Soul Moments:
Marvelous Stories of Synchronicity -
Meaningful Coincidences
from a Seemingly Random World
Edited by Phil Cousineau, Foreword by Robert A. Johnson author of He, She, and Inner Work June 1997
Conari Press, Berkeley, California ISBN 1-57324-079-6


Here is a story by Sophia Fairchild taken from the book

SOUL MOMENTS

Marvelous Stories of Synchronicity - Meaningful Coincidences from a Seemingly Random World


Go Walkabout.
Go alone.
Have no itinerary.
Listen to the spirit of the land
through the soles of your feet.

Kalkadoon Elder, Queensland

I had been working at my home in Sydney on some short stories about a young woman's journey, and one morning, came to the realization that there was a missing story in the collection. It was obvious that my character still needed to travel to the central Australian desert, so as to apply what she learned there to events that came later in life.

Some months earlier, I had met up with a group of Australian women elders out in the desert. I had been invited to walk their country with them and learn their language and ways. It was important to wait for the right time. They had said, "One day we will telephone you and say, 'Come'."

I had not yet heard from them and had expected they were all off together in the bush, but, on the morning I realized there was a missing link in my story sequence, I called the only Napangardi woman in the group who had a telephone line.

Pannaji sounded so matter-of-fact when she answered the phone in Alice Springs. She had been expecting my call. Earlier that morning, one of her sisters had walked into town from the desert and come to Pannaji's house asking about me. The aboriginal women had collectively decided that the time had come for me to join them.

The two women had turned Pannaji's small house upside down looking for my phone number, but couldn't find it. The sister from the desert had shrugged her shoulders and said, "Don't worry, she'll call."

They had simply decided to wait, the way Aboriginal people do. And having waited on the Spirit before knowing when to move and in which direction, they were confident that the time had come for me to travel with them and that I would call.

So certain was my desert sister that I would phone that day and arrive soon after, she had left Pannaji's house to walk to the women's art center to finish off a dot painting she had begun for me - a painting I had not yet asked for.

When I telephoned that morning, Pannaji had been sitting by the phone waiting for me to name the day I would arrive. Without thinking, I told her I'd be there with a four-wheel-drive within a week!

Since all the Aboriginal women were talented artists, I then asked Pannaji if one of them might paint a canvas for me. Pannaji said, "Yes, it'll be finished by this afternoon!"

It was only then that she told me the sister had walked in from the desert less than an hour before, and that they were all now waiting for me.


The amazing coincidences of that day did not end there.

Pannaji told me that one of her skin sisters, whom I hadn't yet met, had gone to Sydney with paintings for a big art exhibition. She said I should go to the Art Gallery of New South Wales where several of her relatives were about to create a big sand painting. These sand paintings in desert ochres depict powerful Dreaming stories, and create a direct link with the Ancestor Spirits.

When I arrived at the gallery that afternoon, I was told by the staff that the Aboriginal exhibition would not be opening for another three days and that the area was closed to the public. Pannaji had been very specific about when the ritual sand painting would be created. She had said "They'll be doin' it in the late afternoon."

It was closing time when I walked past the security guard into the Aboriginal wing of the big art gallery. There, I was greeted by the Aboriginal artists like an old friend. They shooed away the flustered security people saying, "We know her. She was invited." Yet I had never met any of them before.

I still don't know how it happened, but as I sat with the aboriginal artists, watching as the huge sacred story took shape in red sand on the floor of the deserted gallery in central Sydney, while a fierce electrical storm raged all around us triggering the gallery alarms to echo through its empty halls, I knew I was meant to be there!