Recipe for Synchronicity

Today is All Soul's Day, established by the ancient Catholic Church to remember and pray for souls in Purgatory, if you believe in such a place. Purgatory......a place of purging, cleansing, purification......maybe the belief developed from the ancient myth of the river Styx which the dead must cross. Maybe if your unconfessed, unforgiven sins make you too weighty to ride the ferry, you must have those sins washed away by going through the water itself. Good thing Jesus took care of all that on the Cross.

For the sake of All Soul's Day, I will light Jack-of-the-Lantern's candle this evening, just to see his goofy, glowing expression one more time. His lid has shrunk and his teeth are shrivelling inward, but no matter.

Yesterday afternoon, a fun little synchronicity occurred. My sophomore son had arrived home from school earlier than normal-----he had a one-day reprieve from football practice after the big win the night before-----and he, in starving mode, raided the pantry and refrigerator. I asked him if he wanted me to bake bars or cookies, and he chose cookies. So I riffled through my recipe box to find a favorite, pulling out a card hand-written many years ago by my church friend, Andrea.

When I joined my Lutheran church nearly 30 years ago, Andrea was, of all the young women there, the most welcoming to me. Probably because she herself had been a newcomer, too, shortly before I arrived on the scene. Not to complain, but our church had been very insulated there in a community of exclusively Germans, and the members seemed somewhat stand-offish at the time I joined. And, of course, I was an alien of sorts, having come from a Baptist Church, and a rival high school community. Admittedly, too, I'm naturally an introvert, though I've learned to act extroverted when that is called for.

Andrea was from another part of Iowa, and she had been raised Catholic. She was like a breath of totally different air. We shared many fun times over the years, cheering our kids on at games, carpooling to far-away Lutheran school events, etc., and enjoying many good visits. Our now eighteen-year-old daughters played together often as toddlers, as I babysat when Andrea started working outside the home. Also, we attended a Bible Study together years ago, with some of my old Baptist friends.......it was then that she gave me the recipe.


Anyway, I had just pulled out the big bowl to mix the cookie dough ingredients in when the phone rang. It was Andrea!! She was stalled with a flat tire on her way home from work. At first I thought maybe she needed some assistance, but she said that her son was coming to help her. She had called me so she could get the phone number for the church basement......she was going to be late for the Ladies Aid potluck. I looked the number up in the phone book for her, and we chatted a bit. I said, "Andy, I was just thinking of you because I'm about to make your good oatmeal cookie recipe!" She sighed and said she hadn't made cookies for a long time, being so busy with going to work everyday. We agreed that we don't see enough of each other anymore, and that was that.

What a chuckle, though, to have her call right then, when I was about to start her cookie recipe! Fun, fun! Synchronicities are scientific fact, something to do with quantum physics and nonlocality.......impossible to understand, but most of all they are great fun when they occur!