Sometimes called serendipity. Or Providence. A convergence of previously-unrelated events, whose coming together at that specific moment creates a sense of significance, sensed best in hindsight. The feeling of it is startlement, a recognition... It can feel like an 'outside' nudge in a most intimate, 'inside' kind of way.
Though fewer and fewer in my Biz do so, I seem to depend upon synchronicities to clue me into my life of faith--its invitations, its directions, even its purpose(s). Like learning about the Hildegard Haus at the end of January, in an unpredictable confluence of interest, work, timing. Moments like these lead me into energetic and energizing pathways of prayer, purpose. They have an arising, a force that I sense, tinged with uncertainty, a willingness to unknow but act. My journey into Women Writing for (a) Change over a decade ago is chock full of them. My closest spiritual friends and I often name and smile at our own moments, shaped just for us.
There are also playful sychronicities that need not have any ultimate meaning. They seem companionable, like loving winks from the Universe wanting us to enjoy the moment. I.e. meandering in Cleveland's University Circle with Brian this past week, joking around how it could be Paris, if you squinted. The Wade Lagoon and paths could be the Luxembourg Gardens, I said. The Circle Church (UMC) could be Mont Saint Michel, he said. Then we landed in a museum gift shop, only to see this t-shirt (below). Which I promptly purchased as a souvenir of our holiday.
How do we ascribe meanings of faith to synchronicities? What kind of soul posture is required to see and recognize? I'm sure there are all kinds that I simply miss, caught up in my own anxieties or dramas.
This question is growing inside of me, mostly because I keep meeting more and more spiritual friends for whom synchronicity is a mark of divine order, of Godde's intentions. Rev. Dr. Shanon Sterringer, for instance, whose book Forbidden Grace recounts one after another. Fire&Water peeps too. Quanita's famous mantras: Creation follows attention. The Universe wants to prove you right. Attend wisely, what your heart desires...
I, too, live in convergences of holy things I cannot un-see or ignore. Like my folks' first visit to Dayton, Ohio in three years, for a long-desired Easter weekend with us; my dad's eldest brother failing fast in Cleveland; and Holy Saturday. After much kavetching, we drove up to Cleveland and back in a day. Synchronicity after synchronicity unfolded in the car ride, the conversations, the music, and more. As I named at home, "We knew we were being spoken to..." I was sad but not surprised when my father called me on the way home from church Easter morning with the news: Karl died at 11:20 a.m. An intense, holy ordering of family love and devotion...from a deeper ordered Intention.
Holy fingerprints... What capacities need we exercise within to see more of them...all of them? Not everyone puts much stock in synchronicities, after all...
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