By Anita Phillips
Originally printed in the March - April 2005 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Phillips, Anita. "Wonders Never Cease." Quest 93.2 (MARCH - APRIL 2005):53
When I was seven, my parents, whom I adored, decided to separate and place my five-year-old sister and me in a convent, which did not suit us at all. After the first three days of overwhelming sadness, I ran through the woods until I could run no longer and fell on the soft grass.
As I sat there weeping uncontrollably, I pleaded with God to reconcile my parents and return us to our former lives. Suddenly I felt a warmth on my back. Slowly raising my head with my eyes still shut, I thanked the sun for its heat. As I squinted at the sun's brilliance, I caught my breath in awe because I was surrounded by hundreds of white trilliums. A foot above the trilliums stood two beings surrounded in white light. I was mesmerized by them and increasingly had a sense of enormous well-being. The stillness between the beings and myself seemed to go on forever. I had no urge to move, as their light seemed warmer to me than that of the sun! I wanted nothing to disturb the euphoria I felt. It seemed like time extended itself beyond the cosmos. I thought, if these two were indeed my guardian angels, wouldn't they always be with me?
Then I heard the convent bell ring across the field of trilliums. As I looked back toward the convent, I realized it was time for chapel meditation before dinner. The angels had vanished. As I walked back with a spirit of joyful wonder, I vowed to myself that what I had received was a lamp of inner power whose illumination would strengthen my life in the days ahead.
For the next ten years I lived in the sanctum sanctorum of the convent finding ever-constant solace by visiting the field of trilliums when striving to resolve my spiritual dilemmas. Always I carried the memory of that first encounter with the angels of white light and believed in the light that was left within me, whose brilliance remains undiminished with time.
It was not until I left the convent and embarked upon my own journey that I realized that prayers are answered, not necessarily on my own schedule, but when the angels deign to calm troubled waters. Even as an adult, I was a persistent pest to the Almighty and would not let Him off the hook. Every night I prayed for my parents' reconciliation. At the age of twenty-four, I was to marry a New York fire chief, and after seventeen years of persistent prayers, my parents announced their reconciliation on my wedding day. Truly, wonders and miracles never cease in a theosophical mind!
Anita Phillips is a member from Arizona.She was founding editor of "Poet's Perspective" a weekly column for the Yuma Daily Sun and during the summer, she conducts a writer's retreat in Port Susan, Washington.