I was gently tickled one night a while back when watching Theresa Caputo, the 
star of the long running television series, The Long Island Medium. She was doing her fascinating “talking with the dead” work at a movie star’s house when she came across a statue of the Buddha. She was, as she so often is, quite exuberant, even over the top.
“I’m not the only one to have a Buddha with a crucifix around it,” she happily exclaimed.
As Senior Librarian of the New Buddhist Methodist Church, I have fifty years or so of on and off, layman research into mediumship and contact with the “other side.” (For what it’s worth, I’m an easy believer, as would be, I feel, anybody who was able to set aside our culture’s fundamentalist “scientific materialism” and simply look, as Jesus suggested we do, with the eyes of a child s at the accumulated literature of this phenomenon. See, “Books We’ve Been Reading.”)
I suspect Ms. Caputo is not a Methodist, though she doesn’t reveal her spiritual practices. (I also suspect she might be, as a good Italian, growing up on Long Island, a Catholic. Especially when she talked about seeing the crucifix, rather than the cross. But that’s just speculation.)
And I wouldn’t be surprised if she collected Buddha statues, or at least had a few around the house. She’s obviously very open minded, and Buddha is very easy to have around, as is his statue!
Her demeanor on the show has always puzzled me. She-acts — and this may be just part of her television persona—quite ditzy, overly emotional and reactive to life’s daily challenges. She’s obviously having fun with such emotional discharges, but they do not create the calm and peaceable atmosphere which one often associates with the Buddhist practice, and even a seasoned practitioner of the “Methods” of spiritual attunement.
(“Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me!”)
The art of mediumship apparently can be learned, and honed, and made more precise. What a mystery it is.
So often, however, as apparently is the case with Ms. Caputo, it’s simply a “gift” with which some folks find themselves blessed (or burdened) with, often from a very young age. And it’s a gift, apparently, that shows up quite distinctly on some nights, and perhaps not at all on other nights.
Of course, due to our culture and the lack of metaphysics that would explain such a gift, Ms. Caputo and her show are the targets of much skepticism. I admire her refusal to engage with such skeptics.
“I respect and understand skeptics,” she wrote. “I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone, that’s not why I do what I do. I feel, and have been told by my clients, that my gift has really helped them, and that’s all that matters to me.”
This coming April, Ms Caputo and The Long Island Medium will be back for their eleventh season. (Obviously, she has quite a following— there’s a growing interest in this paranormal phenomenon, which is quite normal and natural!)
The sad news is that Ms. Caputo and her husband of twenty-eight years recently announced that they have filed papers for a legal separation. It can—and does—happen to the best of us. And yet…
Statistics show that couples who share a spiritual common ground, are more likely to stay together than those who don’t, though of course there are no guarantees. Part of the “play” on Long Island Medium was the playful tension between Ms. Caputo and her hubby, and their kids, particularly in the arena of her “gift,” and how crazy it made their family life.
We all have “seasons” in our marriage—let’s hope this is just a season. And yet, we all have times when it’s clear it’s time to move on, keep growing, keep learning, without our long-time lifetime companions.
Buddha with a crucifix. Our world is growing into an understanding of our oneness—both east and west, implicit and explicit. What a nice symbol this is to indicate our contemporary “fix.”
