On this Easter Sunday, when many people celebrate miracles, I am reveling in a miracle that just occurred in my life last night!*

I was looking for a good image to post here with this miracle report, and now am also remembering the New Year’s Eve Day when I took this photo.

Here's how they tie together.

I was marveling that NYE day at Stinson Beach over the magic to be found in liminal times— such as one year ending and the next one about to begin.

I wish that our current liminal time between worlds was as beautiful as this, but “as above, so below” manifests in different ways. Perhaps our messy process may have a beauty we can't yet see.

I know that despite all that rational logic dictates, (as I survey fresh catastrophes rolling in every day), there is still beauty and magic occurring every day all around us.

Clearly we need to take practical actions to help co-create a beautiful new world, (whether or not there’s any hope of seeing it in our lifetime), but I also think it’s important to drink in beauty and trust in unimagined possibilities .

We have no idea what’s beyond the horizon. It could be unspeakably grim, but I’m hoping for miracles!

* I can’t go into details about this miracle, (it’s a rather delicate situation), but it’s allowing me to create a full circle between another even more spectacular miracle that occurred many years ago, while also (hopefully) helping bring about another miracle (potentially life-saving for someone I love) and I am deeply grateful!

I have the same phone number (but different area code) as a restaurant (which, judging from the calls I received, apparently has a primarily elderly clientele). I used to get a lot of wrong numbers for them when their area code changed.

I called him back, and he had a hard time communicating because he was mostly deaf, but his daughter was there, and so he finally got the message that I did not have the medal and he needed to call the restaurant back with the new area code.

I posted this story on Facebook that night and a friend commented that she had watched a movie, entitled “The World’s Fastest Indian” about racing on the Bonneville Salt Flats. She said she had only heard of the flats once or twice before i

n her entire life. The next day she was shopping for a new doctor, and the one who stood out was that reported in her profile that she was a racer on the Bonneville salt flats. My friend took it as a sign and chose that doctor!

And by the way, the reason Lokita called Coco her wonder dog, is that he survived being shot in the eye by teens on meth and stood by his deceased owner until help arrived. The kids just wanted money and a car and shot a random stranger and his dog. Lokita was undergoing treatment for cancer at the time. Coco stood by Lokita throughout her grief and medical traumas (not limited to that cancer bout)

https://lokitacarter.com/

I have a nephew who I have only very briefly seen a handful of times many years ago. I have no communication with my half brother and very little with his ex-wife (who is the one who cares for my nephew). But circumstances have not been happy (huge understatement!) for any of them, so I continue to send my nephew birthday and holiday greetings.

I no longer try to send him gifts, but enclose a $20 bill. This year, I questioned whether or not to do that. He is over the age of 18 when I usually cut kids off from cards and gifts and I’ve been worried about finances.

And I’m not even sure he can use the money (he’s pretty high on the spectrum of autism and lives at home). But I decided as a gesture of good faith in reciprocity and in the spirit of love, I would go ahead and do it.

I stuck the card in the mail delivery slot at the post office and then picked up my mail from my P.O.box. Inside there was a card from the parents of children I cared for way back in the 80s. And enclosed in the card was a $100 bill.

Not for any special occasion, just a random gift.

There are a whole bunch of other little synchronicities around the image on the front of the card (Klimt’s “Fulfilment”)and recent events, but I’ll just leave you with this cryptic photo and my encouragement to practice random kindness. That stuff is contagious, and we all need more of it right about now

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She showed the picture she took --which I immediately recognized as my friend Mikki’s car. I contacted Lissa on Facebook and asked if she had seen it 2 weeks prior on January 10. Mikki and I had been driving to the beach on Highway One (we remembered we had an annoying car behind us following too closely --which made sense because she was trying to get close enough to take a picture on that windy road). And yes, that was the day.

And speaking of my friend Mikki and license plate synchronicities…

There are many reasons (eg. current events and probable trajectories) why I am choosing to remind myself and hopefully others* that miraculous, magical, anomalous, unexplained and sometimes seemingly impossible events happen all the time.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/anomalous-events-that-can-shake-one-s-skepticism-to-the-core/

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Although I have a pretty big capacity for “woo woo”, this book was a little bit over-the-top even for me. There was one section about an obscure goddess I had never heard of, named Azna, and I was instructed to make a wish to her and list everything in detail. Apparently, if my wish was to be granted, I would receive roses within seven days.

Although I didn't have much faith in Azna’s roses, there was nothing else to do, so I decided it would probably be a good idea for me to put in writing everything that I was looking for in a new home. I described the community and the little apartment I wanted in exhaustive and excruciatingly specific detail.

On the seventh day, I arrived at the home of some children I had been caring for prior to my sudden departure. And there, on the dresser of my room for the night, was a bouquet of roses. The mother said she had taken the children to the grocery store and told them they could pick out flowers for me.

They adamantly insisted on roses.

A few months later, I moved into a place that I lived in for the next 14 years. Except for one item, It was everything on my list (both for the community and the apartment). And there were more amazing features that I hadn't even thought to ask for. The one item on my list that I hadn't received was a bathtub.

Shortly, after moving in, when I was taking out the recycling, I met a woman who lived on the other side of my wall. We had a long conversation exchanging stories.. when I told her about Azna and the roses, she handed me a key and told me she had a bathtub and I could use it whenever I wanted to. We are still dear friends to this day.

*I lost my home, my husband, my dog, my job, my community, and so much more.

Today is my mother's birthday. I am contemplating all of the messages that I interpreted from the circumstances of the individual appearances and the general themes of the rhinoceros as an animal, AND, from the eponymous Ionesco play in which the rhino is a symbol for encroaching fascism.

Although there are many fascinating connections between these themes, the connection that feels most magical to me is the one between me and Mom. Our connection was so troubled over our lifetime together and increasingly tenuous in recent years. This crash* of rhinos, feels to me like my mother letting me know she is here for me now in way she wasn't able to be when she was alive. Whether or not I am imagining this, it feels true and deeply comforting.

* crash is the name of a group of rhinos

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I tried spreading them all out on the wood floor in my tiny apartment, and but quickly became utterly overwhelmed. One of the cards referenced the myth of Psyche, in which she was given the impossible task of sorting out an enormous pile of grains, barley, wheat, beans, and poppy seeds before morning*. After valiantly attempting to complete her task in the hopes of placating the angry goddess Aphrodite and being reunited with her beloved Eros, Psyche gave up in despair and went to sleep. While she slept, the goddess Demeter sent a colony of ants who completed the task for her.

I, too, was tired and overwhelmed and gave up on my seemingly impossible to ask. I gathered all the cards back into a stack with the card about Psyche on the top. I jokingly told myself that maybe it would somehow all sort itself out while I was asleep. So I went to bed.

The next morning I got up and went into the kitchen to get some water and the entire white wall of my kitchen above the counter was peppered with tiny black ants. I had never had a single ant in my apartment before. In my bleary, half asleep state, totally horrified by this invasion, I began annihilating them with a wet dish towel. But suddenly, I remembered Psyche’s ants.

So I grabbed the top card from the pile and started scooping the ants out and dumping them outside while explaining to them that I really appreciated any helpful intentions, but it was a metaphor!

🐜 🐜 🐜 🐜 🐜 🐜 🐜 🐜 🐜 🐜 🐜 🐜 🐜

I would love to say that I was then able to perfectly sort everything out. But even though that did not happen, it reminded me to trust that when I ask, "assist-ants" will show up! But in the meantime, sometimes you just have to surrender and wait until the timing is right! Psyche had other tasks to fulfill before she could complete her mission. And so did I.

* there's also a similar old tale about Vasalisa being given the same task by the old witch Baba Yaga.