Closer Walk with Thee

By David Kepes

Closer Walk with Thee, Closer Walk With Thee 1. I am weak, but thou art strong; Jesus, keep me from all wrong; I’ll be satisfied as long As I walk, let me walk close to thee. Refrain: Just a closer walk with thee, Grant it, Jesus, is my plea, Daily walking close to thee, Let it be, dear Lord, let it be. 2. Through this world of toil and snares, If I falter, Lord, who cares? Who with me my burden shares? None but thee, dear Lord, none but thee. 3. When my feeble life is o’er, Time for me will be no more; Guide me gently, safely o’er To thy kingdom shore, to thy shore I love this song, especially the version sung by Patsy Cline and Willie Nelson.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781640820937

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Closer Walk with Thee

David Kepes

Copyright © 2017 David Kepes

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2017

ISBN 978-1-64082-092-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64082-093-7 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

1. I am weak, but thou art strong;

Jesus, keep me from all wrong;

I’ll be satisfied as long

As I walk, let me walk close to thee.

Refrain:

Just a closer walk with thee,

Grant it, Jesus, is my plea,

Daily walking close to thee,

Let it be, dear Lord, let it be.

2. Through this world of toil and snares,

If I falter, Lord, who cares?

Who with me my burden shares?

None but thee, dear Lord, none but thee.

3. When my feeble life is o’er,

Time for me will be no more;

Guide me gently, safely o’er

To thy kingdom shore, to thy shore

I love this

song, especially the version sung by Patsy Cline and Willie Nelson.

One could easily change Jesus to Mohammed, Sprit, Krishna, Buddha, or whatever name you use for your lord or higher power. The point of this song is found in giving up control of where to walk in life. Choosing and asking to walk with Jesus rather than controlling your own path.

My greatest problems in life have come during times when I have been arrogant and prideful enough to think that my fortune and success was due to my own skills, intelligence, etc., rather than recognizing the grace and generosity of the creative power that had revealed that infinity, energy, and totality that is contained therein me during my near-death experience (NDE). I instead got into an ego-driven state of how great am I and fell out of grace and peace.

Second Birth

At age sixteen,

I found myself regaining consciousness in the Intensive Care Unit of Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Initially I became aware of the machines connected to me as well as the regular movement and care by the nursing staff as my intensive care nurse, Miss Parish, attended to me, checking my IV, and performing neurological evaluations regularly. Miss Parish was a naturally beautiful young woman from a nearby Vermont dairy farm who, for all practical purposes, was an angel to me as I began to emerge from a comatose state.

I learned in time that I had ended up in the hospital after a severe trauma to the frontal left lobe of my skull. While attending boarding school at the New Hampton School in New Hampton, New Hampshire, I had been struck on the skull by a discus during a track and field meet.

The closest hospital with a neurosurgeon on staff was the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital in Hanover, New Hampshire. Coincidentally, I had been born in that same hospital sixteen years earlier. The neurosurgeon attending to me, Dr. Ernest Sachs, was a friend of my father as they had taken their surgery residencies together at that hospital around the time of my birth.

Evidently my body had gone into the coma in a self-protective mode as I had suffered multiple severe hematomas in my brain as well as accompanying swelling of the brain. Dr. Sachs had performed a craniotomy drilling into my skull to halt bleeding and relieve pressure from swelling in the brain as well as extracting fragments of my fractured skull from my brain tissue.

During my initial reawakening I gradually became aware of the space around me. I observed that my room was separated from the nursing station by a window and that I had a roommate who was also being treated for traumatic brain injury which had occurred as the result of a motorcycle accident.

He was in an almost vegetative state with very little response to the world around him as well as having a tendency to devour his meals by shoveling all food into his mouth recklessly. He did not seem to recognize family members when they visited.

My mind recalled observing my body on the operating table during my craniotomy. As I was looking down at the surgeon and two other people involved in my operation, I noticed that the ceiling of the operating room was missing ceiling tiles due to some type of work being done. (I was told later that the hospital was installing new wiring over that weekend resulting in the tiles being removed.)

Like everyone else in the world who I experienced after my coma, I felt a benign affection for this young man in the room with me in intensive care. His name was Bill.

Bill was from Vermont and had collided with a car while riding a Honda motorcycle, throwing him across the hood of the car and headfirst into the street curb. (In New England, most street curbs are made from blocks of quarried granite.)

For all practical purposes, he had experienced a frontal lobotomy.

Efforts by me to speak as I regained consciousness were unsuccessful as the motor mechanism for speech was not functioning as a result of my injuries. I could think of things to say but could not actually speak the words.

As I regained consciousness, I had some recollection of the experiences that had occurred in my mind while I was comatose.

I had experienced a presence that, to me, was God.

The presence was not any human form; rather it was an infinite energy. To say it was light would be insufficient. There was a sense of piercing light within, but I recall the presence more as having an absence of darkness rather than being any particular light.

While with the presence, I felt a peaceful state with no anxiety of any kind. As I had recently been under pressure to write a couple of papers for school, the peace and absence of anxiety felt wonderful. I also experienced a sense of being loved and safe.

To me, it seemed similar to what Hindus call nirvana—a transcendent state in which there is no suffering, desire, or sense of self. Simply peace, tranquility, and calm.

I felt as if I had been released into the presence and out of the world that I normally lived in. There was no sense of space, distance, or time. I simply was in a state of peace in the company of a presence that reinforced the peaceful sense and exuded love and peace effortlessly. I believe that what I experienced was a near-death experience (NDE). These experiences occur frequently when people are at the brink of death and have a sense of another side of existence beyond life.

I had been baptized and raised in the Episcopal faith and had always lived with an assumptive awareness of God and the Holy Spirit (aka Holy Ghost). I conversed with God regularly.

The conversations were one sided as I did not normally hear responses when I spoke. Nor did I require or expect them. I assumed that God was listening and cared.

My mother had run the Sunday school at our church, St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Rochester, New York, and my brother and I served as acolytes while my sisters sang in the children’s choir and my father served on the vestry.

During his early years in elementary school, my brother had an imaginary friend, as many children did and do. His friend was named Jesus. Our mother set a place at the dinner table for Jesus every night until one night when that place was not set at the table.

When asked about Jesus’s absence, my brother said in a matter of fact way,