In the midst of the wildness that is my life during a big move, a remarkable little mathematical equation emerged out of the chaos that I want to write about, like a still point in my turning world (reference to T.S. Eliot’s wonderful poem). There is too much to say in the turning at this point; I already feel the surges of writing that want flow from it when everything stops spinning. But for now, this amazing dream scenario.

One of the beauties of writing down and tracking dreams is to discover the synchronous timing of their occurrence, often demonstrating how precisely mathematical the whole mysterious fabric of the universe is, truly. I have a few astonishing stories to tell in this regard, this one being a good reminder, “re-mind-ing.” These events do reshape the mind.

The first event was on June 9, 1977.  On that day something in my world cracked open, I won’t go into lengthy details in this writing, and a big part of my future flowed through that crack. That evening I happened to go to a lecture that was surprisingly synchronistic in that it explained and spot on described what was happening to me. I remembered the date because when I wrote it all down the 6 and the 9 looked so beautiful together, round and flowing and mirroring each other upside down.

In future years, every so often a big dream or soulful occurrence took place, and I would notice the date – June 9th, 6 9. It always gave me pause, notifying me that the universe just is not random, it is exquisitely, mathematically designed.

In the early 90’s I developed a love for the writings of St. Therese of Lisieux, a young French nun whose depth of spirituality and ways of finding God in every tiny, simple thing inspired me very much. Her big love and bone honesty moved me. For years I read daily passages from her writings collected in a book called Just For Today; they nourished me each and every day. In one of her books I read that she had a mystical vision of Jesus on June 9th, and that she always privately considered that date as a personal holy day. June 9th! My private holy day too! What were the odds of this?

It has been years since I have given this much thought, time moves on. Two nights ago, my first night of sleeping in an actual bed in my new apartment in Asheville rather than a mat on the floor, I awakened in the middle of the night to write down a dream. In it, I was giving to a friend (who I have not seen in years) a gift that I had also given to my mother, in the dream. I had created it and had only given it to two people. It was a little book bound in beautiful red leather with gold lettering, and gold leaf pages. In the book was printed just one passage by St. Therese of Lisieux; a few words that to me said everything. I chose the passage and had this book bound, once creating it as a gift to give to my mother, as I said, and now again had created one as a gift for this friend. When I awakened I SO wished I could remember which passage was printed in that book!

In the morning I picked up my dream journal to write this dream down thinking how random it seemed to have had this dream in the midst of moving chaos. I cast about to figure out what the date was, having lost track of days of the weekd and dates completely. I looked it up then wrote June 9; it all came flooding back with great emotion.

The universe just is not random. The mystery of it thrills me.

Today, June 11, my Zen Calendar quotation is from Albert Einstein. “The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” I love that he calls the mysterious an “emotion.”

Dreams are, indeed, true art and true science. And mysterious. Yet precise. And artful.

By the way, I gave birth to my 2nd beautiful daughter 26 years ago today. Happy birthday gorgeous Arlene.