I had no idea until I found myself looking at Wikipedia’s listing for events that happened on the 28th of January that serendipity is a neologism, coined by the author Horace Walpole in a letter to Horace Mann, the radical educator, politician, and, yes, Unitarian, one of the founders of a church I once served.
Some might look at the chain of connection and declare synchronicity, a meaningful coincidence. I would demure. I find this search for meaning and meaningfulness part of the shadow of our human condition. Not entirely our fault, I think. We are hard wired, or perhaps the better metaphor is how our firmware inclines us to seek meaning. It is the edge we have in evolution, it is a critical part of being the smart animal. But, synchronicity is the shadow, that finding meaning whether its there or not.
So, no wonder, when I went searching for a picture for this throw away meditation, I found the slogan “serendipity is no accident.”
Yes, dear one, it is.
Or, at least, so far as human beings are concerned the net of interrelatedness, the mysteries of causality are so complex and interwoven so vastly, that for our purposes, there is no meaning in these things.
But there can be delight.
And I delight in the serendipity of finding myself connected in an oh so tenuous way to the word itself…
The universe, I find is less full of meaning and much more full of surprise, sometimes delightful…
And, sometimes not.
That’s the human way, too. And, best saved for another time…
Today, just an invitation to enjoy it…
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