Allah in the Mosque, Jesus in the snow
I have long felt a spiritual connection to life, and this has meant different things to me over time.The center that has helped me grow, given me strength in adversity, inspiration through awe and beauty have been through experience of nature, involving seasonal and lunar rhythms, archetypal themes and my own feminine cycles. I have called myself a nonpracticing pagan, because I feel an affinity with the ancient practices, understandings of energy, symbology and intention. In occasional times of need I would get strong signs, which have led to healing and success. I probably would have done more ritual at some point if i wasn’t a bit lazy. I practice astrology. I have had many spiritual and psychical experiences in my life.
Last October 2019 winter had come really early for a couple of days. Normally we would have cool, rainy autumn with damp yellow leaves but this morning we awoke to snow flying through the air and piling up quickly on the ground. I got my son to school and then drove to a client’s home. I just managed to get there safely, although my car slid on the slippery, unplowed roads a couple of times. At noon I made my way back to my home office to get ready for work there that afternoon. I live midway down a very steep hill in an old neighborhood. The building just past me down the hill is an small, old, stone church, which is now used as a Mosque, though the signage is quiet so those new to the neighborhood don’t recognize this.
The snow had been falling all morning and the road had not been sanded or plowed. It was very slippery and I had no traction as I descended and tried to stop to turn into my driveway. At the same moment my downstairs neighbors were starting to pull out of our shared driveway. Oh no! I honked quickly at them to get out of there fast so we wouldn’t collide. They got out of there -just, but instead of turning into my driveway I was still about to collide with them on the road. The best I could do to stop was swerve, blocking off half my driveway, half on the sidewalk, with the front of my car in the trees that line the side between us and the mosque. Luckily though no injury, no damage.
My next client would be there very soon so I left my stuck car and went inside to prepare for work.
At the end of my appointments I had to collect my son from a friend’s house after school, my car still immovable. I had to call a CAA towtruck at some point and I have never known one to come in under an hr. I called just as I left and assumed they would be there just as I was returning on foot with my son one hour later.
I was chatting with my friend on her doorstep when the CAA towtruck called. They said they had been waiting there for a while already, would I be there soon please? There was impatience in his voice. If I couldn’t get there quickly they would leave and come back later. I told him I would would try to be there in 10 minutes- although really in the snow covered sidewalks it was more like 20 or 25 at least. We left running and slipping in the dimming light, making poor time.
5 minutes later my phone rang again, it was the towtruck guy again. “Are you going to be here in 5 minutes?” he asked. I felt anxious guilt for keeping him waiting and for being so slow. “Because if you are, don’t worry. I am going to go into the Mosque and use the bathroom and pray.” He took a slower breath “Take your time. Take 20 minutes, it’s meant to be. I was sitting here for 15 minutes and realized this is a mosque, this is meant to be. I haven’t prayed for a while and I need to”
Relief flooded over me. This actually served him. This was meant to be for him. He had said it. It helped him connect with his divine expression of God, maybe helped him ask the divine for help on a life issue, or just do his religious practice. (and...My Lateness and Disorganization Had Actually Served Someone!!). I love being a part of synchronicity no mater how large or small. My heart opens, I get tingles, I feel like I am walking in Love and everything-is-meant-to-be-and-will-be-alright. Even this seemingly small synchronicity put me in this openhearted bliss state.
I got there as he was leaving the mosque.
Then as he worked on attaching the car to the towtruck I stood to the side of the driveway, still happy and blissed out, trying to radiate love and not be too much of a weirdo. I was still thinking about this beautiful synchronicity that had brought him closer to his God, how our moments are like fibers that lead us along and sometimes weave or cross and how we are guided. I was staring into the snowbank beside the car when all of a sudden in the arrangement of twigs and debris I saw Jesus’s face. The face was iconic and recognizable, but not moving in itself, but the eyes were so full of energy, rivers of compassion,a compassion deeper than I could fully sense. It was brief and very surprising for me.
But here is thing, what I saw was a compassion that encompassed everything in life. The quote “ a heart that broke for all the world” comes to mind. A being that loves and understands all pain and sorrow, all reaction, misaction, misjudgment. all struggle, while caring so incomprehensibly deeply.
I didn’t experience any “join-me”, or “surrender-to-me” or “get-saved-by-me”. Absolutely No sense of judgement, any need for repentance, no sin, condemnation or repression around sex or ideas of sin. There was nothing about Christianity being The Way. No Bible. Not 2000+ years of colonialism, misogyny, power-wielding, done-in-the-name-of, etc. None of it.
Just Jesus, with a compassion deeper than I can comprehend.
I haven’t stopped following astrology or intuiting the season’s energies. There was no requirement to change who am. I have no intentions to ever read the bible. I still follow the seasons and lunar cycles, believe in nature spirits, etc.
This added to my life, not limited or judged it at all. It offers me a consciousnesses of a much deeper heart, which reminds me of where we are from.