Coincidence

The question of coincidence versus divine intervention is one I find intriguing. Once, in discussing some of the serendipitous events in my life as likely divine interventions, a priest asked me, “Don’t you believe in coincidence?”

“Of course, I believe in coincidence,” I responded, “But when coincidence piles up upon coincidence and all the coincidences have a uniform objective and impeccable timing, I have to ask whether perhaps something other than coincidence is involved.”
Jung, in his book, Synchronicity, describes life as flowing in streams. These streams often bring together events that are not cause-and-effect yet co-occur in meaningful ways even though the likelihood of the co-occurrence is low to nil. Jung defined synchronicity, which he placed on the far end of a cauasality-synchronicty axis, as “temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events.” He attributes such acausal connectivity to a larger framework of human ideas that he labels the collective unconscious.

I do not deny simple coincidence or serendipity. Neither do I deny the more elaborate kind of coincidence subsumed in the concept of synchronicity. However, there are serendipities, coincidences, and synchronicities that seem more readily explained by divine plan or divine intervention because of the need for all the players to be in the right places at the right times either for a one-time event or over a long history. While it may never be possible to win the argument of coincidence versus divine intervention or even to know for certain to which to attribute a specific event, when the timing is absolutely impeccable, I am drawn toward seeing God’s involvement. After all, there is that saying that coincidences are simply those times when God chooses to remain anonymous. As for that “collective unconscious,” it just might have another label: God.

Miracles

Last Friday, I had lunch with Fr. Terry who had come to town for that purpose, bless his heart. I had not seen him in months, and it was wonderful to catch up and share thoughts. He had not known about the spontaneous healing of my torn rotator cuff during Mass. I don't know why that particular event came up during lunch, but it did.

Afterward, I got to thinking about miracles. Why do I seem to get so many of them? Then I wondered if I really did get a disproportionate share of them, or have I just learned to recognize them. My conclusion? I think miracles happen more often than people know (or recognize).

On a related topic, there has been some lively discussion on some blogs recently of distractions during prayer. This is, of course, not a recent or uncommon discussion. It's been a problem throughout the centuries, and I, of course, do experience such distractions. I try to follow the advice to ignore them and return to contemplation, but sometimes these distractions take on a life of their own.

Similarly, but with a happier result, sometimes while I am in the midst of work, particularly boring but important meetings, I become intensely aware of God's presence in the room. The result is that I become quite distracted from the business of hand, sometimes embarrassingly so. Nonetheless, if you had the choice of being present to your colleagues and supervisors or present to God, which would you choose? Is there a choice?

Perhaps God would talk more often to all of us if we took the time to listen more often, more intently, more openly. The signals are sometimes so slight that it is easy to miss them if we are not tuned in, don't pay close attention, or just dismiss the unusual as a curiosity. I might have dismissed the blue light that ran through my body while driving to the doctor for a pre-surgical examination had he not found upon arrival that I no longer needed surgery. I had temporarily stored the experience of the light as unusual, and only the doctor's near-immediate finding helped me to put two and two together. Similarly, the light touch on my torn-rotator-cuff shoulder during Mass might have seemed to be a figment of my imagination had not Doah, my mentally retarded son, not been with me and said "we no alone" and had not I been able to immediately move in all directions an until-then immovable arm (healing confirmed by MRI a few days later). And the warm hands and image of a male figure in sandals and robe I would have attributed to a dream except that I was wide awake, fell asleep only AFTER the warm hands lulled me to sleep, and found the urine infection that had been torturing me into the wee hours of the morning totally gone when I woke up. (See earlier post on these events, Healings, and other miracles in my life, Miracles in Real Life.)

I wonder how many miracles we miss through inattention, let alone through disbelief. I wonder why God would keep sending them to us when we treat them so cavalierly...

Double-posted on Modern Mysticism and 100th Lamb.