An Experience Beyond Understanding

When is coincidence more than coincidence?

I never believed what the nuns told me. All that stuff about what Heaven was going to be like, all the talk in those weekly Catechism classes in the basement of St. Albert the Great Church. I wasn’t going to meet St. Peter at the gates of Heaven when I died and wasn’t going to eternally hang out above the clouds where it never rains and is always springtime. And I certainly was not a believer when I was told that when I pass on, I’ll get to see all the people I have loved and lost. All the relatives and the friends who died before me. They’re up there waiting for you, I was told. You’ll all be together, they said.

Nah. It sounds nice, but it just doesn’t compute for me.

I’m not religious. I’m not an atheist, either. Maybe “spiritual” somehow? But what does “spiritual” even mean anymore? What I am for certain is curious, and open to the prospect that no one is ever going to find out any of the answers to these heavenly questions. Maybe not even when we die.

I was brought up Roman Catholic. Baptism. Communion. Confirmation. All of it. But, like many young men who considered themselves searchers, I eventually turned away from formal or organized religion. Some forty years later, I still don’t know what I believe. Or if there is anything to believe. I remain a searcher.

Still, something will happen now and then that makes more wonder: Is there something else, something bigger in charge here? It’s the experience that seems so incredibly otherworldly with no clear explanation, something beyond my or anyone’s capabilities of understanding, taking on an unexpected mystical level.

Some call it “a sign from God.” Others may label it “a holy omen,” or “a divine signal.” It’s “Karma,” or “Mysticism,” or explained away as “an alignment of the heavens.” Most of us know the more common phrasing: “The heavens have aligned.” Overall, it’s an unmistakable phenomenon that seems far more than coincidence.

* * *

I’m not entirely sure what made me look in the old box of collected family memories. I don’t go there often. I knew there were a few meaningful items inside—my mother’s wedding ring, some bracelets my sons made for me when they were just kids, a cufflink my grandmother gave me when I was young—but I wasn’t anticipating finding an old, somewhat tarnished religious medal about the size of a dime. It was at the very bottom of the box attached to a large safety pin as a way, I suspected, to keep it from being misplaced. As soon as I saw it, I wondered, “Is this Dad’s? Is this the medal he always wore around his neck, the one he never took off?” I don’t recall it being given to me at any moment before or after his death, but there it was. Dad’s medal.

I used baking soda and vinegar and tried to bluff it up so I could read what was inscribed. I held it under a bright light and put on my reading glasses.

St. Paul of the Cross. Pray for us.

What little I may have learned in my religious studies was lost a long time ago. Who is this St. Paul of the Cross? Why is he praying for us? For me? And why did my father wear this for so many years? I’m not expected to find all the answers. But maybe some.

I turn to where many do these days. Facebook.

Without getting too deep into the Catholic weeds, I learned that my father likely received the medal as a gift, maybe for Holy Communion or Confirmation. Maybe my father’s confirmation name was Paul, but I had no way of knowing this or finding out. But the most striking revelation came from a friend who had done a little research on St. Paul of the Cross. What was revealed was the beginning of my belief that the discovery of the medal might have been far more than a simple happenstance.

St. Paul of the Cross is the patron saint of writers. Writers. I’m a writer. I did not know this fact even though I had taken the name Paul as my confirmation name many years ago. (It had nothing to do with St. Paul and more to do with Paul McCartney, to be honest.) And then there was the final element for building the case that this was more than a coincidence: The discovery of the medal came just days before the anniversary of my father’s birthday.

More friends responded to my Facebook post.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Too many things here to make it just a coincidence.

I think your dad sent it to you as a sign to keep writing.

• An unlikely and unexpected discovery, days before my father’s birthday,

• St. Paul and my confirmation name

• And the link to writers.

More than coincidence?

Truth is, we believe what we want to. Whatever helps us get through the night. Our beliefs, our faith, whatever you wish to call it, is there to help us tread the choppy waters of life. We find beauty, inspiration, and grace to propel us forward, to give us hope and comfort, to ground us so that we can weather this stormy world.

The spiritual mystics—the Celts, and the likes of Thomas Merton, Marguerite Porete, and Simone Weil—believe that experiences like this disclose the existence of what they call an extrasensory dimension of reality whose existence cannot not be detected through the inadequate limitations of human capabilities.

Is this discovery a small act of Mysticism?

I have no idea. None of us do. And maybe I’m making too much if it all. But maybe still, I need to. Maybe this searcher is looking for connections, for some evidence of a higher power, a divinity beyond human comprehension to help him see the meaning of why we are here and what it’s all about.

Or, maybe, it’s just a big accident.

Still, even without an explanation for such an experience, I want to believe that there is something greater at work here, even if I don’t understand it.

Jack Kerouac, a searcher in many aspects of his life, including his spiritual life, wrote in a journal entry in 1951 . . .

“I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life but that great consciousness of life.”

I hope it is true, too.

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David W. Berner is the author of several award-winning books of fiction and memoir. His memoir Daylight Saving Time: The Power of Growing Older is due out this summer and currently available for pre-order.