When Serendipity, Truth and Religion Converge
I normally place more faith in serendipity than I do in the power or will of any deity to affect our lives. But, when the literary and the spiritual collide in a serendipitous flash of brilliant clarity, I can’t help but wonder whether it might be time to reevaluate my skepticism. Perhaps, I underestimate the reach of the Powers That Be.
Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, is a day of reflection, self-evaluation, confession of sins, and a time to make things right with those we may have wronged. I did my spiritual exercise of atoning in the way I always do—a little thinking, a little meditating, and pondering my list to see whom I may have injured during the year. I’m not much for prayer, but I find that listening to music, walking outdoors, and watching the trees and the rain, are spiritually cleansing.
Having taken a break from writing, at the end of the day I sat down to pick up where I left off writing my forthcoming novel, The Grandfathers’ Child. Turns out that this novel—a search for home and belonging and a meditation on the distinction between honesty and truth—is a dramatic and deeply confessional saga. As I sat down to pick up the thread of the story where I left off the previous day, I found myself in a room with my characters, one of them telling a story of his abduction and the threats made on his life years earlier. He was imbued by the spirit of the “granfa-granfas,” the grandfathers of our grandfathers, in whose presence truth most easily emerges. As my character began speaking through me, his tale was transmuted from a story about his trauma to a confession of what he had withheld from those closest to him, causing them unintended pain and suffering.
It would have been startling enough had this tale become a confession, unbeknownst even to the author penning the story. But, to have it occur on Yom Kippur, as if the character himself were acting in accordance with the requirements of the Day of Atonement, seems too tidy to be a coincidence.
I can only conclude that serendipity is alive and well. Or, the “granfa-granfas” were making themselves felt. Or perhaps, just perhaps, I’m wrong about the power and willingness of deities to affect our lives.
Photo by 周 辰曦 on Unsplash