White Crow

“To upset the conclusion that all crows are black, there is no need to seek demonstration that no crows are black; it is sufficient to produce one white crow; a single one is sufficient.”

– William James

When William James said this, he was referring to medium Leonora Piper, born in Nashua, New Hampshire in 1859. James took an interest in her after his mother-in-law had a reading with her. Despite his initial skepticism, he attended several of her séances and eventually concluded she actually had the ability to communicate with the dead, that she was the “white crow” of the Spiritualist movement, the real thing.

This evening during yoga, I was thinking about white crows.  Haven’t there been a lot of them? Until 1954 when Roger Banister ran a minute in 3:59.4 minutes,  it was believed to be an impossible feat. But once Banister did it, so did other runners. In the last 50 years, the record for a running a mile has been lowered by nearly 17 seconds.  So wasn’t Banister a white crow when he broke what had been deemed impossible?

J.K. Rowling is the first author to become a billioinaire.  Doesn’t that make her a  white crow? I mean, really, how many writers honestly believe they’ll end up as billionaires from their writing?

And what about Obama, the first African-American president? Back in 1965 when we lived pretty much in the Dark Ages of racism, this was considered impossible.

In fact, when John Kennedy became president, he was the first Catholic to win the White House.

Yes, yoga is supposed to be a time when you focus on doing the postures, but my mind races along regardless. So after I thought of these examples, I wondered if, to be a white crow, you had to be the first, to break records. Well, maybe. But it seems that James was addressing consensus reality, whatever it might be.

At the time of his investigations, the heyday of Spiritualism was waning. Numerous frauds had been exposed, religious leaders instilled fear in their congregations that people like Piper were possessed by devils. Their arguments weren’t all that different than the arguments used during the Salem witch trials in the 1500s. We hadn’t exactly come a long way in 300 years in this regard. James was looking for just one white crow. His quest had become personal.

About Piper, he wrote:  “My impression after this first visit was that Mrs. Piper was either possessed of supernormal powers or knew the members of my wife’s family by sight and had by some lucky coincidence become acquainted with such a multitude of their domestic circumstances as to produce the startling impression which she did. My later knowledge of her sittings and personal acquaintance with her has led me to absolutely reject the latter explanation, and to believe that she has supernormal powers.”

If you Google Piper’s name, you can also find plenty of skeptical material about her and every other medium. In the end, what it comes down to is trusting your own experiences, as James did.

Today, our publicist for Synchronicity and the Other Side sent us an email and a tweet that the book had been reviewed by someone named Sarah Morgan. We’d never heard of her, but clicked the link and went to her blog. From her review, it’s obvious that she’s a skeptic. But by the end of review, something rather startling happens.

Edited to add: Okay… this gave me goosebumps, and I swear it’s true.

I had this all ready to publish. Then I looked again at the book cover.

The person I mentioned in the first paragraph was my Aunt Jeanne. She and I didn’t know each other well until I was in my 20s, but then became very close until her death this spring. She was a fascinating lady, and as with most fascinating people, she was fascinating because she was fascinated. She loved learning and being open-minded.

She also loved hummingbirds. They were her “thing”. The last thing I gave her was a beautiful blown-glass hummingbird.

I just saw the little hummingbird on the cover of this book.

So, in the end, Sarah Morgan, skeptic, got a tap on the shoulder from her recently deceased Aunt Jeanne. She experienced her own white crow (well, via  a hummingbird!)  and is, today, a bit less skeptical.

And I think that’s how spirits work when they communicate with us. A tap, a nudge, a whisper in the dark: Are you sure you don’t believe? Are you sure I’m really dead? Are you sure? Huh? Are you?

In the end, perhaps the white crow lies within each of us, just waiting for the opportune moment to make itself known. As paradigms continue to shift and expand, I suspect more and more of us will experience our personal white crows in the areas where we are the most stubborn and resistant to change.