Pondering a Stranger

I wrote about this last spring and wanted share it here:

A few days ago, my husband and I took our youngest to a labyrinth.  He actually walked through to the center by following the path - of course, he will only be four years old next week so after reaching the center he took off skipping and laughing.  Ah, what a great time for him!

While we were there we encountered a woman we had never met before.  We all felt drawn to her for some reason.  Our young son walked over to her as my husband and I worked our way back out of the labyrinth.  He started a conversation with her.  It was quite precious.  As we exited the labyrinth we stopped to talk to her.  The area we currently live in is not very open to our spiritual path and/or beliefs; therefore we were amazed to encounter someone who was orgininally from our area, but who had spent 25+ years living in India on her own spiritual journey.  She spoke of many things we have interest in understanding better, inviting into our lives, and sharing with others.  Yet, our spiritual path includes many traditions from Huna to Buddhism to Christianity to Hinduism to Native American and beyond.  

Will we see her again?  I am unsure.  But, the gift her presence gave us that day was simply her telling us, "I am so glad you are here."  I am not sure we believe she means "here" to be the location we are in so much as that we are "here" alive in this time and sharing our experiences, knowledge and love with others.

This amazing, yet eccentric, woman has a project in our community she has started where she captures feral cats, has them spayed or neutered, then returns them to where she found them.  She is trying to keep the streets of our town from being overrun with stray cats - yet, she does not want to see these creatures have their lives taken.  They should have the chance to live out their lives just like you and I.

So, ponder today....what might you learn from an encounter with a stranger?...do you allow others to live their lives?...how do you give back to your community?...what can make you smile today?

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Photo by Kavita