I’ve been told I have a strong intellectual side, and a strong spiritual side. That is not always easy. My spirituality runs deep, but my mind will usually try to find ways to rationalise the things that I know, deeply, and intuitively.
You know, there is a saying, when a feather appears, an angel is near. When I find a feather, unless it is only a single one, and it is perfect, pristine and pure-white, I look for other feathers, and I look for a flurry of feathers. And then I usually find a bird’s wing, none too gently torn from its body, or I find a part of a bird’s carcass. I assume it has come from a bird that has met a messy end … being hit by a car, or attacked by other birds, or some Doggo or Puss …
But I definitely do not expect an angel in the vicinity.
Years ago I bought a rose quartz pendant. The stone was about 4 by 3 cm, and is facetted so it is lustrous and shiny, I wore it on a plain silver chain. Over the years I have had a lot of compliments for that crystal, some people see its simple beauty, some sense its energy, maybe from own my energy as I have worn it over the years.
A year or so ago I went to a conference. As I was packing up to leave the hotel on my last morning I put my necklace with the rose quartz into my overnight bag. I knew where it was, and I knew where I would find it once I got home.
When I got home and emptied my bag I couldn’t find the necklace with the rose quartz. I turned my bag upside down, I ran my hand along the bottom of the bag, in its various compartments, and made sure I emptied out my toilet pack and checked it.
No necklace. No crystal.
Since then, every time I have used the overnight bag I have checked it. Nothing. My crystal pendant was gone. I figured that I didn’t need it any longer, and that if someone else had found it that person must have needed it more than I did.
A few weeks ago my partner and I had a little holiday up to the mid-north cost of NSW to see my dear Mum, and then to spend a week relaxing in the Hunter Valley wine country. I packed the usual things in my overnight bag. This time, I didn’t bother to check it before I packed it. To be truthful I didn’t even think of the crystal as I packed my bag. I accepted that the necklace was gone, and the pendant was not mine any longer.
When we got home I unpacked the bag – books, iPad, toilet bag, shampoo and conditioner, face cream, body cream, toothpaste, headphones, charger. Various bits and bobs.
And then I repacked some things into it that I had left sitting on a chair in the bedroom. And I put it away.
A week later I went to get something off the chair, I moved away the step-exercise-thingy leaning against the front of the chair, and … there … was … my rose quartz crystal pendant … lying on the chair. I wish I had taken a photo of it when I found it, because it was so beautifully placed on the chair … it had been displayed … it had not been flung or dropped there.
That necklace was not there a week earlier, when I had unpacked my bag. It could not have fallen out of, or from, anything I unpacked or packed on the day I got back from our time away, because I was sitting on the floor when I did that.
My instant reaction was, oh, there it is, as if I had left it there only the day before.
And then I realised what I was seeing.
I picked up the necklace and held it in my hands. I sat in my meditation room and I wept.
For the return of this unremarkable but beautiful stone that had meant to much to me.
For the symbolism of the Love that has always supported me.
For the faithfulness with which I was being shown – all those things you “know”, are real, all those things you “see”, are so, the path that you sometimes doubt, it is a true path.
You are loved, you are supported.
All of this was so beautiful, and so welcome, because for a few weeks I had been doubting myself, grieving the past, wondering if I was doing what I was “meant” to be doing. I had doubted my spiritual life, and let my not insignificant rational mind (intellectual side) tell me it was all bogus.
I have no explanation of how the pendant got there. Usually my rational mind would have come up with all sorts of hows, but this time it couldn’t. That pendant had not been there when I unpacked and repacked my overnight bag, I know, because I had placed the exercise-thingy against the chair and the only other thing on the chair was a pillow.
The pendant was there for me to find when it was able to be a sign for the enduring Love of the Divine as it is expressed in me and through me. Without reason, without explanation, it was the symbol of Grace.
That is what Grace is, unexplained and unexplainable, something that arises out of pure Love, unasked for, and given when we least expect it.