One day last summer I was driving down a highway on my way to a meeting when I suddenly knew something bad--real bad-- was about to happen. You know the feeling, that instinct that puts you on "red alert" and raises the hair on the back of your neck. I quickly scanned around and saw nothing unusual. No drunk drivers or out-of-control semi-tractor/trailer rigs heading my way, no gunmen, no toddlers about to wander into the street, no airplanes falling out of the sky--and yet, the feeling was intense.

Over the years I have come to believe it is important to pay attention to those inner feelings. When a patrol car moving in the opposite direction (which just happened to be the same direction as a nearby hospital) passed me at a good clip, that was enough for me. I pulled off into a parking lot and called my police department. When the clerk answered, I identified myself and asked if everything was okay. "Why?" she asked, with sudden wariness in her voice.

"I've just got a bad feeling," I said lamely, feeling like Obi Wan Kenobi. ("I feel a disturbance in the Force...")

She said there was nothing in particular going on, so I told her where I would be that day and asked her to call me at my cell number if anything came up. I resumed my driving. I also noted the time, vaguely thinking that it might be something happening in the larger world, if it wasn't something happening locally. Listened to the news that night--no more trouble than usual, no earthquakes or tsunamis or hurricanes--and nothing at all reported as happening at that particular time.

In the following week, this experience repeated itself several times--a sudden feeling of impending disaster, with no apparent source and (thankfully) no ensuing disaster. I finally accepted that it was something going on within me and shifted my attention from the outer world to my inner world. I noticed I was always in the car when it happened. And then, in the midst of an episode, I noticed the music on my tape player: Pachelbel's Canon in D, played by the Canadian Brass, a tape my father had just given me that summer.

Suddenly, I knew what was causing my feeling of doom. In my training for chaplaincy, I have taken several classes from a particular teacher--a very good and effective teacher--who happens to finish his classes with an audiovisual presentation he's developed. It is comprised of video clips of disasters--one after another, people being assaulted, shot, blown up, run down, hit by trains, falling from high places, blown out of the sky--every sort of disaster you can imagine. All set to Pachelbel's Canon in D, that lovely lyrical piece of music. I had imprinted that violent and cataclysmic imagery with that music. Hearing the music was setting off my inner warning system because I "knew" what was coming.