24: Coincidence: Or, Doncha

CHAPTER 24

Coincidence:
Or, Doncha Just Love It
When A God-Plan
Comes Together?

I luv the word Coincidence! To me it means a Godian Surprise Party! It’s a heavenly coordinated event to quicken our meeting of a significant person in and for our lives, an idea we need to activate, a way to be an angel for another, an opportunity to serve a question that an unknowing other was holding the answer for.

Doncha just luv it?

I view it as Angels In Action. Only a coincident allows us to see how we are Angels in other lives as they are Angels in ours.

I bet if we reflected, our entire life has been gloriously riddled with Godian Coincidences that speeded up our journeys for needed people to meet our needed answers for our questions.

When I de-Earth, my tombstone ought to read: “I owe my life to Coincidences. Those I embraced and those I learned from”.

Reading this book, you must sense that my entire life is riddled with coincidences, as is yours!

It’s our silent, yet obvious, destiny accelerator.

I swear, whenever I give God and the Universe a question… Bingo!… the answer/solution shows up. Not always as planned, but as needed.

I recall when I asked God about bigotry and why people are so mean to one another for such silly reasons as birth place, religion, skin color, et cetera. I didn’t get it.

I soon got my example.

I so often struggled to recall when I first learned that bigotry existed. As I contemplated my early home and school years, I know I didn't hear of it as a kid.

Through those years, as an actor in professional children's schools, my classmates were composed of a scrambled bag of types. The only prejudice I heard of related to why some of the kids got all the TV work. A verdict usually issued by the kids who didn't.

Recently, as I rummaged through that mixed bag for the golden nuggets of my youth, a call rang in from Dora, a lady in her late 80s who I only knew on a passing social level. After her howjado, she suddenly and surprisingly blurted her inner thoughts on those “niggers” going too far. On “Mandela, just like that Martin Luther King, being too pushy for his own good.” She ended her tirade by telling me:

“Well, we all have to know our place, you wouldn't marry a nigger, wouldja, honey?”

After I explained the definition of the term “nigger” to her deaf ears, I assured her I wouldn't. But then I added: “Neither would any of the terrific black people I know.”

I told her how curious her call was because at that very moment, I had two golden recalls of my school days. One being about the most pivotal young man who affected a turning point in my past. I told her how his subtle actions and encouraging words still rang in my heart. Thinking I was detouring off her diatribe, she said: “There! I bet no black would know how to be that nice!”

I then told her the man was Gregory Hines.

Amidst the abrupt silence born of her shock, I told her how we, and his brother Maurice, first met in the Willard Mace Elementary School for professional kids in New York.

I told her how we knew each other through high school at Quintano's. I told her that on one of my downest days of denying myself my abilities of not knowing what the hell I had to offer this planet, we kids at Quintano's put together a plan to create a quasi-musical review, just for the heck of it. Whether it ever played or not didn't matter (it never did).

We all gathered in a rehearsal studio off Avenue of the Americas. When it came to the opening chorus act, Gregory showed me a jazz combination to dance.

Not caring about maintaining my obscurity that day, yet craving the freedom that dance always gave me, I went for it. I had some freedom fun.

Though I usually played my personal life on such a low key that I'd not have been detectable to a flea, my what-the-heaven mood caused me to put my all into duplicating what he asked me to interpret.

When the music stopped, Gregory looked into my eyes with that piercing serious look he always had, a look that always made me feel he was reaching into my soul, and said: “Hey, you're good! You are really good!”

Though I admired him for years since we first met, when I learned he worked with his family as Hines, Hines & Dad, we had yet to connect on a creative level.

Ergo! At that moment, though my mind had been holding a race between my worth and doubts, the intensity of his words instantly disqualified my doubt and declared worth as the winner.

I was so numbed by his comment, that the only reply I could utter was “Thanks!” as I crept back into my wallflower patch.

But, internally my brain yahoo-ed with his encouragement. “Wow! Gregory Hines said I was good!”

It wasn't that I had made my inner worth contingent on his approval, it's just that at that time, the home tornado front I was uphill-battling against was causing me to abdicate my Earthian Hope. Causing me to believe that Ashley's vote on my mortal worthlessness was shared by the entire planet.

I had not given up on ME. I'd given up on planetary worth; on there being a way for me to connect with this world; and on there being a reason for my birth. I'd given up on my value that might translate into a worthy contribution to life.

BOTTOM LINE:

I had reached an absolute conclusion that
the Master Planners had beamed me to the wrong planet.

Gregory's words on that rainy day in the sweaty rehearsal hall pulled me back into my life. Back into believing there really might be a reason for my existence whether I consciously understood what it was at that time or not.

I'm sure he never knew the significance of his words or of his encouragement, which proves: the smallest pebbles we cast into life can indeed cause ripple turn-arounds for others whether or not we're immediately aware of the affects.

That wasn't the first time Gregory had an impact on my life. Nor was it the last.

I can't logically explain why he was so important to me. We never got to be close buddies. And, it's not as if he was then the famous celebrity he became, so as to say I was mesmerized by fame. We were all just kid performers who schooled together.

There were others just as well known (some more so then). Heck! My career was doing pretty well in those carnival days.

But, Gregory just had this overwhelming aura of intense honesty, of directness, of significance, of understanding the need to matter and the need to give our life nothing less than 100%.

From day 1 of meeting him (he was about 10), he seemed so sure of, and focused on, his talents, that whenever he spoke, I couldn't help but listen. Nor did I ever avoid the temptation to slip into the hallway or down the sidewalk outside our school when he was practicing or inventing a new dance combination, drumming with pencils against a wall or harmonizing with the other kids.

As I often confessed to my diary, I felt I was witnessing something historical and unexplainably magical. I never knew what he'd do when he grew up, but I knew he'd make it big with whatever he chose. I knew it would be a result of his dedication to personal perfection.

No matter what area of life it might be, whether he'd remain a performer or pursue an entirely different venue, I was sure he'd be a man who would spiritually dance to his own drummer chords.

He validated the need of choosing to be creatively passionate in life. The worth of gratifying our own sense of perfection. Of trusting when our soul told us we had created something terrific, whether we had outside validation or not.

Though I did not display my creativity as publicly as he did, I privately understood that passion. For me it didn't vent via performing, rather when I privately created my artwork and wrote my endless journals.

QUESTION:

How did I perceive these life validations from him as a passing-in-the-hallway classmate?

ANSWER:

Osmosis mixed with my desire to believe in a tangible in-my-life someone. Preferably, another mortal.

The irony is I doubt he'd even remembered me from those days as my profile hovered below see-level. The greater paradox is: that's OK.

What-is-now does not dispel what-was-yesterday when his pat on the back bolstered my Belief Booty.

SIDE THOUGHT:

Now aware of the insane social brakes that were applied to those with year round tans, I admire the fact that his attitude was not contingent on waiting for society to grant him permission to create and succeed. Or else the world might never have met him.

And considering the revived art of tap dancing, without Gregory's publicized skill, the art of using the body and soul as a natural percussion instrument might not be currently alive, or be a source of inspiration for today's kids to dance the Tap Gauntlet into the future.

Having known him during those early years of his pursuit of achievement, he sure earned every bravo and buckaroo he accrued in having succeeded in what I later learned to be a very denying society.

Though I have never re-upped with him, I still thank him for the energy he pumped into that give-up moment of my life even if he never understood the significant role he played.

The memory of that encounter reminds me:

Since the most casual brush stroke with another can affect their living portrait, it's worthwhile on all sides to make those strokes as encouraging as possible.

In a way it may seem like a terrible burden to think that every act, from the slightest nod of approval or disapproval, may have a pivotal affect on another but, it's true.

My way of lightening that load is to do my best for me, to share the best when it feels appropriate and let go of how it's used or interpreted by others. After all:

People receive in accord with how they give.

MEANING:

You could compliment 3 people on how good they look,
yet each will hear your words in accord with
their private perceptions of themselves.

The one who has a low self-esteem will think you're lying.
The one who is a shmoozer will think: “What does she want? What's the ulterior motive?”
The one who has a healthy self-esteem will think you're a generous soul with good taste.

Since we're only able to control our side of the court with no control over how others accept what we serve, we may as well deliver the best we can.

While I'm not adding “Screw the rest,” we shouldn't hinge our life on whether others use our serve to propel them to greater heights or an excuse to sink deeper into their whine seller act.

In recall, the complimentary brushes that mattered the most, and lingered the longest, were those served by people I respected.

People who not only achieved, but shared themselves without strings. Possibly, as with Jackie Gleason, Elsa Maxwell and Gregory, they just happened to be what I later understood to be celebrities, then it didn't matter. They were simply people who gave beyond a one-on-one range.

What I now find interesting is that the only other person I actually revered from my schoolhood days was one of my teachers, as opposed to Gregory having been an unwitting educator on self-value.

Come to think of it, by many people's put down poll, my favorite teacher must also have been considered a target of bigotry bombers.

The man was Frank Moffet Mossier from Quintano's and was the one who woke me up to seeing the connection between adults and kids. He was our Caucasian English teacher who was married to an Oriental lady.

I recall whispered words from the stage mom lounge that his choice of mate was “offensive”, but I never heard why. To me she was a beautiful lady with incredibly thick black hair and Mr. Mossier's greatest fan.

I say Mr. Mossier was another pivotal person because he sculpted a frame of human reference that I can never forget. It occurred during one significant discourse that replays in my head like a first generation tape.

During a typical class that always began in a standard English pattern (but never ended where it logically should have), he suddenly laid out a hypothetical on life and asked us if we agreed.

Being “the teacher”, the unimpeachable adult, of course we agreed. He then told us we were crazy to be so gullible.

He showed our susceptibility to programming by pointing out to us the loopholes in his theory. He told us we ought to use his example as a basis for never accepting any idea at face value just because it was served by an authority figure… an adult.

He urged us to question everything and told us it didn't matter if we got the right answer. It didn't matter if the one we questioned ever backed down due to what we said. His main concern was keeping our questioning spirits active.

All I can say is he was as close to a mortal Messenger of Truth, a Cosmic Butt-Kicker, as I ever met up to that point in my journey.

By day he taught us. By night, he was a playwright whose shows often ran off-off-Broadway, way off, and to which we were often given passes.

His subjects were often far beyond our conceptual grasp. But, they sure were probing methods to get us to question; to go beyond what we perceived as fact; and to reach out and touch our potentials.

Each class with him was an adventure into literary passion and a roguish scouting beyond the outskirts of reality.

Auntie Mame would have quickly lassoed him to tutor young Patrick.

He once cut short his explanation of grammar structure to explain how he conceived his grandest play plot into the absurd.

He told us how he birthed the plot for his latest play using one of his shut-out-the-world secrets. He detailed how he sat in a super hot water tub, pulled the plug and let the icy shower gush down upon his head. Thus silencing outside noise. He said it helped him hear the messages of his soul.

Assigned homework or not, I gave it a try. He was right. Still is, even though I don’t have a real tub. In fact, I now call my shower a Cosmic Phone Booth. The place to muzzle the world and listen to my soul without logic disconnecting my direct dial into Inspiration City.

Though not requested, my closest encounter of the word kind with Mr. Mossier occurred when I nervously dared to pull one of my stories out of my closet and ask if he'd give me feedback. His eyes lit like fire crackers as he promised to do so the next day.

It was titled “Dr. Life Is Not On Call” and though it might have been tagged as surrealistic, to me it was just a story about people hanging out in the waiting room of Dr. Life, doing nothing with their lives as they didn't believe they could write their own prescription due to their fears and frustration.

In my story, some of Dr. Life's patients would get up and say “To hell with this! I'm fed up waiting for my number to be called. I'm leaving to find my own answer.” The lingering patients would toss glares of terror at the exit door, saying: “You're crazy to think you can do it yourself. Dr. Life is the only one with the answers. Leave if you want, but when you come back, as you surely will, the wait will be even longer. You'll be sorry.”

Well, it went on and on, but the hook was: There was no Dr. Life. Behind the opaque door was an abyss of deception.

MEANING:

No one holds the answer for our questions but us.

In reflection, guess I haven't fallen from my kidhood tree, except I now have no queasy dread of sharing my thoughts.

I couldn't sleep that night waiting to hear his feedback.

As we entered the faded front pink room where he held court in his lanky wrinkled suits and untied ties, I relaxed and thought I had 30 minutes of class before hearing his verdict.

Instead, horror of horrors!, he chose my story as the topic of the day. Though I was a performer, I shivered down to my toenails when he asked me to read it aloud. These were not someone else's words, but were birthed from my innermost feelings. I was on the reality line and not just walking the line of an unknown (to me) writer.

Shivering in my penny loafers, I read my story.

When it was finally over, the deafening silence was backed by a thunderous heartbeat trapped in my hope chest.

Mr. Mossier asked the class for their thoughts.

Amidst the glazed eyes that freckled the limited horizon, only one hand raised. It was Brian Hyland's. Up to that point, we barely said: Hi. The only thing I knew about him was his current record: “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.”

By assuming (yes, I know that's stupid) his interest range paralleled his lyricist's, I tensed for a ruling of: She's NUTS!

Wrong!

Instead, I was stunned. Brian said: “I get it. She's saying we're not supposed to wait to be told how to live. I like it.”

Mr. Mossier graded Brian with a cry of BINGO!

Wow! Was I shoved off the Truth Base by my fear or what?

I now wonder how many more acceptances I had side stepped out of fear of rejection.

Though none of the other kids joined in Brian's rally, Mr. Mossier did. In fact, he told the class of his willingness to collaborate on my story for a stage play if I wanted. Wow! He even went on to give interpretations for my ideas that I hadn't considered.

Though I didn't understand all of what he saw, as I guess I didn't need to, as I simply appreciated his encouragement.

I never took Mr. Mossier up on his collaboration offer as I was too hung up on obscurity. Nonetheless, he inspired the door opening for many after school pep talks on creativity.

It just wasn't that he believed in me, but, like Gregory, he showed me I could make a meaningful connection between the world and my own style of creating. Our chats didn't just heighten my personal joy of creating but encouraged my joy of possibly sharing them one day.

I was lucky he happened into my life.

As I now recall the stage mom whispers of criticism, I see how sad it was that their prejudice blinded them from seeing what a great teacher he was for us kids. Not just a teacher of English, but of life.

It's funny that two harmonic influences from my school days came from two groups that are attacked by bigotry, which only lessens our potential for global harmony.

I didn't know of prejudice then because thanks to Ashley's verbal indifference toward me, I was never saddled with her biases. And due to my off-the-beaten-fact lifestyle, prejudice was never programmed into my See-Drive. By not being thwarted by prefab prejudice, I was free to learn from both Gregory and Mr. Mossier.

I wonder how many excellent servers of Life Lessons are overlooked when people choose to make the value of what they have to serve contingent upon whether or not society approves of them as people.

Having offered a couple of these memories to Dora, that elder Princess of Prejudice, she withdrew her editorial and only responded with:

“Well, that's all well and good, dearie, but I'm talking about the kind of people who want to take over the world, and breed us white folks out of existence.”

Knowing she was an independent lady who still ran her own business, I asked her if that's what the bigots-of-yore may have thought when they feared giving women the vote?

Again, no response.

Thinking what the heck, I shared my feeling that Black people, as with all targets of bigotry, are just stating their right to live as equal siblings of God's Family, rather than being treated by our specie as aliens. As God's outcasts.

I shared a puzzlement with her which was my inability to figure how people who believe in God (as she said she did) can nurture senseless hatred in their souls for the other Kids of God who are born with skins from different shades of the rainbow.

I asked her to imagine herself as a young caring mother frantically speeding to the closest hospital for help with her injured baby, yet being denied help just because she was Black? I asked her how she would have felt.

She countered with: “Well, that's Africa, dearie, they have their reasons.”

I told her I was talking about America, about the bigot laws enforced only years back in the South. I re-asked her how she would have felt.

With denial dictating her dialogue, she said: “That's not my problem.”

I said: “Sure it is. It's everybody's problem as we all have the same Godian Parent. We're all kin. And when we deny, we allow our brothers and sisters, our spiritual siblings, to be hurt. Even when we let that happen by not speaking up to abort those injustices, we remain a part of the problem. We walk away from becoming a part of the solution.”

After several pointless serves on this racial court, she retreated with: “Well, I just called to say Hi. And wish you happy Valentine's Day.”

I thanked her by adding: “But isn't that what we've been talking about: Love?”

Do note, I'm no fool, I knew there was no way to turn her around. At 83, she had far too much invested in her long held prejudices. All I could do was voice my views and not allow their validity to be contingent upon whether or not she approved of me; on whether or not she liked me for my thoughts; on whether or not I could refinance her bigot bank.

But, I was glad she called because her bigotry caused me to tap deeper into my spiritual and lifal memories, and I figured if she cut me off, it was no loss.

As I hung up, I recalled a conversation I once had with her daughter. As we discussed karma and reincarnation, we wondered if, in her next life, Dora would face her prejudices including her hatred for kids.

We also pondered the scenario that Dora might return as a poor black woman in a chauvinistic and repressive era, immensely overweight, with bevy of babies, all girls, and snubbed by all men she sought to entice.

Possibly, becoming the target of her own arrogance might be the only way for her to live in the mirror of her racism so as to learn to let go of it.

Afterward, I toyed with a new notion: Since Dora's bigotry was based on her ability to see her target, I wonder how a blind person is programmed with prejudice when they can't perceive visual differences?

I then wondered if possibly sight is a handicap for our spiritual growth as it tricks us into believing that superficial differences matter. My thought on blindness is ironic having just read how Webster defines bigotry: “blind attachment to a particular creed.”

Once again, I sought to pinpoint when I first heard about racial prejudice. I still can't date it's debut, except for a brief incident at Nedick's, a hot dog hangout in New York near Carnegie Hall.

While standing at the take out area, I overheard a woman refer to the counterman as Black, and how she resented him taking a job away from a hungry White person.

Maybe my artwork makes me a stickler for perfection. As I zeroed onto her descriptive, I couldn't figure how people elected that “black” and “white” would become a racial definitive.

To me, that counter-man was more Van Dyke brown with a hint of ocher and burnt sienna. The bigot was more light yellow/rose madder with lavender vein lines.

But then again, maybe the black & white delineation is just reflective of people wanting absolute lines to be drawn. Wanting not to have to consider the multi-gray areas.

Possibly it's symbolic of how the specie craves categorizing each other into easy files just so as to avoid exploring each other beyond the most effortless veneers.

Possibly laziness, fear of being insignificant, or the hunger for superiority prompts people to not go beyond issues, which I sense doesn't mean a twit to God, such as the shade of one's skin.

People seem to run from the “grays” as in: Honesty vs. Dishonesty, Loyalty vs. Disloyalty, Peacemakers vs. War-Makers, Lovers vs. Killers, Be-ers vs. Bores.

In fact, the most loathsome abuse our specie commits may be the centurial cruelty it has enacted upon the Children of God who don't fit the majority's mortal view of perfection.

If that inkling of mine is so, it might just behoove us to each decide which side of the spiritual court room we wish to take when we de-Earth and enter God's Supreme Court.

Personally, I think it would be senseless for bigots of any shade to plead insanity as their excuse for having harmed another human because they didn't fit into a particular color scheme, or pray as we prayed.

I can't believe that insanity will work as a defense because we all had our Choice of Action.

Then again, maybe it takes insanity and blind arrogance to believe that it’s possible to rationalize conscious abuse of God's Children to God in God's Court.

'Tis a Thot.