Synchronicity

 I must share some of my life this week. It is too grand to keep to myself.

I have a dear  friend who used to be Maxine but is now Reverend Master Serena, a monk at Shasta Abbey, up north. I have not seen her in 22 years, but I mention her every day, and write her once a year, as our birthday month approaches. This year, I took two weeks to write my letter, mixed in with listening to her Dharma talks on the abbey’s website, which now also has a YouTube channel, so I get to see her as well. I went off to the mailbox a few days ago to send the letter, arrived home to find our mail had been delivered and it was a card from her. Great timing, yes, but there’s more. She told me that she had spent a fortnight at their retreat house recently and went online to buy some used books to take with her. When they came, out of one of the books dropped a business card of mine from my consulting days, from 2000. She sent me the card with the same amount of awe that I had, the Universe never failing to surprise. The next day, I was in a store I had not planned to be at , wearing a mask that says Wisconsin Badgers, and a random guy asked if that’s my home. I told him it was until I got smarter and moved to California in the 70’s, asked where he was from, and found we both grew up in the same tiny town, ages and years apart, but his high school teachers were my old friends. I decided then to go to Trader Joe’s, a place I never go on a busy day, but only if a parking spot was available, and of course one opened up just as I arrived. I grabbed my purchase and had my choice of four open checkout lanes, went to one with a clerk named Amber, who saw my mask and asked again about Wisconsin. She was a tender young’n, but told me she grew up right next door to my hometown. I started to tell her about the guy from the other store, but her boss was frowning a bit, so I told the boss woman that it was a good story and she calmed. She too had to smile at the miracle of it all. Fun, huh?