As If Magazine

I don’t remember any miracles before the events of
this story (though I suspect they were always there)
except that right before the playing cards came to
me, I used to walk along the sidewalk of my Forest
Hills neighborhood with my friend Joanne and talk
about things. “You always have angels around you,”
Joanne would say as she’d pick white feathers from
my clothes or my hair. “Or holes in my pillows,” I’d
laugh. But today, 25 years later, I’ve realized she was
right. I do have angels all around me… always. I just
never noticed it, until the playing cards...

It was New York City, early spring, 1986, when a playing
card blew across my path, landing on the concrete step of
the 14th street subway entrance.
At the time, I was working for the New York office of The
Institute for Human Evolution (or DMA) where we taught
people, among other things, that “The universe is on your
side.” In my year and a half there, I’d learned to set goals
and visualize them. I'd learned to ask questions and to
listen, everywhere, for the answers which might come from
a voice on the radio, a cab driver, or even from a stray
playing card that meaningfully lands beside your foot.
I picked up the card, searching it like a talisman for
message or meaning. Then, unable to discern anything, I
slipped it into my pocket, imagining I'd piece it together
later and promptly... forgot about it. Until, a few weeks
later, when it happened again. This card didn't fall from
the sky as the other one had seemed to. It was just there,
on the black and white tile floor of a crowded Queens-
bound E train, right beside my foot.
Wow! I thought. These random events did seem related.
But how, and, more intriguingly, why? Then, the train
pulled into my station, the card went into my pocket and I
forgot about it.
Until, on a breezy summer day, while I was sorting socks
into my husband’s drawer, a playing card came soaring
into the open window of our third-floor apartment and
landed on the bed before me.
No, really.
Skin prickling with electricity, I picked it up, awe and
terror sweeping through me as--all at once--the enormous,
infinite universe gaped open before me and grinned.
I’d had dalliances with the "spiritual world" before. But
none of them--from talking to Archangels and seeing auras
to regressing through past lives--had changed me the way
the arrival of those three cards did.
For now, with a cosmic one-two-three punch, I'd been
pulled across an invisible line between faith and reason--
between talking about the Divine and having it fly
through the window and wink at me--and suddenly,
nothing was the same.
Were the colors really brighter? Was life really simpler? I
walked around infused with love for everything and
everyone. I knew I’d experienced something precious--a
peek into a truth that would change my life. And it did...
for awhile.
Then, it wore off.
I became "comfortable" with the other-wordly presence
that seemed always to be by my side and invoked its
support in every aspect of my life.
“Where are my keys?” I’d ask aloud after searching
pocket, purse and countertop and, as if pushed by an
invisible hand, I’d turn to find them sparkling on the
ground by my heel. Driving a familiar route, I’d suddenly
“know” it was time to change course. Moments later,
breezing along the new route, I’d hear a radio announcer
confirm the traffic jam I’d avoided.
I could talk to plants and conjure parking spots but I
started to wonder, what, really, did it mean?
Hadn't I been singled out for something special? Where
was my illusion-shattering vision? My cosmic meditation
experience?
I wasn't lazy about it. I'd done my share of spiritual "work"
--taking workshops, read books, I could name all the
chakras. So why was I still asking the same questions: Who
am I? Why am I here? God, are you there?
This question haunted me for some time and I began to
write about it. And last year while wrestling with this
essay, I took a break to pick up my 14-year-old son at
school.
I pulled my car into the parking lot, stepped out of the
car and there, on the pavement beside my foot, was a
playing card.
I stood there, holding my fourth playing card (the two of
hearts, by the way,) that same familiar awe sweeping
through me and suddenly, I laughed out loud.
Suddenly, l understood it all--the fairies and traffic
guides, the lifetime of gentle pushes, intuitions, sparkles
and glimmers that had guided me to this moment.
The universe--that wacky jokester--really was on my side
and always had been. That triple play of synchronicity in
1986 had been a sort of cosmic wink, a way of answering
my question by saying, “Yes, I’m here.”
As for the other questions--Who am I? Why am I here?--God
had been dropping little pebbles of enlightenment all
along. You’re a teacher, You’re a writer, I’d hear, little
whispers that came with gifts--a talent or synchronicity, a
job opening, a chance meeting. All of these years, as I'd
waited for a breakthrough vision that would being me
cosmic enlightenment--I'd been in the middle of one.
Miraculous things really did happen to me, every single
day. Things like happiness, blessings and when I least
expect it, the arrival of a playing card to remind me the
universe is--and has always been-- on my side, every step of
the way.