Wear the Bangle!

In the early pioneering days in the community, many hardy souls did forestry work; tree thinning, planting and woodcutting. On this particular day, the work involved thinning, a more dangerous task and so one fellow’s wife loaned him her bangle. He wore it for three or four days until it finally became a nuisance, slipping up and down and getting caught on things.

The next morning during meditation he took it off only to hear a voice later in meditation say, “Wear the bangle!” Since he wasn’t at all used to hearing voices and thought certainly it could be imagination, he dismissed it. A bit later, the voice again said, “Wear the bangle!” He dismissed it again. Finally, after some more minutes the voice loudly commanded, “WEAR THE BANGLE!” Thinking it over this time, he decided, “Okay, I’ll wear the thing.”

Later that morning he was thinning a smaller tree away from a big one and when the small tree fell away, a large widow maker dropped free smashing down squarely on top of his hard hat, seating him abruptly on the ground. If it had been a glancing blow it would surely have broken his shoulder. He shrugged it off and went back to work, no harm done. With the chain saw fired up again he walked to the next tree only to stumble and fall with the howling saw landing directly between his legs. Once more, he shut it off, stood up, brushed himself clean and started to work again. Sawing away at a clump of brush, it suddenly whipped back smashing his safety glasses.

As he stood there wiping his face and sorting out his safety glasses he reflected on the morning’s meditation, the “voice” and how he had come through all this with no injuries.

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