had passed away was one of my brother's friends who had died in a car accident. I wanted to scream, “nice guess, almost everyone knows a young person who has died in a car accident!” And then I thought how odd it would be for my brother's friend to have nothing better to do in the afterlife than follow me around hoping I'd notice the flower he was trying to give me!

     The same medium also asked if my mother had frequent horrible headaches – and I said no. She was way off there.

     When I got home that day, Mom wanted to know exactly what was said, and she tried to interpret everything. The headache comment freaked her out.

     Then Mom mentioned that Dad did not approve of fortune tellers. His Catholic upbringing had taught him that fortune-telling was breaking the first commandment which is “no false gods”! At first I was shocked. No one takes fortune-telling seriously how could it be like believing in another god?! And then I realized that putting any thought into fortune-telling at all is kind of like putting one's faith in something other than God.

     Up until that time, I always thought the first commandment would always be the easiest one to keep.

     In the years since then, I have come to realize the first commandment is, instead, the easiest one to break. 

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