AN OMEN OF GOOD CHANGES

 Outside my bedroom window is this amazingly colored tree.  

Why hadn't I noticed it before?  I have lived here for several years!  I must be slipping in what I consider to be the first "commandment" of "my religion", which comes from Alice Walker and her glorious novel, The Color Purple.  It comes from the line, I think it pisses God off in you walk past the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."  Well, now having noticed this tree, I purposefully look at it every morning when I open up my blinds.

About a month after my seeing this tree, I was looking out the window at it and saw a black woman sitting on the grass under this treet.  The ground was heavily covered with leaves that had fallen and shared its color with the green of the grass.  In all the years I have lived here, I had never ever seen anybody sitting down on the grass here.  But here was this woman doing just that, adding her colors with those of the leaves and the grass.  I literally said outloud in my solitude, "How beautiful that is!", because the whole tableau truly was glorious.

 

This was the kind of view that would stimulate taking a photograph, but I was a stranger three stories up above and hidden behind her, which would be creepy, so I did not.  I didn't want to sully the atmosphere by assentially being a spy.  But I did have the idea of going downstairs and around to tell her how beautiful she was in that setting.  I kind of laughed at the boldness of my thought, but in addition to my "God wants you to notice," another of my aphorisms is if you see something good about a person, then you tell them if you can.  Rarely have I ever come upon a person who did not like what I was saying to them, but there have been some and that's too bad for them.

I can remeber one time I was on a trip and was having lunch in a Dennys.  In the booth in front of me there was an elderly couple, a large man whose back was facing me and his wife who was across from him.  The man was doing most of the talking and the woman was listening and nodding as the man talked.

Let me tell you, that man..the most glorious voice he had!  It was deep and strong and had a powerful timbre.  It was a voice of great knowlege and the power to educate you with valuable truths.  Just based on the sound of that voice alone made me think he would be one of the most important sound casters in our day.  If he had a podcast that aired even deep in the night and lasted for three or four hours each night, I would nevertheless get my earphones, get into bed, and listen to him every single night.

The man and woman ate slowly and so I finished before they did.  I was eager to get back on the road.  All I knew about this man was his back and his voice, but there was no way I was going to leave that restaurant without telling him how I felt about how great his voice was.  So I walked over to their booth and I simply said to him, "I was eating in the booth behind you and I couldn't help but notice that you have one of the most wonderful speaking voices I have ever heard, people would fall in love with the power of your voice; if you aren't already on radio, I think the sound of your voice alone would make you a huge success on radio or anywhere else you could use your voice."

That was all, just my observation.  I wasn't going to stay beyond that, just tell him this and then leave.  He looked up at me with his mouth handing open and I smiled and then walked away to the booth where I could pay my bill.  As I walked away, I could hear him say to his wife, "What cheek!  Did you hear him? That guy said that I should be on radio", like that was the farfest thing he had ever thought of in his life.   I thought to myself, "Well, you lose some," yet somehow, I bet that guy rolls that thought around in his head and things start to change in his life in various beneficial ways.   I hope so!

So, I went down stairs and round the building and walked up to the woman sitting under the tree and simply said to her that I had seen her sitting there among the flowers, I had seen her from my aparment upstairs and thought the whole picture was so beautiful that I had to come down and tell her.

She was so gracious, accepting the compliment and appreciating my sharing that with her.  This happened to be a bit after the start of the New Year, so I said that she was a sign that we were going to have a very good year this year, she was a good omen, and with her being the bearer of that good message, she herself would find all sorts of good things happening in her life as well this year.  She smiled groadly and said, "Thank you so much, I like what you are saying!"  I said, "Well, the thanks go to you, and enjoy this year!" and then I left her.

Since I was now downtairs, I decided to go get my mail, so I walked over to the vicinity of the manger's office where all our mail boxes are.

I got my mail and then walked back to my building, climed up to the third  floor and then walked along the walkway to my aparment which is at the further end.  I heard a bisy-boddy little girl down on the ground below talking with a friend of hers.   She was saying to her friend, "Yes, I saw that homeless woman here again, let's go tell the manager to him to kicked off."

Homeless woman?  Could that be the woman who had been sitting under the tree?  I went into my apartment and looked out my bedroom window, but the woman was gone.  Come to think of it, every single apartment in this gignatic complex has either a large balcony (the upper units) or a gated patio (the ground floor units).  Generally speaking, there would be no reason to be sitting down on the grass if they lived here; they would be on their valcony or in their patio.  Even the numerous childred don't sit down on the grass--they're up and about playing, or if they are resting but not in their apartment, they sit on the seats and tables in the large barbeque area.

It hadn't occured to me that the beautiful woman sitting among the fallen leaves was actually homeless, finding a quiet place to sit and rest for a while.  Instead, there was someting regal about her.  Nobody homeless could come here to camp, as the complex has armed guards who patroll the grounds.  (My premious blog engry was about our new nighttime guard.) 

All that was near the beginning of 2022 and now it is early February.  Here is what that tree looks like now.  Instead of covered with ORANGE leaves, now the tree is dense with WHITE leaves!  You have the photo proof!

What kind of tree IS this, anyway?  It must be magic, the way it completely changes the colors and tells a story using its leaves.  When I told that woman who had chosen to repose under the tree that she was an omen of good changes, I utterly believed it.  I think she did, too.

God wants you to notice, because it is yet another way that He will share his promises with you, and when you know them, you can manifest them.