Chapter one
The Kindred Spirit Connection
Because I had a jeep, I figured I could go anywhere.
The year was 1967 and a friend and I were in my old
1953 ex-military jeep headed for an isolated lake far from our naval air base at
Keflavik, Iceland.
We had fishing on our minds.
Rather than drive the miles around the lake, I decided to
take a shortcut. So, off the road and down a grassy, but also a boulder strewn
and muddy mountainside we went.
About halfway down, the right side of the jeep
suddenly sank in the mud clear up to the body. I couldn’t believe we were stuck,
I mean, shoot, that hill was steep and we were going down.
But we were.
My buddy and I spent over half a day trying to unstick the
jeep.
We couldn’t winch it out because there was nothing to winch
to—besides, I didn’t have a winch.
All we could do was jack it up and try to move
forward by driving off the jack.
Unfortunately, the only thing that happened was the
jack simply sank into the mud as pressure was applied upward.
We knew we needed boards under the jack for support, so we
started looking until we found some.
This, I knew, was impossible.
After all, this was Iceland…the national forest is a
nice tree.
Why would boards be out here in this desolate place where
there was nothing else as far as we could see?
But, there they were, right out in plain sight, a
couple of weathered and broken one by eight inch boards that were a foot to a
foot and a half long.
And fairly close to the jeep, too.
Once we placed them under the jack we were able to raise
it.
So, after several hours of frustration, the jeep was
finally unstuck from the mire it had bogged down in, which was when we
discovered that the right rear tire was flat.
Hey, that’s no big deal, right?
Just jack it up again and change it.
Nothing to it.
Do it everyday.
Wrong!
Not even with one end of my four way lug wrench on a nut,
my friend holding the other end, and me jumping up and down on one of the ends
sticking out to the side, would they break loose.
Previous excursions to salt water beaches had rusted
them tight on tight.
We must have done this for a couple of hours before giving
up.
I remember sitting down on my front bumper in complete
disgust: I was hungry, angry and worn out.
This fishing trip was totally ruined.
I remember saying disgustedly to myself, “Oh God,
what do I do now?”
That’s when I saw the two men in navy dungarees approaching.
“What’s the problem?” one of them asked.
When I told him, he said, “Let me give it a try.”
My first impulse was to laugh.
Here he was, a small man about half my size,
thinking he could do what I had been unable to.
Impossible!
He wouldn’t be able to budge those nuts and I knew
it.
Instead of laughing, however, I merely expressed some doubt
and handed him the wrench.
He casually put it on a nut, made some sort of
miraculous maneuver and off came the nut.
In less than a minute he had the tire completely
off.
In no more than three minutes he had the spare on and the
flat where the spare had been.
And he wasn’t even hurrying.
“How did you do that?” I asked incredulously.
“I used to be part of a pit crew at the Indy 500,” he said.
I thanked him profusely, and he left.
I turned away for a thirty seconds to a minute, and looked back in the direction
they had gone.
There was nobody there.
I thought to myself, “They must have gone over the
hill.”
It was over twenty years later before I realized that
something out of the ordinary had happened that day.
In an out of the way spot, alone and isolated, two
men in trouble got the help they needed because two other men, Americans¾one
of whom just happened to have been part of the Indianapolis 500 pit crew¾were
out for a stroll in the drizzling rain on an Icelandic mountain side.
If somebody told me that tale, I’d say, “Yeah, sure.
Right!”
But that’s the way it happened.
How (and why) were they there?
It would have been odd enough to be called bizarre
if we’d been on a major highway and they had come strolling along in the rain.
It’s events like this I call the “Kindred Spirit
Connection.”
We need something and it happens.
Usually in such a natural way that we don’t notice
the miraculous event that took place.
This is not a new discovery.
What I call the KSC (Kindred Spirit Connection),
Karl Jung called “synchronicity.”
Either way, needs get filled, and in such a manner
as to prove the existence of something beyond ourselves; something that is
interested in our welfare and is able to respond to our thoughts. (Oh God! What
do I do now?)
I call these type of events “Minor miracles.” They happen
often, but are usually unnoticed.
When we do notice, we think of it as luck, but luck
has nothing to do with it.
This is just one of the ways God interacts with His
blindly stubborn people.
The Kindred Spirit Connection in action is simply this: good things happening
inexplicably to good people.
Because we don’t know what to look for we often miss the
miracles in our lives.
After all, Biblical miracles were always accompanied
by something grand, like burning bushes, parting seas, or visiting angels.
So, we automatically assume it has to be accompanied
by a wild extravaganza.
When it isn’t, we are slow to accept the godly or
angelic event that actually took place.
Yet they are as miraculous as the Red Sea parting
for Moses, or an angel talking to Mary.
Most miracles would be just ordinary events except for one
thing:
timing.
They happen when we need them the most.
They are extremely important to us because they
prove something at work in our lives besides mere happenstance.
They are signs pointing to a loving and caring
universe working in our behalf.
This same sort of thing happened when I moved back
here from Virginia.
I was sick of city life and wanted to be back in the
mountains, surrounded by lush, natural beauty.
I don’t know why.
For some reason this just seemed to have more appeal
than the roar of traffic, honking horns, the profusion of people and the haze of
smog over everything.
In southern Oregon the beauty is all around: lovely
mountains, crystal clear rivers and streams, and mild, but rainy climate.
This area (Cave Junction) is not an easy place to
make a living, but it’s beautiful here and I love it.
Our sole heat was firewood.
In previous years I had gathered the next winter’s
firewood in the spring, giving it ample time to season and dry before I used it.
In 1991 I didn’t, however, because my wife, Sylvia,
and I had been looking for a nicer home for quite a while.
Since I was sure we were going to be moving, the
last thing I wanted to do was add five cords of firewood to the long list of
other things we would be moving.
Therefore, I gathered no wood.
By the time we had found the place we loved, bought it and
moved in, it was September.
From past experience I knew this would be a cold
winter, for it was too late to gather seasoned firewood, and unseasoned wood
burns neither hot nor well.
Shortly after moving in we met our new neighbors, Rod and
Terry.
They had just bought three acres next to us, and
were vacationing on it while making plans for their retirement.
The day they left to go back home they stopped by to
give us their address and phone number in case we needed to contact them.
Just before leaving Rod said, “I’ve cut a little
firewood that you’re welcome to.
We won’t be back for at
least six years and it won’t be any good by then.”[1]
I thanked him, but
didn’t think too much about it—until I looked at his pile.
There they were, at least two cords of seasoned wood
in a large heap.
Not enough to get
through the winter on, but more than enough to insure my green wood would be
more seasoned by the time we needed it.
This is another example of the Kindred Spirit Connection in
action:
people helping people without realizing they’re
doing anything out of the ordinary.
I believe this is a law of attraction, just like
magnetism.
I also believe it to be a
universal constant that works in the lives of all “good”[2]
people.
Miracles of this type happen every day all around us.
Most things, such as the
firewood event, I call “minor miracles.”[3]
If I’d had five cords of
wood stashed away, the event would have been nothing but a friendly gesture on
their part¾which
indeed it was.
What makes it a minor miracle is that I had a need
that became filled unexpectedly through the Kindred Spirit Connection.
Remember that it’s not what happens that makes an
event miraculous; it‘s the timing.
I have observed this phenomena many times over the
years, not just in my own life, but in many others’ as well.
And it almost always happens in such an ordinary and
natural manner it’s often not noticed.
Which makes me think of
the biblical admonition to be hospitable to strangers for we never know when
they might be angels.
Heb 13:2
2.
Forget not to show love unto strangers: for thereby
some have entertained angels unawares.
(ASV)
I believe the Kindred Spirit Connection to be the bond that
links God, man, angels and other beings into a broad family.
Back in Iceland in 1967, I was oblivious to any such
a thing.
I just assumed it was natural for people with amazing
skills to come strolling along and help others with flat tires on steep
mountains in the rain.
(I can’t help but wonder now why I didn’t attach
more significance to the event.)
Because God usually chooses to work in a manner that is
unobtrusive, uneventful, and seemingly very natural, when the event happens we
don’t notice that anything out of the ordinary occurred.
It’s sort of like watching a cat show.
Have you ever watched a cat perform tricks?
They are one of nature’s smartest domestic animals,
yet you never see them as acting in circus or other trained animal shows.
Why?
Because, when they perform they do it in such a
natural way they’re boring.
I learned this by watching Ralph, my old cat . . .
Ralph was a good natured Manx of mixed origin.
If cats were people, he would have been one of those
laid back fellows who smoke cigars, drink beer and swap sea stories with their
buddies.
One day my thirteen year old daughter, Joyce, came into the
kitchen while I was fixing dinner.
“Dad,” she said, “I’ve taught Ralph to do tricks.”
“Right, Joyce,” I said in mock agreement.
“Cats can’t be trained,” I added knowingly.
About that time Ralph came strolling into the kitchen to
see what was happening¾and
for a possible handout.
“Here, I’ll show you,” Joyce said.
“Ralph, sit,” she commanded.
Sure enough, old Ralph sat down and started licking
himself.
He was very casual about sitting, though.
It was as if he were just getting ready to sit
anyway.
“Coincidence,” I thought.
“Ralph, lay!”
Joyce again commanded.
Ralph laid, but stretched out to full length as he did so, again making it look
so casual that once more Joyce’s words appeared to be mere happenstance.
“Ralph, roll over,” she said.
Yup!
Ralph rolled over, and again it was so unimpressive
it was almost boring.
So it went for the next five minutes or so.
Everything Joyce commanded, Ralph did, and
right on cue.
Finally, after she and Ralph piled up a preponderance of
evidence, I had to agree she had trained Ralph.
“But,” I added, “it’s the most unimpressive animal
show I’ve ever seen.”
Most (not all) of God’s miracles are like that, so
unimpressive and natural you don’t even notice they happened.
That’s what makes them uncanny.
Only their timing makes them worthy of note.
Rarely (if ever) is there a parting of the Red Sea.
Rarely do we get to talk with a burning bush.
God just doesn’t work that way.
Well, rarely, anyway.
Chapter addendum:
An interesting thing happened when I first wrote this
chapter, circa 1990.
I had finished the story of the jeep and had ended
it with the words “As God is my witness this is what happened.” (Or words to
that affect.)
Then I printed out a copy so it would be easier to proof,
filed it on a floppy disk and finished my writing for the day.
The next day when I started writing again, this chapter was
missing.
It was nowhere to be
found on the disk.[4]
Irked, but resolute, I
retyped it from my hard copy, wrote a little more, refiled it, and quit.
The following day I started writing again, and once more
this chapter was gone.
Now I was getting really angry.
I retyped it once more and filed everything on a
brand new disk.
This time, though, not content to wait until
tomorrow, I called it up again immediately.
Gone!
What’s wrong, I wondered?
My computer had never done this before and I was
using new disks.
What could it possibly be?
Resolutely, I started typing it once more.
I was getting to know this chapter pretty well by
then.
I could almost type it by memory and I was beginning to
getting bored with it.
(Not a good sign).
While typing, I came to a line that read: “I was miles off
the main road.”
The line appeared to be in heavier print and
suspended above the page.
A thought popped into my mind, “If you’re going to
say, ‘As God is my witness,’ get it right.”
OK.
The truth is, I wasn’t miles off the road, maybe six
hundred yards at the most.
(I was out of sight over the hill, however.)
I had no intention of lying, I was simply using
hyperbole to point out that help wasn’t available and I couldn’t be seen.
No cars went by all day on that road, so we were
isolated.
But I wasn’t “miles off the main road.”
Anyway, I made the correction, filed it to disk, and never lost it again.
Hmmm!
[1]
As it turns out, this was inaccurate.
The returned here several times a year.
We usually have
Thanksgiving dinner together.
[2] “Good” as
opposed to “spiritual,” “religious,” or “holy.”
[3] Though I
call this a “minor” miracle, there are actually no degrees in miracles.
All equally demonstrate the love of God.
[4] This was an
older computer where everything was stored on disks rather than on a
hard drive.