I am going to take a different direction with this blog for a moment. This photograph is from around 1991, when I was an apprentice with the Local 48’s Electrician’s Apprenticeship program(1988-1992).
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Yesterday I saw David McElwie at the Oak Grove Fred Meyer’s (person in front, on the left of photograph), who was an apprentice in the same class that I was in. Through our conversation I learned that Gary Johnson, the man sitting next to me (to the left of me in the photo), had died shortly after our apprenticeship had finished. I began to tear up, and I cried for a little while in the store.
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Gary and I were not great friends, though we exchanged kindness and mutual curiosity over much of our apprenticeship classes. He was a smoker, and I would rib him for smoking cigarettes and also being a jogger.
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Gary claimed that he was providing care for his dying mother, which is why he pursued a career in the electrical industry, so that he could have the good health care that his mother could not afford. The truth was eventually revealed that Gary needed that healthcare for his own deteriorating health.
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The back story to this is that Gary and I had a “miracle moment” while we apprenticed together. One class day we had a major test to take, and I had noticed how mightily Gary had been struggling with the course material (it was much too easy for me, since I had 6 years of electrical engineering training).
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For some reason, I began to pray for him, something I would never even think to consider to do for most situations. Why I did here, I will never know, but, at the end of the test, Gary came over to me, and asked me why I prayed for him, and then thanked me .
HUH?
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I was stunned, shocked, and temporarily speechless (yes, silence from me is possible)..
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THERE WAS NO WAY HE COULD HAVE KNOWN THAT I HAD PRAYED FOR HIM
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I always hid my spiritual and ‘sensitive nature’ from the coarse masculine energy that permeated much of our electrical industry, fearing rehection, and the apprenticeship classes were no exception. I really do care for people quite deeply, regardless of what my personality might imply.
We are all linked together on a much more fundamental and profound level than we realize. Our thoughts may be nothing more than unfocused prayer, so be careful with those thoughts that we entertain in our private little worlds, because they always become quite “public”, in reality.
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Women’s intuition may be nothing more than a more direct, though intermittent, connection to the underlying truth that connects all of us together.
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Thank you, Gary Johnson, for helping me to see and feel more of the mystery of love and life.
