Tuesday 04 | 25| 2017

Moving Part 2: You Were Just Lucky - Really?

We are still moving even as I write this. This move has been unlike any we have experienced. Some have said we have been very lucky. In 1976, while visiting a gravel pit in NH when they were doing major bulldozing, I watched them expose smoky quartz crystals. Was I lucky to have been there just at that moment? In 1992 they were bulldozing at one of the mines in Herkimer county NY and also exposing lots of crystals. I was there also. Was I just lucky? Both these events played an important part in life events that followed, so does this change the way we think about “lucky events” making them more a part of destiny than just luck? Does God show up at special moments in our lives? I pose these questions because they are rattling around in my head following a series of events connected to our moving closer to family. This move to being closer to family is necessary because of the Parkinson’s disease. We needed a place that could be made ADA easily, and it needed to be a fairly nice place with easy access to community resources. Then it also had to be in our price range. The house we found is, for us, a small miracle. It is perfectly located for easy flat road travel to the services we need and the house can be made ADA within the budget allocated. And the land is perfect for building a country garden - including a small brook nestled between towering pines. “You were very lucky to find this wonderful home in such a difficult housing market” – really? When we finally made the commitment to the house the moving went into motion, and then more small moments of “good fortune”. Both the banker we found and the buyer’s realtor were not just good, but exceptional. We have been through the house buying and selling routine before and it is not always accompanied by skilled and attentive practitioners. “You were lucky to find those quality folks” – really? The money needed to move is a challenge. My partner began immediately looking for work and the very first opportunity she saw was a job working with computer data, in human services, just a short drive from our very rural home. I was very excited, but she turned it down as she felt it necessary to apply to the local hospitals. They all turned her down and she returned to this first opportunity. She got hired doing exactly what she likes to do with just the right number of hours per week. “She was very lucky to find a job health care data base management so close to your new home” – really? The new job did help the home budget but having two homes presents more than just monetary concerns. It’s a drain on time and physical resources (yard and maintenance work for two homes). Driving back and forth between the two homes with a small trailer to move things provided time to bemoan the situation. While loading the trailer, on a brisk but sunny day, a middle-aged man drove up in his truck and cheerfully asked, “How’s the moving going?” We continued to chat and then he asked, “Have you ever considered renting?”. I said that I had and asked him how much could he pay. We negotiated the details and came up with a unique contract. The deal includes him paying for the utilities, taking care of the yard, the gardens and doing home renovations, utilizing his skills as a master carpenter. “Wow you were lucky to find the guy to rent your home” – really? Summarizing: 1. We bought a perfect home with the help of some excellent people 2. Partner found the perfect job 3. We found the perfect person to rent our other home. All of this happened within the span of two months. Then, there was this sense of disbelief, a little voice saying” why is all of this happening so perfectly”? It has never been that way before. Every one of our 13 previous moves has been filled with hair pulling periods without employment, or a temp job with “the boss from hell” and having to live in a home that needed way too much repair. Having everything go right during this 14th move is as lucky as guessing all the lottery ball numbers correctly. We felt like we had won the lottery. There was, and still is, this deep permeating sense of happiness in our home, which is hard to do at the end of New England winter and two spring snow storms dumping a combined 23 inches. But Cheshire cat grins we both have, along with a prostrate humble gratitude. Was the move without issue? Heck no! It was very painful on the body and for some reason the mail service decided to send my medication to Phoenix, 2000 miles from where they needed to go. Even so, we were both left with the sensation that luck had little to do with lining up these things so perfectly. It has been the most incredible move of our lives. There was Divine help here – really? Yes really! Like other loving relationships, God does show up. You can believe this was all just luck, win the lottery type. Me, well… it makes more sense for me to think of us as having Divine moments rather than lucky lottery ones. Man has been writing about these bliss/flow moments as far back as writing goes. These Divine moments are still happening in our lives today, if we are in a place that allows such a relationship to be viewed with clarity. Our relationship with God suffers at the hands of stress in a way similar to that of loving relationships, as described in the previous blog. You need not use the term God in your conceptualization of “flow moments” (discussed in previous blogs). These flow moments have miracle events, wisdom imparted, and a sense of humbling awe. But the “flow communication” with God is not only about going with that which is good. It is also about NOT going! When we were first house hunting to find a place closer to family it was so much hard work. We looked at over 300 homes on line, selected half a dozen and found a realtor to help us, we even got to the point of a deposit. But that fell apart because the inspector told us the home was about to do the same. The doors kept shutting and all I could hear is my daughter’s words, “You need to move closer to us”. Giving in one last shot we stopped in and looked at a home that looked decent on the web. We drove in the driveway and felt this pressure pushing against us, a pressure saying, “Get back in the car, turn around and go home.” It was a palpable thing, like moving against a strong wind. We did leave, and from the testimony above one could say that the “No” answer lead eventually to the miracle of the yes answer. The Not going is as important as the flow within the bliss moments. But stress will get in the way of us being able to hear the signs of the “go – no go” steps in our lives. Was it all just luck? For me it is fantasy thinking to say that both the “no -go” and the “go” solutions here were the product of luck, a simple roll of the dice. Man has had a relationship with the Divine for as long as we have recorded history. If we are all sharing a myth, a bedtime story, it’s there for a reason. It’s there because men and women throughout time have experienced Divine moments. These stories of miracles, and the story shared here, call us to reconnect – to each other and to the Divine. God does show up, and it seems less fantastical an explanation than saying, “You were lucky that happened”. On sharing this story with others I encountered resistance to using the term God. People seem more comfortable with something like “the force” from the Star Wars movies, or just the Divine. Some may even say this this is just my philosophy, but that is like saying that the relationship I have with my spouse is philosophy. The relationship available with God is the same as the one we have with those we love. Sometimes we forget that we are spiritual beings experiencing a material existence for the purpose of enlightenment. .. .