When your need is great and your heart is pure, ask your question.

The answer may come to you in an email, sent by a friend you’ve never met but who knows you’re feeling shaky by the way the wind is blowing when she think s of you.

The answer may come to you in a Tarot reading, done on an iPhone because your cards are at home, that — since energy is energy and cards is cards — nails you on the head like a clawhead hammer.

The answer may come to you in the introduction of a book you picked up to read, which seems as written for you as the lightning was meant to touch that tree and not the next one.

The answer may come to you sitting in the car at the stoplight, which is where most of the admirable folks I know have their favorite prayer altar.

The answer may come to you in an unexpected chat with a tall, dark, handsome stranger who let you know that, yes, it’s okay to do what you’re thinking about doing and yes, he knows how hard it is.

The answer may come to you in multiple phone calls to your best friend who, too, is feeling the pressure of questions unanswered in the climate of change.  It’s not that you feel better knowing she’s going through it, too… it’s that you feel better because you’re glad it’s her and no matter how weird or bad it gets, you’re blessed to have her in your life.

The answer has as many ways to get to you as a GPS has recalculations.  I’ve learned that the key is asking the right question — the singular question — free from all the mind-chatter and social blather and pitter-patter of the daily rain of life on your poor tin-roof mind.

When the need becomes greatest, the question burns.  Too hot to hold, to dear to let go.  And that’s when the answers find us, over and over again.  The same answer.  The Universe echoes it back to us from every surface of our lives — from the people with whom we speak and write, to what we read, to what we divine with the tools we have.  Again and again and again.

There is no synchronicity, no random chance.  When you ask the right question, the sound of God/dess answering will not be a single voice but many, not a soloist but a choir with perfect pitch singing a hymn as you pass along the sacred way.

Ask the right question.  The world will sing you the answer in 12-part harmony.

Photo by Eddi 07 (via Flickr).