Just one. Or maybe two. Well, I like three.

As a poet in this life and, I am pretty sure, an early American Puritan in a previous one, I believe everything means something. Everything is a sign. Whatever is put in my path deserves to be read and will tell me something about where I need to go, what I need to do, and who is willing to help me.

All I have to do is pay attention.

At the end of last year, I read Laura Lynne Jackson's book "Signs." Honestly, I struggled with it because her stories, much like her title, are just too literal. The deliberate one-to-one specificity of each account in her book feels hard to accept. A loved one dies and someone on this plane asks the departed loved one to send a butterfly as a sign that she has crossed over safely and five minutes later, a woman with a butterfly t-shirt walks up and asks for directions.

Jackson tells of people who have “crossed over” sending back signs to their loved ones in the form of songs, comments from strangers, and found money. In one instance, a father and life-long Elvis fan dies in the hospital. After his passing, the family leaves his bedside and goes to a local diner. When they sit down they notice that “on the wall right above our booth…there was a big, framed print called Heaven’s Diner. It depicted a restaurant with three famous people in it. Marilyn Monroe. James Dean. And Elvis.” Upon seeing this, everyone felt transformed by the sign of reassurance. One day later, a car cut them off in a parking lot. Its license plate? Elvis4U. The family believes their Elvis-loving father sent these Elvi to them.

I just don’t know. I like my signs more metaphorical, more subtle. I like to work for my reassurance.

Last week, I interviewed for an important opportunity and am still waiting to hear back. I am getting anxious; I’m seeking reassurance. So, I swallowed my Puritan poet pride and asked for a sign. I asked the Universe to send me a clover.

If I don’t see a clover somewhere on the streets of Chicago or on the expressway to the suburbs during my morning commute, I will know to let the opportunity go. If I do see one, I will know to be patient because I am still being considered. (Note: When asking for a sign, ask for something improbable, but not impossible. God can bend the rules for you, but he’s not going to make up new ones.)

Within a block, I saw the first clover: St. Patrick’s Day decorations on a house on the next corner. Then, about halfway to work, I saw the second clover on a billboard sending another set of St. Pat’s well wishes.

I had forgotten about the upcoming holiday when I asked for the clover and thought I should ask again for a different sign. But I worried that would be demanding too much—I asked for clovers and got clovers! So, I thought, if I see a third one—a clover not associated with St. Patrick’s Day—then I’ll believe it. 

At the end of my drive, just as I was making my last turn toward work, the third clover appeared as a logo on a “for sale” sign on the other side of the street. 

The Sign of the Fleece

Apparently, God has been dealing with this kind of I'll-believe-it-when-you-prove-it thing for a while. In the Old Testament book of Judges 6:37-40, Gideon asks if God is really going to help him save Israel like he already said he would.

37 look, I shall put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor; if there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that You will save Israel by my hand, as You have said.” 38 And it was so. When he rose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece together, he wrung the dew out of the fleece, a bowlful of water. 

In other words, “Look, God, you said you would help me and then I asked you to confirm it and you did. Cool.” But, well, Gideon is still not convinced.

39 Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me, but let me speak just once more: Let me test, I pray, just once more with the fleece; let it now be dry only on the fleece, but on all the ground let there be dew.” 40 And God did so that night. It was dry on the fleece only, but there was dew on all the ground.

 “Don’t be mad at me, but I’m gonna have to ask you one more time and this time I am changing the rules about how you answer.”

It’s a good thing that Old Testament God doesn’t get angry easily.

Fleeces and clover/over and over

Perhaps, regardless of the discipline of my Puritan past, I don’t have to read everything as a sign. God or the Universe or the Divine or Source does absolutely communicate with us all the time in subtle and overt ways. But, as the song goes, too many signs break my mind.

How am I to know which ones I should notice? 

Ask.

If everything around me is an answer—which it is—then I need to consider the questions I am asking. And rather than attempting to read the whole world as augury, I need to learn to accept the obvious answers: the anomalies, the repetitions, the clovers.

And then do the thing I know, the thing I always know. The thing I want and cannot bear: connect to the words that connect me to myself. Find what I thought was lost. Take up space in the world.