Author Neale Donald Walsh (Conversations with God) finds himself in the awkward position of being a well-known spiritual author with an apparent lapse of memory.

It turns out, according to the New York Times, that the personal Christmas essay he posted on beliefnet.com about a pageant his son was in wasn’t his essay and wasn’t about his son.

Candy Chand, the real author, published the story 10 years ago in “Clarity.” The essay also appeared in “Chicken Soup for the Christian Family Soul” in 200o.

The essay has been removed with Walsh saying that he’s been telling that story for years in speaking engagements with the absolute belief that it came out of his life.  Walsh wonders if somebody sent it to him over the Internet years ago and it somehow became a part of his history.

Chand doesn’t think so.

Since it wasn’t my work that was lifted and claimed by another author, I’m free to say “I wonder” about this as I recall all the things that people in my life have told as yarns for so long, they could have passed a lie detector test on their belief in the truth of the events in spite of the fact they never happened. Not in their lives anyhow.

Nonetheless, I understand Chand’s skepticism.