Coincidences?? Hm...

I spent the past two weeks in the Alps and could not be happier to be back to Paris! Don't get me wrong, the Alps are splendid and I had the chance to spend a few days snowboarding in this splendor, but I also learned a valuable lesson: If 2 grandparents need help caring for their 2 grandchildren on a vacation, thus making the grownup to child ratio 3:2, there's something wrong with the children, and the parents know it, and the grandparents know it. More on that in a future blog perhaps.

After being away, I needed to get out today and be in the city I love, so Brock and I went out walking all day long. He wanted to get some video footage and to revisit a street he found in the Marais while I was out of town. We walked in circles for about two hours trying to find this street filled with Jewish food vendors before realizing we were about three blocks east of it.

Earlier this morning I had found a vintage shop online I was planning to visit after lunch to look for some new boots. I wrote down the address and directions. On my way home from lunch, I stopped in a shoe store and found some boots I loved and bought, so I went home instead of to the vintage shop. As it turned out, the Jewish street was the exact location of the vintage shop! Had I gone there after lunch, and later came here with Brock, I would have ended up in the exact spot in the metropolis of Paris twice in the same day. And we may have avoided a lot of walking in circles since I had the address in my purse. What are the odds, eh? Eerily though, when I sought out the address of the vintage shop since we were in the neighborhood, the store did not exist.

Another coincidence: While in the Alps, I had no access to television and internet, and one can only hike so much, so I spent most afternoons and nights reading. I finished three books in ten days, and wishing I had brought another easy‑reader, my final book was a pretty heavy one: Confessions, by Saint Augustine. I bought this book on 5^th avenue from a street vendor alongside central park a couple of years ago while visiting my brother in NYC and have tried starting it a few times since then, but finally became determined to read the whole thing. When I got back to Paris, I decided to put it aside for a bit to read something else, so I picked up Dominion, a book my friend Tara loaned me a couple of days before I left Phoenix. I opened the book, read the intro, proceeded to the first page and chills ran through my body when I realized that the opening quote of the book was by Saint Augustine, from Confessions. This coincidence is made just slightly more profound by the fact that my friend Jennifer once mentioned to me while reading and having coffee at La Grande Orange that she attributes much significance to the opening line of a book, and I have thought of her saying this every time I begin a book and I now always read the first line very carefully, realizing the careful consideration put into this first statement by the author. And that very Jennifer happens to be coming to visit me this weekend. The coincidence is made only further profound considering that the morning before I began Confessions, I walked Majerle over to a church in my neighborhood to check evening mass times. And of course, that church was Saint Augustine. The coincidences go on. I told my husband about this and he asked if I happened to have been talking about Saint Augustine lately (which I had not) because for some reason he had called his mom and asked her to mail him his books by the same canonized author. And lastly, Saint Augustine is the son of the saint I chose for my confirmation name: Saint Monica.

I don't really believe in coincidences; I have always believed what we call coincidences are God's way of entertaining Himself and maybe letting us know that we are right where we're supposed to be. But I'd really like to know if there's any meaning behind this one.