okay.  so here’s what happened to the best of my memory.  (yes, I should have written this down right away.  why didn’t I?)

I think that the most important part was the feeling, not what actually happened.

You know the voice I hear?  the one that tells me things?  Like… Ayrie telling me he’ll be back. …Or the voice telling me to walk out to the dock on a cold night, lay on my back and look up at the night sky, making me see the infinite universe in a new way…. Or the voice that makes me get up in the night to write even when I really, really don’t want to….Or the that showed me Buffy (click here) and told me that I could only see what I was meant to see…

So the other morning I was reading a book about good and evil or more accurately, Light and Darkness.  The book said that there was balance in everything so that for all the Light in the world there was an equal amount of Darkness.

As I was walking to class I was thinking, “Really? Does that make sense to me?”

And I really just sort of tried to feel whether it made sense to me.

I thought “No, I really think there is much more light, beauty and joy in the world than darkness and suffering.”

“Do you really think that?”  I asked myself.  “I mean look around.  Everything is grey, covered in roads, ugly buildings, waste…”

But then I looked at the trees and I thought “Look at those trees.  They are symbol of what is good in the world.  They are proof.”

And then I heard the voice.  It said, “Go touch that tree.” And on a campus full of trees I know that the voice was talking about a specific tree, about a large, old oak tree that stood alone in the snow, across the street.

“No way!” I thought.  “It’s below zero.  I just want to get inside.  Besides, that tree is buried in three feet of snow. I am going to get snow in my boots.  And there are people everywhere.  They are going to think I am crazy.”

“Go touch that tree,” said the voice again, kindly but firmly.

And like a petulant child I pouted and reluctantly walked over to the tree.  It turned out that there was a little place for standing cleared out in front of the tree.  “How odd” I thought.  And I didn’t have the excuse of getting all snowy again so I stepped over the snow bank, into the cleared spot, and touched the tree.

It was warm.

I mean, this was one of those -5 degree morning and this tree was warm.  I was so freaked out that I remember looking around.  What was happening?  How could this tree be warm on a sub-zero day?  This had to be the energy of life, the Light that I am feeling.

I took a step back, freaked out.  I noticed that below my hand were two hearts in the bark.  Not hearts that were carved in, but hearts that were simply natural variations in the brown bark.  One was about 10 inches across and the other was about six inches across.

“Whoa,” I was saying to myself out-loud.   The moment felt so intimate. So important.  “The world is full of goodness and I am not alone,” I thought.

And then I heard the voice again.  It said, “You see, when you need answers to your questions, you will get them.  Be patient. We are here supporting you and will make sure you have what you need when the time is right.”

It was a very profound moment and it left me shaking.