Divine Timing

When I was a little girl, I remember hearing Jiminy Crickett sing the song,"When You Wish Upon A Star" in the movie Pinocchio.

Its lyrics tapped into what I eventually called "living with vision," letting our hearts be a compass to guide us towards our deepest dreams.

"When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires will come to you."

Often, when we look into our hearts and see our deepest wishes, we want them to happen immediately. But life doesn't always work that way. Life has a natural rhythm, and while our wishes and desires might not come to us as soon as we want them to, when we really open our hearts to them, they most often do become real in divine timing.

Like a bolt out of the blue.
Fate steps in and see you through.
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true.

This brings in the importance of faith. Faith is a very powerful force. It allows us to keep our heart open to our dreams even when we don't know exactly how or when our dreams will come to be. In this sense, faith is the guardian and keeper of our heartfelt dreams. And faith allows us to let go of the need to control timing, so that we may surrender into the path that diving timing carves out for us.

Faith gives us a spaciousness and a sense of grace, that allows us to be present in the moment, and see what unfolds. This allows us to take right action moment to moment and experience the gift of the journey as well as the gift of arriving at our goal.

Have you ever had the experience of leaving your house a few minutes late to go to a coffeeshop or a supermarket and running into an old friend you had not seen for a while when you arrived? Or have you walked in the door, having thought about someone, only to find a message from them in your e-mail or a text arriving as you open the door? This is divine timing in action. At times when this kind of synchronicity would happen, I would find myself asking, "so what would have happened if I had not left late?" or "did the fact that I was thinking of this person lead to their calling?"

Experiences like these remind us that we are all interconnected. Our thoughts, our feelings, our deepest desires are energy currents, and they communicate, even in ways we cannot grasp with our physical senses. If we can have faith in the universal currents that run through life overall, as well as our own lives, it is easier to embrace and be embraced by divine timing.

I have found that the more deeply I understood the process of living with vision: opening my heart to my deepest dreams and desires, finding strength in the faith that in divine time my vision would become real, and gracefully taking needed steps towards the vision as they become clear, the more peacefully I live.

Experiences of divine timing lead to an understanding that we will really be okay if we stay connected to our hearts and let go of control. It is a truly beautiful and inspiring experience to realize we can ride the energy currents of life, and things will really move forward in ways that matter to us."

Enough

I find it fascinating to see where songs come from and what sparks inspiration. A couple weeks ago, my singer/songwriter colleague John Mark sent me an article entitled "All I Want Is A Mediocre Life," and asked for my thoughts about what he might include in a refrain for a song on this subject.

Though I have never liked the word "mediocre," the article got me thinking how much I value simplicity and how important it is to have a sense of "enough." And then I got to reflecting on what is happening in my local village of Newtonville, as several big commercial development projects are changing the face and landscape of my long time stomping ground. One project involves building a mixed use complex on a popular parking lot. Another project, one the neighborhood tried to push back on unsuccessfully, has put beloved mom and pop businesses out of business, as longstanding buildings are being torn down to make way for a huge 5 story complex, which will dwarf any remaining buildings near the intersection of Washington and Walnut Streets.

Projects like these could make Newtonville unaffordable for people like me (and many others). And while many consider this kind of commercial development progress or just inevitable, beyond the inconvenience of detours due to months of construction, I grieve the loss of simplicity of life as it has been.

The shadows of commercial development have also been haunting me in Waltham. When I moved into my house there 3 years ago, a 1950's ranch sat on a corner lot at the end of my street, inhabited by an elderly woman. When she died, her family sold the lot to developers, who tore down the ranch house and built two large houses on the lot. My very own house, built in 2006, was the product of the same kind of development: a 1950's Cape house had occupied a large lot, and it was torn down and replaced by two houses. I appreciate my house. I appreciate having a small yard without the burden of maintenance that a larger lot would require. But I am sad to be part of a trend of tearing down houses that were perfectly adequate for a family to live in when I grew up, and squeezing multiple larger houses on postage stamp sized lots.

I love beauty. I love quality. But I fear we are losing perspective. We live in a supersized world, where we receive messages that bigger is better. That Starbucks calls a small coffee a tall, and a medium coffee a grande is a metaphor for what is becoming "normal." Somehow, I am afraid that the simple things are getting lost, either because we are too busy to have time for them or because there is no room for them with our new constructions.

I found myself moved to address this experience, and a song started to come through me. Simple is enough for me. And I hope I will not become an anachronism because I feel this way!