Vaclav Havel, via Donny:
Being spellbound within me and Being spellbound within the world can join hands anytime, anywhere and in any way: when I look into the crown of a tree or into someone’s eyes, when I succeed in writing you a good letter, when I am moved by an opera on television, when a passage from Levinas sets my thoughts swirling, when our visits work out, when I understand the meaning of my compassion for the weather-woman, when I help someone or when someone helps me, when something important happens, or when nothing in particular happens at all. But whenever and however it happens, such moments tend to be rare and fleeting. Given the contradictory nature of separated Being, it can’t be any other way and it is right that it should be so: after all, the uniqueness and the unpredictability of such moments combine to create their meaning: it is the meaning of “islands of meaning” in the ocean of our struggling, the meaning of lanterns whose light is cast into the darkness of our life’s journey, illuminating all the many meanings of its direction.
I could explain to you the circumstances of a synchronicity from last week, which involved a drive in Daviess County, a podcast, a Halloween decoration, and a cross.
But the explaining would do no good. It was one of those moments when “nothing in particular happens.” Explaining such events to someone else is like describing your dreams: meaningful to the teller; confusing to the hearer. You not only had to be there, you had to be me.
Nevertheless, the meaning in such events is not invented by me. I have often enough had these experiences that I know their pattern: Unlooked-for, something comes into my awareness and brings with it a clarity that can only be interpreted as a message from elsewhere. Such experiences are gifts, not products of thought.
The human heart, properly attuned, is an antenna for receiving the meaning broadcast throughout the cosmos. Or, to make the metaphor more homely, meaning is seed cast broad hand across all kinds of ground. Cultivate your heart that the seed may take root when it appears.