Now this is what I'm really gonna miss about Arizona. Somehow, I don't think I'll ever see a sign like this in Milwaukee! (Note: I just found this blog post, which I started writing the morning I moved from AZ to WI, back in June.) I was riding down a busy street in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago, and this gem caught my eye. After enduring years of junky fast-food signs, milk-moustache billboards, etc. something like this seemed like a little wink from the universe. It made me smile and laugh to myself--especially since I'd been feeling a little "poor-me-trying-to- eat-raw-in-a-cooked-man's world". For a minute I thought I might be on the right planet after all.Oh, yes--the sign achieved its purpose! Even though I should have been attending my Medjool Dates Anonymous meeting 'cause I got some serious sugar issues, the promise of big fat me-drools lured me in. I drove back to the store later and happily shelled out $15 for three pounds of the finest organic dates I've ever had. (What a bargain!)
I had to pay cash because owner Arnie said that's all his ancient cash register would take.
Seen one o' these lately? Arnie said his store (Arnie's Health Foods, on Thomas, for anyone in the neighborhood) is the oldest in the area, and he assured me, "I'm the
oldest fool doing this." Come to find out, I had stumbled upon a bit of a celebrity. Arnie Cole had just been interviewed by CNN because he was a war hero who fought in Iwo Jima, and he had a wallet from a fallen Japanese soldier that he'd kept for decades.In 2006, after seeing a couple Clint Eastwood films about the battle, Cole contacted the Iwo Jima museum to see if they wanted the wallet. Two years later, the wallet found its way into the hands of the 77-year old sister of the Japanese soldier. Inside it was the only existing photograph their family.
Imagine how that woman must have felt upon receiving these precious pieces of the past. Imagine how she must have cherished these tiny fragments of
connection, of memory, of pain and love.And it happened because Arnie made the effort. He paid attention. He had the spark of an idea, and he decided to act. He dug out those long-buried tokens. He investigated. He made calls. He made something happen. Arnie could have left the wallet and photo forever in the little plastic bag in which they had for so long been stored. He could have let the moment of opportunity pass by--why bother? He and/or the Japanese soldier's sister could have died before the connection was ever made. But a choice to act made something beautiful happen.
This kind of story means so much to me, because I have been amazed throughout my life by the myriad "tiny" turning points upon which so much has hinged. These turning points, upon reflection, have always seemed on some level astonishingly precarious. It would have been SO easy for things NOT to have gone this way or that--and yet they developed in ways that seemed fundamentally necessary. In ways that made me think: "How could it have been otherwise?"
If I perceive it properly, my whole life path has been a shiny string of signs and synchronicities. But there are times when it seems to be a veritable shower of confirmations. I am in one of those periods now and am still so much in the midst of trying to absorb it all that I can't yet write about it.
I will say this for the moment: we can all be signs to each other. We know this, deep down--but it is so easy to forget, to get busy, to get tired, to get hurt, to get jaded, angry, hopeless and disillusioned. To dissolve in a puddle of self-absorption.
But step back for a moment into the realm of vulnerable love, trust and the powerful spirit of magnanimity . Today, follow just one of those little inner promptings to speak love into the life of another person. Say it. Write it. Send it. Make that call. Start that chapter. And take a step on your Big Work--that thing you think you're supposed to be here for. Remembering that I actually have a blog and want to write is the little step for me today.
Don't leave your treasures in a dusty box forever. We don't know what hangs in the balance.
