This series of posts, ‘From Farm To Meditation – Memoirs Of An Angel‘ is about the man who had the greatest effect on my life, my father Bill Heinrich. To find other posts in this series click here.
My wife, Jan, once said to me, ‘Wal, I truly admire you, amongst other things, you are the nicest man I have ever met’. I replied, ‘The nicest man I ever met was my father and I am nowhere near as nice as he was’.
That small interchange caused me to reflect on my life from an unfamiliar point of view and I came to realize that, even though I sought to always be my own self, my life has sometimes gone much the same way as my father’s, sometimes making similar good choices, sometimes making similar mistakes. It wasn’t all one way, however, because in taking up meditation in his later years, my father copied me.
Bill Heinrich - Angel
Meditation is something that I began as a teenager, copying that other man that had a big influence on my life, Lance, one of my mother’s brothers. As you look through my mother’s family tree you see a splattering of artists and mystics. Lance and I come under the mystic category and had taken to meditation like ducks to water. Lance was famous for floating above his bed while meditating. Lance was very popular, an inspiration to many, including myself.
On my father’s side of the family, we see farmers, health industry practitioners, pilots, and business people. No sign of artists or mystics that I know of. Maybe my passion for healing and my opposition to planting GMO on farms comes from this side of the family.
In the final chapters of this series I may reveal why I refer to my father as ‘An Angel‘. The truth will astound you. I may also reveal why I refer to my uncle at this early stage of this series, and the spiritual connection he had, and was to have, with my father, even though the two of them did not know of it at the time.
Both of my parents were born in South Australia and both were born to farmers in an area of the State called ‘Northern Yorke Peninsula‘. My father had always been silent about his life even though many of us were curious, and I had the foresight to get him to record his memoirs before he died. My father’s story begins:
From Farm To Meditation – Memoirs Of An Angel
A cold, dark, dewy morning on August 8th, 1917, found Wally Heinrich and his very pregnant wife Mabel, in the front seat of their Model T Ford heading towards Bute.
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The doctor at Bute, Dr. Cardin, had been seeing Mabel throughout her pregnancy and he figured that she would have a baby some time on August the 8th. Accordingly, arrangements were made with Mrs. Kerley, the only midwife in the district, and a very good midwife at that. She was asked if she could deliver this baby on or about August the 8th, 1917. And so we find this excited couple on their way to Bute along the Alford Road, in a Model T Ford motor car.
And so ends this brief, first installment of this fascinating series, From Farm To Meditation – Memoirs Of An Angel. Look out for many more posts in this series.
