I’ve been thinking about how following signs and omens is so central to my life. Since we’re all part of a living, breathing, conscious universe, why wouldn’t it speak to us and give us direction?

Why wouldn’t it send us messages and answers, if only we opened the way?

So to me, operating without the help of signs would be like refusing to turn on the lights in a darkened room. Why stumble around tripping over furniture when the universe has the bulb?

Yet people can be so busy trying to follow over-amped logic, they don’t realize they can just request a sign.

For all the fundamentalist talk that astrology is the “work of the Devil,” the three wise men were guided during Christmas by a star, of all things. Some historians even insist that the travelers were clearly astrologers. But then again, contradictions are rampant in the Good Book. And in many indigenous cultures it’s considered precipitous and even disrespectful to move forward without an appropriate sign.

So here’s a prayer I’ve used thousands of times to make decisions. I hold a problem in my heart and say:

“Please show me your divine will in this matter and send a clear sign that gives the proper direction. And if for some reason I’m about to head the wrong way, please, please stop me.”

Last autumn I felt a strong longing to be in Mexico for the birthday of the Virgin of Guadalupe on December 12. She’s one of those glorious dieties I love in all my polyamorous devotional ardor.

But on the logical level, the trip didn’t make much sense. It was already Thanksgiving, much too late to plan a cost-effective trip.

So I asked for a sign. Please show me if you wish me to go. If you do, please bring a sign, and a miracle.

Two days later I was walking in San Francisco and I saw a young Mexican guy wearing a huge Guadalupe t-shirt. Nothing typical, almost like a colorful nightgown all the way to his knees.

“Wow!” I said. “Where did you get that?”

“Oh,” he looked down and laughed. “I love her. I went home last year for her birthday. I was between jobs here so it was like that joke: all I got was this big-ass T-shirt.”

When I booked my ticket that afternoon, everything flowed like a dream. A single last-minute frequent flyer seat appeared. Each place I called, from the airport shuttle to the San Miguel inn, offered its final spot.

This also happened once to my client Gigi from Massachusetts. She was trying to decide whether to go to Savannah, Georgia, a town she had never visited, to see their art school. So she called in Divine Order and asked for a sign.

Later that week when she was out for dinner, she kept overhearing “Savannah” from the couple beside her. She soon discovered they lived half the year in her Cape Cod village, and half down there. They invited her to visit.

“After the universe went through the trouble of bringing them,” Gigi told me giggling, “how could I not go? I mean how random is that?”