Arlys Winkler of Hot Springs Village believes subtle messages are clear as glass for those with the awareness to recognize them.
She's been convinced of the power in mystical messages for decades. They've repeatedly come to her and her family in three ways: Through flights of birds, by finding feathers, and most often by discovering orphan pennies at relevant moments.
She recorded her experiences in a book-length manuscript years ago called The Penny Miracles.
Her early sign came as she prepared for church on an early Easter morning in frigid North Dakota. Opening her drapes, Arlys was astonished to see three large white birds flying with wingtips inches apart looming large in her picture window. "What a beautiful Easter gift," she thought, imagining the spiritual imagery. Her eyes teared as she ran to the back of her house for a parting glimpse, but saw nothing. Where had they come from? There was still snow on the frozen ground.
"Although I consider myself a spiritual person, I also seem to always search for the scientific explanations. Yet the number three had special significance and has found its way into my life many times since."
While encountering feathers and various "threes" at opportune moments, it's been the unexpected pennies at crucial times that made her a firm believer in the unseen forces.
For instance, her husband Lloyd died in 2001 following an extended fight with cancer. A few weeks before his death she'd read a letter to him from a "Dear Abby" column called "Pennies from heaven."
"We discussed that letter at length," she said. "Almost immediately after Lloyd's death, his children, grandchildren and I began finding pennies. Who'd have thought something as simple and inconspicuous as a penny might prove to be the medium between this world and the world of life after death?"
What we call miracles ( I prefer GodNods) occur regularly. Yet we must be aware and open to recognize them. Here are but a few of her "penny miracles."
On Sept. 12, 2001, Arlys was on her usual morning walk in Magog, Quebec, feeling sadness over the thousands of people who'd died a day earlier. "I reflected on my own mortality and life, as I'm sure many people must have done after the Trade Center bombing," she said. With a new partner, Guy, a Canadian, she wondered whether she was on the right path.
"I reached the end of the road strewn with bright autumn leaves and started back, kicking as I walked. Suddenly I spied two pennies among all the leaves. Shoving them in my pocket, I continued to our chalet and placed them on my computer desk. Later, the thought tugged at me to look again at the pennies.
"I looked as the hairs on the back of my neck prickled when I saw one was Canadian! What are the chances of finding an American penny and a Canadian penny side by side in a pile of leaves on a rural community road in the middle of Canada? The pennies confirmed we belonged together on the right path no matter what others might think and say!"
She keeps those pennies safely today, often reflecting "on the miracle of finding them."
The penny miracles have since extended to Guy as well as her children.
In December 2001, Guy said, he was on a golf course with three friends in Phoenix; all four had just hit onto the green. Approaching his ball he saw a penny lying beside it, the only penny on the green. Later, he called Arlys, still shaken. She told him it might have been her deceased husband's way of reassuring Guy that all is OK.
Earlier that year, granddaughter Rachel, then living in Minneapolis, was playing basketball with a friend. Afterwards, they slipped back into the street shoes they'd stored in a secure locker. After taking a couple of steps, Rachel felt something odd and somehow knew it was a penny. She bent down, undid her shoe, turned it over and, sure enough, out dropped a penny!
Neither girl could imagine how a penny had gotten in the shoe, especially since Rachel had worn that shoe from home to the gym.
With only a few days remaining until what would have been Lloyd's birthday, Arlys' daughter, Robyn, was thinking of her father as she and friend, Beth, attended aerobics class in Illinois.
Robyn said, "we'd been doing dance steps in the same spot for an hour and were just sitting there stretching in cool-down. Suddenly, there was this penny! I swear, it wasn't there before! I couldn't believe it. If it was there all the while we'd been working out. How come we didn't see it?"
Arlys had visited bedridden friend Maria at a Hot Springs Village nursing home for three years. May 29, 2016, is one of those days when Maria was agitated and Arlys was turning to leave without singing a hymn together.
"Her hymnal, which I usually search for, was on her dresser with nothing on top of it, except right in the center sat a shiny new penny!! I picked up the penny, opened the hymnal and, with tears in my eyes, started to sing 'Amazing Grace.'"
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
Editorial on 01/15/2017