My husband, Christian, is an asbestos consultant who performs building
inspections. Recently he performed an inspection for the demolition of
a nice, but somewhat neglected 1950’s residence overlooking the Pacific
Ocean in Southern California (Pacific Palisades). The house had last
been a rental property until it was purchased (for $1.8 million) by the
new owners who plan to re-build on the site.

On occasion he finds interesting items that homeowners have left behind,
apparently not wanting to deal with them, including furniture, artwork,
appliances and even cars and one time a powerboat on a trailer was left
behind. Usually Christian just leaves these things for the dumpster.

During this recent inspection, he noticed a green armchair with an
ottoman in the master bedroom. The chair sat in front of a picture
window with an ocean view, the fabric on the chair was torn and sun
faded, but he said that he instantly fell in love with the chair. He
took a picture of it while he was performing his inspection and when he
finished the job, he asked the buyers agent if they would ask the owners
if they planned to keep the chair or to throw it away. When Christian
sent his report to the agent, he asked again if they would ask about the
chair and they said that they would.

Well, almost a month later Christian received a call from the agent
saying that they were ready to tear down the house and if he wanted the
chair to come and get it. As luck would have it, he had an inspection in
the area and he was there the next morning to get it. While loading it
into his SUV the seat cushion fell off and a page torn from a magazine
fell onto the street. Christian picked it up and tossed it onto the
front seat and left. While driving away he glanced at the page and saw a
picture of a similar chair with $3,800 handwritten next to it.

He called me from the road and asked me to look up a Hans Wegner “momma” chair. I did, and could not find a “momma” chair but I did find a “Papa
Bear” chair by Hans Wegner. Apparently this is a mid-century modern chair that might still be worth something. During my search I found a
dealer in Hollywood who had a picture of the chair on his web page, and he also did restorations. The second bit of luck that day was that
Christian was passing right by the dealer on his way back to the office. He stopped in and asked about having the chair re-upholstered and found
out that it would cost $650.00 to have it restored to it’s original condition. As Christian was leaving, the dealer offered him $5,000.00
for the chair in it’s current condition.

When Christian brought the pieces home, we put them in the living room
and marveled at this bit of luck. We discussed selling, but we are
thinking that we don’t know when, or if, we could ever afford to buy
such a piece. So for now we will re-upholster the pieces nicely and
enjoy our new-found treasure.

Robin–Chatsworth, CA

We, as well as our dear friend Lisa, put up rain-protected flyers all over the area with his description (extra digits on his paws!), we went door to door all over the neighborhood, put up flyers at vet offices, went to both animal shelters 1-2 times a week looking for him, put ads in the papers, and said lots of prayers that where ever he was, he was happy and at peace (we weren’t sure about the coyote factor).

A day or so later, while on the internet, looking for suggestions on how to find your lost pet, I stumbled upon a professional tracking service.  I called him, almost on a whim, but he said he could drive right up with his two dogs who work all over the world and who have found buried earthquake victims, murder victims (these dogs were on a Discovery channel show about what they do) as well as many lost pets.  How could I say no?  We wanted our beloved pet back.  His tracking dogs traced Buddy’s steps down to the lake (Buddy is attracted to water….coming from Hawaii he’s got instinctive “fishing” genes), along the lake, then across the lawn to the driveway of a just completed new house right on the lake, where the scent abruptly “disappeared”.  But the dogs gave the signal that there was no smell of trauma or death.  The tracker said it could mean the Buddy went into a vehicle that drove off (construction worker’s truck bed that had a lunch in it?? who knows).  That was that.

Meanwhile, Lisa knew of an animal intuitive (very “under the radar-not advertised”) whom I did call and who tuned into Buddy and conveyed many messages from him to me, of a soul level nature.  Buddy “told” me things through Mandy (who didn’t know me previously) that were perfectly attuned to what was going on for Buddy, me, as well as Jenna and regarding other things besides this physical separation.   There was a deep meditative quality to the messages, beyond the animal instinctive-physical plane.  I would consider sharing them with any who are truly interested.  That was an amazing piece.

A month ago I had a call from a young college man, home on a break from Berkeley, staying with his parents just a few houses down from where we formerly lived, saying he thought he saw a cat that looked just like Buddy’s photo on the flyer, twice. He likes cats a lot and he wanted us to get our cat back, his dad said.  I spent time going back and forth, different times of the day, talking with my former neighbors as well as the lovely family who bought my house.  No Buddy.

After that I just kept checking the shelters weekly, checking the “founds” in the paper and Craig’s list, and, even though Jenna or I would just start crying at times, in grief, and profoundly missed his presence in our family,  I was working in an inner way, to “let go”, surrender and accept what was, our cat was gone physically—maybe to coyotes, maybe adopted to a new family, maybe still “out there”—but he was still a strong presence energetically, with us.   Through working with Mandy, the messages were to just Trust.  Trust that whatever and however it played out, the Love, the connection was still there, and that how it unfolded, to have him back physically or not, was ok, had purpose, and that this whole process had meaning and was part of an unfolding.

Then, four days ago or so, I had a call from a lady who lives on a small lane in a house right on Lake Whatcom, about halfway between our old house (where Buddy was sighted) and the house he was lost at.  She had just noticed our flyer TWO days earlier (after two months out, I was even surprised the flyers were still up).  So I drove down there and walked up and down the lane, calling his name, putting out cat food, but no sign, stayed about two hours, then left, after speaking with two other neighbors on the lane who also had seen a cat similar to the photo I carried with me.  I couldn’t get right down by the lake shore where the cat was really seen because it was on private property and at that point I hadn’t been invited.

Also, I’m sure an animal on it’s own, especially a cat, must travel a good range to find adequate food and safe shelter.  The cat could have been half a mile away when I was calling out and offering food.  And a cat on it’s own would wisely be in an extreme state of survival and not come running easily when in that state.
In the next few days I went back and forth, the ten miles between our house and the area, as well as “talking” to Buddy, asking him if he was ready to rejoin us.  Then, two days ago, I was at the Humane Society, doing another “lost cat check”, finished and went out to my car, feeling defeated.  As I just sat there a thought came into my mind, like someone whispered an idea to me, to go back in and ask them how they catch the many cats at the shelter.  I did, and besides the cats that people just bring in, they told me they use live animal traps, and that they were for rent!  So I got one.    Then, awhile later, another idea like a whisper in my ear…… I remembered that Buddy LOVES watermelon and mangoes….what can I say, he’s from Hawaii.

I called the neighbors at the sighting and one of them, Nilah, was so kind and helpful, saying I was welcome to come set up the trap on her deck and she would also help me, having had cats before, and having caught feral cats as well.  We set it up with the mango and fragrant watermelon I brought, then I sat outside, around the corner from the deck.  My goal was just to see the cat, just to determine that it probably wasn’t Buddy, as had happened before.  No sign of an animal for over an hour.  Nilah brought me some delicious homemade tomato soup, to warm me.  The sun set, it became very chill, and I left, driving up the lane, then pulled over to take a call from Jenna.  Right after, my phone rang again, it was Nilah!!   She said, “We have a cat!”.  I went right back to her house, flew out of the car as she was saying, “And he’s got extra toes!!”.  Then I lost it, crying, ran around the corner, and there was Buddy in the cage, totally freaked out by being trapped, all his survival instincts exploding out….but safe and whole and just THERE!

I hugged Nilah over and over, then drove Buddy home, phoning Jenna on the way, and she couldn’t stop crying for joy, and kept phoning me back, then I phoned my son Nate who was waiting to hear— he was so happy and had been so sad that Buddy was missing too…. Then Buddy and I were home.   I sat down on the floor with him until Jenna got home. Talking with him, he calmed down so quickly….he couldn’t get enough cuddling and energy (me too!), the purring was nonstop, and then he would go eat more food (the vet said he lost over 3 pounds, a lot for someone who only weighed 13!), then more cuddles, then another snack, then more and more cuddling.   Jenna came home and held him and held him and Buddy stuck to her like glue.   He follows us everywhere and slept peacefullly on Jenna’s bed, and only woke me at 6:30 this morning. Buddy and I speak to one another from a whole other place.  I call him Sir Buddy Binky, the Lion-Hearted, a brave and true cat.      We are a happy family.

Marlena–Vancouver, B.C.

At the end of Spring this year, my healer moved away. I was in despair because I had come to depend on her for my physical well being. It was difficult for me to look for a replacement because in my experience, no one would be able to do what she does.  I decided that I would purchase a massage chair instead. And it so happened that Costco offered  one on the floor that week and I purchased it.

I must say that I have been able to hold my own since my healer’s departure and I find that my back is getting more supple every day.
With the realization that my back is in good shape now, I have named the massage chair “My seat of Gratitude”, and I sit in it daily thanking God for this Miracle.

Janet–Maui, Hawaii

I had spoken to Ian several times by phone – a clipped English accent and a fairly brusque manner. He was going to sell us bees at a reasonable price, but we didn’t know what to expect. Was all of this going to be a rip-off, poor quality stock to match the bargain basement rates?

Then one sunny morning in early May a small group of us made the journey out of the city to pick up our new bees. We were excited but also apprehensive.

Meeting Ian in person made all the difference. He was comfortable in his bee yard and he put us at ease right away. A solidly-built, middle-aged man of medium height, Ian had a broad smile and a twinkle in his eyes. Obviously his telephone manner was reserved only for the use of that instrument.

We put on our bee gear and he explained how we needed to conduct ourselves among the industrious inhabitants of this new domain. Then he led the way to the boxes of new bees.

We stood around him in a semi-circle, watching as he slowly and patiently opened each box. He was checking that each had a queen bee, so vital to the future health of our colonies. When he found each one, he would hold out the frame so that all of us could make her acquaintance.

The mood was magical – Ian speaking softly, the mid-morning sun warming us, and the air around us filled with bees on the wing. The soothing hum of many hundreds of the tiny creatures had the calming quality of a meditation session. The bees seemed to accept our presence among them and continued on with their busy lives of gathering nectar and pollen. We felt at one with the surging vitality of insect life and close to a fruitful and productive earth.

Since then our bees have prospered and proliferated – excellent value for our investment. Our first meeting with Ian had been auspicious, and our first meeting with the bees inspirational.

Dave–Toronto, Canada

Finally the weather turned warm enough for me to get the vacuum out and commit to the chore.

When I opened the driver’s side door, I saw that the floor was perfectly clean.  After I got used to the idea of another miracle happening to me my cynical comment was:  “What a lazy angel…The passenger’s side is still dirty!”

Tom B.

As a science writer, miracles are not expected be within my field of interest.   I’m not a believer in any religion–nor do I believe in the supernatural. I don’t need to believe in the supernatural because nature is already super. I learned this from growing my own organic food. The green chlorophyll in plants is–even as you read these words–performing a miracle of biology, physics and chemistry that enables them to process and package sunlight into food for you and me. In fact, you and I eat the sun every time we bite into a bit of food.

I knew nothing of this when I started gardening in 1973. The only thing I knew was that my TV had died, and this opened up a cathedral of silence inside me. For the first time in my life, I could hear my inner voice without any background static. “Dig in the dirt! Make friends with the green guys!”.  It sang to me like a choir.

As you may have imagined, “the green guys” are the chlorophyll cells that for three billion years now have been empowering the plants on this planet (including the algae in the ocean) to make life out of light. Without the green guys, none of us would be here. Their creative productivity is so miraculous that it’s evaded the grasp of our scientists for as long as we’ve had scientists. But this much we do know:

Plants reach down with their roots and pull up water and tiny amounts of minerals from the soil (or the ocean). They also reach up toward our local star and capture its energy in their chlorophyll cells. By combining this solar energy with what they bring up from below and with the carbon dioxide they snatch out of thin air, they manufacture their own bodies. Of course, their bodies become our food directly through vegetables, fruits, and starches, and indirectly, by feeding any animals we eat. Thanks to the green guys, the light of the sun becomes the life of the earth.

A miracle that’s been happening all over our planet for three billion years now is easy to take for granted. But I prefer not to do that because I enjoy worshipping at the shrine of photosynthesis. As you may know, photosynthesis is the scientific term for the miracle that the green guys perform. “Photo” means light and “synthesis” means manufacturing. The green guys operate factories that run on light–on the renewable resource provided for free by the radiance of the star we’re orbiting.

No religious authority is commanding me to worship at the shrine of photosynthesis. I worship there because I love being down on my knees, participating in the miracle of soil and sky. If I didn’t do this, I’d feel like a mere spectator at my own life. In fact, the more I revere the green guys’ creative productivity, the better my food tastes. Thanks to my reverence, every morsel I eat is a divine communion with the blue-green planet that I live on and with the golden star that she’s orbiting.

When I’m saying grace before my meal I’m not pleading to have my food blessed. I’m honoring the fact that is already is!

Harriet–Maui, Hawaii

In the midst of this, a little over a year ago my wife of 28 years gently but firmly asked me to leave. At the same time, my business began to fall apart. I felt myself slipping into a place where my life, regardless of how many years were left, was feeling over. But my friend, in her gentle, and very persistent, way, kept asking me to come to Maui to meet her teacher. Finally, last April, I came, and I found myself truly reborn. I moved to Maui in July, and I began to live my life in a very different way. I appreciate the grace in each moment for the first time in many, many years. I have an opening heart, and a very wise and wonderful spiritual teacher from whom I learn something every day.

It was my friend’s grace and love that brought me here. It was a miracle that she re-appeared in my life when she did, and a bigger miracle that she had the grit and the tenacity to bust through the wall I’d built around my heart and get me to wake up and live life again.

Richard–Maui, Hawaii

IF YOU WERE MOVED BY THIS STORY, PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT

In 1999 we were in an upward spiral to infinite financial independence due to our investing in a foreign bank which yielded enormous returns. My beloved and I watched this growing abundant horizon with excitement and humble gratitude for the blessing of this fortune.

We embarked upon many life-style changes including a full year of traveling and moving to Maui to create our home. We greeted these opportunities with tremendous  gratefulness, while practicing generosity toward others less fortunate.  Our spending was conscientious and we never over purchased for the sake of material gain.  Rather, we pursued the opportunities of bringing art and beauty into our lives and to others.  We were new at this concept of being millionaires, so approached the territory with restraint.

The tide turned when we were not able to withdraw money.

The explanations from the offshore bank officials were sporadic and perplexing.  However, we placed our trust in the continuity of that financial institution, and did not, in our naivety, heed to any whispering inner voices that might be telling us to pay attention.  We continued to focus our energies upon creating our home, and placed a large sum of money into purchasing a house that we loved.  The foreign bank promised that they were resolving the disruption.

During the next month, we sat on pins and needles until the unthinkable news came our way: the bank has failed, we had incurred serious debt, and we lost the house and a large sum of money involved in that transaction. We had just arrived on Maui, we knew no one, we were in our 60’s, with $5,000.00 left to our name.

Until this financial disaster, I had never known lack in any form.  I always had plenty of money for my needs and desires, and didn’t know the meaning of “survival”.  In the Fall of 2000, in shock, I wrote of my experience.  It was important for me to fully feel the impermanence of life, and I wasn’t very good at accepting it then. The miracles and grace DO happen however.    .  .  Stay with me

Journal Entries–beginning October 2000
Oh God, why me—why us?  Is it because I must learn the abject dismal plight that millions of humans must endure?  Cannot I compassionately embody their condition without having to live through it?
Tonight I am only posing questions and writing about my nightmares. I feel no gratitude for anything in this moment.  I am in the dungeon where trust eludes me.  I am terrified.
Ram Das speaks of karma yoga as the path of knowledge inherent in what’s here now, in my face, as life itself.  It is not about the escape, but rather the full embrace.  Resistance is what creates suffering for me—-the holding back from full participation because I want the circumstances to change.  So many beliefs are being tested and I am wondering who I really am.
I do feel a shift in my energy and perceptions today and am less in the doldrums of despair.  In allowing myself to really feel all the emotions that I skillfully avoided all my life, I have shut myself off from seeing a larger horizon. I cannot stay in this dimension of scarcity, lack, fear, anger, and victimhood to which I have succumbed.
Where is trust now? I have no other choice but to accept grace and love since love is all that really exists.  In this moment, am I grateful?  Do I have love in and around me?  Do I have food, clothing, shelter, friends, family, a car, some money, good health?  Yes, of course I do, and I am far more fortunate than 99% of the world’s people.  My path right now must be devoted to gratitude, knowing that all is well and always will be even through the times of pain and discomfort.

Having our very survival at stake, we met wonderfully generous friends who offered places to live, opportunities for work, and true friendship as we began to draw in our community of like-minded and hearted souls.  The more we were thankful, the more generosity we were offered. We are cared for, supported, held, and nourished. When I touch into fear around lack of money, I know it’s big medicine to really accept that there is no security, and security most certainly doesn’t revolve around money.  I watch when anxiety seizes, how awful it feels, and how it has become  a huge collective, and certainly familiar, wound that is working its way through our global humanity.

Now nine years later we live abundantly and peacefully and dynamically in a world of great upheaval and terror which I do not consider to be my own reality. What I think and believe is my reality, so I try to make choices to experience what is beautiful, sublime, loving, and in integrity.  I am always learning to choose harmony over despair.  Emotional housecleaning is a necessity to my ongoing sense of balance, and attunement to a larger landscape allows more acceptance than simply seeing what’s at the tip of my own nose.

Present time–March 2009

We are in a comfortable, elegant life of simplicity and grace where we want for nothing.  We live on combined social security and the little work that continues to come our way. Our determination has been to afford plenty of spacious time to nurture our relationship, our friendships, to enjoy this lovely island, and to create satisfying projects.  I am seldom anxious about our financial future because life has taught me that I am always provided for. What’s best for me always appears if I don’t try to manipulate the direction I am shown. Nothing is too wonderful to happen and I invite in the magic of unexpected  blessings.  God is my true source of abundance.

Above all, I know the peace inherent in surrender—-a surrender that comes out of acceptance of what life is presenting in this moment and knowing that it is mine to respond to—a constant choice of fear or peace. One is not wrong or right, but I am free in one and imprisoned in the other.

Lotus—Maui, Hawaii