James 24:7

Well...yeah...I guess you could say I've been taking an out-of-the-way drive through the countryside in this little series of essays on coincidence.  That's allowed.  After all, what is a blog if not thinking out loud in the most public of places?   These things happen to me..to us...so why not slow down and ask what is going on?

Maybe we are all called to play in the field of God.

One of the things I notice about the whole inquiry is this desire to "find the answer"...to finally zero in on a 25-word-or-less definitive word:

"A-ha! Coincidence is THIS..." 

Back in "God Weaves VII" I listed 9 or 10 theories of coincidence.  While my list is of the quick and dirty variety, many of the theories are of the "zeroing in" school, as if the point is to once and for all "zero in" on precisely what this thing called "coincidence" really IS.   

Several years ago, I taught a college class called "Theories of Personality."  In the class we surveyed the main theories of personality advanced by social scientists in the 20th century.  I taught Freud, Jung, Adler, Sullivan, Maslow, Rogers, Hall, Skinner, etc. etc. etc.  We turned "personality" this way and that.  We spoke of psychodynamic theories, learning theories, behavioral theories, humanistic and transpersonal theories of personality.

Finally, a student, worn smooth by the rush of theory, raised her hand and said, "Dr. Street...when are you going to cut to the chase and tell us what really makes us tick?"

She wanted to get to the bottom of things, to zero in, to cut to the chase, to find the nugget at the bottom of that deep, dark mine.

We seem to think that the object of the game is to follow the ever-narrowing path that will take us to THE answer.  ("Is that your final answer?")

But what if we did this...

What if we decided that some experiences in life would be better understood if we treated them like art?  What if we approached life and some of the odd experiences of life in ways that do not lead to a "narrowing down" but to an "opening up"?

I have been reading the DaVinci Code.  I am about 1/3 of the way through.  I have not gotten to the stuff that everyone is finding so offensive.  I am to the part where Sophie and Langdon find words written across the glass in front of the Mona Lisa.

As I read the other night, I was struck by the picture of two people standing before a work of art trying to decode an encrytped message...how they are working to "narrow down" before a work of art that may be there to "open them up".

Maybe in our attempt to decode and distill these odd experiences of life we miss the point.  Maybe they are little poems, little riddles, little paintings placed in our paths to induce awe and wonder and joy...Maybe they are there to shake us out of our self-absorption and begin a conversation that begins, "You won't believe what just happened..."  Maybe God has all kinds of ways to get us to notice each other and to talk and to listen.

Maybe these coincidences are there to call us out into the field of God rather than into the ever-narrowing caverns of a bottomless mine.

Maybe...