A few weeks ago, the Pacific NW section of The Seattle Times featured an article by Erik Lacitis about UFO tracker, Peter Davenport. For twenty-eight years, Davenport has spent seven days a week logging UFO reports for his National UFO Reporting Center - 180,000 reports. His interest in UFOs started when, in 1954, at the age of six, he was at a drive-in movie theater with his family. "Suddenly there was a disturbance," he reports, "with people running and shouting. I looked out the right side of our Studebaker and saw the most incredible thing I have ever seen in my life. It was so bright that it looked like the sun, shaped like one of those English rugby balls. It rose straight up and dropped down behind the movie screen. Then it was gone into the northern sky."
A friend was convinced that he saw a UFO - also at a drive-in theater. (My father, who was the projectionist at many drive-in theaters, never saw a UFO.) Here is his report: "It was early in the summer of 1966 and I was at the Lawrence Park Drive-In Movie Theater near Erie, Pennsylvania. It was a clear night with many stars. About midnight, there was a light in the sky, far to the left of the screen, that seemed to be getting brighter as if coming toward us. It was not near the light of the movie projection. Suddenly it went extremely fast from east to west and again stopped. I got out of the car to see better and it hovered far off in the atmosphere for about 15 seconds. It then started south slowly and then suddenly accelerated in an easterly direction. It again stopped, hovered momentarily and then went south, disappearing below the horizon.
I have no explanation for what it could have been but am absolutely certain it was neither a jet nor a satellite… the moves and speed were far too fast and angular for either.
Later that summer, there were several reported sightings of UFOs around Erie and the Peninsula. I cannot speak for what others may have seen, but to this day am convinced that what I saw was beyond our technology – past or present!"
Copy and paste these links for more information:
UFO sightings appear and disappear in the Erie County region - Hagen History Center (eriehistory.org)
https://www.eriehistory.org/blog/ufo-sightings-appear-and-disappear-in-the-erie-county-region
(16) Watch | Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=628428110507706
Some UFO sightings are easily explained, but others remain mysteries. It's sort of like God. There are people who can't believe in anything they haven't experienced, in anything for which there isn't solid evidence. And then there are the people who are convinced that God talks to them. I have heard some interesting stories. As with UFOs, I'm not going to say they couldn't have happened, but sometimes I'm a little suspicious as when a past Vice President of the United States claimed God was talking to him. The message always seemed to be in support of what the VP wanted to do.
A former minister of a church I belonged to held a prayer retreat. He said that if your prayer elicited an unexpected response, if a word or idea popped into your mind that surprised you, that could be God talking to you. Well, he said it was God talking to you, but I wasn't fully convinced. We were all told to go off on our own to pray and to listen. I sat in my car and started to chat with God. "Remember that time when I went to Shorey's Bookstore to buy Maud (an old book I had just read and loved), and my mother told me how unlikely it was that they would have such an old, out-of-print book, and I went into the shop and found the biography section, and I reached out, without even reading the titles, and I picked the book right off of the shelf, and my mother was STUNNED, but I just told her I was going to get the book, and I did, so what was so surprising? Yes, I guess it was pretty strange, and when I told the story once during Bible Study, as a joke, you know, people said it was you leading me to the book. So was it?" Then, after I had said all that to God, not expecting anything to happen, a word popped into my head, "playful". Playful? I had never, ever thought of God as playful! And when that word came into my head, I felt so strange and tears came out of eyes, not just dribbling down my face, but SPRINGING out of my eyes. Ballistic tears is what someone called them. Wow....
There are many things we can't explain or prove or understand. Does that mean they aren't real?
Some books to explore:
99 stories of God / Williams, Joy, F WIL
Are you there God? It's me, Margaret / Blume, Judy. J F BLU
Be still and listen : experience the presence of God in your life / Smith, Amos 248.2 SMI
The case for God / Armstrong, Karen, 211 ARM
Fingerprints of God : the search for the science of spirituality / Hagerty, Barbara Bradley. 215 HAG
Flipped : the provocative truth that changes everything we know about God / Pagitt, Doug, 248.4 PAG
God / 291.2 NEU
Glimpsing the face of God : the search for meaning in the universe / McGrath, Alister E., 211 MCG
God : 48 famous and fascinating minds talk about God / 211 BER
God : a biography / Miles, Jack, 231 MIL
God went to beauty school / Rylant, Cynthia. 811 RYL
I heard God talking to me : William Edmondson and his stone carvings / Spires, Elizabeth. 811 SPI
God : a human history / Aslan, Reza, 211 ASL
The language God talks : on science and religion / Wouk, Herman, 201.65 WOU
The language of God : a scientist presents evidence for belief / Collins, Francis S. 215 COL
The life of God (as told by Himself) / Ferrucci, Franco, F FER
On God : an uncommon conversation / Mailer, Norman. 211 MAI
Some people say ... God is no laughing matter : observations and objections on the spiritual path / Cameron, Julia. 291.44 CAM
The varieties of scientific experience : a personal view of the search for God / Sagan, Carl, 215.22 SAG
What is God? / Needleman, Jacob. 211 NEE
What we talk about when we talk about God / Bell, Rob 231 BEL
When spiritual but not religious is not enough : seeing God in surprising places, even the church / Daniel, Lillian. 248.4 DAN