Finn Cohen’s interview with Randall Sullivan [“Reason to Believe,” April 2025] both intrigued and horrified me. I immediately bought Sullivan’s book The Devil’s Best Trick and devoured it. Why is evil so compelling? I’m a Methodist, a denomination that gives little attention to hell, let alone the devil—concepts I do not believe in but that nonetheless terrify me. So I guess at some level I do believe. Otherwise I would scoff, right?
I wonder if the devil is a projection of our own inner guilt, as A Course in Miracles would have it. Or is it a manifestation of our own beliefs, as Michael Talbot’s The Holographic Universe suggests? I like to think so.
Evil exists in this earthly realm. Our inability to see others as sacred, equal souls is rampant. Sullivan’s experiences with this dark force were frightening. My mother felt a presence in her bedroom when she was in her seventies and later invited a priest over to bless her place. The presence left.
I keep a picture of Jesus in my bedroom. Just in case.
I don’t know about a devil; I don’t think we’ve ever met. But I sure know about angels. I feel like I’ve been riding on their wings my entire life, especially that time I heard my name called aloud, awakening me from behind the wheel just as I was nearing the rear end of a semi. Or when I went into an uncontrolled skid on a winding mountain road, headed for a cliff, and, as if hands other than mine were on the steering wheel, my car turned into a snowbank, bringing me to a full stop. Or when I beat colorectal cancer.
The list goes on. I like the image of these angels dressed to the nines, sitting on fences, awaiting their turn for divine intervention. I have reason to believe.
When interviewer Finn Cohen says he has never bought into the idea of God, Randall Sullivan asks, “Are you wanting to be cracked open?”
This happened to me. After I’d lost my job, my dad, and then my brother, I was walking my dog to a church parking lot, and I sat at the base of a tree and screamed at God, “What the fuck do you want from me?” Then I meditated and had an experience in which the archangel Michael drove his sword of light through my crown, cracking me open and pouring wisdom into my body.
After that mystical experience I began to “see” through the eyes of compassion and opened up to other dimensions as a channel. The interview with Sullivan encapsulates what I now believe.
I laughed at the indignant letters in your April Correspondence in response to Derek Askey’s interview with Jim Tucker on children’s memories of past lives [“Old Souls,” December 2024]. Dwight James King-Leatham said it was “magical thinking” pseudoscience that “skirts on the ridiculous.” I’m a scientist with a PhD from Columbia University whose research has won awards and been published in top-tier academic journals—and I was intrigued by the interview.
Every century upends previously agreed-upon “truths.” Keeping an open mind is how science advances. Centuries ago the most learned men—and they were all men—believed the Earth was flat and that the idea of “flying machines” was preposterous. I continually remind myself that likely many of our current beliefs will in time be shown to be false.
I gasped when Douglas O. Moser suggested in your April Correspondence that The Sun start carrying ads instead of trying to attract readers with pieces that “entertain metaphysics and other such speculation.” For more than thirty years I’ve cherished your magazine for its insightful and often provocative essays and interviews. Some fail to move me, but I read because I’m curious to know what other people think. What if I learn something new? Often the interviews are an introduction to new ideas, new ways of looking at the world. I don’t have to agree or disagree. I need only set aside preconceived notions.
Please don’t replace thoughtful exploration with advertising.
My husband died of cancer in 2019, when I was seventy years old. After his death I just kept thinking, Where is he now?
I’d never taken drugs—just smoked a little pot in college. I decided to try psychedelic mushrooms and ask my question again. With my friend sitting nearby, I did it. I can’t really describe what I experienced, but it was like what John Colman Wood relayed in his short story “Nectar” [March 2025]. I’ve been at peace ever since.
The narrator of John Colman Wood’s “Nectar” tells of a love bound not by convention, but one that challenges reality. Love can do that. Thoughts surpass boundaries, including the one between life and death.
Wood’s short story made me question whether the living place too many limitations on existence. It put me in mind of Shakespeare’s opening line of Twelfth Night: “If music be the food of love, play on.” If honey be the nectar of the gods, buzz on!
When I retrieved your March 2025 issue from my mailbox, it was a wet, sodden clump following a heavy spring snowstorm. The pages were stuck together and already beginning to wrinkle. I haven’t missed an issue in years, and I wasn’t going to let a leaky mailbox change that.
I painstakingly separated the pages and draped the magazine so that it would hopefully be readable when it dried. Two days later I carefully separated each dried page from its neighbors. No content was ruined or illegible. The incident made me realize how much I value The Sun and look forward to its arrival each month. Keep it coming.
I’m no longer a Sun subscriber, having succumbed to the 24/7 onslaught of trivia and entertainment on my phone, but today my sister sent me Sy Safransky’s musings on living with Alzheimer’s disease [“This Is Hard to Write,” February 2025]. It is easily the most compelling piece of writing I’ve ever read from him.
I’m grateful to Safransky for all his efforts over the years, but this essay in particular has had a profound effect on me, as I’m struggling with the same concerns. Like all experiences, dementia has the possibility to be an opportunity for growth.
It’s early mud season here in Vermont, and I’ve just finished your February 2025 issue. It started with an interview by Leath Tonino [“Where the Wild Things Are”], whose first book of essays, The Animal One Thousand Miles Long, is one of my favorite works about this state. I moved here in my thirties and love it so fiercely I’ll never leave. Tonino’s interview with John Davis affirmed the decision my husband and I made to serve as stewards and purchase the twenty-four acres adjacent to our paltry acreage: a swath of birches and maples and evergreens with creeks and a raven’s nest, deer scat and fox trails.
Heather Swan’s essay “Keening for the Cailleach” reminded me how this past winter was the first time in years there was enough snow to cross-country ski, despite Vermont’s history as a skiing haven. Ron Currie caught me from the first line of his essay “The Only Alternative,” as I’m reckoning with friends and neighbors who are reaching the end of life. Much of Dana Salvador’s essay “After All This” echoed what I’ve heard from my husband, who’s been a teacher for more than two decades. And Sy Safransky’s essay broke my heart in the most gorgeous way.
I seldom love every piece in an issue, but thank you, sincerely, for this one.
