sometimes a sign is a sign

One day I was walking along Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and stopped frozen in my tracks when I saw a sign on a telephone pole.

The sign was advertising a group called Brooklyn Writers. In the days before Facebook events or Myspace, telephone pole flyers were a means of community communication. This is how we knew where bands were going to be playing or who had something for sale. The flyers had little rip off strips with phone numbers so you could call and find out about the thing.

In this case, the thing was a writer’s group.

When I saw this sign, it glowed. It stopped me in my tracks. I found myself tearing off one of the little phone number strips, even though making phone calls is high on my list of things I hate to do.

I was being guided. I knew this. I was being told by some intelligence, some force greater than myself, to join that writer’s group. And I did. It turned out to be one of the most supportive groups of which I’ve ever been a part, if not the most supportive.

I often think about that warm cozy brownstone in Park Slope and the writer who led that group with such wisdom and tenderness, and every member of the group who showed up once a week. I think about how we drank apple juice and ate cookies and passionately wrote in our notebooks, alone together, and how we shared our words with one another and how our stories and poems were received with such openness and love. I think a lot about the love in that vulnerable, creative space.

It was in that group that I found myself again. I found my voice. I felt my true self seen and nourished. Because of the Brooklyn writers, I applied to graduate school and eventually, ended a toxic relationship once and for all.

That telephone pole sign represents a major turning point in my life, a point on the map where I was plucked up out of my situation and placed down in another. Joining a writer’s group in Brooklyn was not on my radar. It was not a thought I’d even remotely considered, but when that sign stopped me, when I tore off that little phone number, when I actually picked up a telephone and called the number, I was responding to divine guidance.

I didn’t do anything to deserve or earn that guidance.

It had nothing to do with attracting things with my energy or even my prayers, which were messy and basically me saying, help, help, help, over and over again.

The sign on that telephone show was God showing up in my life to direct traffic, saying THIS WAY.

When I look back on this moment, the fact that my sign was a literal sign makes me laugh with joy.