Bernie Beitman, M.D. a visiting psychiatric professor at the University of Virginia, has done something unique. He has created the Coincidence Project, a group of people who write about and explore this phenomena and meet the first Thursday of every month via Zoom. My unusual encounter with a mockingbird happened on the same day that I attended my first Zoom meeting.
This occurred during an afternoon bike ride that takes me down a side street that ends at a police station that faces a canal. That afternoon, my cell buzzed as I turned into the station, and I stopped to see that I’d gotten a spam call. I glanced up and saw a mockingbird in the nearby bushes. I moved my bike closer and closer and the bird didn’t fly away. It made that sound these little guys make and I interpreted it as, “Hey, hi.” So I moved closer and took more photos.
It eventually moved farther down into the bushes, away from me, and when I got home, I researched the esoteric meaning of mocking bird. It’s about communication, mimicry, how we can tweak our own method of communication by expanding it.
At the time, I didn’t understand the message. Combined, Rob and I have written hundreds of books. The written word is how we communicate. But in Feb 202,0, we started a podcast, The Mystical Underground. And now this mockingbird encounter was asking for something else? That very day, I’d attended my first Coincidence Project Zoom. I’m not much of a joiner, but I committed to attending the first Thursday of the month and I realized the mockingbird was a kind of confirmation of that decision.
At the first Zoom, I suggested we do a Coincidence Cafe every third Saturday. More casual. Bring your own coffee, tea, wine and share your stories with other people who are experiencing the same types of things that you are. Bernie is onto something here. So many of us experience this weirdness and feel isolated in our experiences, unable or unwilling to talk about it with others for fear of being ridiculed. At the Coincident Cafe, we’re all on the same page.
I’ve been wondering what’s happened to Bernie’s podcast.
He started back with an episode on March the 6th this year with Kenneth Harris, but there hasn’t been one uploaded since.
I hope he is OK.
He was fine today at coincidence project!
Did u get my email?
I look forward to the Cafe! Birds are, like butterflies and dragonflies, great messengers.
Two years ago I had an encounter with a Cardinal, which is a bird one rarely sees here in the desert, and especially in the hot time (because they have the good sense to migrate north). Yet that bird spoke to me (https://threadsofspiderwoman.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-scarlet-bird-of-paradisea.html) …… and lately I’ve been seeing a female cardinal, singing or just mysteriously hanging out in my tree. Which means I need to pay attention again to what the first visitation had to say!
I love it when cardinals deliver messages!