Dancing in the Streets

Spiritual lessons are mysterious in nature. No one knows for certain why some things happen in one person’s life, and not in others. Each of us is on our own path of learning and discovery. What I do know, is that every spiritual lesson that is intended for me, is given without my own making. (Although we create many of our own life-lessons by our repetitive mistakes and misunderstandings, I am talking here about the lessons that seemingly come from beyond ourselves.) I only play a small part in my spiritual lessons, by showing up and paying attention. I believe it is true for everyone, although our lessons are different. ... You have a unique life that is unlike anyone else’s. You have been shaped by billions of circumstances and incidents. In fact, your whole life is like one big movie picture with so much meaning squeezed into it that you miss a lot of it. As we grow older, if we have been reflective we can often see many themes that run through our lives. What we take for granted and what we consider randomness are really something bigger at work in the universe. What we call the details is really the stuff that makes up our individual lives. A renowned architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said of architecture, “God is in the details,” and that applies to spirituality too. Through everything that happens to you, your spirit will keep giving you messages and clues to what you need to know. … We have now lived at our retreat centre for a decade. I had no idea that this book would come from that phase of my journey. While our retreat grew I continued to see the hand of God Spirit bringing into my life what I needed to learn and experience. Some dreams came true as planned but not necessarily in the exact way I imagined them to happen. Joseph Campbell’s famous quote, “We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us,” rings true for me. Although my dreams did not unfold exactly as I envisioned, many turned out far better than I imagined: like the Tibetan monk’s visits and teaching spiritual workshops with CAMH (the mental health agency in my city) to people in recovery. Many people do not believe that life is filled with so much meaning. But if mathematics and music are such precise subjects why is it hard to believe that there is a benevolent, intelligent inborn force guiding even the smallest of details in your life. Just as there is a fine balance in the ecosystem with the smallest change affecting the whole, our lives are not just a series of random coincidences either. They are intricately designed but at the same time not fated but guided by circumstances. The future is always entering into our lives or calling us forward and shaping us even when we are not fully aware. Our life is not fated because we have free will but it is up to us whether our design turns out to be for better or for worse. … My next chapter is unfinished of course because I am living it right now, but I want to share what is happening that is mysterious but as yet unclear. I hope this will help you in your process of being in the midst of something, as we always are. Every summer my husband and I have a tradition. We watch old videos at our cottage as we cannot get television reception. Almost every year we watch Tom Hanks in his movie the Cast A Ways. He is a great actor and we always see something new in the movie that we never noticed in a previous viewing. If you have seen the movie then you will remember that Tom is stranded on an island after an airplane crash. One day a package with a Wilson Volley Ball floats into shore. The ball becomes his companion during his four year journey of being lost and waiting to be found. Wilson is his guardian angel throughout the ordeal. Like Mr. Hank’s character, we have been in a long transition period. We are waiting for some pieces to come together in our lives, so that we can make the next move we want to make. This past summer, three different Wilson balls have floated onto our shore: a football, a basketball and volleyball. We keep wondering about this seeming coincidence. Three balls appear out of nowhere and land up on our shore one at a time. Our summer cottage is on a huge lake, so the possibility of this happening, seems small. We think the balls are a good omen. Over the past two years, I have been saying that “We have a lot of “balls in the air.” We are in the process of selling our retreat centre, some land at our cottage, planning to move back to the city to live near our grandchildren and build a better cottage so that all our grandchildren and children can share it with us. I have also been writing this book for over five years. But all these changes take a long time and come with many steps to make them a reality. We have the idea that this weird incident about the balls landing on our shore is a synchronistic event and has meaning for us. The balls are no longer in the air, but have landed. They are reassurance that we have not been left abandoned on this journey. I am playing with the idea that the balls are literally on my shore and that soon my life will unfold further. We will just have to wait and see what the significance of this episode may have for our future. I believe that although we do not have complete control over this situation, something has changed in our field of energy, or in the possibilities that spirit has waiting for us. One ball has now manifested, as we have a buyer for our cottage land. Two more large changes are coming. I’ll let you know when they arrive, and I sincerely hope it will be soon! I didn’t say it was easy, did I? But the universal clues give me hope and courage that change is indeed in the works.