Fable

I find I often talk at length of how we must find meaning and purpose in our experiences. I try to practice this mindfulness in my daily life, and to reflect on past experiences to soak up as much education as I can from them. Sometimes I reflect on things that happened many years ago, but sometimes I am open and able enough to get a massive dose of education immediately, sometimes even as the situation is happening, which is what occurred for me this morning.

This morning started out as most mornings do here in the Cottage. Cell phones play their alarms and we push the sleep button and snuggle down into our cozy sleeping nest and ask for five more minutes. Eventually we get moving, one of us makes coffee, one of us makes lunch, sometimes one person does both. We look for his misplaced this or that until we find it in some absurd place and laugh and kiss each other good bye with well wishing for the day. I check my email and facebook and connect with friends and family while figuring out what my schedule is for the day which today included a job interview at 12:30. Then in comes the wrench!

My phone rings and it's the potential employer I am meeting with at 12:30, I was sure it was 12:30, I'd said 12:30 three times to various people who asked me when the meeting was. 12:30, 12:30, 12:30. But no, it's 10. I am supposed to meet with her at 10, and it's now 10:15. I look at my iCal, it says 10! How did this happen! I apologize profusely and we agree that I'll be there as soon as possible. I throw on clothes, brush my teeth, wish there were time to eat something to temper the coffee I had been sipping leisurely not two minutes ago, run out of the house to my car and immediately realize something is not right. Another wrench!

My car is trashed, the contents of the glove compartment and back seat pockets is strewn about, I have no idea what's missing, I immediately feel angry and scared and violated, I notice the windows aren't broken and the radio is fine and remember I brought the faceplate in last night as I always do, and then I realize I'd left my wonderful black velvet jacket in the car and it's GONE. I am so upset. I call him freaking out, push the stuff out of the way and screech off to my interview that I'm now 30 minutes late to, crying and yelling on the phone about all of it and how some #$%&!@ has my jacket which was the only thing I really loved that was in the car in the first place and blah blah blah. He calms me, in the magical way only he can do, rational, good advice, making me sturdy and strong, bolstering me with support, reminding me that I'm Emily Taylor and I will go in there and somehow the situation will work out wonderfully. I feel the anger starting to melt from me, not fully, but it's melting. There's a goofy recumbent bicycle behind me with the silly flag. We always joke about me having a recumbent bicycle, we call it a Cumby. I laugh and he laughs and I take a few wrong turns but I make it to the interview and I'm feeling okay though humiliated.

I walk in and immediately they are warm and kind and open and I am honest and apologetic and trying not to let the drama get to me. And suddenly it all flows, all of the experiences of the last few days start to line up in this perfect synchronicity. I remember being at a funeral two days ago listening to the minister saying "We may pray for a calm sea when the sea is stormy, but those with faith are like a sailor on a stormy sea who has faith in his captain." I relate that story to them and say that often I want to calm the sea myself, or at least be the person at the helm, but that I think my faith is more about maintaining a calm sea within. We have a pleasant conversation about how to ride a stormy sea and I instantly feel a sense of kinship and home that I never would have experienced had the events of the morning not occurred. They remark at how centered I seem considering all that had happened that morning and the past few days, so they got to experience me at my worst, but still maintaining my calm sea. Something every employer wants. Something they would not have seen in action had life not thrown me a few wrenches.

I drive home, feeling pretty good about myself that I had managed to handle that situation, but still upset about my beautiful velvet jacket and then I drive up my street and see it laying there on the sidewalk. I pick it up and it is unharmed and warm from the October sun.

I put it on, feel warm, and call the potential employer and we both share a moment of glee to hear the happy ending to our fable.

And the moral of this story is: Maybe the Universe works in ways that aren't as mysterious as we think. Maybe we just have to learn how to speak it's language.

Loving the Scientist

I am in love. I am in love with a person who is very different from me. He believes that there are many things he can't explain in this world, but he believes in science instead of god. He can't relate to a lot of the things I do, or the things I feel, but he respects me enough to not mock me for them. He says he loves the spiritual part of me, that he sees the benefit I get from it, and how I help others with it. He is in grad school right now getting a PhD in Environmental Engineering. He is on a very linear, intellectual path. My path wanders and weaves as it always has, and often I can't see the path in front of me. It's foggy in Berkeley you see.

At times I wish he were more like me. I wish that we were on more similar paths, but then I think about what that would really mean. Would we constantly be comparing ourselves to each other? Would it get confusing who's path belongs to who? Would we have to explain it all to each other as we go? That sounds like a lot of work. Distracting work. I sort of like that I get to have my path all to myself. He can't relate to most of it, just as I can't understand the math scribbled on his white board, but I know that math means that one day he'll be helping people get clean water and he knows one day I'll be using my own math to guide people along their spiritual paths. We might not understand how the other one does it, but we appreciate that they do.

Occasionally we have intense debates about spirituality vs science. Both of us end up learning something from it. In general though we let each other have our own gods. This suits me fine. I have always felt that spirituality is a personal relationship you have with yourself and whatever universal consciousness or spiritual path you choose as your own. There have been relationships of mine where the other person got immeshed in my spirituality or mine in theirs or both, and it seems like in those sorts of situations things can get messy very quickly. Sometimes people start to create myths around the other person, believing them to be more than human, and although in theory it's lovely to believe that your lover is a deity, in practice you find you're always disappointed when you figure out they're just a human being like you.

I love my scientist. He keeps me grounded. I never have to question whether he's working a magic spell on me or if he meditated more than me this week. When I have a nightmare he wakes me up and he says "there there... it's just a dream" and I can trust him because he doesn't believe that nightmares can come true. When he's away from me the spirits bother me while I sleep, but when he's here his wall of disbelief creates a lovely little bubble around me. He's got his math and I have my math and never the twain shall meet.