Have you ever received an epiphany or a vision that seemed to come from outside of yourself that drew you into the divine world, and then, as confirmation that what you had heard was real, a double rainbow presents itself in that very moment? I’ve heard people speak of this. For me, it wasn’t a double rainbow, but a splash of brilliant colors in the heavens like an aurora borealis, at a time and place where an aurora did not belong: near the equator at lunchtime.
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| Photo courtesy of scenichudson.org |
This misplaced aurora arrived exactly 21 years ago today, while I was serving as an interpreter for a 3 week mission trip with my church to Valencia, Venezuela. A mysterious, soft inner voice nudged me to take a step of great faith to be the fourth of the four translators the team needed. An announcement at church came: the team was to serve in four churches, needed four interpreters, and had only three. A fourth was needed for the fourth church. I heard a quiet voice within me. You are the fourth interpreter.
This was the first soft, quiet, mysterious voice coming from outside of me, yet inside of me that became that familiar friend and loving guide, my whispers of mystery. In 2010, I started my blog and titled it whispers of mystery. But when this voice first whispered in early 2005, it was entirely unfamiliar. Could I trust it? I hadn’t spoken Spanish in ten years. At the peak of my skill at the end of my study abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico, I could get by with my Spanish, but I had never been fluent, and now I was very rusty. How was I to be an interpreter?
I found the mission’s leader after church, said I hadn’t spoken Spanish in a decade, but would pray about it. I added that I was so rusty, he should keep looking for a qualified candidate. Two weeks later, I asked him if a fourth interpreter had been found; he said no and would I do it? I took a deep breath, silently prayed for a miracle of language skills, and said, yes.
A week into the mission, on May 14, 2005, the four teams were gathering together for a full group outing. Included was a trip to the beach that I had very much been looking forward to, but my life-long insomnia, coupled with the lack of my Prozac, accidently left at home, had kept me awake almost all night long all week. I was exhausted and needed some rest. Our group had three other translators, so a fourth was not needed on this day when all teams were together, so our leader encouraged me to take the day off to rest.
I rested well, then in the late morning, decided to roam the city, buy some gifts for our Venezuelan hosts and my family back home, and find a local restaurant for an authentic Venezuelan lunch. With its many small stores and gift shops nearby, our hotel was well situated for my plan. As I roamed the sidewalks of the streets, I passed many others, coming and going through the shops. The weather was warm and sunny, the air was crisp, and the sky was blue. I was wearing spring attire: a short sleeved shirt and knee length capris pants.
My first week in Venezuela had already been magical, with a download of memories from my very early childhood, what I was calling una cascada de recuerdos, a waterfall of memories. When I was a year old, my family had moved to São Paulo, Brazil, where we lived until a few weeks before my fourth birthday. Now in Valencia, a divine miracle poured through me of a great many memories of my toddler and preschool years in Brazil, the earliest of which you can read here, when I was only 22 months old.
About twenty minutes into my walk, the blue sky grew grey with heavy clouds, and instantly, a thunderstorm broke out. Magically, the thunderstorm complimented my waterfall of memories. While others were racing into shops, I let myself get drenched. A rush of energy entered into me, as I let the rain baptize me and the electric, oxygenated air fill me with euphoric breathing. How glad I was to be free of any umbrella, hood, hat, and jacket and get fully soaked. I prayed with glee, “Bring it on!”
Sufficiently drenched, and having not yet taken a break for lunch, I looked for a restaurant and found one only a few stores down, a small family-owned restaurant with authentic cuisine. I apologized to the server I was dripping wet, but he laughed, told me not to worry, and complimented my Spanish. How had I learned it? I told him I had picked it up fairly easy in school because I had learned Portuguese as a little girl, living in São Paulo. He perked up. ¿Vivía in Brasil? “You lived in Brazil?” By his tone of voice, I felt like a celebrity. The Venezuelan fascination with Brazil had already been shown by my hosts, who all had given similar responses. At one point as I chatted with two of my hosts, one of them said my accent sounded more Brazilian than American. The other host agreed, adding it was a great compliment. The Brazilian accent is highly prized in Venezuela.
Since I was the only guest at the time, my server asked if he could sit down with me and hear about Brazil. How would I describe São Paulo? Did I like it? I loved it, I said, and would be delighted to share, but admitted I was very small when we lived there, though I had returned again for three summers at ages 7, 17, and 25. He returned with my dish, complete with the black beans I had been craving, and pulled up a chair.
After sharing observations from my summers at 17 and 25, I returned to my earliest years, just shown to me by the waterfall of memories. I described my house and how similar it was to those I was visiting in Valencia, with cement floors, a small sala (living are) at one end of the house, two little bedrooms on each side of a hallway, a covered add-on out on the patio with a toilet and sink, and a kitchen on the other end of the house, with the same design I observed in Valencia of an oven and sink toward the back, a refrigerator to the side, and a small table to the other side. But my house had one difference: we entered at the kitchen, not the sala. Later, I would learn from my mom that our front door was jammed, so we entered where the kitchen was, at the back door!
I then said we had a maid I adored who lived in a casita in our backyard who painted my nails and read Monica cartoons to me. I also loved feeding the ducks, driving push-pedal cars at the home of friends, seeing the city lights driving down the mountain from the University of São Paulo where Dad taught, drinking fanta laranga (orange pop), and, I smiled big, “eating black beans just like this!” My server opened into a broad grin and said they are slow cooked overnight with a little vegetable oil, onion, garlic, salt, and a touch of bacon, very finely cut, and barely visible. “Completemente brazileña!” Then I added in Portuguese, “Gostoso!” Understanding “delicious,” he put his hand to his belly and leaned back with a great big smile and chuckle. I had given the cook a grand compliment, which he promised to pass on.
Finally, I shared a memory that had upset me at the age of three. Across the street from my house and those of my own neighborhood were another set of houses quite unlike ours. They were dilapidated shacks, barely held up with scraps of wood, tarps, and slats of floppy, tin shingles, collected from the dump. The mish-mash of materials collected from various dumps left openings that couldn’t protect their residents from the rain. Our neighbors across the street cooked outside and the children were barefoot. At three, looking across the street, I wondered, Why don’t they have a house like mine?
My server was moved by my sadness. I admitted I wasn’t used to seeing houses like that where I live in the US and that I was still sad not everyone has a house like mine. With a warm smile, he agreed. By then, my plate was clean and the sky was beginning to clear. I headed out to a light sprinkle, struck by the timing of the thunderstorm suddenly coming and going and leading me to just the right restaurant and server.
Although the thunderstorm might have felt like a surprise from nowhere, it was not outside of what I know the weather can do. But what came next was definitely outside of what I had ever before or since experienced and not at all within the realm of anything I thought possible.
The streets were empty and I must have trailed out into a clearing with a smattering of small homes, so I began to cross the street to turn back on the other side. Just as I was about to cross, the sky fully cleared, opened itself up, and then I watched the entire sky shift into a wave of spectacular colors– violet, blue, lilac, and magenta, spotted with little bubbles of orange and yellow, spun together into a stunning and artistic spiral. An aurora borealis? In Venezuela? Near the equator? At 1:00 pm? This was an aurora entirely misplaced. Not possible. But what was it?
No, not an
aurora, I thought. Heaven. I marveled.
Who is this Choreographer?
Yes, Heaven. Another of those mysterious
whispers had just arrived. But you
think heaven is the afterlife. No,
heaven is here. With you. Now.
This was the same soft voice that had whispered that I was to be the
fourth translator. It had been right; no
one else had stepped up to the plate, and, I smiled to myself, I was the right
one to come. Could I trust this whisper
too?
What, I wondered, could I trust? The aurora? The whispers? The memories? How accurate were they? I wanted to trust them, but wouldn’t know for certain until I could verify them with my mother. Once I returned to the US and called her, she verified them all, in astonishment, as you can read in Remembering with Mom.
I looked around and saw no one else. The sidewalks had been plenty peopled, but not now. Could not one other person be outside to witness this extraordinary sight with me? Would others see what I see? I couldn’t know. I was alone.
Yet not alone. In that remarkable moment of the aurora vision, a moment that may have lasted a mere fifteen or twenty seconds, I felt myself one with the heavens. I was not alone. Not at all. In that brief moment, I discovered myself connected with everything. I also discovered, if I was willing to trust the whisper, heaven is not the after life. It was here, with me, now.
The aurora arrived 21 years ago today. I have never seen anything like it again, but the whispers of mystery and a great many other miracles have continued and increased. Something magical shifted within me 21 years ago today. I was shown that heaven was with me then and I know now it is with me always. I also glimpsed that I and the heavens and every one of us everywhere are all connected. We are each like a little bubble in a spectacular splash of color, a Grand Aurora within the Cosmos.
Today, I glow in this 21st anniversary, 3
cycles of 7, a divine synthesis of transformation. So thank you for joining me in this
celebration, and if you ever see anything that hints to you this Mystery of your
connection with the heavens, don’t doubt it.
Let yourself be awed, and then let it magically transform you.
© by Karina Jacobson. Use only with permission and/or a link to this blog post
If this post interested you,
see my other two of my time in Venezuela, recalling my childhood in Brazil:
What my Eyes
Could Read: my Childhood of Cultural Paradox
