A Beautiful Heart

I went to the coast today, and met two really wonderful ladies. I also had a really REALLY yummy marrionberry scone, picked up some more driftwood to dry for my patio bonfires, and almost but not quite ran out of gas on the way home. Luckily, I realized it was going to happen, and did NOT start back into the mountains until after I found myself a gas station and filled 'er up. I'm home safe now, just in case you were worried.

By the way, if you are uncomfortable with what lies behind reality, you may not want to read the rest of today's blog. I go there. And it's beautiful. I usually try not to go there in my blog... but today was special, and you'll just have to deal. Whether you believe that energy is a scientific phenomenon based on simple magnetic properties of the earth and the moon, a reflection of God's light in each of us, a spiritual force, that it is of the great Mother Earth and the Moon Goddess herself, or something else entirely, we each have moments in our lives where we just have to accept what occurs, and say "thank you." Both of the women I met today fall into this category, and I'm going to tell you about them. Backwards.

The second woman that I met at the coast today has a little shop in a corner of a building so NOT on the main path that I really had to look at the door for a while to decide if it was the FRONT door or not. It was. In fact, it was the only door. I only even saw that door because I was taking a short-cut behind other buildings toward a sign I'd seen earlier in the day for a bead store. This, it turns out, was not the bead store... I never made it to the bead store, and I'm still glad that I followed the sign. After staring at the door for a while, I went into the shop, to be confronted with a little of everything that I love and am looking longingly at these days.

It was very overwhelming at first. I truly think that I could have had anything in my mind that I REALLY NEEDED TO FIND at that moment, and it would have somehow manifested in that little shop. There were rings, beads, scarfs, incense burners, tarot cards, little statues, big statues, fixings, containers, books, more scarfs, gorgeous jewelry, semi-precious pendants, amazing pieces of art-- and over in one dark corner were bits and remnants of all the things I'd have LOVED to find there as a child... That corner is obviously somewhat neglected now. There is even another half of the store that I never made it into. And this was a small store.

After I'd been standing by the front door staring at a rack of five different kinds of birth-sign reading cards (the star signs we all know from our horoscope in the paper, the Chinese animals, the Egyptian goddesses, African fortunes, and more), a woman appeared. She is probably in her sixties, and though she doesn't look old, her hair is pure white, and she looks like she knows a hell of a lot. I didn't really have much conversation with this wise woman, but I was thrilled to find that she is every bit as interesting as her choice of what to have for sale in her shop. And somehow, the prices were all ones I could handle, too... just not all at once. I'm definitely going back to that store the next time I go to that part of the coast. First off, I want to see if the store (and the owner) actually exists outside of my mind, and more-- I want to explore the second half of the shop! I am now the proud owner of a Healing Woman Tarot deck, and a beautiful spring green 100% cotton sari scarf, shot with silver threads, from India. I also feel like I just met a manifestation of the Goddess, and that the store existed in that moment, just for me. Since I'm quite happy about that interpretation of events, I didn't ask too many questions, and I didn't look behind me when I walked away. I just said "thank you," as I closed the door.

A little background for the first part of the second story:
My Aunt Jacque, mom's oldest sister, was a very special person. She was a truly spiritual being by the time I knew her. She got that way, in large part, by remembering to breathe. She became an ordained and practicing Presbyterian Minister somewhere along the way. She also worked with healing energy, cleansed auras, used essential oils medicinally, met with the Dali Lama, traveled all over the world, and loved unconditionally. She just KNEW things. She knew when to watch Spring unfold-- that one magical day each year when the leaves appear and the buds turn green or pink or gold. She knew unusual facts about celebrities-- and she wasn't someone to sit down and read a People Magazine. She knew what essential oils your body needed to get healthy, and she often knew what ailed you. She knew how to listen, and how to tell a good story.

She was never on time. She didn't actually have a sense of time as we know it... and she was happier that way, I think. She didn't really know how to drive either, but she made her way around Chicago without getting into accidents, for years. I think she had a bit of divine intervention on that one. You'd agree if you'd ever spent time with her in the car. I suspect she is the person who taught my mom to drive, actually. She'd be looking in the rear view mirror (or be half-turned in the driver seat, and looking at you directly) to maintain eye contact with you as she told a story-- and the car would be slowly swerving back and forth across the full width of whatever road she happened to be on. But we never crashed, never drove off the road, never hit another car... She also never knew how to get where she was going, but she usually got there anyway. I take a surprising amount of encouragement from this one little fact. That someone this gifted and internally beautiful might not really have known how to get where she was going-- and that she still got there in the end... maybe I will, too.

(This also ties nicely into my reality of following directions while driving. You see, I have a tradition. No matter how hard I try, I can't break it. The tradition is that you will give me driving directions over the phone, and I will write them down in detail, and with clear organization, so that I can follow them later when I'm driving... and then I will not look at those directions again until I am on my way to visit you, and realize that I've left those great directions at home. And I somehow-- often with a few phone calls for help if it's a long way to go-- manage to get to where I was going anyway. I love that!)

She started her own school of healing, called Crossroads, ran her own business, produced a CD of meditation techniques, faught off breast cancer at least three times, and started writing her own book of spirituality as well, before she died. She even knew how to decide when she would die-- noon on Christmas Day. And she always knew what I needed from her to make things okay again... Jacque is a wise woman I've turned to for love, support, and better understanding throughout my lifetime. I tell you this now, because it is pertinent to my meeting with the first woman of today.

The first woman I met today is a clairvoyant. A really brave person who has overcome a lot of fear in her life. I met her by accident a while back, and have exchanged maybe two words with her since then. Today, I asked her to do a reading for me. She sat me down and asked me if I had any questions or expectations, and I told her I just wanted to see what came up. I think some of the best gifts are the ones we don't ask for, so to me it was an opportunity to learn what I may not even KNOW I need to know.

She looked at me and told me that I have a very strong creative bent to my life. That my creative talents are as much or as little as I need them to be, because I've really tapped into them fully of late, and because my will is so strong that I shape them to my liking. She said I'm well-grounded now, and I've spent time building a strong foundation lately, but that now I'm moving forward with my creativity, my skills, and my plans for balance and security-- and I'm going in the right direction with all of it. Then she opened her eyes and said I have a beautiful heart. She was a bit in awe of all that she'd seen me overcome in the past year, and of all the protection and sunshine that surround me now and for the future. She says it's because I'm acting from my heart now, and I have such a great heart. (This may be about when I started crying... I can't think of a better compliment-- a better place to work from-- than having a beautiful heart!)

Much to my surprise, it is not just my Aunt Jacque that she saw watching over me of late, but also my Grandfather Elliott. It makes sense, and I'm glad to know that now. Because this is what she does, just like Jacque did what she did, this gifted woman spoke with my angels, and she looked into my "history book of the soul" that the angels keep for each of us, and discovered that there are two volumes for mine. The reference material from my whole life and lives leading up to about a year ago, and the new volume I've been writing since that time. I've gone through such a rebirth that it is as if I am a different person.

She was actually quite surprised to realize that the things she saw in the past, and the things she saw in the present/future are for the same person! (I guess this reading, like many other first meetings I've had with some of the great women in my life, was a great new experience for her. I'm so glad about that! Sometimes, my desire to be different-- to be outstanding-- surprises me. Especially since I'm okay with buying my clothes off the rack at Fred Meyer or some other chain store half the time.) She told me that my strength is my own (I'd really been wondering when whatever was giving me the strength to do all this would go away again, so that was SUCH a relief to know it's actually mine!), and that it has come from the decisions I made, and the efforts I've put out in the past year. She was just thrilled about the future path that she sees for me, too. Whatever it is, she believes I am going about it just at the right speed, and in the right manner. And she was asked to let me know that the people I need in my life will be there waiting for me when I need them.

I've never had my fortune read, and beyond Aunt Jacque, I haven't really had a lot of energy work or other alternative medicine done either... but since Jacque's death, I've felt like my sense of direction has been harder and harder to find... (I had a compass tattooed on my back a few days after she died, come to think of it) and in some ways, that was true... but not because of Jacque. Today, I learned some great visualization techniques to help me deal with my fears, and I learned that it is okay to acknowledge my struggles, and to take credit for my successes and for my inner strength in working to succeed and be joyful. Additionally, I found a great alternative to calamine lotion for dealing with my "I don't want to date yet, but flirting is fun" itch... and I made a good friend. I believe that there is energy out there, and that there is a font of universal knowledge waiting to be tapped into. I believe that people like my Aunt Jacque and the clairvoyant woman I met today are tapped into that knowledge in some way... and so for me, it is easy to put aside my scientific mind, and stop assuming that life is just random chance occurring over and over again... and to say "thank you" for the gifts I've received today.

So... speaking of people appearing in my life when I need them, have I told you about the blog I'm going to participate in writing for the LibraryJournal magazine? At the ALA Midwinter Meeting back in January, a woman I'd never seen before sat down to rest at my small table (two rickety chairs, about 20 newspapers, my lunch, and a bunch of crumbs) outside a really busy Starbucks one day. Neither one of us was drinking coffee. She ended up asking me a bunch of questions about being an online MLS student. She was also interested in the fact that I have my own blog. (You're reading it.) It turns out that she is the Editor-in-Chief of the LibraryJournal, and she has been thinking about starting a library student blog in her journal's online component-- and I may just be lucky enough to come along for the ride now that we've met!

Yeah. Really happened. Random woman on the street... just when I was trying to network and thinking about looking for opportunities to publish my work (if I have any library-related work worth publishing at this point) so that I could make myself more appealing for library jobs down the line...

I could tell you a lot of other stories from my life just like this-- stories where I meet a stranger, and gain an opportunity or learn a lesson or hear a story that changes the way I look at life-- changes my future plans for the better. It isn't really coincidence. Remember that time you were traveling... stuck in an airport you'd never been to before, and in some part of the country you never visit? Remember how you bumped into someone from your elementary school that you always wondered about, or your old next-door neighbor with those great dogs, or the perfect character for your next book, and the name is even perfect? "Small world!" you said... and all the angels and fairies and scientists and totem animals just laughed from where they were watching over your progress through your life... and then, as you boarded the airplane and finally headed out to your next destination, you thought to whisper a "thank you" into the air. Coincidence. Totally.