Summer Magic

By Lisa Campion

Everyone once in a while, the Universe throws me a bone. Hallelujah! It’s been a very intense year for me, with a lot of change, loss and transformation. It feels a little bit like being turned inside out, so all my squishy bits are now on the outside for you all to view. (Ewwww!) So any and all bones are welcome.

I am still very mid-transition as I spend this week helping my son pack up for college. Sooo excited for him! Sooo sad for me. No doubt I will blog about that anon, but for today’s blog I want to talk about MAGIC and MYSTERY. You know, the good stuff, the synchronicities, magical shenanigans and beautiful experiences that let you know you are in the flow and that the glass is half full after all.

Fortunately for me, my “interesting times” have been alternating with moments of respite where I felt the odd, beautiful, magical and mysterious hand of… what?

God?

Fate?

The Universe?

My own soul?

Usually I just lump all those forces together into something that I call The Mystery, since it’s well… mysterious! It’s essentially ineffable and that is where the magic is.

Let me tell you the story. It’s absolutely true and rather wondrous actually.

We just have to hop into the Way Back Machine and travel back in time to ten years ago. At that time, I was sitting on a deck in Melvin Bay on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. And I was crying into the lake, heartbroken.

(Don’t worry, this is basically a happy story with a lot of love in it, so you can keep your hanky in your pocket this time!)

I was getting divorced from my first husband and saying goodbye to his family, and to the beautiful cottage on the shore of The Lake. It’s a gorgeous spot on the Lake, secluded, quiet, and very magical. It had always been a special place for me, a refuge. I was devastated by the divorce and equally upset about not being able to visit that spot again. After all, I had been going there for the fifteen years that I was with Husband Number 1. It was a second home for my kids. I had friends up and down the shoreline. The cottage had been in his family for generations, you get the picture.

As I was sitting on the dock, feet dangling over the edge, tears falling into the Lake, a huge snapping turtle swam right up to my feet. It’s a big old turtle, maybe three feet around and even though it’s species has a nasty reputation, this particular one always seemed fairly placid to me. It’s pretty well known for cruising up and down that section of shoreline and it must be ancient, since I have been seeing it since 1988.

It came right up to me, surfaced and regarded me calmly for a long time. I swear to you it winked its dark little eye and rolled a fin at me like it was waving and then swam gracefully off. I was touched by this. It felt like the Lake was saying goodbye and I let it all go. Really I did, I just let it go, like my tears into the lake.

Fast forward a few years later when I met this brilliant and very cool guy named Rhys Thomas. He is my friend, my business partner and the head of the Rhys Thomas Institute of Energy Medicine where I teach. Rhys and I started the school together seven years ago and we and our school are kicking some serious booty, metaphysically speaking, of course.

The first year I met him, I was standing in his kitchen when I saw a photograph that took my breath away. It was a poster sized snapshot of a shoreline and a lake. A lake I knew.

“Hey,” I said, “I know that place!”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “That is my house up on Lake Winnipesaukee. My family has had a house there for generations.”

I gazed at in shocked silence for a while until the penny dropped. “Oh my god, you are Rhys THOMAS, from the Thomas’s cottage.” His cottage is two, let me say that again TWO cottages down the shoreline from Husband Number 1’s cottage. There is, in fact, only one house between.

After I explained to Rhys where I had spent those fifteen summers of my life, we sat there in stunned silence for awhile, figuring out all the people we knew on the shore in common which was EVERYONE, except each other.

I can’t believe in all that time, I had never meet Rhys. I had seen his dogs, his kids, his wife and even his dad. I walked up his road everyday for my daily constitutional, but I don’t remember ever meeting him.

And can I just say that Lake Winnipesaukee is a BIG lake. Huge. How many houses are there on that lake? How many lakes are there in New Hampshire? How crazy is it that Rhys’s house is that close to “my” old cottage.

It’s not crazy, it’s just the magic of The Mystery.

Later that year, I visited Rhys’s cottage for the first time and sat on the end of his dock with my feet dangling in the water. This time, I was crying tears of joy at being reunited with that place. Those mountains, the bay, the skyline as familiar me to as my own backyard. The stars with the milky way that shows at night. The loons calling. My friends and family up and down the shoreline. I was home again.

I was crying tears of joy into the lake yet again, reveling in the magic, and honoring the Mystery. Just at that moment, the old turtle came swimming down the shoreline and rose up right at my feet. He rolled a little to the side, winked at me, waved his flipper and regarded me with his mysterious black turtle eyes.

I felt like he was laughing a little. Like he was saying, “See? Magic is a foot. The Mystery has your back. Here you are, home again.” And then he was gone.

And this summer, seven years later, I was up there at Rhys’s cottage for a nice long stretch, working our student retreats but also getting some much-needed R&R. The first weekend I was there, my kids were with their Dad and their extended family two cottages down the shoreline. My kids popped back and forth between the houses, visiting. My son Devin mowed the lawn for Rhys and borrowed his water skies. My daughter Genevieve came over to snuggle and braid my hair. And my new tribe, my new family was all around me, my BFF Rhys, and my fellow teachers in the school. It’s a very good family.

I sat on the end of the dock at Rhys’s place and waved to my kids, my ex and my ex’s whole family. It was lovely to see them this year, actually. It occurred to me that I had been coming to that spot for twenty five years and only moved two houses down the shore.

Somehow The Mystery has arranged that I should have that place of peace and solace to come to. It helped me believe that all is as it should be. That even though I have been wrung inside out and am now wearing my guts for garters, there is a reason, a plan. There is some backup somewhere. As if The Mystery said to me-

“Yes Darling, we know it’s been hard and will be hard again probably, but for these quiet moments, what peace! What beauty! What Magic!”

So I soaked it in and relaxed. Allowed my faith to be restored and to remember to trust The Mystery.

Thanks!