Synchronicity

I love words! Several years ago, several of us were reading a book about synchronicities, a concept coined by Carl Jung in 1950: the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.

Sometimes, I'll be writing a word and hear it within a minute or two on NPR.  Sometimes, like yesterday, driving home from lunch, I'll be thinking about someone (yesterday it was Linda Kot), the phone rings and it's Linda!

At lunch, Pam and I were talking about simplifying our lives, making more time for the things and people who matter.  Low maintenance hair styles, cars, clothes, houses.  Then I read this morning's Brainpickings, and the top article (by Erich Fromm) was about simplifying life:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/03/23/erich-fromm-the-art-of-living/?mc_cid=0379a5846e&mc_eid=7940cd5ca2

Today I was thinking about Janet Oglethorpe, a dear friend I haven't seen for too long a time--then she sent me this poem by David Whyte:

EASTER BLESSING

The blessing of the morning light to you,
may it find you even in your invisible
appearances, may you be seen to have risen
from some other place you know and have known
in the darkness and that that carries all you need.
May you see what is hidden in you
as a place of hospitality and shadowed shelter,
may that hidden darkness be your gift to give,
may you hold that shadow to the light
and the silence of that shelter to the word of the light,
may you join all of your previous disappearances
with this new appearance, this new morning,
this being seen again, new now, and newly alive.

These synchronicities make me sit up and pay attention!

I listened this morning to "A Way With Words" on NPR--an excellent program about the pronunciations and usages of words in different regions of the country.  Do you say "Ahnt" or "Ant" or "Aint" to describe your mother or father's sister?  Do you call the evening meal "supper" or "dinner"?  The two linguistic geniuses who host the program teach me so much about usage and the etymology of words.  If you can't hear it on the radio, you might want to check it out online.