the Width of Heaven
A Spiritual Love Story
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
It’s another Saturday. There’s no work on my to-do list.
In fact, there’s no list at all—no errands, no home repairs, no pressing calls.
I’ve worked hard at trying to become my best self in this lifetime.
I’ve stumbled plenty. Somehow, I manage to right myself
before hitting the ground or finding a banister just in time.
I can’t say for sure, but I haven’t fallen since that night—
humiliated in front of my suddenly concerned dog.
Maybe that’s grace—or practice—or love,
Danny still steadying me from another realm.
Selected Gems from the width of heaven
Danny’s Kind of Rest
Danny’s Kind of Rest
I bought him that chair for a birthday—or maybe Father’s Day. He loved that thing. It sat near the creek, angled just so, where he could hear the water slip over stones and watch the squirrels skitter up the trees.
He would sink into it for hours, creating, dreaming of fishing, and letting what he called “mind chains” carry him somewhere I couldn’t quite follow. Leaves rustled overhead. Wood bees lumbered nearby. When the bees flew too close, he’d use a gadget we called the bee gone to swat them away.
Rest came naturally to him.
After decades together, our silent dance was sweet and fluid. I gave Danny space to relax, to just be, to let nature restore him. He respected my hours in the studio while I worked on the next painting. I checked on him from time to time to see if he needed anything. He walked quietly through my studio, observing my process without interrupting, understanding the attention it required.
We orbited each other that way.
He was a man who knew how to settle into stillness, but he couldn’t teach it to me. I was either fully engaged or totally spent, with very little middle ground.
Being busy felt responsible. Productive. Safe.
Ashkenazi Jews don’t take achievement lightly. Perseverance is part of the inheritance, education, resilience, and excellence in whatever form it takes. If your mother is Jewish, you’re Jewish. No take-backs.
The wiring runs deep. We build identity on survival and striving. Make something from scraps. Turn limitations into ingenuity. It’s less about wealth than about proving you can endure.
We may have been shaped by different cultures and different wiring, but there was one thing we were completely aligned on. By the time we met in Los Angeles, we had both opened our hearts to Bahá’u’lláh, and that changed everything.
Unity was no longer a pleasant idea. It became the ground we stood on. Differences didn’t threaten us; they intrigued us. We learned to consult rather than collide, to listen rather than defend, and to sit in the same spiritual room even when our instincts moved at different tempos.
We trusted pause and motion.
Somewhere between those two rhythms, we built a life grounded in our faith.
It’s Another Saturday
It’s Another Saturday
When walking, I still stumble more than I like to admit.
Danny always had a hand at my elbow to steady me.
I tried not to trip, but sometimes nothing would catch my foot.
He’d smile knowingly, and I’d laugh, embarrassed every time.
On his arm, or hand in hand, my insecurities vanished.
Forty years later, it’s another Saturday. I’ve worked hard
in the mineshaft of loss. Danny died far too soon,
and I sometimes feel myself receding from a life once lived so fully.
We were two creative, unconventional souls trying to fit into
a world that preferred conformity. When we couldn’t
make a living doing what we loved, we took what work came—
installing carpet, waiting tables, selling retail.
The mundane paid the bills, but the call to create was constant.
I still don’t lift my feet high enough when I’m tired. Once,
chasing the dog in the dark, I tripped over a tree root
and went down hard—skinned knees, burning palms.
The ache in my throat came not from the fall
but from the thought:
Danny would have caught me.
These days I aim for rest, cleanliness,
and the quiet satisfaction of laundry folded,
a line of paint on canvas,
a page filled with words.
If anyone asks, I’ll confirm that recovery work is hard—
maybe the hardest of all.
But I’m finding my way, as my Persian friends say,
little by little, bit by bit.
There is immense beauty along this path. I see it. I count on it,
the way I once counted on Danny’s hand at the ready.
It’s another Saturday. There’s no work on my to-do list.
In fact, there’s no list at all—no errands, no home repairs, no pressing calls.
I’ve worked hard at trying to become my best self in this lifetime.
I’ve stumbled plenty. Somehow, I manage to right myself
before hitting the ground or finding a banister just in time.
I can’t say for sure, but I haven’t fallen since that night—
humiliated in front of my suddenly concerned dog.
Maybe that’s grace—or practice—or love,
Danny still steadying me from another realm.
Learning to Slow Down
Learning to Slow Down
My least attractive quality has always been impatience. Caregiving and grief have softened that tendency, but the habit still sneaks in—my voice talking over someone else’s, my quick brain presuming where a sentence is headed. I’m working on this reflex.
Part of the problem, I admit, is my fading ability to remember. If I don’t immediately say whatever exceptionally witty, brilliant, or insightful response I’ve just formulated, it vanishes.
Listening with focus requires practice. When someone’s life depended on me, I learned to listen with focus. That kind of listening changes you.
I used to be an avid notetaker because I could not make mistakes. That hyper-intense attentiveness was necessary then. It kept people safe. It kept things moving.
The requirement for that vigilance is behind me now.
So when I sit still, brain pleasantly numb, listening to the air roar through faulty ductwork while the ceiling fan pushes back against ninety-four-degree Tennessee heat, I try not to feel guilty.
Guilt is a stubborn inheritance in our culture. Comedians have made fortunes joking about Jewish guilt; there’s truth buried in the humor.
But exhaustion tells its own story.
I think I’ve earned mine.
I don’t begrudge a single minute of community service, care of the innocent or ill, energy spent, or sleep lost. Still, these days my bed looks especially inviting. The couch is a close second. And when Tennessee weather behaves for four miraculous days in spring or autumn, Danny’s upholstered glider on the deck claims a strong third.
Bread of the Spirit
Bread of the Spirit
One morning during my devotional time
a passage from Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh
caught and held me.
"The Prophets and Messengers of God are like leaven,
the animating force that lifts the world of being
and brings forth the arts and wonders of creation."
If that is so,
then Danny must be part of that leaven now—
some measure of living yeast still lifting me.
Every minute, centuries of souls radiate
the bread of the spirit—
an unseen rising that stirs hearts
and quickens imagination.
Who receives what portion, and when?
I do not know.
I only know I do not want to miss
what is meant for me.
Perhaps it comes in a daydream
or in the silence that follows prayer.
Perhaps in consultation with friends,
or while I wait, brush in hand, for the muse.
Communication with the next world
feels like exchange.
I ask.
God responds.
The Divine Concourse stands ready,
but I must open the channel.
Sometimes the exchange is whisper-quiet—
a wistful wish heard,
a barely perceptible whoosh.
Sometimes it arrives urgently,
like salvation bestowed
after one agonized cry.
I have begged, pleaded, beseeched,
humbly requested—
“If it be Thy will.”
My gratitude is unending.
Words fall short.
So I try not only to speak it—
but to live it.
I have opened colorful paths
for Monet, Chagall, and Matisse
to send inspiration down, should they feel inclined.
I have asked my ancestors to pray for me
as I pray for them.
The bread rises.
Inside The Width of Heaven
The universe is infinite. Who shall declare it’s height, it’s depth and length? It is absolutely infinite.
- Abdu’l Bahá Promulgation of Universal Peace p. 274
There is practical and mystical symmetry between the physical and spiritual realms. The Width of Heaven is both a poetic and actual notion.
- Andi Seals
A Memoir of Grief and Love
The Width of Heaven guides readers through five spiral stages of grief and spiritual awakening:
Flight, The Flood & the Fracture, The Mirror of Marriage, Signs of the Divine, and The Continuum.
The Bahá’í Faith
The Baha’i Faith is at the very heart of my being. Every task I undertake has it as my inspiration. Its core tenet is UNITY espousing there is only one God, that the world’s great religions all originate from that same one Source, and all the earth’s peoples are one.
For more information please go to www.Bahai.org
Where the Journey Began
Before the spiritual renewal of The Width of Heaven, there was the raw immediacy of loss. A Crocus in Winter is an artistic and tender account of Andi’s initial path through grief after the passing of her husband, Dan Seals. Through her signature paintings and honest prose—woven with profound emotion and gentle humor—Andi shares her earliest process of coping, offering a quiet companion for anyone navigating their own season of loss.
Coming Soon
Dan Seals & Friends: The Last Duet
Dan’s music has always been the soundtrack to our life together. Now, I am honored to help shepherd this final, beautiful chapter of his musical journey into the world. This upcoming collection of duets is a tribute not just to his artistry, but to the deep friendships that defined his career.
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