Last Saturday afternoon my phone starting chirping the ring I’ve assigned to my dad. He doesn’t call me on his own too often, so I was happy to hear the ring and know that he was thinking about me. He had called to thank me for the Cherryholmes CD I had just sent him, as he walked down 23rd Ave. in Northwest Portland (near where we lived when I was in high school) to go to Music millennium. He was on his way to buy a Marilyn Keller* CD, and was telling me his plans for an upcoming peace rally and a song he’s written called, “Let Peace Prevail,” when he stopped talking and said, “whoa.”
Right in his path was a $20 dollar bill. He picked it up and started walking again. I told him he had to stop and look around to make sure that there wasn’t someone frantically looking at the ground, in case it belonged to them. There was a touch of reluctance in his voice as he paused and looked around. He told me he didn’t see anyone. The twenty was his. The CD cost $12.90 so he came out $7.10 ahead that afternoon.
The next day he went to Kinko’s to make several additional sets of song books for the peace rally. He had made the same number once before, and the total cost had been somewhere in the neighborhood of $35. He and the sales guy got to talking about the peace movement and the rally my dad is working on. When it came time to pay, my dad swiped his credit card and saw the same amount as before flash across the screen. However this time, there was a discount, and the total came up to $6.40. My dad looked up at the guy who had been waiting on him and said that he didn’t think it was the right total. To this the guy replied, “That is how much I want to charge you.” My dad replied, “So Kinko’s is making a contribution to the peace movement?” The guy nodded and with that the transaction was done.
The found twenty stretched to cover both the CD and the copying. The universe is working to support the work of the peace activists in interesting and miraculous ways, these days.
*Marilyn Keller is a vocalist who will be singing for ten minutes before my dad’s group goes on.