Do you believe in signs, messages from some metaphysical realm, personally addressed to you with no return address? The ancients gave signs much credence. The Bible is full of signs. Although I no longer believe in gods/goddesses/or much of anything labeled “woo-woo,” I do record in my journals all of the “signs” that have appeared in my life. Call them what you will. If we are responsible for creating meaning in our lives, we certainly have the right to imbue these incidents with such meaning.
Synchronicity is a good word for these events.
From Wikipedia:
“Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, where they are unlikely to be causally related. The subject sees it as a meaningful coincidence, although the events need not be exactly simultaneous in time. The concept of synchronicity was first described by Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychologist, in the 1920s.[1]
The concept does not question, or compete with, the notion of causality. Instead, it maintains that just as events may be connected by a causal line, they may also be connected by meaning. A grouping of events by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of cause and effect.”
Because these synchronicities are so mysterious, even the most devout agnostic is forced to question how they happened to appear in his/her life at that exact moment. For a believer, there is no question at all…they were sent directly from God.
I would like to share three synchronicities from my life and journals.
First, the cookie cutter angel: May 2004, during a period of overwhelmingly exhausting work on the farm, with choices about my future heavy on my mind. My Aunt Lois had just passed away and it was near the anniversary of Gram’s birthday.
I had just closed in the chickens for the night…”when I noticed a shiny object on the ground. Naturally, I attempt to pick up all junk on the ground, especially where livestock might eat it and get sick. I stooped down and picked away the dirt to release my treasure. By the goddess, it was an angel. A cookie cutter angel. I stood up, holding the angel away from me, struck dumb with the wonderment of it all. What on earth was a cookie cutter doing in the chicken yard? And not just any cookie cutter, but an angel cookie cutter. I hadn’t added any new leaves to the compost bins in over a year, one source of ‘surprise’ toys and junk. I stood there turning it over and over in my hand, tears in my eyes.”
I suppose the chickens unearthed this buried archeological treasure in their scratching. It had been there a while and seemed old. The angel did not help with the farm work or point the way to a particular choice, but she did come just when I needed a comforting hand on my shoulder.
The apple: Oct. 2, 2001. “I was picking the last apples from the MacIntosh tree. Several times I knocked some to the ground while trying to get a good one. I poked at a pretty apple with the extension pole fruit picker. The apple fell, but not into the basket. It began crashing toward the ground, ricocheting off the branches, going first one way then the other. I held out my hand in a futile gesture when I saw it coming my way. Miracle of miracles, the apple literally flew into my hand. A cartoon joke. This all took seconds. At the precise moment it landed in my hand two things happened: I laughed. Perhaps the most spontaneous real laugh I have ever produced. And secondly, I believed in God, if only for that intense millisecond of time.“
My thoughts at the time this happened were a whiney “nothing ever goes right for me.” I was tired of so many apples crashing to the ground and being ruined. I held out my hand with a curse and that apple flew into it with a stinging vehemence that was shocking. I laughed because I deserved that response from the universe: “take that you ingrate!”
Getting a handle on it: Entry not found. Once again, life was difficult for me. One of my favorite expressions from the sixties has always been “getting a handle on it.” I was out in the garden, doing some self-therapy through gardening, thinking about how I really needed to pull myself together. And then, there it was. A handle. A handle in the garden. Now where on earth did that come from? I thanked the universe for trying to be of help. It gave me a handle.
So those are just three of my pretty unusual experiences, experiences where it felt like I was given a sign. Anyone else with mystical coincidences?
Tags: diaries, journaling, journals, signs, synchronicity
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