This article was published in the "Martinelli Newspapers" in the April 27, 2006 weekly issue of The Westchester Crusader, The Rye Chronicle, The Eastchester Record, The Pelham Sun, The Sound View News Home News & Times, The Mt. Vernon Independent, Harrison Independent
and North Castle News

Life and Money - Awe and Wonder

By Frank Sisco, CPA, PFS

(Word count =  1,186  including 72 words for About the Author)

A person's financial well being is hurt by the inevitable low periods that happen in life.  The low periods can be brought on merely by simple malaise or unexplained doldrums as well as things like illness, job loss, business failure, and disability.

When you find yourself in a rut, feeling low, lacking energy and ambition to tackle new challenges, you should seek out the help of others.  Communicating your feelings can go a long way in helping you to see things more positively.  Another way is to open yourself up to the possibility that something unusual could happen, restoring awe and wonder in your life.  The more you believe in possibility, the greater your chances of emerging from the mud

Here's a true story of an event that helped pull me from the mud.  Helped show me that awe and wonder were still in my life.

There was a stretch several years ago during which I was in a rut, feeling low, bogged down by too many demands.  Breakthroughs were not happening.  Life seemed dull. I knew I needed something major in my life to envigorate me.   Talking to people did not seem to help.  For some reason, my appeals to God were not being answered, or so I thought.  Then a type of miracle happened to me that I believe might have been instigated by God working through Uri Geller over the radio.  No kidding.  

The event happened in December 1996 on a Tuesday evening at 7 p.m.  It started with a broadcast I heard on my car radio, two blocks from my way home, that caused me to speed home, rush into my house, grab the plastic wall clock from my home office, and put on the radio in the family room.  There I was standing at the radio in my family room, as commanded during the broadcast,  alone with my eyes closed holding a circular wall clock that had not worked for over a year.    It was a commonplace, inexpensive plastic clock with a white face and a black minute hand, black hour hand, and a red second hand.  It cost about twelve dollars from the pharmacy down the block.  For nine months, the clock ran fine on one AA battery, but then it died and would not run again after trying fresh batteries and shaking it every which way.  The second hand had not moved on this clock in over a year.  I still do not know why I had not thrown it out.  Well, there I was, with my eyes closed, clutching it.  My wife, Lorrie, and daughter, Kelly, were upstairs getting changed, unaware of the "magic" to ensue. 

The fellow on my car radio and now on my family room radio, Uri Geller, told me and the other listeners to bring to the radio something that was broken and that we wanted to have fixed by mind power. He gave examples of broken things like watches, clocks, radios, calculators, toasters, irons, even computers and big appliances. Preposterous was my initial thought.  I then remembered that I knew of Uri when I was a college student in the late 1960s.  He used mind power to bend spoons on Johnny Carson’s "Tonight Show," and to do other mind-over-matter feats.  So here, now, Uri was on AM radio with Curtis Sliwa, popular talk show host and founder of the Guardian Angels, planning to fix things over the airwaves in the households of New Yorkers.   I was actually amused at myself for being engaged in such a crazy thing, but excited and curious, nevertheless.

In a calm voice, Uri asked all of us in the listening audience, along with him and with eyes closed, while concentrating intently, to say twice in a loud voice and in a slow cadence, "1 - 2 - 3 - Work!" as a command to the object we were holding.  It was a command for the object to come back to life.  And so I did.  "1 - 2 - 3- Work!" and then again and even louder  "1 – 2 - 3 - Work!"   I opened my eyes and to my astonishment I saw the red plastic second hand move around the circle.  The clock was working again!  Like a miracle!  A shiver went up my spine, over my shoulders and down to the front of my legs.  I felt right then and there that somehow my life had changed.  Perhaps I was also the "thing" that was fixed.  I opened myself up to the possibility of something crazy happening, and it did, right before my eyes.  I could not explain it, nor did I feel I needed to.  I instantly felt better.

As I stood there numb and smiling, I listened to Uri answer the phones at the radio station and greet, with almost nonchalant acceptance, the callers’ hysterical excitement over all their things that started working again.  I did not feel the need to call about my wall clock.  I just stood there, stunned, smiling and staring at the moving second hand, and realizing that my companions, awe and wonder, were back in my life again. 

I called my best friend Tony and shared the experience.  Over the years, we have often called each other right away when important events happen.  He suggested that a true test would be whether the clock still worked in the morning.  I thought the fact that it worked now was enough of a miracle, but I acquiesced and positioned the clock vertically against the sofa's pillows, overnight.  The next morning upon waking and before showering, I rushed down the stairs from my bedroom to the sofa to see if the clock was still working.  My heart was pounding like my heart used to when I was about to open my gifts on Christmas morning.   There the clock was, with the second hand still moving!  I smiled to myself that it took a second look this morning to "validate" the miracle that happened last night.  That day, I brought the clock to my office and hung it, as a reminder of miracles.  It still keeps perfect time. 

Several people have offered their reasons for the event.  I choose to think that God worked through Uri Geller to make the unexplained occur in front of me, which was exactly what I needed at that particular time in my life.  To pull me from the mud, and get on with life.

Please feel free to send me your letters about any events in your life that restored your appreciation for awe and wonder, and how they impacted your life and your money.  With your permission, I will include them in future columns.

About the author.

Frank Sisco is a CPA and Personal Financial Specialist, and author of many articles about personal finance and issues of life and money.   His firm, Financial Management Corporation, is located in Harrison, NY.  Frank makes his home with his wife and daughter in New Rochelle, NY.  He can be reached at 914.381.3737 or by email at ideasmoney@aol.com.  Visit his website at www.LifeAndMoney.com, which contains this and prior articles.