The Oxford dictionary defines serendipity as “the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident. I am not sure this is how I have come to understand serendipity. I remember Carl Jung telling a story of coincidences of events and symbols that he began to notice. I can’t recall his examples but he suggested that they happen all the time but one needs to notice them. I person who is more intuitive is more likely to see, if you understand intuition as a kind of seeing from above or seeing with the heart. Some people will look for signs out and about in order to know how to make a decision. I am not inclined to do this simply because I don’t believe we can ever be completely sure whether a decision is perfectly right for us. For me, choosing is about stepping onto a different path and each path leads to a different set of outcomes that will be “right” for us. In other words, I believe that if your decision is made with good (loving) motive (and perhaps with some information-seeking) you should be able to relax in it. My husband and I had a conversation recently about some of the decisions we made over the years. We realized that his decision to change jobs or our choice to move to a new location put us on a different path. The paths we did not choose may have been just as good for us. We will never know, of course.
An example of serendipity happened to me yesterday, though I don’t think it will effect any major decisions in my life right now. A poet friend of mine, Dianne, posted a short piece she wrote about moving through fog. It was a positive poem. She finds fog-walking to be comforting. I made a comment that I used to think about fog-walking as well and it helped me get through a difficult time.
This morning, I was reading an old journal. I wrote on July 30, 2008:
Oh, the motions I go through to try to grab hold of God. God, in a sense is like fog. I can walk in it – and it keeps me from seeing – but I breathe it in and breathe it out. I sense divine activity all about but can only see a short way in front of me. So all that binds life together – the great connection – is a mystery to me. Nevertheless, I try to guess – I create a master plan in my head because I am afraid that the truth might be that there is none. Alas. Well, I keep grabbing. I cannot hold God in my hands. But breathing in and out seems to help – for as long as I am alive – I feel somehow connected to something greater than myself. Life itself – and I wonder, perhaps, that God is Life Itself – no face – just Life.
Serendipity. It seems the only decision I need to make is to take the next step and have confidence that God is here.