In my rather "naughty"
diary a
few weeks ago, I wrote about celebrating an uncle's 90th
birthday by going skinny dipping (and no, the uncle was NOT
one of the participants, although he's a pretty game guy, and
I wouldn't have been surprised if he had joined in). I have a
funny follow-up to that story, plus a new set of
portents
that hit me with a wallop after I got home. I sometimes think
that God (or Goddess or the Great Spirit or Whomever) has
realized I don't listen to whispers in my ear, so I get hit
over the head with a metaphorical frying pan instead.
Ever since my aneurysm burst around 5 years ago, I have
noticed an amazing number of synchronicities in my life.
Maybe they were always there, but I just didn't notice them
before. Whitley's theory is that this means I am on the right
path, when it comes to the way I am living my life. Or does it
mean something more scary: Are our lives more
predetermined thanwe like to imagine? Do we not really
possess what wetreasure the most, which is our free will?
The first such portent involves a flurry of UFO sightings in
the little town where I went to high school. My childhood was
pretty miserable and these years were some of the most
miserable of all: my parents moved from the sophisticated
college town which I dearly loved to the country, where I
was bored out of my head. They didn't want to pay the extra
insurance so that I could drive, so I never got my license,
and since I learned to drive very late in life, I've never
been a confident driver and highways still scare me to death.
In those days, this meant I was stuck in my room most of the
time, which was (conveniently for the rest of the family) out
of the way in the basement, where I could hear all the
laughter and living going on among my step-siblings but
couldn't be part of it.
But the worst thing was, the land they bought and built their
house on was just over the property line that divided one
school district from another. Instead of traveling to the town
I loved to attend high school, I ended up taking a big yellow
bus to a school in a dreary little town with a single moribund
factory that employed all the men there who were not
farmers. So, not only was I bored, I was also sad.
There's a kind of karma to this story though (isn't there
always?) My parents bought one-third of an orchard from a
elderly couple who wanted to retire. If you have apple and
peach trees, you have to spray them, but one of the families
that bought the land didn't want to pay the money necessary
to do this, so their trees all became diseased, and the insects
quickly spread to everyone else's trees and killed them. My
father eventually cut down all the trees, which were now
very ugly, but he couldn't afford to remove the stumps,
which was expensive proposition, consisting of hiring a man
with a tractor to wrap a chain around each one and pull it
out. The result was that our beautiful country manse now
had a view of a sea of stumps!
I did make friends at my new school, however, but I didn't
keep up with them when I went to college. Since these were
some of the worst years of my life, I wanted to put them
behind me. But being in a public venue like our website
sometimes brings friendships and
family ties
out of the woodwork, and I was contacted by email by an old
friend from my high school.
I learned that a high school reunion was being organized in
the town. Since this is far away from where I now live, and
thus hard to get to, I decided not to go, despite the fact
that I saw, from the list of email recipients, that the boy I'd
first had sex with (under the pool table in HIS basement) was
going to be there.
I have since found out that, during the reunion, there was a
flurry of UFO sightings over the town! Were they "looking" for
me? Since I assume that they
(whoever they are) know where I am, since I'm
always with Whitley, I think it may be a message of some
kind of me that I need to interpret.
The second major portent that has occurred in my life is that
I've just finished an autographical book about my aneurysm
and recovery, which I hope very much will help others. The
editor of the company that is going to publish my book
suggested I read "Man's Quest for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl
(which I did). At this Sunday's mass, I learned that a reading
group is starting up at the church next month--to discuss
this very book.
In fact, my favorite priest, who gave the sermon, made a
special point of saying that we need to keep our ears open,
to listen and notice what is going on around us, so we can
take meaning from it. I was especially receptive to this
message, since it's what I've tried so much to do in the last 5
years.
The school reunion message might seem, on the surface, to
be that I need to come to terms with my past, but I've
already done that. Frankl's book is about how HE needed to
come to terms with the past (and he writes about being in a
concentration camp, so he had a lot to come to terms with!).
I can't compare myself to such a great thinker or the
wrong that was done to me to his great suffering, but I can
say that we had similar reactions to evil that was done to us.
While Christianity is largely about forgiveness, I can't see
why any Jew should even try to forgive the Nazis for what
they did (in fact, it could even be dangerous, since it might
encourage other people to try their hand at genocide).
Immoral choices were made by a group of people in that
place at that time that are almost without precedent, when it
comes to evil.
Families are a different matter, however: Sometimes the only
thing we can do is forgive and move on. I don't think I have
ever really forgiven my father and stepmother for what they
did to me, but I do understand how those of us who are not
what might be called "evil" can make the wrong moral choices
at times. I recognize that the wounds imparted by my family
have healed because I've come to the realization that I would
have chosen to act differently under the same
circumstances. I hope I would have made some brave moral
choices in the Nazi era as well.
Oh, one final word about skinny dipping: When I told my
friends in Austin about the pool party, they related the
following story. They had some friends visiting from Harvard
who were avid birdwatchers. They brought binoculars with
them and said, "The black capped virago (I may have this
slightly wrong) has been sighted recently in an area of Austin
known as Hippie Hollow." The Hollow is a notorious skinny
dipping spot in that town, and when our friends took their
bird watching acquaintances over there, they stumbled upon
a naked WEDDING that was taking place. While the Harvard
folks peered eagerly through their binoculars, our friends had
to keep reassuring the nude wedding party (who were giving
them suspicious looks) that "They're birdwatchers. They're
only looking for birds."
I used to say that I don't need to go to church, because
church
comes to me, but this Sunday proved that there's still
something valuable to be found there. I guess I could say the
same about bird watching:
They come
to me too. And UFOs? Well, they came to me but I wasn't
there: I was busy getting wisdom in another way.
Related Entries:
10-Nov-2009: On NOT Going to a Movie about UFOs
20-Oct-2009: The Laughing Buddha
11-Oct-2009: The Red Coat
22-Sep-2009: Four Days
27-Aug-2009: Two Birthdays
12-Aug-2009: Held Hostage by Hummingbirds
05-Aug-2009: The Irish Milkmen of the Dog World
27-Jul-2009: Two Surprising Events
29-Jun-2009: Trickster Coyote
08-Jun-2009: Tool Users
