Coincidence?

One of my dearest friends, who moved back to her native England a few years ago, is in town to visit for a couple of weeks. Another good friend of ours picked her up at the airport yesterday and brought her home. As they walked up to the door of my friend's house, coming home from the airport, there was an Amazon package awaiting that my English friend had ordered for herself - a book she couldn't get back home.

A couple of hours after she arrived I went down for a cup of tea and a natter... my friend told me this story of the package that had awaited her arrival, and lo and behold - it is the same book that I put on my waiting list at Amazon only 5 days ago!!!! Is this coincidence? How do friends, so greatly separated by distance and busy lives, who's spiritual lives have taken fairly different paths, come to the same point in the path, simultaneously?? It makes me cry.

So I think that I will be placing my order at Amazon very soon so that I can read along with her. This book is Thomas Keating's Open Mind, Open Heart. I am very drawn to learning about Centering Prayer right now, and am considering taking a class on it soon.

In some ways, this coincidence might not be so very surprising. Though we have not talked together at all about our mutual desires to learn about this kind of prayer, prayer is my friend's passion. She teaches on prayer at many churches, and has been involved in many efforts to lead Christians into more prayer. I am surprised, though - how likely would it be that we would both be considering this one book, this one strand of the multitudinous strands that wind through the cord of prayer that stretches between humandkind and the divine, at exactly the same moment in time?