WISTERIA AND THE WHALE: SYNCHRONICITY, SERENDIPITY, AND HOPE DURING THE PLAGUE by James B. Nicola “If you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it,” said Alice Walker in her famous novel, “I think it pisses God off.” Such a theology, of course, takes as a given some Divine Presence caring whether you notice violets popping up in a sea of grass, or wisteria blossoms cascading from above, inviting you to look skyward. As a child in central New England, I felt enthralled and replenished by walks through lush woodlands, drives in the country, and hikes along mountain trails. Spring and autumn boasted parades of colors, textures, and aromas; winter offered sensational servings of snow; summer never ceased to enchant with its daily cycle of sunrise, sunset, moonlight, starlight, and fireflies. Whenever a learned astronomer predicted a solar eclipse, you bet I followed suggestions for how to protect my eyes in order to observe it. This past December, did you catch the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, the “Christmas star”? I missed its peak in Manhattan, due to three nights of cloud
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cover. But I did manage to catch a fourplanet alignment back in 2003. Similarly, as Halley’s comet passed by Earth in 1986, its one time per 76-year orbit, it ended up being visible only from the southern hemisphere. Drat. But in 1996, a more recently discovered comet appeared, visible even from my midtown apartment. I began to look forward to it each evening as a dependable visitor. It made me smile—for no particular reason, at first. But over the course of several months, it seemed to be saying something —or, like a work of abstract art, evoking a thought it wasn’t “saying” per se. Which was simply this: to remember that I was not alone. That we were not alone. Nor ever could be, quite. Because the universe was still a work very much in progress. Like us. *** While I knew that my interludes with fauna, flora, and firmament were hardly mine alone, my relationship with nature, ever since childhood, has felt peculiarly personal. Long before my “comet encounter,” in other words. If you’ve ever