I got back from Montserrat on Tuesday night worn out by the hectic schedule of the week and the weariness of the wait at Antigua airport. Head still buzzing from all the sounds of the festival and the images of unsafe zone, I wrote my blog as a way of downloading the information and clearing my head on Wednesday. I slept pretty much all day on Thursday, and was therefore feeling rejuvenated on Friday morning. I wanted only two things on Friday. The first was a massage. Camella left for work promising to try and find me a good masseuse. The second was a reply from the Nation newspaper to my two previous emails, but I decided to relax for the day, hang out on the beach and deal with such matters on Monday.

After twenty laps of the beach I was heading to the bench for my abs work with I stopped to speak with a young lady I'd only previously said hello to. She captured my attention when she said she'd recently had and accident, that the doctor had told her she may well have a permanent injury, and that she had decided 'hell, no. That will only happen if I believe it will. What we believe manifests in our bodies.'

An hour later I left her, having shared our beliefs that the the body does not need a fraction of the food we actually put into it. That it does not need great slabs of steak, or pounds of hard food (that's yams, potatoes, dashines, cocos etc to you uninitiated). We agreed that illness serve a purpose, has a benefit for the people who have them, whether its to get sympathy,or time off work, or to be worn as a badge of honour for carrying the hereditary tradition of the family. I told her I wanted a massage. She was going to have one that day at 12.30. She called her masseuse and within minutes I'd got a massage booked for the afternoon. What I thought was touching was that, while we waited for the masseuse to call back, she said I could have her slot and she would go the following day as my needs appeared to be greater than hers. What a coincidence, I thought. We hugged, our own energy boosted by the other, and I headed for a dip in the pool side of the beach.

Within five minutes of being in the water a gentleman beckoned my over. He turned out to be the author David Goddard. His book In the Midst was published late last year. I told him about mine. When he asked if I was doing a book launch I told him of my frustration of not being able to elicit a response from the Nation. He said I was emailing the wrong person, that he had just been speaking with someone from the Nation and that, if I was willing he would arrange a meeting with the person I needed to speak to for next Tuesday. This is where I dumped my notion of coincidence, and wholeheartedly embraced the divine planner, the magnificent orchestrator.

As we talked we discovered we had a great deal in common, not least that we believe our thoughts manifests as things, that our beliefs shape our lives. His book, he explained, challenges beliefs about divorce, particularly for Caribbean Christians, who would rather die than divorce, will live separate lives for years but will not divorce because the fear of an unforgiving God is so great.

As I walked home I was joined by a young man (well young for me, about 35) who told me he was a preacher in The Church of God of Prophecy. His main concern was to challenge some of the firm held beliefs of the congregation that some of the metaphors in the Bible are real, literal. He couldn't understand why I laugh out loud. I simply said I think we are all being challenged to question our beliefs.