celebrating the slender strands of synchronicity: part one

As our anniversary vacation/retreat ripens on the shore of Lake Gardner, and Brother Sun has rejoined us for another day of beauty and warmth, a few seemingly random - but most likely related - thoughts keep swimming through my consciousness. These quiet and tender connections - the slender stands of synchronicity, as spiritual director, Christine Valters Paintner says - are neither random nor foreordained. Rather, they are mystical reminders of creation's heart and soul. When observed and honored, synchronicities can bring clarity to our quest for meaning. They can instruct us gently in the sacramental wisdom that saturates all of creation and reminds us that there is a love at work in life that is greater than the obvious chaos of this present darkness. One wisdom-keeper at Being Benedictine writes:

I think of synchronicities as connections seen with the inner eye. They are holy coincidences. Both mysterious and meaningful, these holy surprises open our eyes in new ways. The voice of synchronicity encourages us to be aware, to look and listen deeply... There are so many invisible forces and connections weaving a web that holds us in its grace. The more we look, the more we see. It is only with eyes open to wonder, holy surprises, and synchronicity that we experience the humbling and awesome fall to our knees. There we are uplifted by invisible forces and surrounded by angels who “walk among us in seen and unseen forms.” In these moments, we see new pathways and possibilities. I agree with Brian McLaren who said “The closest thing to God is when we say WOW!” Holding tight to this knowing sustains us when our faith is not as strong or challenges present themselves. 

https://beingbenedictine.com/2022/12/21/synchronicity-and-holy-surprise/

Our sojourn north was originally slated for Nova Scotia five years ago. When the pandemic was declared, however, we aborted our plans and joined the rest of the world in lockdown. Regrouping, we began to see what a closer journey through the Eastern Townships of Quebec might offer, only to be thwarted again with the cruel absurdities at the border. Rather than risk a third frustration, we decided to use our dollars to support the great state of Maine's governor, who has taken on the current administration with a curt: "See you in court!" This was my first clue that something significant was brewing below the surface.

That second whisper came when my brother from another mother - my musical co-conspirator in both Wednesday's Child and All of Us - asked if I might learn a Huey Lewis and the News song: The Power of Love. It's a bluesy pop tune from the movie, Back to the Future, that we once used in Tucson to kick off our new alternative worship series. Both then and now, we hunt for essentially popular secular songs that evoke and illuminate deeper spiritual truths. Because so many of us have in the past been burned by the church and alienated from so-called organized religion, yet still experience a hunger for meaning and community, doing simultaneous translation through music has become our way of making connections with sisters and brothers like us who are spiritual but not religious. My musical mates and I have discovered that sharing these songs in a prayerful but not overly pious way can sometimes lead us all into holy ground. That's why we once chose The Power of Love as well as Who Are You by The Who 25 years ago in our ministry of solidarity. What if God Was One of Us was another no-brainer! That this old friend should pop up again at this moment in time genuinely caught my attention.

I'd been laid low, you see, for four days with a flare-up of diverticulitis: I didn't know I had this affliction, but after settling into our retreat house, a wave of pain took me down. That, too, proved useful as I had to rest quietly and start a clear semi-fast that offered time to read, pray, and reflect. Silence and solitude are helpful allies when it comes to celebrating the quiet synchronicities. Serendipitously, an old article David Brooks article written in 2018 about Jacques Maritain and his philosophy of personalism popped up in my reading. As the aphorism proclaims: when the student is ready, the Buddha appears - so, apparently, I was ready! I'd heard of Maritain and his philosophical personalism, it influenced the inner/outer journey of MLK and offered a third way between the rugged individualism of the West and the soul strangling collectivism of the East, but I never took the time to go deeper. Brooks wrote that: 

Personalism is a philosophical tendency built on the infinite uniqueness and depth of each person. Over the years, people like Walt Whitman, Martin Luther King, William James, Peter Maurin, and Karol Wojtyla (who went on to become Pope John Paul II) have called themselves personalists, but the movement is still something of a philosophic nub and not exactly famous. Back in 1968, Wojtyla wrote, “The evil of our times consists in the first place in a kind of degradation, indeed in a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each human person.” And that’s still true.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/opinion/personalism-philosophy-collectivism-fragmentation.html

Again, my unplanned, counter-intuitive gift of convalescence offered me a chance to do some research. The more I read about Maritain and his uniquely creative wisdom re: the meaning of life, the more I wanted to learn. Donald DeMarco, Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Jerome's College in Ontario, Canada, offered an accessible and thorough introduction to Maritain, noting that Maritain:

Was born in Paris on November 18, 1882. He grew up in that city, barely nourished spiritually on the lukewarm Protestantism of his mother. When he entered the Lycée Henri IV, he possessed no particular religious convictions. He enrolled at the Sorbonne in 1901 during France's rich and corrupt Third Republic, a time when rabid French anti-clericalism had turned the Church into an intellectual ghetto. The school's rigid empiricism had effectively excluded any respectful discussion of spiritual matters. One day, as Jacques walked hand in hand through a Paris park with his Jewish girlfriend, Raissa, the two made a pact that if, within a year, they could not find any meaning to life beyond the material, they would commit suicide. That despair dissolved when they heard lectures at the Collège de France given by Henri Bergson, whose theories of creative evolution exalted the spirit of man (sic) and his ability to discover the intelligibility of things through intuition. In 1905, Jacques and Raissa, now newlyweds, met a passionate Catholic named Leon Bloy ("A Christian of the second century astray in the Third Republic'') who led them into the Catholic faith (where Maritan began his exhaustive study of St. Thomas Aquinas.)

https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/christian-personalism-of-jacques-maritain-10027

Before starting this mystical pilgrimage, I was sent a NY Times article from a trusted colleague about what people who have given up on organized religion say they miss the most. With certainty and sorrow, most of the thousands of respondents to Lauren Jackson's research said that what they missed the most was belonging. They yearned for connections in life that went deeper than a bowling league or a book study. Jackson connected her own personal journey to the bigger picture, writing:

I never really wanted to leave my faith. I wasn’t interested in exile — familial, cultural or spiritual. But my curiosity pulled me away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and toward a secular university. There, I tried to be both religious and cool, believing but discerning. I didn’t see any incompatibility between those things. But America’s intense ideological polarity made me feel as if I had to pick. My story maps onto America’s relationship to religion over the last 30 years. I was born in the mid-1990s, the moment that researchers say the country began a mass exodus from Christianity. Around 40 million Americans have left churches over the last few decades, and about 30 percent of the population now identifies as having no religion. People worked to build rich, fulfilling lives outside of faith. That’s what I did, too. I spent my 20s worshiping at the altar of work and, in my free time, testing secular ideas for how to live well. I built a community. I volunteered. I cared for my nieces and nephews. I pursued wellness. I paid for workout classes on Sunday mornings, practiced mindfulness, went to therapy, visited saunas and subscribed to meditation apps. I tried book clubs and running clubs. I cobbled together moral instruction from books on philosophy and whatever happened to move me on Instagram. Nothing has felt quite like that chapel in Arkansas.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/style/religion-america.html

She then observes - as did Maritain and Raisa at the start of the 20th century and me, too, a century later - that: "People are unhappier than they’ve ever been and the country is in an epidemic of loneliness. It’s not just secularism that’s to blame, but those without religious affiliation in particular rank lower on key metrics of well-being. They feel less connected to others, less spiritually at peace and they experience less awe and gratitude regularly." 

Mother Teresa much the same thing when she observed in the late 1970's that: HIV/AIDS, drug/alcohol/sex addictions, or gun violence were not the deadliest problems confronting the USA. It's loneliness. Belonging matters. Living with purpose and compassion is salvific. Embracing the paradox of sacred trust and grace invites us to move beyond the trust and constraints of linear logic and asks us to acquire sacramental eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to feel, and flesh to honor. That is, the holy in our humanity is not only attracted to beauty and love, but becomes healing when these unique individual blessings are shared in community. (Part two will amplify this reality.)

pictures from our sojourn thus far...