Icons and focal points

The power of prayer, the manifestation of meditation, wishful thinking . . .

Call it what you may, I suppose you might even say it is coincidence, but whatever it is, or was, it makes my day.

For months I focus on something I wish would happen and then:

One cold wintery day I find a discarded ornament, a homemade silver sequined ball with a delicate twisted thread wound around it.  My friend scoops it up and gives it to me and I use it to focus more intensely. 

My thoughts, my prayers, my wishes, wind around and around, just like that thread until -- today -- they manifest in this world and come true.

Or maybe it was Saint Joseph.