When I heard the names Thomas Aquinas and PT (Phineas Taylor) Barnum echoed from the other side I was instantly incredulous. Oh, come on! Neither of those souls reside in the In-between, now you are just messing with me. I set the whole thing aside like a sandwich prepared for me by my five-year-old daughter. Technically it was made with love, but I wasn't entirely convinced it qualified as food.
Like a splinter buried deep in my thumb, the names continued to nag at me. Thomas Aquinas, one of the most influential theologians in human history, and P.T. Barnum, the legendary showman whose name had become synonymous with spectacle and illusion, seemed about as likely to be trapped in the transitional neighborhood as the Pope and a circus ringmaster sharing an apartment.
Experience has taught me that arguing with Spirit is rarely productive. My process is to set aside the skepticism, genuinely ask the question, and wait for the response to filter back. Sometimes the answer arrives immediately. Sometimes it arrives in a way that makes me question my career choices.
I was first directed to notice the source of the names. They were not shouted over the fence as in the cases of Dennis and Louise. Rather, they emanated from the place where stories arrive, from somewhere deep within. There is a space beyond thought, beneath imagination, where impressions take form before words. It is there that the names first appeared, rising to the surface of awareness with a persistence that demanded attention.
The two named individuals were uniquely qualified to serve as my guides, protectors, and teachers as we journey through the In-between. That, I could accept.
Thomas Aquinas had spent a lifetime navigating the mysteries of faith, belief, and humanity's relationship with the Divine. P.T. Barnum understood something equally important; the stories people choose to believe, the illusions they embrace, and the extraordinary lengths they will go to protect them. As guides, they formed an unlikely but perfect partnership. One understood truth. The other understood perception. The In-between, it would seem, is governed by both.
I felt honored to welcome them and excited for the new partnership, but wait… While I am not completely conversant in the rules that govern the Other Side, I do know that souls who have entered the Realms of Light cannot backtrack into the In-between. They cannot simply cross the veil to retrieve loved ones who have temporarily lost themselves. Free will remains the law of the land. No soul, no matter how enlightened, can kidnap another into awakening any more than a person can be seized from the spell of a cult and forced into clarity.
The Light may call. Family members may wait. Angels may guide. But the choice to take the next step belongs to the soul alone. It is one of the great frustrations of the In-between and one of the Universe's most sacred protections. Which left me with an obvious question. If Thomas Aquinas and P.T. Barnum could not return from the Realms of Light, and bonded souls could not cross the veil to intervene directly, then who exactly was introducing themselves to me under those names?
Before I could ask the question aloud, the answer arrived as a remembrance rather than a revelation. I was instantly filled with the awareness of two beings who had once walked the Earth in physical form as the prophets Enoch and Elijah and who later returned to the Realms of Light as the Archangels Metatron and Sandalphon. In the mystical traditions of Kabbalah, these two are often described as the bookends of the Tree of Life.
Metatron stands at the highest reaches of creation, governing the descent of Divine intelligence into form, translating the unknowable into what can be understood. Sandalphon stands at the lowest reaches, grounding Divine energy into the physical world, gathering the prayers, experiences, and lessons of humanity, and carrying them upward. One reaches down the other reaches up. Together they form a bridge between Heaven and Earth.
The realization struck me immediately. Thomas Aquinas and P.T. Barnum were never Thomas Aquinas and P.T. Barnum, perhaps more accurately, they were not only Thomas Aquinas and P.T. Barnum. The names had been selected because they described a function my human mind could understand.
Aquinas, the theologian, devoted his life to the pursuit of Truth. Barnum, the showman, devoted his life to understanding Belief, Perception, and Illusion. Truth descending into understanding, human experience ascending toward wisdom.
Metatron and Sandalphon expressed through symbols I would immediately recognize. The assignment suddenly made much more sense. If I was being asked to walk the corridors of the In-between, a place where souls become trapped by what they believe and liberated by what they come to understand, then guidance from both ends of the bridge would be required.
One to illuminate Truth. One to illuminate Illusion. In service of helping souls remember the path home.
The Universe never lies, but it often offers understanding in a form we can accept without collapsing our identity. Rarely are we presented with the whole truth at once. Instead, we are given symbols, stories, and familiar reference points that allow us to approach a larger reality without becoming overwhelmed by it. Thomas Aquinas and P.T. Barnum were not deceptions. They were translations. One represented the pursuit of Truth. The other represented the power of Belief. Together they formed a bridge my human mind could cross.
Only after I accepted the lesson hidden within the names was I able to recognize what stood behind them. The realization did not arrive as new information. It arrived as remembrance.
If I was about to embark on a journey that would make even the bravest of souls nervous, I was not inclined to travel alone. I needed help in the form of guidance and protection. The In-between is filled with the forgotten, the fearful, the stubborn, and the lost. It is a place where beliefs can become prisons and where entire realities can be constructed from guilt, regret, anger, or false certainty. Navigating such territory without guidance would be the spiritual equivalent of wandering into a hurricane carrying a flashlight and good intentions.
I needed help, not the kind of help that solves problems for me, but the kind that provides perspective when the path disappears beneath my feet. I needed guidance, protection and teachers capable of recognizing dangers I could not yet see and lessons I was not yet prepared to understand.
Thomas Aquinas and P.T. Barnum were never intended to deceive me. They were introductions, familiar reference points offered before a larger truth could be revealed. Only when I accepted the need for guidance did I recognize the source from which it was coming. If I was to walk the boundary between truth and illusion, faith and fear, remembrance and forgetting, then I would require companions who understood both ends of the bridge between Heaven and Earth.
No offense to Metatron and Sandalphon, but I think I prefer them dressed up as Thomas Aquinas and P.T. Barnum. There are practical considerations. Imagine boarding a commercial flight seated between the Archangels Metatron and Sandalphon. The level of expectation alone would be exhausting. In all likelihood, half the passengers would suddenly deplane, convinced the aircraft was destined for either a miraculous ascension or a spectacular crash. Board a plane with Thomas Aquinas and P.T. Barnum, however, and nobody pays much attention to you at all.
Whether they were Aquinas and Barnum, Metatron and Sandalphon, or something far greater than either description hardly matters. What does matter is that I was not being asked to walk into the In-between alone. Help arrived.
Stay tuned for the further adventures from the In-Between now that the team is assembled.