When We Stay Open with the Universe

A re-visit

We’re walking into summer with a new moon in Cancer. I’m pulling one from the archives this week. One that feels aligned with the theme of emotional renewal. I wrote this one back in January of 2024, under a different new moon, but I feel it will translate well now.

What prompted me to visit it again was this visitor at my front door two mornings ago (yes, I wake up before it is light out. I’m one of those people)

Read below and you will understand the significance.

After reading, I’d love to hear from you about how the Universe reminds you that Someone is really listening and watching out for us.

What I want to share today is something I consider risky. This week’s piece is the one (so far) I am most nervous about writing. I am here to walk myself through and share in writing my experience of spirituality. Of the many gifts sobriety has laid at my feet, this one, my relationship with Spirit and my Higher Power, has been the special sauce. It is what has opened me up to so much more. It is what guided me back to writing. If you’re willing to go there with me, allow me to bring the woo. My word for this week, that I’m pulling from my Alphabet Atlas, is open. Will you walk with me here and stay open to the woo?

It just so happens that when I began writing this piece yesterday, it was a New Moon. For months now, I have been starting my days by reading

heather marie morse

‘s

The Light Today

- a daily nugget of magic where Heather walks us through the current movement of the Sun and Moon through the zodiac and shares how these natural light sources can be luminary.

Heather guided me with explaining¹ that in astronomical terms, a New Moon occurs when the Moon aligns with the Sun, casting the Moon into shadow and making it invisible from Earth. This phase is traditionally viewed as a time for new beginnings and setting intentions. The New Moon's subtle energy is like a seed lying dormant in the soil, full of potential.

I took this as a nudge that perhaps it is time for me to write about how I am experiencing my Spirit. Even when cast in shadow and not visible to the eyes, we all know the New Moon is there. It never truly goes away; it just becomes something we can no longer see. My Spirit tells me that our loved ones, when death succumbs them, become shielded by a veil we cannot see through. They never truly go away; they just become something we can no longer see.

I am not a religious person, but I am full of faith. I come from an Irish Catholic family and have, over the years, referred to myself as a recovering Catholic. What feels truer, though, in this season of my life, is that I am more aligned with Mysticism. I am allowing myself to unravel into this way of being with Spirit. With Catholicism, I found I would cherry pick my way through it and that never felt right. I just couldn’t sustain staying there. I don’t read the Bible. I don’t go to church. But I talk to God daily.  For me, organized religion doesn’t work.  Yet I wholeheartedly understand how important it is to others and can appreciate that kind of conviction. Me, I find my Spirit in the ordinary. And in the extraordinary. 

Since my early days of sobriety, I have inhaled the words of Father Richard Rohr - an American Franciscan priest. His book Falling Upward is one I pick up over and over. I never went the AA route, but I respect so many of its tenets. I feel like, in my early days, Father Rohr was my sponsor. I turned to his words over and over and over. 

My two favorite quotes from Rohr (and it’s so hard for me to choose!) are:

“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”

“People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know that they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind.”

There is a wealth of research and scientific literature that shows a clear association between spirituality and increased mental health and longevity. The deeper your connection to something greater than yourself, the more rooted and sustainable your overall well-being. I have personally witnessed this shift in my own life.

What I choose to believe is that death is not a dead end. The Consciousness of you does not simply dissipate when your body finds its final rest. 

I feel this is a personal journey that some of us go on. For me, I found I had to confront my own yearning to make meaning. Like any relationship, in order for it to thrive I have to tend to it. Send a bid for connection. I’ve often heard others who have lost loved ones say, I still speak to them often. Well, why not take that one step further and ask your departed loved one to talk back to you? To send you signs. I encourage you to play around with that idea. Especially if the one you lost was playful by nature. I lost my dad in 2020. We had his funeral and then one week later, the world shut down because of the pandemic. My father’s wake was the last one the funeral home was able to have before Covid shut their doors. But I didn’t shut the door on communicating with my dad. And he sends me messages. He loved to joke, poke fun and laugh so of course he is still delivering. His laugh had a cackle to it that was so infectious. Just his laugh (never mind the joke or story -and there were many!), moved me to laugh. I didn’t need to hear the punchline. 

Mid-spring of 2020, we had a big toad that kept appearing on my back deck. Due to the pandemic’s requirements that we all quarantine at home, I encouraged my daughter (then 6 years old) to spend time on the deck to get some fresh air. She would bring her dolls out there and conduct “school”. This toad, whom she aptly named John (my father’s name) would come every day. Despite helping it, time and again, back down the steps to the grass, Caroline would excitedly exclaim the next day, “Mom, John the toad is back!” This toad would not leave her alone. I knew, this is you, Dad, isn’t it?

Fast forward to Mother’s Day of 2023. We are at my mothers-in-law’s home for dinner. My teenage son decides to go poking around in the attic. He finds a box of cards and photos that I stored there in between house moves years ago. He presents me with the card below - “Mom, look what’s in here”

A long-lost card to me from my dad on my 26th birthday

My heart swelled, happy to be reunited with this treasure 19 years later. I tucked it away in my journal after writing the next morning. That same week, during my walks with the dog I came across frogs in my path - while cutting through the wooded path towards the dog park, in the baseball field we cut through, even some smushed as roadkill on the street. I start to think, Ok Dad. You’re sending us the frogs again. What’s this about? The frogs slowly stop showing up, nothing out of the ordinary for a bit. A few months later I came across this great podcast episode where

Elise Loehnen

joins in conversation with Laura Lynne Jackson² (a NYT bestselling author and psychic medium) on the Pulling the Thread podcast. They talk about how we all have this connection within us. This connection that allows us, if we stay open, to ask for and receive signs from our own Team of Light, our own guardian angels, our departed loved ones, all those who now convene on the Other Side. The side we cannot see but know is there. Just like the New Moon.

If you’re a skeptic and feel resistance to all of this, I encourage you to just try to open up to its possibility.  After reading Laura’s book Signs, I decided to write some invitations down in my journal. I made a declaration of energy, telling the Universe - I’m all in. Use me. Guide me. I literally wrote, “Team of Light, if I am on the right track with getting closer to my purpose, bring me signs. Dad - show me more frogs, bring Cardinals my way. Universe, send me feathers so that I know angels are near.” Those are the words I wrote. Sandwiched in between the birthday card from my dad inside my journal.

The following week, I am walking up to the front door of my office and right smack in the middle of the entrance was John the Toad’s twin. I literally almost stepped on him. He just sat there to the right of my welcome mat. Oh hi, John. Welcome.

John the toad?

Then, a couple days later, I pull in the driveway at the end of the day and my daughter runs out onto the front steps yelling “Mom, there is the smallest, littlest frog downstairs in the house! I don’t know how he got in here. Come check him out.” Ok, seriously?!?!? IN the house??!?!

Six days after the toad encounter at work, I find THIS in the tree that rests right up against my house. A baby cardinals’ nest with three hatchlings. I spotted a bright red cardinal flitter and fly out of the tree which prompted me to move closer. The joy these hatchlings brought me is ridiculous. My kids and I checked on them over the next few days but then we had vacation plans at our condo in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. I was sad to leave these birdies for a week and knew they likely would take flight by the time we returned.

Three days later, while on vacation in Maine and while walking the beach at sunrise, I come across this feather, directly in my path. I think to myself, “when a feather appears, an angel is near.”

Then, 10 minutes later, I see this in the sky.

A feather. IN THE SKY. I mean, C’MON!!!!!!! Do you have goosebumps yet?

After all these interactions with Spirit and the Universe and knowing/feeling its presence, I still feel funny talking or writing about it. Why is that? Somewhere along the way, we lose that unmoored wonder and awe. I think children are open to this naturally, without even knowing it.

My father-in-law Arthur passed away suddenly in 2013. I was pregnant with my daughter Caroline. We had just reached the point in my pregnancy where we felt “safe” sharing the news. Arthur was the very first person my husband shared our news with. He was so excited. We lost Arthur two days after Father’s Day. My son Nathan was his only grandchild. On the morning of Arthur’s funeral, the adults were all standing in the entry way of the church, waiting to proceed into the service when I spotted young Nate (6 years old) standing alone, opening his right hand fully and placing it into the air, back and forth. Back and forth. He does this over and over. I slip away from the grown-up conversation and go over to my son. I ask him how he’s doing, and he says, “Papa is giving me high fives, Mom. A bunch of them.”

I know he was. And young Nathan was open enough to receive them.

I have always encouraged my kids to be in relationship with God. To trust in Spirit and build their own communion. We aren’t a family you will find in church, but we talk about our faith. Caroline has this tin of notecards labeled “Give it to God.” I encourage her to jot down a worry, a fear or anything causing her pain and to place it there, so she can give it to God. She has had some sweet ones (“please have me and Sadie stop fighting at school”, “please have my dog live forever and ever”) but this one….. wooooof. Directly into my heart it went. And it will stay there.

My dad was called “Pa” by all his grandkids. I have no doubt that Pa was there -is there, next to Caroline. Helping ease her fears, worries and pain.

I strongly believe that if you energetically put yourself in the spiritual game, the Divine will play back with you. If we stay open. If we believe it’s there.

Sitting at a red light yesterday, after having a started a draft of this post earlier in the day, I was thinking to myself, “am I really going to write about this?” In unison with the thought, to my left, on other side of the road, a car drifts along with the license plate: CARDNL

Stay open to bewilderment. Let it find you.

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I recognize that religion and faith can be something many protect unto themselves and keep private. This stuff is largely personal. I respect that. If you feel moved to share your experience but aren’t quite sure you want to leave a comment below this post, I welcome a reply by way of email. I’d love to engage.  

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Before I leave, I want to extend a huge, heartfelt extra dose of THANK YOU to two readers, Meg G. and Dee M for upgrading to paid subscriptions this week. I came to this space not knowing if I would ever have the courage to turn that pay option on and the fact that you are willing to invest in my words, it means the world to me. I will continue to post my weekly newsletter to all subscribers on Fridays, and I have some plans in the works for how I will use the paid subscriber space. I’m thinking of diving deeper into whatever the “theme” of the newsletter is there with a take on some poetic prose and perhaps even drop in some audio in (eeeek, I hate how I sound buy we’ll see!) I’ll post a piece to paid Subscribers on Wednesdays. It’s a space where I’ll bring more vulnerable pieces of myself, ideas that aren’t fully formed yet and bounce them off others in a more intimate setting. I’m excited to see where it goes and would love to have you join in.

No matter what level of a subscriber you are, I thank you for being here. I want you to know I so appreciate you.

How do you dance with the Universe? What’s your relationship with Divinity (whatever that means to you)?

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1. You can read the full post here,

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2. Laura Lynne Jackson - Psychic Medium