Synchronicity

The dictionary defines synchronicity as a coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related. I'm a big believer in synchronicity. I think life does its best to point us in the right direction. And today, I experienced one of those strange convergences.

After logging off last night, I was thinking about what I wanted to post on my blog today. And I decided to write about something that happened a year and a half ago. The story seemed relevant because it relates to the theme I've decided to focus on for the blog: the theme of change.

At the end of the summer, I was digging up an iris bed because of an infestation of iris borers. Borers are insects that rot out the rhizome (the fleshy root that looks like a yam). After digging up the bed, I sat and cut away all the rotten parts and divided the remaining pieces for replanting. As I sat there slicing through rhizomes and tossing away rejects, a sudden flash of insight hit me. I grew up in a church that emphasized salvation versus hellfire and damnation. God is portrayed as eager to separate the sheep from the goats—or the incurably rotten from the good, as I was doing with my irises. Sitting there in the warm August sun, I concluded that I don't view God that way anymore. Instead I see him more as an overall gardener: feeding and watering plants, pruning a bit here and there, propping up weak stems with support, and providing restraint where needed. The purpose of all this activity is not to sort out the good plants from the bad. It is to try to help each plant in the garden grow as full as possible and bear the most fruit.

So here is where the synchronicity comes in. Today, in the Episcopal Church, we observed Good Shepherd Sunday. The gospel reading was from John 10, in which Jesus says, "Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. . . . Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."

In the sermon, Rev. Kate, one of our priests, said she doesn't believe that Jesus is a gatekeeper, standing there saying, "I want this person, but that one is no good, so Satan can have them." Nor does she believe in a God who accepts everyone just as they are. Instead, she believes that God wants us to grow and change so that we can do more of God's work of bringing peace and justice to the world.

As I said yesterday, I believe that I am going through a new set of changes, and I still can't see exactly where I'm being led. So I'm going to write about the transformation as I go through it, step by uncertain step. Hopefully, someday, my life will be as bountiful as this: