In the days before my “nonprofit sanctuary building retreat day,” my co-facilitator, Heidi, and I found feathers everywhere. The banded blues and blacks of bluejays and the curled wisps of downy undercoats fell repeatedly along our paths, and in my case the tail feather of a yellow-shafted flicker in the middle of my driveway. The golden center unmistakable. Some things are meant to be noticed.

The invitations had been sent out about two months prior, and almost immediately responses came back, most stating enthusiastically that they were definitely going, or would try to. Yet, life has a way of taking over, and by the time Saturday came we were expecting only four more. That made six of us for the day, with one more, my husband, who appeared periodically. Some things are just meant to be.

For those of you who know me through the mystical world that I walk through, you will know that I have a rather intimate relationship with the hexagram. Not in any nefarious way, as that is religious dogma’s fear of mystical symbols that predate even the written word. The hexagram is the symbol that brought me to Sue, my spiritual mentor, and is the symbol that came as a labyrinth calling in the Warriors of Light in my book series. It is a sacred geometrical alignment of unity and balance. Combining the (triangles) elements of water (feminine) and fire (masculine), as well as earth and air. Its elemental form creates a six-pointed star. In the center is one more, not always visible point, representing the soul as an aspect of the divine. On Saturday, I had my 6 + 1 = 7. A complete hexagram star.

Some things are meant to be, and as the weekend played out I became more and more convinced that Sue was orchestrating, at least in part, from beyond the veil.

So let me tell you about the night before. Heidi and I arrived at the lake at 7pm. Dusk was settling in fast, and the setting sun haloed the hills of the (goddess) land in an aura of gold. Into the cove we walked to watch the alchemy of earth, fire, air and water.

We went to bed early, Heidi to a downstairs bedroom, and I to the upstairs loft. It took me hours to fall into sleep, and when I did I was woken abruptly by the sound of the fire alarms going off. It was 11:01am. Heidi, downstairs, noted the same time, also now fully awake.

We gathered with racing hearts to assess the situation and could find nothing amiss. Climbing back into bed with my mind restless, it took a long period of time to find sleep again. Shortly after I did, the fire alarms went off. It was now 1:11am. Heidi, downstairs, also noted the time.

As we once again gathered to assess the situation, we become increasingly convinced that the alarms going off with three ones each time had not been accidental. Perhaps we were just not meant to sleep, at least not restfully. Heidi did not wake again until about six in the morning, I, on the other hand, woke once more, this time to the persistent hooting of an owl. I was too tired to look at the clock, but the messenger was noted.

The ensuing day unfolded as it was meant to. The six, plus occasional one, shared thoughts and ideas. The right questions were asked, and I had some, but not all of the answers. By the end of the day, lots of pieces of the puzzle were scattered about, but it had yet to be assembled. Our mission was to work on a name, tag line and logo, and we had aspects of each, but the whole was still illusive. Earlier in the day, during a medicine walk, I had heard this phrase inside of my head, “Surrender to not knowing, that’s when the magic happens.”

Tired and packing to go home, I didn’t know what to think of it all. Everything still felt amorphous and uncertain. I was grateful for the efforts of the gathering, but I wasn’t sure what to make it. So I let it settle and be. I went home and unpacked, watched some TV, read, and then went to bed. Almost immediately, I fell into a deep slumber.

At 1:31am, I woke abruptly. My shoulder was aching and so I rolled on my back and started to think. I thought about the pieces from the previous day and what was missing. I thought about how when I had read my vision narrative for the sanctuary, one of the participants had noted there was something missing, yet I could not articulate it during our day together. And then it occurred to me.

Wonder.

How could I have forgotten wonder, which had always been central to the vision, but had somehow not been articulated in its story. And then the name came to me. And then the tag line. I started piecing together an image for a logo, realizing the components were there, laid before me, I just needed to put them together. I thought about the book I had recently read even though, as my husband said, I had “hated” the movie, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. Suddenly, I realized who my target audience was in a way that felt more concrete.

And I thought of another message I had received during the medicine walk after I had heard the call of a loon, “Let go of expectations. Anything is possible when you open the doorway and walk through.” After years of holding this close to my heart, I think I had just walked through the doorway with my dream.