coincidence is gods way of remaining anonymous
By Stuart Morris
Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous
When asked to write an introduction to what follows, I couldn’t find the words. Whatever I wrote was too clumsy a description of what I hope these pages offer.
Instead I decided to relate this particular story, as it encompasses where my journey began and, I trust, goes some way to explaining why I have so eagerly collected the other tales that follow.
It may not be the best of the stories contained in these pages; it may not be the most interesting or poignant, but it reflects my first steps toward trying to understand life’s incredible coincidences.
Stuart’s Story Part 1 - My First Steps
In the year 1992, three years after my diagnosis of non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, I had finished my treatments and had begun practicing Pranayama Yoga. My interest in the use of complimentary medicine was growing enthusiastically.
At that time I had heard about another form of yoga called Dru Yoga and so I attended a weekend workshop to see what it was all about.
The venue was in Bilston, a suburb of Wolverhampton, and participants were to meet in a place named Maristowe House.
I entered the reception room and found it full of people. With my head down, I made my way to far corner and sat upon a bench, hoping to blend into the background and hide away. Unfortunately as I rocked nervously, the bench seemed to take on a personality of its own, trying to throw me off, which didn’t help my quest to go unnoticed.
I smiled pretending everything was okay as more and more people filled the room. Then I noticed, with paranoid anxiety, that they all seemed to know each other, hugging and chatting like long lost relatives.
Feeling more than a little uneasy, I was surprised as one particular lady separated herself from the throng, walked over and sat next to me. With a brief but genuine smile, her first words were, “I’ll balance you up.”
Seeing through my discomfort and blushes, she introduced herself warmly as Wendy.
“So,” she said, “have you practiced Dru Yoga before?”
“No,” I confessed. “I’ve just come to have a look really”
We chatted a little and Wendy quickly made me feel more at ease. She told me that one day she would like to go on and teach yoga, that this was one of her goals in life.
A little while later the workshop began and we were all put into various groups. By chance Wendy was put into the same dormitory as me and the friend she’d actually arrived with was put in another dormitory.
From then she seemed to stay close to me, or maybe I stayed close to her, but whatever the case we chatted away happily and I began to feel easier by the minute.
All the time there was something about her. Part of me was drawn to her. I felt instinctively comfortable in her presence and enjoyed her company, but there was something else, something I still cannot articulate, except to say that it was right to be there with her.
The weekend was one of the most inspiring and moving weekends I had ever had. Up until that point in my life, I’d never realized that people could be so loving and kind to each other.
There was a speaker, a yoga teacher who took the weekend course named Many Patel, who to this day I believe is wholly made up of love. Everything about him, his words, his gestures, everything!
Something touched me that weekend, through the words that were given; something moved me towards a journey of spiritual awareness which was to come to fruition seven years later at a conference in Wales.
At the end of the weekend Many Patel asked the people in the room if there was anyone attending for the first time that may like to make themselves known. One by one the few of us that were new stood up and said a few words on who we were and why we’d come along .
When my turn came, I could hear the tone of my voice rise and fall as I introduced myself awkwardly. I told the group that 12 months previously I had a form of cancer, and that I was looking for another way in my life. I’m not sure exactly what I meant by that statement, but that’s the way it came out. And with that I sat back down.
Many looked at me and told me and told me, “No one here would let you down.”
How true those words turned out to be.
At the end of the seminar Wendy rushed over to me, lovingly hugged me and said, “I told my friend that I was drawn to you, that I didn’t know why, but there was something.” She went on to say that she finally understood what it was. She also had cancer, which was still with her, and this was our connection.
I have since come to realise that not only do certain cancer patients have this pull, this connection to each other, but we all do. There is a connection between us all especially if you have had a similar experience in your own life. We are drawn to others of similar mind, of that I’m sure.
I wrote to Wendy just once after the seminar and she wrote back, but I never wrote again only to say I remembered her on and off as we all do with certain people for the rest of our lives.
So from there my journey continued. I practiced Pranayama Yoga which was my saving grace and eventually I was asked by my own yoga teacher to train to become a teacher, which I did over the next three and half years. Alongside that I gained a diploma in holistic therapies.
My goal was always to come full circle and help others in the same way I was helped -through the simplicity of touch and the right word at the right time - which I’ve always said is the most powerful form of medicine (and I have the comparison of radiotherapy to compare with).
I do my own little routine of yoga daily, and sometimes during relaxation or at other times of peace, I would ask God, “Please God, hear my prayer.” And I have on occasions heard the answer, “Be still and know that I am with you.”
I had always heard about people getting great messages, really profound statements, but to me I did not see my answer as anything more than something I’d read, something that stayed with me, something that came back to me from time to time when I was relaxed enough to listen, a simple thought – nothing much.
When I went to the Dru Yoga weekend some years before, where I’d met Wendy, I noticed that there was a conference every year in Snowdonia in Wales, and at the time I promised myself that one day, when I was ready, I would go.
Seven years after that workshop, I woke up one morning and decided to. By this time I was teaching Pranayama Yoga and had not been back to Dru Yoga at all, and yet here I was with a strong pull to go to the conference.
I had been teaching Pranayama Yoga for 2 years by this stage and in all honesty I felt I’d lost something personal to me within my own practice of yoga. I felt I was going through the postures and teaching the philosophy but no longer feeling it in the same way. That year more than most I felt far away God.
One of the things I have always believed since my illness is that there is part of us that knows the future, a part of ourselves that prepares us for what’s to come. I now know that this intuitive part of me played its part in my journey to the conference that year.
The train journey down to Snowdonia was one full of thoughts such as, “What the hell am I going for? I don’t even practice this form of yoga. Why am I going alone?” etc.
I arrived and checked in, got my keys and lay down on the bed, resting from the journey. I closed my eyes and asked myself once more, “Why am I herer?”
Later on that night I walked up to a large hall they called the Haven, where books, tapes, information about courses etc, were available. I needed to change a workshop that I had mistakenly been put me down for (unfortunately, or so it seemed at the time, no one was there who could change this workshop for me).
The Haven was also a place where people could meet and socialise, and so I got a drink of tea and sat down on some steps overlooking the hall.
“Can I join you?” asked an elderly man, a helper with the conference named Derik. Happy for the company I gestured for him to sit down. Soon we were chatting.
I confessed to Derik my feelings, that whilst this was my first time at the conference, I didn’t really know what I was doing here, that I taught Pranayama Yoga, or at least went through the motions, that I had no real conviction in the words I used and that I no longer felt God in the same way.
Derek listened to me quietly and then asked, “Do you meditate at all, Stuart?”
I told him I did and told him the words that I had sometime heard when praying, “Be still and know I am with you.” I explained that I wondered whether these were just words I’d read somewhere and that, despite hearing them, felt that I had lost my way.
We talked some more and then Derik said he had to leave. He gave me his card and said to ring him any time I was feeling that I needed to talk. I could sense he was a genuine sort, and we parted with a handshake.
Back in my room, I felt dispondent, questioning whether I should leave early by train. Full of doubts about my life, my head spun and my spirits plummeted. Eventually, my mind full of confusion and desperation, I decided to pray.
“Dear God, I’m so fed up, can you hear me, please God in heaven. If you hear me, send me an angel. Please God, send me an angel. Give me a sign that you hear my prayer, give me a sign that you’re there. Send me an angel.”
It was a prayer said from the pit of my stomach. It might not have been very wordy, but it contained all my thoughts, confusion, desperation and emotion. And it was enough, for quickly afterwards I fell asleep.
I went down to breakfast the next morning, train timetable in my back pocket, sat down at a table and introduced myself to the lady next to me.
“What’s your name I asked?” I enquired.
She looked at me, smiled and said, “Angel.” I nearly choked on my Weetabix.
“Is that your real name?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes, Angel,” she said. “It’s my Christian name. I’m from Holland.”
We talked some more and soon I felt I needed to tell her about my prayer the night before, concluding what an incredible coincidence it was that her name was Angel.
She laughed happily and said, “That’s Gods way of remaining anonymous.”
After breakfast, again I lay on my bed and closed my eyes.
“You must have some great sense of humour,” I called out, “if that’s what it is. Well God, here I am, I am willing to forgive, I am willing to learn to love, I give you my life from this moment on, I give you this weekend. If you exist, have it, its yours. I no longer care,” and I meant it.
Later on in the day, whilst I was waiting in the queue for lunch, I turned my head to meet the eyes of the lady immediately behind me. She smiled and said, “Hi Stuart. It’s me, Wendy.”
My mind flashed to the Dru Yoga workshop seven years previous.
“ Jeeeeeze what’s going on here,” I thought. “There must be close onto a 1000 people at this conference. This is impossible. This can’t happen.” I was gobsmacked
I reached out and held Wendy closely, feeling our connection instantly rekindled. I can’t really express exactly what I felt at that moment. Pleasure, excitement, amazement, disbelief, profound relief, complete happiness, reassurance. These feelings are a part of it, yes, but I don’t think I could ever list exactly what raced through my mind in that split second when I saw Wendy behind me. But of one thing I was certain, the way in which events had unfolded that morning, they were too great to be a coincidence.
We spent all weekend talking, Wendy had a terminal cancer, it had been that way for the last seven years, and still she was there more beautiful than ever. She had reached her goal and was teaching Dru Yoga.
Amazingly she had never been to the conference before either but had had a strange yearning to come.
Even more amazingly she had been wrongly booked on a particular workshop and hadn’t been able to cancel it – the very same workshop I had been incorrectly booked to attend.
Later on, when I thought more about it, the importance of this really hit home. Not only was it yet another incredible coincidence, if by some mishap we hadn’t met in the queue, we’d still have met in the workshop.
After the course had ended and I lay once more in my own bed, I reflected on the strange events of those couple of days. I tried to quieten my mind but couldn’t. Those incredible coincidences: those happy events. And as I lay in elated reflection, I heard those words again:
“Be still and know that I am with you.”
Was it God? Or was it my own mind, a simple memory, an eager thought.
Whatever the answer, I lay still - and I knew that God was with me.
I never saw Wendy again after that conference, but she gave me a book as a leaving present when we parted. In it she wrote, “Keep looking for angels.”
I have continued to look. I know that they come in all shapes and disguises, even woven in the mixture of pain and loss that takes place in our lives. So please look for yours. I know they will be there. Know, with absolute certainty that you are heard in your moments of despair.
The purpose of this book is to show that there are no such things as coincidences; That Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.
stuart morris
This article was posted by stuart morris
View all articles posted by stuart morris
