It was 1957. He huddled close to his mother in the waiting room full of strangers. Half a dozen people, mostly women his mother’s age or older…preoccupied in their own separate worlds, leafing through the latest issue of Life no doubt. All of a sudden and for no apparent reason, he simply climbed off of the chair next to his mother and walked across the room, climbed up on the empty chair next to the unsuspecting woman as all eyes followed. Without saying a word, he looked into her eyes and then gently laid his head in her lap. Quietly, subtly and spontaneously…the separate worlds became one.

Good morning dear friends! Welcome to our 13^th consecutive Sunday get together! For some reason the memory of this event from 54 years ago has come back to me. Perhaps it is the familiar feeling of the separate worlds we all seem to be living in, who knows? But like so many, many things I’ve learned to see through my windshield; I know it is not by accident…and I trust the source implicitly.

The subtle power of prayer, positive thought and synchronicity are the three things that came to me to write about on this crisp autumn morning.

Prayer is our most powerfully intimate and direct connection to God. When you pray you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom save in prayer you may not meet…I cannot teach you how to pray in words. God listens not to your words save when He himself utters them through your lips. And I cannot teach you the prayer of the seas and the forests and the mountains. But you who are born of the mountains and the forests and the seas can find their prayer in your heart, And if you but listen in the stillness of the night you shall hear them saying in silence, “Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth…”– From The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

And if our heart is the stage for prayer, then it is our mind that sets the stage. Think of it as the magnifying glass that you and I used as children to focus the rays of the sun onto the dry leaf. Our minds are very much like children who dance about chasing every pleasure and curiosity. As we’ve covered in previous discussions, there is no shortage of sweet mind candy to distract the unfocused and undisciplined mind away from itself. But in submitting to this endless folly, we give up the Crown Jewels for the Snicker Bar. The Elders of all Faiths know this to be true.

I have made friends with members of a local Christian Community here in Bellvale. They are wonderful neighbors who live very much like the Amish. I have been their guest for lunch on a couple of occasions now and I am really enjoying getting to know them. They begin and end each meal with a song. And one of the adults will tell a story during the meal. Just the other day, the mealtime story was the famous story of the Little Dutch Boy who saved Holland. (This is one of those stories that is way more than a story!) As I listened to the storyteller bring us all back to that foot path alongside the infamous Dutch Berm known as Dikes (the only thing separating the Dutch from drowning!), and into the footsteps of the legendary young boy…I felt the sweet fragrance of synchronicity. The young boy happens by a particular section of the Dike and notices a trickle of water. Instantly aware of the inevitable disaster the trickle will become, he assesses his options. He realizes that there is no time to go for help, so the only thing he can do is plug the hole himself with the only thing he has…his finger. In so doing he knew the pain and suffering he was taking upon himself as it was hours before his worried father would come to find him.

As I listened to the story, I thought of Churchill who no doubt listened to the very same story himself as a child; “If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case:  you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”- Winston Churchill

Synchronicity is the reflecting pool of God’s love that we tap into when we rise to meet in the air as Gibran so poetically puts it. It is the eternal flame the Secularists so desperately seek in vain to douse…and replace with their own “light”…by any and all means necessary. The Elders of Bellvale fled their original home in Germany in the 1930’s for this very reason!

They know, as do many of us now; that the very same gathering storm that threatened our world then is at our doorstep once again. I could not help but think to myself as I looked around at the warm and friendly faces of my gracious hosts, how many of us are walking by the trickle of water in our lives either unaware, afraid or simply thinking someone else will plug the leak?

Never has there been a better time to pray my friends! I will meet you there. 🙂