happier coincidence

A coincidence is when God performs a miracle, and decides to remain anonymous.

I stopped believing in coincidence a good while ago. In fact, I’m not sure I ever believed in random happenstance. But I had one of these serendipitous encounters a few days ago that has me both smiling and scratching my head.

First, some background…. Five years ago, I was living and working in Richmond, Virginia — my hometown. I’d been making a good living as a technical writer, and was working on my fiction and creative writing on the side. But my personal and spiritual life was suffering. I’d always been a spiritual seeker, and was even a graduate/ordinand of the New Seminary’s interfaith ministry program, but I’d gotten rather caught up in the more mundane details of life. Meditation was happening maybe weekly, not daily. Prayer was present, but unfocused.

I wasn’t so much unhappy as I was quietly tangled.

When I heard about the “Teacher’s Tutorial” program that Neale Donald Walsch (NDW) and his Conversations with God (CWG) Foundation were planning for the summer of 2003 in Portland, Oregon, I registered immediately. I’d read and enjoyed NDW’s books, and my mother had recently moved to Portland and had been asking me to come visit. Plus, I needed a vacation.

The short version is that I had a great time and fell in love with the Pacific Northwest. I moved out this way the following summer. Though I didn’t further pursue becoming a CWG trainer, the two-day workshop was a treasured experience all the same.

Fast forward to this past Saturday. The week had been a real bear. Amongst some other disappointments, Duke had just gotten knocked out of the NCAA Tournament. I was dragging myself over to the climbing gym, so as not to feel like a complete slug, but first stopped by my local Powells to pick up a book I had on order.

The staff was breaking down chairs immediately following an author event — and there, seated at a table with only a couple of people in front of him, was Neale Donald Walsch.

I'd not seen him since the teachers’ training, and hadn't known he'd be in Portland — much less at that particular bookstore.

I got in line. NDW kept glancing at me. There was a flicker of recognition, but I could tell he couldn't quite place me. When it was my turn to approach the table, I told him briefly who I was and where we'd met before, and then thanked him for bringing me to Oregon. He had one last copy of his new book — "Happier Than God" — in front of him, which he signed for me. I stepped out of the way to let the next folks approach, but NDW reached out to touch my elbow and said, "Good to see you again!"

That was a fun little coincidence.

Now I’ve got this book in my hands and am thinking again about how my (true) spiritual life had been slipping away from me in recent months. That might sound like a surprising statement, given my committed efforts to convert to Judaism. With the “Jewish thing,” it’s been pretty easy for me to focus on the mechanics of the conversion process and lose sight of my own core — something you’d think would be impossible to do, but it happens.

I did start coming back to myself recently, however, in a quiet but seminal moment when out dog walking with Mike. We were talking about my family’s reaction to my conversion. Without even thinking about it, I said, “My beliefs are still the same; I’m just finally choosing an affiliation.”

Huh. If I could have smacked myself upside the head — without too much discomfort — I would have. I’d just summed up for myself precisely what I’d needed to be reminded of. It’s time to come back to the core of intention and the underlying meaning within ritual and action, rather than getting so caught up in the relatively mundane external details.

So I’m grateful for these entertaining coincidences that act as guiding lines back to my own anchor. Now, it’s time to meditate, to read, to explore…. To keep breathing, but from a more conscious center. And that small, quiet miracle is often the best and clearest of all.