Synchronistic Moments



photography by Ck

       ... is something I have in spades. If I didn't have these ongoing life conicidences that would be REALLY weird. After uploading our Summer Vacation via movie maker onto my blog and sharing it on facebook, I went into the master bedroom to make the bed and straighten up the room, before having to jet off to work. Upon leaving the bedroom, I casually glanced over to my book case on passing, and found myself looking at Sarah Ban Breathnach's Peace and Plenty. I stopped, pulled the book off the shelf and opened.

An excerpt:

"The cottage was nine hundred years old and only had two rooms. It was barely big enough to hold me, and I'm just five feet. there was nothing the least bit practical in this real estate transaction. It would require extensive long-distance renovation across the Atlantic and could become a money pit. Recalling the exact moment my common sense went south~ only one word come to mind:
home.

From the moment I opened the garden gate, a strange enchantment took hold. "Enchanted places have the power to change us, to germinate and nurture that tiny seed of happiness... that each of us have kept so carefully concealed," the English writer Alexandra Campbell reveals in her novel  Remember This.

All my life, I've never felt as if I belonged anywhere; my harried heart was possessed by a mysterious "holy longing" that never seemed to be satisfield. But, here, in the garden of this tiny ivory stone cottage with its huge, ancient apple tree, heavily laden with reddening and ripening orbs, I felt that there couldn't possibly be anyplace else more exquisite. The warmth of the September afternoon made the earth fragrant, yeasty, and fruity; bees flitted among the drooping pink hollyhocks. Wasps droned over sweetly decaying apples on the ground, drunk in delight. Doves cooed from the top of the red-peaked tile roof. Across the meadow, sheep grazed on a green hill bordered by hedgerows of blackberries.

Inside Newton's Chapel, the stillness was so luxurious, it took my breath away. The silence was lyrical; the atmosphere sensuous; the very air was intoxicating, an aura that was simultaneously serene and exhilarating. It also felt sacred. I knew I was standing on holy ground. Later I would be told by a geomancy master (who divines sacred spot in the earth) that the chapel had been built on the site of a holy well belonging to practitioners of the Goddess faith around the first millennium. This was a common occurrence during the early medieval times as Christiananity replaced the practice of worshiping the Great Mother.
I could feel all of this sacred energy in this physical place. I was thrilled, and a bit dazed, as I tried to take it all in.

That September afternoon, the sunlight was strong, and against it the old dark wooden beams supporting the roof looked as sturdy as the day they were hoisted sometime in the twelfth century; the plaster walls were five feet thick; in one room stood a partially exposed but completely intact Norman arch. I rubbed my hand slightly against the grainy stony and a hush soothed my heart. A palpable awe came over me; I was draped in a mantle of reverence as soft as cashmere. I felt so safe, so loved, so protected. So chosen. I knew I had been led there, step by step, by some mysterious grace. I knew that I had come home.

As I stood in Newton's Chapel, my past and future intersected. I didn't ever want to leave because I knew when I did I would be facing more expectations, deadlines, obligations and responsibilities. I knew the only way I could leave Newton's Chapel was with the surety that I would be coming back."

This is how Sarah Ban Breathnach described her purchase of Sir Issac Newton's home... and yet, it could easily decribe Sutter Creek Cottage.