Incidents and dreams may be God whispering to us

"Incidents and Dreams" is the third story in Linda McCullough Moore's book of short stories, This Road Will Take Us Closer To The Moon." The story is about Margaret McKensie who is getting her performance appraisal done by Mr. Peterson who doesn't think her creative production is what it should be and suggests that maybe she is better fitted for sales at which point she resigns.

In the meantime Margaret McKensie has agreed to help care for the ailing Episcopalian Bishop who is dying of bone cancer and who gets her into bed with him for unclear reasons other than perhaps wanting an innocent snuggle and is discovered by his teen age daughter.

As unlikely as both these scenarios previously seemed Margaret McKensie marvels at how simple incidents can so quickly and irrevocably change the course of one's life.

Moore writes:

"These things happen to us - Peterson, my surprise retirement, my afternoon spent with a dying bishop - they are incidents. It is not reasonable to expect that they will change my life, but neither is it wise, I think, to rule out the possibility entirely. At any moment, when I least expect to, I might stop treating my life like a Wednesday matinee I got free tickets for. I might even strike up an old acquaintanceship with tenderness, the kind the bishop had in mind, tenderness that's been away so long I had forgotten that it might just be off on some vacation, one that got stretched out way too long, one that was pure and perfect foolishness from the beginning." pp. 43-44

If we are open to the whispers of the call, we can sense that the Holy Spirit, God, Jesus, the Spirit of Life, the Universe is leading us along to our destiny, our fate. We can easily ignore it and think that we know best, what is in our own best interest, but my favorite joke is "If you want to hear God laugh, tell God your plans."