Our Supreme Being guides the Universe executing his plan in mysterious ways. Earthly directives are especially vexing, wars, tsunamis, hunger and sickness require large blocks of time and, of course, there are the small problems that must be dealt with.
As in this case, God thought. Something to do with that game involving plastic spheres and small poles. Spheres and poles...let’s see...that would be Earl Anthony!
“Earl! Are you there?”
“Yes, Lord, I am here.”
“Another dispute Earl!”
Beleaguered and somewhat bedraggled from the recent fall that led to his ascension, Earl Anthony laments his plight with silent thought, “God, will I never be allowed to rest?”
(Large voice, definite ring of Divinity to it, answers) “Yes, Earl, but later, after this dispute...maybe. Earl, this one involves a family unity issue, one of great consequence between a brother and a sister, earthly remnants of the Bowse clan. The disputed issue involves the number of small poles that are knocked down by a series of thrown cylindrical plastic spheres. These spheres are thrown the length of a smooth wooden structure called a ‘lane’.
The following conversation is fictional. Total imagination deriving from what seemed an actual middle of the night appearance from my former mother-in-law, Ann Browne. This gentle intrusion seemed real but was obviously illusory, a dream.
On occasion, in a public place, a restaurant, a convenience store or the post office, I would notice a youthful woman looking my way; not staring but glancing, looking away and then quickly returning her eyes to me and looking away again. Her hair is a faded orange color. She is slender and has a freckled face. Am I imagining her? The same face in multiple places? Aging, tricks of the mind? I begin to ignore the ever-present woman, just barely more than a girl.
Was she Ann Browne?
I suspected the young woman making appearances was a much younger version of my former mother-in-law, Ann Browne. How was that possible? She’d passed more than forty years ago. Being spiritual and able to add two numbers that make four, I believe in an afterlife, frequent events that others describe as miracles.
Yes, spiritual but infused with more than a hint of realism. A well thought out belief that all that is humanity cannot be accidental. Eyesight alone warrants belief! And all necessary organs needed for a functioning human body did not emerge from the sea.
