Mystery in everyday moments

Do I believe in miracles?

I don’t know, really. What are miracles? Maybe miracles are just events and outcomes we cannot (yet) explain.

But I am partial to this Albert Einstein quote:

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

And I believe that the entirety of life as we humans experience it is indeed a miracle of sorts, in whatever way that life and our condition has actually come about.

Perhaps the better word for me is mystery.

I’ve shared before that I am comfortable not knowing things—why and how events occur. I don’t feel the need to understand the reason we—humanity—are here with our consciousness on this one single planet amid countless universes.

I like Heather Plett’s expansive thoughts on mystery:

Mystery can be defined however you want to define it—God, Allah, Spirit, Universe, nature, Love, your higher power, tenderness, etc. Whatever name you use for Mystery, especially in the midst of a big life change, it is helpful to have a sense of something bigger than you, holding you and caring for you.

Any or all of those names work for me. I need not know or define them more.

So it may come down to mystery what recently happened to my honey and me. Or synchronicity. And maybe those are the same or related.

This acceptance of mystery doesn’t just apply to grand cosmic questions, but also to the everyday twists of fate. Let me share recent examples from my own life, highlighting how mystery can play out in the practical world; how the universe has our back.

Our search for a new home

For the past five weeks, a large part of our focus has been on finding a new space to make into a home. The apartment we are currently in is a sublet and we must move out of it by June 1. Our search has been, in a word, wearisome. The rental market in this metropolis (as in so many others) is tight, with demand outpacing supply, and monthly rates have skyrocketed in the past couple of years.

Without boring you with the many details of our journey, I do want to share with you how we dodged a bullet in one place and later found another.

It soon became apparent to us that with our modest budget, we could not afford to live in the area of the city we are living now. We cast our net wider and wider, until we found ourselves looking at an apartment in Chilliwack, a town an hour and a half drive east from Vancouver. It suited us in every way—size, layout, and budget.

Good friends in Vancouver were horrified to hear we were considering a move that far out and we soon got an earful from all of them why it wasn’t a good idea—too far, bad summer traffic, winter road closures because of snow drifts, ultra-conservative, and they would miss us. No one was in favour.

As it turned out, despite having met the landlord’s every (excessive) demand, he still abruptly turned us down. We were shocked at first; then concluded the universe had protected us.

Doors close and doors open.

In the Universe there are things that are known and things that are unknown, and in between there are doors.

William Blake

Our attempt in Chilliwack was a door that closed, but it was hardly the end of our journey.

It’s a tough competition for places. We viewed dozens more spaces and got passed over by the places we applied to.

When I shared my vexation with my youngest brother, who also lives in BC, he suggested I post a request in the various Facebook rental groups. My firm sense of online privacy recoiled at the idea, and I wasn’t immediately convinced it would lead to anything, noting that very few of the posts in those groups got any engagement at all.  

Then I reconsidered, took a deep breath, and posted our request with a photo of us in three groups. The response has been astonishing—even, shall I say, mysterious? Within the next four days, nearly 200 strangers liked/loved my posts, and many have left comments—some encouraging, others not so much. I’ve received about a dozen legitimate offers through direct messaging, and maybe double that in patently scam messages.

And this is where the story gets back to mystery.

One of the private messages came from a woman with an offer that sounded interesting. After exchanging details, yesterday we went to look at her ground floor suite. She had never rented it out before. It had been constructed for her son, but he chose to go live in another city.

For safety reasons, she had thought to rent it out to females only, but she wasn’t actively listing her suite. Then our post came into her Facebook feed, and she liked our smiles.

The mystery is that she is not a member of that group! And still she had been shown our photo.

On our way home, my honey told me that he had started meditating again and had once again asked Guanyin for help. Perhaps, he mused, this was the divine response.

Now we must decide what to do. We both felt an affinity with the woman who owns the house and lives upstairs from the suite, an important factor for us. The place itself was okay, adequate, but not completely ideal for us.

To take it or not to take it?

Reflecting on the rooftop parable

A parable came to mind of a man who finds himself stranded on his rooftop, surrounded by a rapidly rising flood. As the waters swell around him, three different rescuers come to his aid. First, a neighbor rows by in a canoe, offering to evacuate him. The man declines, saying, “No thanks, God will save me.” Then, a search and rescue team arrives in a motorboat, but again, he refuses help, repeating his belief that God will save him. Finally, a helicopter hovers overhead, lowering a rope, but the man still insists that God will rescue him. Eventually, the waters overtake him, and he drowns. Reaching the afterlife, he asks God why he wasn’t saved. God replies, “I sent you a canoe, a motorboat, and a helicopter. What more did you expect?”

We have a few days to consider whether to accept this unexpected offer, and we can’t help but wonder: is this our canoe? Should we wait for a motorboat, or is this the universe nudging us forward?

Closing thoughts

I believe in the magic of life’s mysterious connections—the unexplainable ties we have to certain places and people, and those moments of perfect synchronicity. As Charles de Lint beautifully puts it,

I do believe in an everyday sort of magic — the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.

These are the everyday miracles, the doors of mystery that appear and disappear around us.

What mysteries have you embraced in your life? Have you ever found a miracle in an unexpected place? I invite you to share your stories in the comments below.

PS. For those following my cancer journey, I recently had my first follow-up meeting with my ocular oncologist. Looking at new sonograms, she sees healing, but it’s not yet conclusive. That leaves me still in a wait-and-see mode. I am grateful for feeling healthy and in good spirits despite the challenges we face. Again, having a strong loving partner and caring and supporting friends makes all the difference.

PPS. I’m tickled to read your thoughts. Thanks for those shared here or to me privately. If you find value in my posts, I invite you to share them and sign up to be notified when I post (top right on menu).