Those of you who have been following the “My Guru Has a Tail” series know that there have been not one, but two, Gurus.

First there was Guru Lucy.

And then there was Guru Max.

What you don’t know is that, like with most Regime changes, the transition didn’t happen without a fair amount of upheaval.

We’re talking death, drama, and Divine Revelation.

To do true justice to the story, I need to start at the beginning.

I’m talking deep history here, before the advent of the “Guru” series.

Here’s how it all went down:

At the time that Guru Lucy came to live with me, I was recently single.

I’d had a particularly difficult breakup, and because I was the one who chose to leave the relationship, I gave the custody of our cat, Luther, to my ex.

I loved Luther.

He was a badass, a champion, a Guru’s Guru.

So I was a mess. I missed my kitty and I wasn’t relishing living alone. Plus my brother had recently had his first kid (he didn’t actually have the kid, his wife did), and I was feeling a need for a little bundle of joy of my own.

But one that didn’t need 24/7 breast feeding and diaper changing.

So I went to my local pet shelter.

Now I need to interject that I had never before been united with a Guru in such a fashion.

Every other Guru in my life, and there had been 4 at that point, had come to me on their own.

Showed up on my doorstep. Or given to me by a friend. Or abandoned at my place of work.

But this time, I didn’t have the patience to wait until the Guru showed up.

I wanted my Guru and I wanted them now!

When I went to the shelter, Lucy was not the first Guru that caught my eye.

There was another kitty that I was drawn to right away. But I was told she was already spoken for.

So they showed me Lucy.

She seemed nice enough, so I picked her up and pet her. This went really well for about thirty seconds.

And then she bit me.

While this was not an auspicious beginning to a fruitful Guru/disciple relationship, I reeeeeeeeeally reeeeeeeeeeally wanted a Guru.

I was told there would be a waiting period of a week before I was able to take her home. In the meantime, they needed me to swear on my life that I would not return her once I brought her home.

They also needed three references.

I’m talking references where they had to call my friends to find out that I was an appropriate Guru Caretaker.

Again, I really wanted a Guru, so I signed all their forms and agreed to all their regulations.

And then the Guru plot thickened, as Guru plots are wont to do.

In the week between picking out the Guru and taking her home, a friend called me up. She had seen an orange male kitten at the pet store near her house.

My first Guru was an orange male. His name was Zeus. Like Luther, he was a badass, a champion, a Guru’s Guru. I have loved orange male cats ever since.

I went to the pet store to check him out.

Oh. My. God.

He was perfect. It was love at first sight.

And there was no biting! Only love!

Since I had already signed my life away to get Guru Lucy, I couldn’t get the orange kitty instead of Lucy. So I decided to get them both.

How hard could that be?

Turned out…

Hard.

They hated each other. They fought and yowled and basically drove me crazy.

Also? When I took them both to the vet for shots, the vet said that torties, which is what Lucy was, did a lot better as only children.

But I couldn’t give Lucy back, so I had to give back the orange guy, whom I had named Max.

That’s right. The Max before the Max.

A friend of mine met Max right before I was about to return him to the pet store. Taking one look at his orange adorableness, she said she would adopt him herself.

So Max went to live at my friend’s house. And Lucy stayed with me.

Fast-forward twelve years.

I’m now married to Melissa. Lucy, still biting at irregular and unpredictable moments, had settled into her life as a feisty Guru. Melissa and I were about to graduate from ministerial school. Life was generally groovy.

Enter the Divine Revelation.

It came when I was meditating. This particular Revelation arrived in the form of a metaphor, as Revelations are wont to do.

I was told that Melissa’s and my ministry had two choices. One choice was to approach our ministry as I had approached the relationship with our current Guru: Going out and making it happen.

The other choice was to treat our ministry as I had treated every Guru before Lucy: Allowing it to come to us on its own.

If we took choice one, our ministry would still be adequate. Just as my relationship with Guru Lucy was certainly adequate.

But it would also bite from time to time.

If, on the other hand, we took the second choice and allowed our ministry to come to us without effort, our ministry would rock.

Like the badass, champion, Guru’s Gurus that had come when I had simply allowed them to find me.

Okay then.

Until that moment, I had never made the connection between my pursuit of Guru Lucy and the difficult nature of our relationship.

But once I did, it was hard to ignore.

And get this:

A few months after I was given the Revelation, Guru Lucy died.

Suddenly and unexpectantly.

Interestingly enough, in the final months of her life, she was surprisingly sweet.

We found out afterwards that it was because she had a heart condition and probably didn’t have the energy to bite.

It was sad and shocking and a little unreal.

Even though Guru Lucy was a feisty thing, I still missed her.

But now that I’d had the Revelation, we didn’t dare go out and force the next Guru to come into our lives.

We knew we had to wait.

And wait we did.

We started up OhMyGod Life and threw ourselves into building up our online and traveling ministry.

It was great, it was fun, it was good.

But.

There was no Guru to greet us when we came back from a weekend gig. No Guru to cuddle up with us at night.

(Well, Guru Lucy wasn’t much of a cuddler. But still.)

More than once, Melissa and I wanted to run to the pet store and pick out a cuddly ball of Guru fluff. But we held back.

The Revelation! It was so specific!

And we didn’t want any more biting – from the Guru or our ministry.

Finally, relief came when I was out of town visiting my parents.

Melissa phoned me to say that she’d run into our friend Steph, our friend Steph who had a stray cat living under her house, our friend Steph who wanted to know if we maybe wanted a new Guru.

Yes!

Yes, we did!

Our friend sent Melissa a picture of the cat and Melissa sent the picture to me.

We both got a “Yes.”

A big ol’ “YES!!!!”

We also both intuited, separately, without checking with each other, that his name was Max. And we both thought that this couldn’t be his name, because I’d already had a Max.

I’d only had the first Max for about a week, but we still assumed that this meant the name was taken.

Until we told each other about it, and realized this was a pretty strong confirmation that his name was Max.  

Max who is, you guessed it, a total badass, a champion, a Guru’s Guru.

He’s amazing. He’s a love bug.

He has us both wrapped around in his fuzzy Guru paw.

He cuddles with us all night, even though none of my previous Gurus have done this and I’ve always wanted a cat who would.

He’s pretty much perfect.

And every time we feel discouraged about our ministry, every time we wonder if we can trust the Divine to lead us forward, we look at our Guru.

And we know the answer.

What’s your experience with following Divine guidance? Share your comments below!