Synchronicity

Synchronicity - the experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, where they are unlikely to be causally related (Wikipedia).

I've been writing in my journal the past week about life patterns. You know what I mean, the repeated behaviors that always produce the same maddening outcome. Recently when I discovered myself inside a repeated pattern, I beat myself for failing to notice . . . then a friend suggested I journal about the experience with compassion.

This morning after writing a few pages, I picked up a book of poetry received as a Christmas gift. It opened to the poem Casting and Gathering. I felt the words of the poet seep in. They inspired me to cast away blame and gather in forgiveness. What a beautiful synchronicity.    

Casting and Gathering

Years and years ago, these sounds took sides:

On the left bank, a green silk tapered cast

Went whispering through the air, saying hush

And lush, entirely free, no matter whether

It swished above the hayfield or the river.

On the right bank, like a speeded-up corncrake,

A sharp ratcheting went on and on

Cutting across the stillness as another

Fisherman gathered line-lengths off his reel.

I am still standing there, awake and dreamy,

I have grown older and can see them both

Moving their arms and rods, working away,

Each one absorbed, proofed by the sounds he's making.

One sound is saying, 'You are not worth tuppence,

But neither is anybody. Watch it! Be severe,'

The other says, 'Go with it! Give and swerve.

You are everything you feel beside the river.'

I love hushed air. I trust contrariness,

Years and years go past and I do not move

For I see that when one man casts, the other gathers

And then vice versa, without changing sides.

From Seeing Things by Seamus Heaney