On a day when I couldn’t remember why I was alive or what I was doing here, the following happened.

It was late afternoon, a cold, gray, breezy day in Manhattan. I was near the Time-Warner Building on Broadway, a hub for tourists and residents alike, when suddenly cop cars started speeding like crazy up the big avenue. Sirens blaring. Lights blinking. Steering wildly around traffic, racing over curbs and sidewalks, some thirty of them coming out of nowhere. Nobody knew what was happening. A bomb? A terrorist? After all, it’s New York. Nobody could tell me what was happening. Maybe it was a test run.

So I crossed the street and suddenly saw a young man lying in the street, apparently hurt, surrounded by police. He seemed to be in shock and deeply agitated. (I later learned he had just been mowed down by the hit-and-run car the cops were chasing.) My first impulse was to send healing but the police kept gruffly telling everybody to move on. I was so torn, I didn’t want to leave, I felt I could help, but I’m shy. Finally, I looked at one cop and said, “I am a chaplain. Can I help?” (I never know exactly what to say to “get in.”)

This officer, throwing me a dry look, said sarcastically, “Well, he isn’t dying. So, what could you do?” My mind went blank for a moment, affronted by the implication, but then I said without thinking, “Well, I could help calm him down. I am a healer.” Another cop sneered, “Well, no disrespect meant, m’am, but…” Then he mumbled something, which I couldn’t hear at first, but which I intuited to mean: “Well, I am not going to tell you to stay, but I am not going to tell you to leave.”

Everyone else had been shooed away so I took this as a sign to follow my instincts. I knelt down beside the young man and stretched my hand out to give Johrei (a form of energy transmission, like Reiki, through the hand). I couldn't imagine what the cops were thinking, (maybe that I was some kind of evangelical), but as I started to talk to the victim in a very calm, loving voice (not like the cops!), he turned his head, looked me straight in the eyes and immediately connected, wide-eyed, very appreciative. I guided him to relax, to breathe deeply, to feel like he was melting into the pavement, to try to send breath to the pain, etc. And I kept my hand up the whole time, allowing the energy to move through me, from Source, towards him.

And it was simply amazing. In just one minute, this young man, lying in the middle of Broadway, radically changed; it was so beautiful to watch. I even got him to laugh when I said he was in safe hands, that there were more cops right here, right now, than in the entire city of New York. After about five minutes (I don’t really know how long--time seemed suspended), two medics arrived, strapped on their blue plastic gloves and went to work. I stood up and backed away, then waved good-bye to the young man, who by this time had completely calmed down. Then, as I was leaving, the first cop did something totally unexpected. He looked me straight in the eye, held out his hand and said, “Thank you!” with real sincerity and awe in his voice. 

And then the second cop did the same!

I was shocked. Minutes before, they had thought I was an idiot, an intruder, but I think they simply could not deny what had just happened in a very short period of time. It had been like watching time-lapse photography. As I walked away, though, I couldn’t help saying something to the first cop. I leaned over and said very quietly, very simply, in his ear, “You have to talk to them in a way that calms them down.” I am usually a bit scared of cops, but his nod said it all. I didn’t need anything else.

As I walked away, I was filled with so much awe and happiness--that despite all the ups and downs in life, that it is possible to be ready and willing to serve when the circumstance arises.

Even in the middle of Broadway.

I think, for all of us light workers, this is the future...