Miracle at Fuente de Amor
[Please note: ACIM passages quoted in this article reference the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) Edition.]
The early dictation of the Course material depicts miracles as simple acts of love toward others, and throughout the Course we are taught that the miracles we give return to us. Just this past week, Patricia and I experienced a miracle (at our address on “Fuente de Amor,” which means “Fountain of Love”) that brought both points home to us in a powerful way.
As many of you know, our cat Chloe disappeared the day after we arrived in Mexico. She was in a second-story bedroom, and sometime in the middle of the night leapt out the window to the ground below.
We were heartbroken at the disappearance of our beloved Chloe. We searched for her and called the local “friends of animals” group for help. We asked our friends and mighty companions in the CCC for prayers (thank you!). And we put up “Lost Cat” posters all over the neighborhood, with her picture and our phone number to call if anyone found her. We hoped for the best. But the days went by, turning into weeks, and while Patricia remained hopeful, I became more and more convinced that we would never see Chloe again.
Meanwhile, we were unexpectedly thrust into another situation involving an animal in need. A couple of weeks ago, when we arrived home at 10 pm, we discovered that our neighbor’s dog Peluchin was badly injured. According to the other neighbors attending him, Peluchin was brutally attacked by a pack of other dogs. He was bleeding from bite wounds and in obvious distress. However, the neighbors who actually owned him were out of town for the weekend. What should we do?
Patricia and I immediately swung into action. Patricia remembered the name of the veterinarian to whom her friend Nancy had brought her cat la Kiara when she was in Sedona with me. She called him and just managed to catch him — he had literally been walking out the door for the night when the phone rang. He agreed to wait for us, and we packed up Peluchin and brought him in.
Long story short: After treatment and a few days at the vet, Peluchin is at home and recovering nicely. The neighbors are immensely grateful for taking him in that night. It probably saved his life. And they’ve repaid us with kindness of their own, writing a new prescription for Patricia’s antibiotics (one of them is a doctor) and inviting us to a birthday party where we saw Peluchin happily begging for food.
Now, back to Chloe. Patricia and I felt very good about what we had done for Peluchin, and somehow it awakened in us new hope for Chloe. We joked that we had accumulated some good “animal karma” and that would help Chloe return to us. If we were there for Peluchin and his family when they needed us, perhaps someone would be there for Chloe and us when we needed them.
Of course, that wasn’t the reason we helped Peluchin; that decision was a spontaneous act of love. But at the same time, I remembered that line from the Course that says, “The miracles I give are given back in just the form I need to help me with the problems I perceive” (W-pII.345.1:4). Somehow, it felt like the miracle we had worked for Peluchin would come back to us, perhaps in a way that would help our beloved pet as we had helped someone else’s beloved pet.
A few weeks later, Patricia and I were having a bad day. She had been sick with salmonella for a few days (that’s why she’s taking antibiotics), and the sickness had sparked a “period of discomfort” in our still very new relationship. We’ve been doing very well together, amazingly and wonderfully well, but this was just one of those days where old dark patterns were stirred up and our egos were having a field day. We had been emotionally distant from each other all day. We needed something to remind us of our love for each other, and of God’s loving care for us. We needed a miracle.
That was when Patricia got the call. A woman in the neighborhood saw a cat stealing food from her dog’s dish. The dog chased the cat under the car, and the woman scooped up the cat. This cat looked familiar — a lot like the cat on that “Lost Cat” poster she saw in the neighborhood. So she called us and we raced over to her house, hoping against hope that this time it would really be Chloe. (We had received another call a few days ago about a cat that turned out to be a Chloe lookalike.)
Our jaws dropped when we arrived and saw the cat this woman had corralled. This time, it was really Chloe! Words can hardly describe our joy at that moment. We thanked the woman profusely for her great kindness (she even called the next day to see how Chloe was doing). After twenty days, our little Chloe had been found!
And she had been found at just the right time. Always a slender cat, she had shrunk to a mere four and a half pounds. She had a nasty wound caused by her collar getting caught under her leg, a wound with necrosis that stank of rotting flesh. We took her immediately to the vet who had taken care of Peluchin (a vet who was amazingly kind and helpful—we have a regular vet for all three of our cats now!). She spent several days there eating and drinking and getting stronger so the vet could put her under anesthetic and treat her wound. It’s clear that if she had been outside for much longer, she would have died. She was found not a moment too soon.
She was also found at just the right time for Patricia’s and my relationship. When we very much needed a miracle to remind us of our love for each other and of our Father’s infinite care, we received the call. All of the ego darkness we had experienced that day melted away instantly. It wasn’t just because we were happy about Chloe’s return. It was because Chloe’s return reminded us that there is no order of difficulty in miracles, that our loving Father is watching over us, and that He has blessed our relationship just as He has blessed little Peluchin and little Chloe. We were reminded once again of a line from one of Robert’s classes that has been an anchor for us: “All things are possible for us when we have trust.”
I sit here now and marvel at the infinite love and care of God. We performed a simple act of love for Peluchin and his family in their time of need, and that miracle really did return to us in just the form we needed to help us with the problems we perceived. Chloe was lost, but now she is home, sleeping contentedly beside me as I write this. Patricia was sick, but now she feels much, much better. And our relationship couldn’t be better — oh, we still have moments of discomfort sometimes, but they are mere ripples on the ocean of our love. We are happily building our shared life together once again.
Thank you, Father, for showing us that Your Love is always with us, a Love we experience for ourselves as we extend that Love to all of our brothers and sisters in need. And thank you as well to everyone who offered us such great kindness, including all of you in the CCC who have given us prayers, comfort, and helpful advice as we dealt with Chloe’s disappearance. All of you have contributed to the miracle at Fuente de Amor — the Fountain of Love!