Knowing : Part 2 (and a Bit o' Luck)

Signs of Spring : This is the Cherry Tree outside Meme's window in Roanne, France.

My Women's Group met the other night. The topic was Luck, but we stretched it into the areas of Coincidence and Knowing and Intuition (and lots of other things).

I love this group! Real conversation and sharing. I always leave feeling really fortunate for the life and choices I've made ... that I can spend a few hours sewing on Sundays, that I have a loving, funny, supportive husband who feeds me and does his own laundry, that I have a decent job to keep us comfortable. After the Real Work retreat, I was feeling a bit blue--like the real world was too loud and busy to hear the spirit speak. But I do hear it more often than these busy moms with still young children. I try to remind them that having young kids is only temporary--it gets better as they get older and more independent--at least that's my perception. For confidentiality's sake I can't really tell the other women's stories, but I'll share mine ...

We got to talking about relationships and how the lucky ones seem to work out, even with brief courtships. How do you know it's the right person if you've only known them for 2 months? I told the story of Ma and Pa and the parade picture ... It still amazes me that that worked out for them!

We asked :
* What's the luckiest thing that ever happened to you?
* Do we make our own luck? or bad luck?
I think we concluded that it's all in perception. We could all think of incidents that seemed really tragic at the time, but it's what we each did with it that turned most of these seemingly horrible experiences into something good or redeeming.

I had opened the evening with the Taoist folk tale (Thanks, Dottie!) about the farmer who's horse ran away ... In the end, it's all in how you look at things if they be good or bad, happy or tragic. How do we know what the master plan is, or what our part in it is?

I said I could remember when I was 6 years old, waking up one morning with the knowledge that I would one day marry a French-man and that I'd have a boy-child. Now, a lot happens between getting that glimpse at age 6 and when it really happens and knowing that was the sign, and not just a passing fancy. (I was sure Oliver would be a girl when I was pregnant ... And there were times I thought I'd never find a mate ...) Most of the time, I don't KNOW until I can look back and say, "Yes, I remember that moment. That was the signpost on this path to now ..." Hindsight is 20/20.

A week ago, I took the dogs for their nightly walk and got a very clear message from Keba (my dearly departed dog of 12 years) that I needed to light a candle when I got back home. J (an old friend) and Cacco (Keba's litter-mate) needed the light and prayers. The next morning, I got an email from J saying Cacco died. The bone cancer finally took her at 14 years old.