Last week, a client of mine said, “I need a sign!” They were feeling stuck in a pattern and looking for a way out.
Being a person who looks for signs and spiritual messages when things are tough, I could relate. I’m also someone who’s received signs and spiritual messages without looking and I wrote about this in the last Healing Journey Letter.
At the very beginning of my own healing journey, it was suggested that I “look for the coincidences” as evidence that a Higher Power was at work in my life. Nearly 25 years later, I’m still taking this suggestion.
One of my most faithful sign-bringers is Woodpecker and I’ve written several times about how this comical bird’s coincidental materialization reassures me that I Am Known.
On a retreat I was leading last month, I shared with the group that I’d had yet another woodpecker encounterĀ the week before and one of the women spoke up, pointing to the window excitedly and proclaiming, “There was a woodpecker right out there this morning!”
Since then, I have literally been bombarded by woodpeckers. (Okay, not literally.)
For many mornings in the last few weeks, I’ve been waking up to the bird’s percussive hammering. I leave the house and hear the rat-a-tat-tat echoing in the neighbourhood. I arrive home and the rhythmic patter is again sounding somewhere in the nearby trees. On several occasions, the bird has been close enough to see, making its way around a nearby trunk or flying from one tree to another in our yard.
A few days ago, not one but two woodpeckers were pecking at the trees right outside the kitchen window. I felt like my “sign” had become a Times Square billboard.
I watched in awe as the pair jabbed at rotten bark and darker crevices. I marveled at the precision of their work and the singular markings on their feathers.
My heart felt happy and my day got better.
*
After I wrote the above sentence yesterday, I saved the Letter and went to work.
On the way home from work, I stopped and got gas.
Later, after an evening walk, I noticed the fuel door was still open and the gas cap was missing. Ooops! I had forgotten to close the fuel door and I’d driven away with the cap on top of the car.
I got in the car and drove slowly back to the gas station, looking for the gas cap on the road.
I spotted it, pulled over, got out, picked it up.
A man, mowing his lawn, saw me and shrugged, puzzled by my action.
“It’s my gas cap!” I shouted above the mower.
He couldn’t hear, turned the mower off and walked over. I repeated what I’d said.
“That’s funny. The same thing happened to my wife this afternoon.”
“What?!”
“Yeah. She left the fuel door open, gas cap dangling. Some guy flashed his lights to indicate for her to stop.”
“That just happened to your wife today?” I asked.
“Yup.”
Okay, seriously. What are the chances that my gas cap falls off the car in front of the house of a guy who just happens to be outside when I come by and whose wife had the exact same thing happen to her on that day?
In a world that sometimes seems to have gone completely mad, when the cauldron of human hatred and fear seems ever closer to boiling over, I look for the coincidences to land me back in the joyful notion that We Are Known.
From the fires of love,
Celia
