How many movies have you seen in which either some gruff, unshaven middle aged man or a trim, well dressed young woman says "Coincidence? Bah. I don't believe in coincidence"? I'm gonna go ahead and guess that it's a lot. I, on the other, do believe in coincidences. There has been an increase in coincidence in my life of late.
August 8th, around midnight. Flipping through an old journal, I read aloud an entry from a very difficult, and vastly different, part of my life. It was about faith. And God. I didn't notice the date of the entry until the next day. August 8, 2005.
August 10th, early afternoon. Perusing the blog posts of a close friend, I noticed that the name of her blog, and the subsequent sub-title, is a quote from Beloved, my favorite Tony Morrison novel. "It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind". It is this quote that I, upon reading it one day last winter, immediately transcribed into my journal and, later, wrote in a letter to a friend of my mind.
August 11th, midday. Reading through past entries on my blog, I came across a comment left by another very dear friend. She had, unbidden and from a country oceans away from me, responded with clarity and care to fears and questions that had quite suddenly overwhelmed me the night before.
I don't claim to know or even suspect that these moments, along with several others that are less poetic, but no less significant, are signs or clues to some hidden truth. I highly doubt that, several days from now, CSI New York will come busting through my apartment door, waving fingerprint ink in my face and shouting "Now it all makes sense!". But there is something oddly comforting about coincidence. While divine intervention is a bit beyond the scope of this blog, I will say that at least, to me, it implies a sort of universal ordering of things. And, if you have ever seen my closet or my desk, you will understand that a little cosmic order makes me feel right at home. And so, yes. I do believe in coincidence, in the same way I believe, wholeheartedly, in sticky-notes and paper clips.
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ReplyDeleteI'm glad Gather Me Man was a part of these important coinciding moments. I believe in them wholeheartedly. Example: tonight, while reading and getting excited by an article about notebooks as memory aids, I ran across this quotation: "As I propose from this date August the 24th 1762 to keep an exact journal of my actions and studies; both to assist my memory, and to accustom me to set a due value upon my time" (Edward Gibbon). Struck by the "due value," I began calculating in my head. August 23rd...By the time I'd typed in the quotation and made the resolve, it was midnight. August 24, 2010. I do suspect hidden truths. At the very least, you and I are having freakishly similar guiding moments - clarity enforced by something a little bit more than chance and circumstance.
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