Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2017 - January 2018 i Mysterious Ways

I rarely remember my dreams. A snippet here and there—that’s about it. There’s one dream, however, that I can recall almost perfectly. Strange because it happened when I was maybe seven years old. In the dream, my sister Priscilla and I were in a place that looked a lot like a Hollywood version of Kansas. A winding dirt road. A farmhouse in the distance. Fields of wheat. Everything bathed in a hazy, golden light. By the side of the road was a puddle. The water was so clear and sparkly, as if it weren’t of this world. At the bottom of the puddle lay several gold coins. Priscilla and I knelt by the puddle, splashing and laughing as we tried to pick them up. Did we ever get the coins?…

Roberta Messner HUNTINGTON, WEST VIRGINIA I was shopping downtown when I saw a sign in the window of one of my favorite stores: “Last Chance! 75% Off!” Pass up a deal like that? Not me! I ducked into the shop and made a beeline for the sale section. On a table near the back, I found the sweetest little carousel charm. I didn’t have a charm bracelet. I wasn’t particularly drawn to carousels. But I knew someone who was: Alexandra, a writer who lived in Connecticut. Alexandra and I weren’t especially close, but she’d written about her love of carousels. I headed for the register and shipped it off to Alexandra. I didn’t hear back from her until several months later, when a thank-you note arrived in the mail. “Roberta,…

I was 30 days sober, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it to day 31. I dug my nails into my mattress and squeezed my eyes shut. One minute I’d been folding laundry in my bedroom, the next I’d been overtaken by a craving for alcohol so strong, I had to cling for dear life to my bedsheets. I thought I’d already experienced every withdrawal symptom possible. The shakes, nausea and headaches. But this was the worst one yet. Not a dream. A vision that played out before me like a scene from a movie. I saw myself as a thirsty golden retriever, frantically lapping up liquid from a golden lake that sparkled like diamonds. A lake filled with Chardonnay. My drink of choice. Or maybe…

Jamie Wilson It was nearly a year since my lifelong friend Dave had passed away from pancreatic cancer. Dave and I had gone through everything together—school, learning to drive, holidays, even our birthdays, which were around the same time of year. We each got married the same year too. I loved him like a brother. Dave’s battle with cancer had been long and difficult. But we lived in different states, and I never got a chance to really say goodbye. One afternoon, I couldn’t stop thinking about Dave and everything I wished I could’ve told him. “Please, God,” I prayed. “Tell Dave how much I love him, how much I miss him.” I opened my eyes and glanced at the clock. It was 1:11 p.m. I knew Dave had received…

I’ve always had vivid dreams, even as a kid back in Kansas. Full of strange characters, conversations and symbols. Sometimes I can barely make sense of them, even if I write them down in my journal. Like a series of dreams I had last spring. I kept seeing buses, subways and hallways. But I always got on the wrong bus, missed my subway stop or never made it to the end of the hallway. It felt as if I were being warned. Then again, maybe I was just having stress dreams about the subway, like any other New Yorker! I never quite figured out those dreams, and my puzzlement only intensified once I started working at Mysterious Ways. I heard story after story about warning dreams from readers and even…

On my shelf at home, I keep a treasured photo album of my great-grandfather’s trip to Yosemite in 1901. He was suffering from some undiagnosed ailment when he took his family in their horse-drawn carriage on a rustic tour that culminated in a visit to the recently established national park. Perhaps it will seem ironic if I tell you that my great-grandfather, a former Civil War drummer boy and a mayor of Pasadena, California, had made his living as a lumberman. Still, even he knew that healing could be found amidst the giant sequoias. Those trees might not have been there had it not been for the rapturous writings of the great American naturalist John Muir. But, then again, my great-grandfather probably wouldn’t have been there either had he not…

Italy takes its nativity scenes as seriously as its pizza. I discovered that last year when I traveled there on vacation. A last-minute detour led me to the town of Amalfi on the western coast. I stumbled upon an eighteenth-century fountain, La Fontana De Cape ‘E Ciucci. Named after the produce-bearing donkeys—or ciucci—that once stopped there to drink after their journeys from the mountains. In 1974, the fountain became something else. A nativity scene, complete with miniature town, underwater manger and, of course, donkeys. Nowadays, tourists and locals stop by the fountain to toss a coin, make a wish and celebrate Christmas. Explore more hidden gems around the globe at Guideposts.org/SecretSpaces…

Triple Conjunction In 1979, astronomer David Hughes proposed the unusual star resulted when Jupiter and Saturn aligned with the sun and the moon three times over several months. That’s how the Magi were able to follow it on their long journey from the east. Jupiter in Aries Astronomer Michael R. Molnar analyzed ancient coins and texts and speculated the star was Jupiter eclipsed twice by the moon while passing through the constellation Aries. In Jesus’ time, Aries was a sign of Judea and Jupiter of royalty. Nova The star could’ve been a nova, astronomer Robert Cockcroft told the BBC: “It can ‘appear’ as a new star in a constellation and fade again over the following months. It is also not too bright, explaining why we don’t have any records of…

“God communicates himself to us in proportion to how much we are prepared to receive him.”—MADAME GUYON INTERN Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon (1648-1717) was a French writer and mystic. As a child, she dreamed of becoming a nun but was forced into an arranged marriage at age 15. Her husband had little patience for her pious ways, and Madame Guyon frequently escaped the house at night to commune with God in secret. Widowed at age 28, she embraced the life of a mystic. Her writing focused on cultivating the inner life through quiet, contemplative prayer, also known as Quietism. Her views were controversial at the time, and she was imprisoned twice for her teachings, once in the Bastille. Madame Guyon kept writing; her books, especially A Short…

It was a promise I’d made back in 1971. To repay an act of kindness with a trip to the salon. At the time, my husband, Joe, was a pilot in New York. We’d bought a house in New Jersey, not too far away. I had my hands full raising two children under the age of five. Then the airline cut costs. Joe was laid off. He took any odd job he could find, from painting houses to pumping gas. I got a job teaching at an elementary school. But we struggled to make ends meet. We put ourselves on a budget. One of the first expenses to go? Trips to the salon to maintain my short hairdo. One Sunday, a friend from church named Bette Barnes approached me after…

Camrose, Alberta, Canada When Mary Grams lost her engagement ring while weeding on her family farm in 2004, she was devastated. She’d worn the ring since 1951. After weeks of searching in the dirt on her hands and knees, Mary quietly replaced the ring without even telling her husband, Norman, the CBC News reports. Some years later, Norman passed away. Mary moved and her son, Brian, and his wife, Colleen, took up residence on the farm. This past summer, Colleen was gathering vegetables for dinner one day when she found a most unusual crop. A carrot wearing a 1-carat diamond ring. “It grew perfectly” through the ring, Colleen said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.” Mary, 84, was thrilled to have her engagement ring back. Added bonus: It still fit!…

“Just keep livin’.” That’s actor Matthew McConaughey’s catchphrase. The native Texan is known for playing both charmers and rogues in movies like The Wedding Planner and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. But offscreen he’s a man of deep faith. He famously thanked God in his 2014 Oscars speech for Best Actor for Dallas Buyers Club, saying, “He has graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or of any other human hand.” Coincidences, you might say, aren’t quite so coincidental to Matthew. Like the name of his first child with wife Camila. The couple wanted their baby’s gender to be a surprise. So when Camila was pregnant, they’d come up with about a half dozen names in the event the baby was…

I stood on the subway platform at Grand Central Terminal in New York City, waiting. I was moving to the Bronx from Queens. The movers had taken care of the big stuff, but I was heading back to handle the little things. The trek from my new place to the old one was more than an hour. I was tired from going back and forth all day. And the 7 train was taking forever to arrive! I’d been hoping to find some time to hang out with my friend Isotta. She was from Italy. We’d met in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where we both volunteered at the 2016 Summer Olympics. A few days earlier, she’d posted a photo of the World Trade Center on Instagram—it turned out, she was on…