'SHALL I CATCH A SHOOTING STAR?' -- A Healing Story

[ * There are 19 pieces of writing on the mystical
path in this blog: essays, articles and poems.
The 'blog archive' or Table of Contents
is located below the tall, narrow image at left.
Click on a white triangle to open it. * ]

[ * To enlarge text, use Control + keys. * ]

‘SHALL I CATCH

A SHOOTING STAR?’

"Symphony of Fire" at Vancouver, Canada

Text and Image © Copyright 2019 by Neall Calvert

MY SOLITARY DINNER at a Fraser Valley restaurant is over. As I direct my vehicle out of the parking lot, a strange sensation manifests in the middle of my head. Deep in the recesses of my mind, something feels wrong. I have no reference point for what I’m experiencing.

This could be the muffled booming of an approaching thunderstorm—except the rumblings are occurring in my brain. My thoughts no longer seem under my rational control; the feeling of disorientation accelerates and suddenly I think I could be losing my mind. Experience with spiritual teachings has taught me that some greater power is always available to assist human beings in trouble, and so I stumble around in my mind looking for the most effective way to invoke my Higher Power.

Rather than asking for help, in other words ‘pleading with God,’ as the old paradigm declares, I realize I have to affirm what I want, as Science of Mind teaches. I’ve never had to solve a problem this big and this pressing before, but I try to find words that will affirm what I want to happen. Tentatively I begin: 

“I call forth the restoration of my health and my sanity—and I declare it now.” I repeat the phrase again and again, checking if it still resonates with the situation at hand, each time my voice becoming louder, until, driving through the farm-country night, I’m shouting repeatedly, “I CALL FORTH THE RESTORATION OF MY HEALTH AND MY SANITY—AND I DECLARE IT NOW!” Given the circumstances, this seems the most helpful thing I might do. 

I begin to realize I’m angry about the continual lack of money I suffer from and the isolation I, a city dweller spending a year in the country, am experiencing. 

“HOW LONG THIS POVERTY AND UNRELATEDNESS?” I yell. “HOW LONG THIS SUFFERING? . . . AND WHY DO I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING MYSELF?” 

With those last words, I’m suddenly clear who it is that I want to bellow at. It’s God. I feel abandoned by the Universe. As I warm to the confrontation, I let myself get real worked up. 

“WHY DON’T YOU DO SOMETHING?” I shriek. “I’M TIRED OF DOING THIS ALL ALONE!”

Never have I felt so isolated, so apart from Creation. Tears pour down my face; my nose runs profusely. Movement seems my only security: I keep following my car’s headlights along Fraser Valley back roads. Angrily I roar, “WHEN WILL THINGS CHANGE? . . . HOW LONG MUST I SUFFER? . . . WHEN WILL YOU DO YOUR PART!? . . . WHERE IS YOUR PROMISE, LORD?” 

Through the cascading tears and mucus, I feel that something I consider to be “God’s promise” to me has not been kept. It’s as if—until this moment unknown to me—in my core I believe that a contract exists between human beings and the Creator, to the effect that Its power is available to help us live fuller, healthier, more abundant lives. But, by some arbitrary decree, my contract seems to have been cancelled.

I feel very silly yelling like this, but there is no other person to hear me. There is also no counsellor available at this moment, or psychiatrist, and besides, a psychiatrist would conclude that my problems were either biological or psychological in origin, and likely indicative of a pharmaceutical deficiency. So I shout again, “WHERE IS YOUR PROMISE, LORD? WHAT IS YOUR PART IN ALL THIS, AND WHEN WILL YOU PLAY IT?”

A streak of light flashes across my windshield. Was it the flash of headlights from a turning car? There are no other cars on this country road. Then I remember this is August, the month of the Perseid meteor shower. I have just seen a shooting star.

My mind adjusts to a larger perspective than the one inside my head and the dark interior of my four-door Chevy Nova. I continue driving, thinking about the trail of light I have just seen. Is it a sign? If so, what does it mean? As I get out of my car at the house where I’m staying, the tears have stopped. I notice I’m standing a little straighter. The crisis is over.

The next day, two things happen. A voice whispers in my head, “You’re in the New Age now,” and a freelance editing contract worth thousands of dollars is confirmed. In the evening, feeling cleansed and lighter, I stand outside in peaceful darkness to watch for more streaks of light. . . .

The Perseid meteor shower is created each year as the Earth on its journey around the sun travels through the tail of a comet named Swift-Tuttle. Tiny particles of dirt in the comet’s tail collide many kilometres above with the Earth’s atmosphere and ignite and burn, creating what we call meteors. This particular night, high above me—although far below the fixed stars—I see one more of the beautiful dashes of light zooming across the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere.

The week previous, together with hundreds of thousands of oohing and aahing spectators, I had witnessed the annual Vancouver fireworks spectacular called “Symphony of Fire.” Yet one shooting star of only a second’s duration seems more real and profound than a half hour of multi-hued, man-made pyrotechnics.

I turn on the late television news: Local people camping out in a rural park to watch the meteor shower are being interviewed. Several adults are asked for their responses, then a little girl approaches the microphone and the reporter repeats her question. 

“They’re God’s fireworks!” exclaims the child. . . . That’s what the flash of light means. In my hour of deepest darkness, I had been given a light; I had been shown what a child already knows: The Universe has fireworks too. . . . 

Now that I no longer feel separate from an infinite creative force, sanity has returned. I’m back with people, earning a living, once more in the flow of life. I’m clear that no material-minded philosophy or science or psychiatrist with drugs could solve this kind of crisis. I sense I am more solidly part of something far larger than my human problems—yet certainly not unaware or unmoved by them. 

The healing I needed was to expand my faith, the kind expressed by that word faith when it’s an acronym—‘F.A.I.T.H.’—for Following An Ideal That Heals.

*     *     *

“Shall I catch a shooting star?

Shall I bring it where you are?

If you want me to I will . . .”

—Edith Piaf: “If You Love Me”