Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, I believed in cosmic interconnectedness, a belief which was reinforced by living in a small town and seeing the same faces over and over again. I would think of someone only to encounter him or her as we met on one of the trails or streets passing through town. On the trails, it would be a chance to exchange a few words. On the streets, as our vehicles passed each other, it was at the very least an opportunity for mutual acknowledgment and to have noted in my thoughts that I’d made some sort of connection moments before, and to thus marvel, “What the heck is going on here?”
My small hometown of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, was in the midst of a hippie revolution at the time, with many young folks like me from all over the United States arriving and finding ways to settle in. So perhaps it was very natural for us to be watchful of each other. We were making connections that would last a lifetime.
My mother had a favorite saying she gleaned from an Art Linkletter program on daytime television but that has often been attributed to Albert Einstein—“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” I do not know very much about God, but I am convinced by coincidence that we may be interconnected in ways we’ve not yet imagined. Of course, it may be that we find in the world what we most expect. On the other hand, being struck sidesaddle by the sudden arrival of coincidence bearing gifts of greater import and meaning is more likely to happen if we’re open-minded enough to welcome it.
In our digital age and through our devices, we may have a sense of interconnectedness even greater than that which we might find on the trails and streets of a small town. But rather than bringing us together, it has proven its potential to tear us apart with marketing algorithms sifting us into columns of isolation.
I will not describe all the myriad coincidences in my life, as I’m sure you’ve noted some of your own. But for me, one instance stands out. In the late 1980s, my wife and I were sitting on a porch swing overlooking our front yard in the woods, and I had been reading a book, The Black Butterfly: An Invitation to Radical Aliveness by Richard Moss. In the book, Moss described an encounter with a black butterfly that shifted his view of polarization between the extremes of black and white, good versus evil, and the like. And so, as I was sitting on the swing with my wife, gently moving forth and back, and reflecting on the contents of the book, I wondered what would happen if a black butterfly was to mate and in synthesis merge with a white one. What would the color of the offspring be? I felt a slight tingle on my left arm and looked down to discover a moth (not a butterfly) had landed. I had been imagining that black and white butterflies might produce offspring a shade of gray but the moth that landed made a joke of the narrowness of my speculations.
It was polka-dotted, black wings with white dots and to top it all off, it had fuzzy orange leggings. The moth sat there as I examined it and marveled at the connection between my thoughts and its arrival. I mentioned it to my wife. She got up from the swing to make lemonade, as I observed its presence. When the door opened behind me I turned my head to note my wife’s return and when I looked back at my arm, the moth was gone with no trace. The moth, I learned much later was an “eight spotted forester,” Alypia octomaculata, and is found in the woodlands from Canada to Texas.
We dismiss such experiences, telling ourselves, “That’s just a coincidence.” But perhaps if we followed the advice offered by my mother, Art Linkletter, and Albert Einstein, we would at least apply a smidgeon of greater meaning and attention when signs of interconnectedness pop up.
In the early half of the nineteenth century, as our civilization was descending into the grind of industrialization, German pedagogue Friedrich Froebel transformed modern education with his invention of Kindergarten. Kindergartens were launched all over the world in the years that followed. In recent decades, the name lost its deeper meaning in American education and became “the new first grade.” But as increasing numbers of people of all ages suffer from depression, anxiety, loneliness, powerlessness, and alienation, a bit more Kindergardian interconnectedness is just what Dr. Froebel would have ordered for each of us regardless of age.
When Froebel was just a baby, he lost his mother. His father remarried and, for a time, infant Friedrich was the apple of his stepmother’s eye. When children of her own came, the attention on which Friedrich had thrived was offered no more, and he became a troubled child of the streets. Perhaps that’s why the concept of interconnectedness held such an important place in Froebel’s educational theory. Froebel invented his own word for it, combining the German word glied, meaning “member,” and ganzes, meaning “whole.” The combined word, gliedganzes or “member-whole,” suggests that the child is both a whole being and a member of ever-expanding whole systems, each in supportive transcendence of each other. The purpose of Kindergarten as Froebel originally intended it, was not to prepare children for reading and further schooling but to bring them to a level of greater understanding of their role as active participants in the world.
One of Froebel’s early books, Mutter- und Koselieder, translated in English as Mother Play, consisted of a series of songs and illustrations to illuminate various aspects of family, nature, community, and culture, including hand gestures for the children to use suggesting their participation in each. For example, in the illustration of the carpenter (Tischler) at work with his hand plane, a small child is shown at work at the Tischler’s feet, her hands emulating the two-handed grip that the carpenter uses to guide and propel his plane along the stock.
Another one of my favorite songs and illustrations from Mother Play is that of the Charcoal Maker. When the Charcoal Maker came into town, all covered with soot from his fires in the forest, he would be frightening to children. To put children at ease, to help them see his importance to their community, the illustration shows his tepee-shaped mound and hut. The children would use their hands as shown in the illustration to form the shape of the hut, then observe the blacksmith at his forge with hammer and anvil, and witness the child being read to by its mother while warmed by a charcoal fire.
The Internet bears a striking resemblance to the all-knowingness we might attribute to a deity. I was able to take my remembrance of a small moth resting on my arm, type its features into Google and learn its names both common and Latin, and see multiple photos of it in various settings. It is a thing still not so powerful as having landed on my arm. It is possible to be so overly attentive to a world presented by algorithmic machines that we fail to look upward and outward toward the world that surrounds us.
Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was part of a meditation group, seeking a sense of greater understanding. I found meditation to be soothing—a tool for finding greater balance. But when untethered from the real world, meditation (and prayer) can also be a powerful form of self-deception. I was taught that meditation might involve sitting in stillness, but it is meant for moving through life. We were advised to visualize our souls as a bright sun over our heads, a nexus of connectivity between ourselves and others. No lines were drawn to separate ourselves from others or from life itself. Our teacher described his form of meditation as “dual awareness” and “meditation on the run.” It required no sitting position, no fussing with the hands to get the flow of energy just right, and no additional levels to master in order to prove our spiritual status to ourselves or others. You could do it whenever or wherever you were with no one in your vicinity becoming any the wiser.
I’ve learned to accept and appreciate coincidence, not as the assurance that there is a God but as evidence that we are connected in ways we may not yet understand. And perhaps our interconnectedness would be more self-evident if only each of us were more vigilant and watchful for our deep connections with each other.