Back in the day, way back in the day, I read The Celestine Prophecy, a sort of New Age-y, spiritual journey novel that enjoyed serious best-seller status.

To be honest, I don’t remember much about the story. What I remember is the concept of synchronicity, the belief that coincidences have a meaning for those who experience them. The thing is, I’ve always ascribed to Albert Einstein’s theory, that “coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” I woke up thinking about both synchronicity and Einstein’s quote and so I’ll share my story and you can let me know what you think.

On Monday night, in my daily phone call to Dad, he mentioned a song that he’d been thinking of lately. He couldn’t remember all the words and so he asked the woman who leads his bible study if she knew the song. She did; it’s a beautiful, old Christian tune and Dad sang to me a bit of the chorus, the part of the song he remembered. “You won’t know it, of course.” But he croaked out a couple lines, anyway, “And He walks with me, and He talks with me.” And I smiled, because I do know that song and I picked up the chorus: “And He tells me I am His own.”

Dad was surprised that I knew it, but he was even more surprised how I knew it: Mom used to sing that song. Not in recent years, but when I was a child.

I have few memories of my years in Texas; we moved to Georgia when I was seven. But I can see my mom, standing at the sink at our house in Arlington, washing dishes. And I hear that song.

I have not thought of that song in years. Years and years and years. But I thanked Dad for sharing with me, because it was a gift to remember Mom singing that song. And he thanked me, because he always loves hearing memories of Mom. “Perhaps your mother wanted us to hear that song,” he said.

Maybe, I thought. So I searched for the song and gave a listen to all the words. It really is a lovely song. And that might have been the end of it if I hadn’t been watching The Voice last night when Emily Ann Roberts sang In the Garden in the Live Playoffs:

Well, you don’t have to knock me over the head with it, Mom. I got the message.

So tell me, what do you think of synchronicity and coincidences? Writers are always chastised for including coincidences in a story, that real life doesn’t happen that way. But I think it’s just the opposite, that weird things happen all the time, events that defy logic or explanation.

Truth really is stranger than fiction.