Seeking
My fiancé had just called off our engagement due to “a lack of long-term potential”. My business was failing after three years of hard work. I had health problems, mental and physical. My spirituality was non-existent. I had drifted beyond my normal agnosticism to something like resentment. But that resentment was a type of faith, as I was on the verge of discovering.
I walked my dog every day in the Alta Plaza park at the top of the hill. There were beautiful views of the San Francisco Bay. It was often cold and windy, but sometimes spring would shine through. Also, there were tons of moles and gophers — thousands of them — digging holes and running across the park paths.
One day, while walking my dog, a critter ran right in front of us. Just then, a hawk swooped down two feet away and flew off with it clutched in his claws, making a small sound. It happened so suddenly that I was stunned.
A woman nearby said, “That was amazing! You know that was a red crest hawk? I’ve seen them around the park lately.” I couldn’t believe there was a big hawk in the city.
After that, I saw the hawk almost every day. There may have been two of them and they had a nest in a big tree at the edge of the park, overlooking the bay. I read about the hawk in a local article. A photographer posted some pictures of one online, too.
My fiancé said she was moving out. I had planned to go on a “last-ditch” sales trip to try to drum up some business for my company, so I decided to go when she did. But I wanted to go on a motorcycle trip beforehand to clear my head. Going north sounded good. There were supposed to be some great roads through the mountains near the northern coast, and I wanted to see some redwoods.
It was a pretty straight ride up the 101 and the weather was nice. Once I got out of the Bay Area, anyway. I rode and became hypnotized by the highway.
As nightfall approached, I thought I’d better figure out where to spend the night. I pulled over at an intersection and was reading a sign about the “Avenue of the Giants” when a cop pulled up and asked if I was all right. I said I was just trying to figure out where to go. He wished me luck.
I turned off on the Avenue of the Giants and rode along at a sedate pace through the amazing giant trees, the motor humming. Suddenly, I spotted something above me. I looked up and it was a hawk! It was gliding along about twenty feet above me. It was effortlessly keeping up and seemed intent on following the road. It stayed with me for several minutes before veering into the redwoods.
Then I saw the sign for the town of Redcrest, California. Red crest like the hawk?
I pulled over at a promising-looking place called the Redcrest Resort. Yes, they had just one cabin available.
I was tired and had very little food but I was happy to just go to bed. But all the days of anger and resentment and fear caught up to me and I couldn’t sleep. I was so angry. I pictured a giant sword sweeping all the pain into the sea.
I awakened in pure darkness. It was silent and a band of tightness wrapped around my chest. For some reason, the darkness seemed alive. Like there was something there with me. I felt scared, wondering if someone had broken into the cabin and I was sensing them in the darkness.
Then for some reason I thought about the devil and how vexed I was. This seemed appropriate. I said to the devil, “If it’s you, I don’t care.”
Then I thought if I believed there was a devil here, then that must mean God is here. I hadn’t thought about God in years. I had avoided the subject.
But suddenly I felt angry.
"Well, God," I said, "if you’re here I don’t want to believe in you. Even if you were real, I wouldn’t want to believe in you. Look at all the crap on this Earth and in my life. You’ve really let it go, haven’t you? Fuck You, God."
I felt better. With the last “Fuck You” echoing in my mind, I drifted off to sleep.
The next day, I had a strange feeling: lighter. I headed north to Eureka. I found a diner and ate breakfast. Then I headed east on 299. Pretty soon, I was picking up the pace. The motorcycle was finally in its element: twisty roads.
After a little while I was zipping around blind corners in the mountains at a fast pace. Shift down and brake. Lean in tight. Twist the gas. Shift up. Unstoppable fun.
The next blind corner turned into a smear of gravel. I barely slowed in time to avoid three deer just standing in the middle of the road. I stopped.
They looked at me. I waited.
After a few minutes, I honked the horn. They stared blithely. Then I revved the engine. They just stared. Eventually, in their own good time, they turned and slowly walked away, staying on the road. They walked sedately all the way around the next corner.
I followed in first gear. What else to do? After a few minutes, around the next bend, I saw the road was crowded with boulders. The deer looked at me, then jumped off the side of the road.
If I’d come along at my fast pace, I would have killed myself on those rocks.
I threaded my way through the rocks. Then, with a little fear, I sped up again. I was riding along. Thinking. Then I started laughing. What was that all about? Were those deer supposed to mean something? Was I just saved? Fuck You, God.
The rest of the ride was a fast, curvy delight. I passed a group of bikers and they all waved. We knew what we were all after. The last couple of miles on 299 were like a roller coaster dream.
On the way home, I was peaceful and didn’t really think much. I was happy and sore from so much riding. By the time I reached home, I had clocked over 900 miles on my sport bike.
Afterwards, things didn’t get better. She moved out. I went on a business trip but didn’t really drum up more business. I took a side gig to keep afloat and pay back some debt and used the company money to pay my employees while I could.
But strange things happened.
One day I was thinking about how two of my exes both drove the same car. Same model. Same color. Funny thing I’d never consciously thought about. Then I turned the corner and I saw two of the exact same cars sitting at the red-light, one behind the other. What are the odds of that happening? Not just that two cars of the same color and same model would be together. But that it would happen exactly as I had the thought about my exes?
There was a lot that followed. I’d read a weird word that I’d never seen before, and suddenly, it was in everything I read. Thank you, lugubrious. Odd color patterns showed up constantly (I was redesigning our website). The same song would be playing everywhere I went. I randomly ran into two people I hadn’t seen in years in unlikely places.
I told some friends and family about all the happenings. I knew it could all be explained as coincidences of some low-probability events. I know Carl Jung called it synchronicity. Some of the more religious among them said it must be God. I started getting packages from them, and suddenly, I had a bookshelf full of C.S. Lewis and Timothy Keller. They gave me three Bibles of different translations. I read a little.
Later, I was on a flight. A young woman, maybe twenty, sitting next to me asked me why I was reading the Power of Now. I said I was hoping to be calmer. She proceeded to tell me that God told her to tell me that I was on the right path and that my seeking would lead me where I needed to go. She talked a bit about Jesus and said she would pray for me. She told me a lot about her life. She was a cellist from Africa. She was having a hard time, so I talked to her about her problems. She said God told her that I was someone she needed to talk to.
After a few weeks of this sort of thing, I was feeling freaked out. Am I going crazy? This stuff was driving me nuts if I wasn’t already. So I decided to pray. I prayed to God to stop all the craziness because it was getting difficult to focus on important things, like overdue projects. Fuck You, God.
One day, I was walking by my bookshelf. I was thinking “I have so many questions.” So I decided to play Bible roulette. I grabbed one of the Bibles my friends had sent me. I said “What does all this mean? What am I supposed to do?” I randomly flipped open a page. I closed my eyes and stabbed my finger at the page. When I opened my eyes, I was pointing at:
Hear the word of the Lord
Just then, I heard a piercing sound, a cry I can never forget. I looked out my fourth-floor window to see the hawk flying by, the cry of the hawk echoing among the apartment buildings.
It was so profound that I couldn’t move.
I decided to explore this path to see where it went. I found a church that wasn’t too "churchy” and began to ask questions. I went through a number of transitions to more faith and sometimes less.
This blog is a continuation of my exploration into spirituality, philosophy, technology, and a variety of thoughts about things I find interesting. It is a self-centered attempt to share some things that other folks might find helpful and connect with others on similar topics. I’d love to hear if you have had any experiences similar to mine.
Note: I later learned that the hawk was not a “red crest” hawk. It was a red-tailed hawk. The woman at the park had been wrong about the type of hawk. But then, I ended up in Redcrest, California. So the fact that she said the wrong name, but that it was the name of the town I stayed in and said my first “prayer" in decades, was some strange synchronicity, too.