One morning, I couldn’t find two handout pages from my Wabanaki Languages class. The day before, those two pages had been on the kitchen table, ready for me to work on them over breakfast. But at breakfast, not there. I looked everywhere. I am usually very organized, so when something gets lost, I go a little bonkers.  I looked in the basement, I looked in the junk drawer, I looked on my writing desk, I looked in the basement again. Nothing. We’d had our house cleaned the day before, so I emailed our housecleaner to see if perhaps she had put them somewhere.  I secretly wondered if Margy had moved them. (Sorry Margy!)

Finally, after more than an hour of this, I gave up.  There was no where else to look.  I stopped.  I sat in my room in the chair next to the window and wrote in my journal.  Writing in my journal is a form of praying for me.  Praying is a form of surrender.  I wrote, “How do I handle this? I give up. I can’t do my day as I planned it–the next Wabanaki lesson over breakfast and then, etc. I give in. Is there a better response than going bonkers? Is this some sort of cosmic interruption? What should I be paying attention to?”  Then I sat silently and breathed. I accepted the interruption. I got more quiet and breathed some more.

Then I quietly remembered that I had moved some health notes from the table the day before. And that is where I found my lesson pages, intermingled among them.

But I continued to sit, and I reflected on how much energy I used up being anxious and frantic about losing the papers. It was only when I gave in, and prayed, that the answer emerged, from quiet.  So I decided to fully embrace this cosmic interruption of my plans for the day. I let go of the projects I had thought about doing, and went into Margy’s room and we cuddled.  We decided to go see the ice disk in the Presumpscot River in Westbrook–that temporary, famous, huge, slowly spinning circle of ice that was mysteriously floating on the surface of the river.

We walked along the river and took photos.  We mingled with dozens of other people who were out to see this curiosity of nature. We felt full of joy.  I learned that this is what can come from embracing cosmic interruptions.  Joy. Maybe there is a cosmic interruption waiting to happen for you today?