Serendipity

So I believe in Serendipity. Sometimes the heavens open up and things happen at the right place, at the right time, and with the right people. It is always full of holiness and is always a surprise. Then it happens so unexpectedly that you are shocked.

So for months I have been living through this shitstorm and struggling just to breath and to keep my feelings in check. Then my beloved son Jeremy accompanied by a gang of Irish Catholics kidnapped me and we all got drunk. We are all vaguely aware of how and when we got home. Somehow we all rose from the dead the next morning. Who knew that healing can begin this way?

Then I had cocktails with a friend. Our plan was to compare shitstorms, but it didn't work out that way. We rushed through those stories and spent the better part of two hours smiling and laughing and confessing ourselves to one another. Two hopeless romantics who really do believe that love is possible.

And yesterday I was having the follow up lunch with Mary Ann Beil. She had threatened this when I was in St. Martin and, true to form, she shows up with a dog eared copy of John Donahue's "Anam Cara", which is Celtic Christianity. She read me passages and then lunch came and we just talked.

I was telling her about this week, when she exploded as she can do. "Let me tell you something, you know more about love than anybody I know." Laying her fork down, her eyes locked mine and she pointed a finger at me, "for Christ's sake, you love homeless people. You love people with AIDS. You love people that the rest of us do not give a shit about. So when it comes to how to love someone else, I think that you know more than most!"

I was stunned. It is hard not to love Mary Ann.

And then it happened. The heaven's opened and serendipity appeared at our table. She was beautiful. A smile that could not be contained exploded on my face. And there was this moment, when I saw all of the possibilities of futures that I had never considered. And every dark thing that had been living in me fled to other places and I found myself again. And Love was all around me, as the song goes. And in me. And through me. And then as quickly as she came, serendipity vanished. But my heart stayed full.

I spent the rest of the day chasing her, and though I came close, I didn't see her again. But my heart remained full. And last night Johnny O, Judy, Whitley, and O Johnny called wanting to go out. Goddess didn't seem to mind so I went. And we had fun, though I kept one eye over my shoulder on the lookout for secrendipity throughout the night.

I came home and crawled into bed and looked at the ceiling fan. The last words that I said last night were to thank secrendipity. And for the first time in months, I slept peacefully throughout the night. And I woke to happiness.