Dear friends,

Today is my 42nd birthday. This essay is longer and more personal than usual. Writing it has been a gift for me. I hope it also arrives as a gift for you.

I invite you to read it straight through or spend time in sections that seem most relevant to you. Thank you for sharing the journey of life.

Yours with gratitude,

Andrew

 

Synchronicity:

Divine Presence in Human Experience

Last year, my birthday was unlike any other in my life. It was my first since my dad died.

Today, a year later, his death still “hurts so good,” as dad would playfully say in painful situations. I think of him daily and am still surprised by the unpredictable waves of grief that wash over me.

Since his death, my attention has been expanding to God’s mysterious presence in my experience, especially in everyday life and deep grief. Jesus promised, “I am with you always.” Paul wrote, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”

This essay reflects on that divine presence that is always with us.

A Need for Presence

Early on a Thursday morning last April, my dad fell out bed. Mom called me to come help him, and I rushed over. But I wasn’t able to lift dad up by myself, and we called an ambulance.

After we arrived at the ER, dad stopped breathing. The medical staff frantically surrounded him, and I thought to myself with shocked sadness, “Did I just miss my chance to say goodbye to my dad?”

Thankfully, dad survived, and we got ten more days with him in the hospital.

Those were some of the most meaningful, sacred days for me and my family. Yes, they were acutely painful. Each day, we didn’t know if dad would recover or decline, live or die. The suspense of uncertainty was exhausting. But those ten days with dad were precious.

They taught me a profound lesson: I deeply need presence. And presence is enough.

During nine of dad’s ten days before his death, he had a breathing tube inserted into his throat and couldn’t speak. He was also so weak that he could barely scribble words on scraps of paper. Verbal communication wasn’t an option.

But dad could wink his eyes, squeeze our hands, and wiggle his toes. Warm emotion rises in my face as I write these simple words — eyes, hands, toes.

Those wordless signs of dad’s presence were everything to us. We didn’t need him to hold conversations, to reassure us once more that he loved us, or to do anything for us. We simply longed for his presence. The way he squeezed our hands as we held his or raised his eyebrows as we looked into his face or wiggled his toes when we asked him to reminded us that he was with us, alive – present.

A Sacred Shattering

Ten days deep into that suspended uncertainty, it finally happened. Dad died. It was 9:14pm on Saturday, April 27th.

Those may seeming like meaningless numbers: 9, 14, 27. But they mean so much to me. I’ve said them countless times over the last year. I’ve also noticed that other grieving people mention specific days, times, and other details when they tell the story of their loved one’s death. They’re all markers of presence, of the preciousness of being there together, as well as our grief in loss.

I will always remember pressing my weeping face against dad’s cold face. I felt like my soul was shattering into a thousand pieces. But the excruciating pain was also love ripping through me. Being face-to-face with my dad one last time was one of the most devastatingly beautiful, shatteringly sacred moments of my life. “It hurt so good,” and still does.

Soon after dad died, I felt like a special room in my soul had gone dark. It was like the window blinds were closed and the space had become vacant. I cried more often than perhaps any previous year in my life. In the second month, I simply felt numb and didn’t know what was happening inside of me — what I was thinking or feeling. That was an especially difficult aspect of the grief process for me: knowing that I was hurting but not being able to understand or express it.

But, over the last year, I’ve learned that the heart of my grief is surprisingly simple: I miss my dad’s presence. That missing is often especially strong on “firsts” like my first birthday, mom’s first Mother’s Day, or the first time I saw the Atlantic Ocean in Maine after dad died.

Grief has risen and fallen in me like an erratic tide. Sometimes its waves have washed over me and soothed me. Sometimes its waves have crashed over me and almost drown me. But in all its movements, its unpredictable rise and fall has continued to surprise me. Grief has felt like a mysterious visitor that shows up at the most unexpected times and reminds me of my longing for presence.

Synchronicity

What I’m about to write next has also surprised me. But it has equally been my experience.

Before, during, and after dad’s death, signs of divine presence have surprised me just as much as my grief has. Like dad in the hospital, these signs have felt like God squeezing my hand, winking at me, or playfully wiggling cosmic toes. Each one has invited me to trust that God’s presence is there, with me, even when I am grieving and aching with the feeling of absence. I never want to forget these experiences, and I desire to expand my attention to them.

I’m referring to synchronicities.

For me, synchronicities are mysterious signs of divine presence in our human experience. They’re tangible traces in our daily lives that Love is with us, witnessing us, holding us, even in events of shattering sorrow. They whisper to us that we are not alone, not abandoned in the pain we suffer, nor insane in the hope we hold onto. Synchronicities reassure us that our suffering is not God’s rejection or punishment of us. Instead, God suffers with us, holds us through it, and promises to finally heal us in the full presence of Love in the end. As Jesus promised, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

In her book The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life, psychologist Lisa Miller writes insightfully about synchronicities. She describes them as times when we feel “guided by something.” They’re moments “when the inner and outer align,” “when somehow, and usually through struggle, a bigger meaning is revealed to us.”

Synchronicities are not spiritual entertainment. Miller calls them “one way, even in darkness and suffering, for a new sense of the world to show up or shine through.” More technically, they’re moments “when two apparently disparate events are joined at the level of meaning or consciousness.” Synchronicities, she writes, are “an accessible way to illuminate and validate those sparks of inner knowing, those flashes of meaning or insight that arrive seemingly out of the blue.”

Research indicates that we can become more attentive to these “flashes of meaning” in our experience. Based on a study at Harvard Medical School, Miller summarizes,

“The more we pay attention to synchronicity, the more it becomes apparent, as though when our eyes are more open to it, synchronicity picks up steam, growing more forthcoming and abundant… The more we practice engaging with open awareness, the more we are able to perceive synchronicity. And as we perceive synchronicities, we become more spiritually oriented — more aware of guidance, connection, and unity in our lives.” (Lisa Miller, The Awakened Brain, 90-94)

Miller’s words powerfully describe my experience of divine presence in relation to my dad’s death. In some cases, I was immediately aware of these synchronicities when they happened. In others, I became aware of them many months later. But all of them astonished and helped me to “become more spiritually oriented – more aware of guidance, connection, and unity” in my life. Some of them made me laugh and gave me access to a wild joy. Others simply gave me a bit more grace to continue living and trusting that I’m not alone – that divine presence is “with me always” as Jesus promised.

In the remainder of this essay, I’d like to reflect on several synchronicities that occurred to me over the last year since dad died. I’m amazed by the variety of ways they showed up – a friend’s letter, clouds in the sky, flames of fire, a stranger’s graffiti on Christmas Eve. I don’t share them like pieces of evidence seeking to mount an argument. I share them as expressions of gratitude for good gifts.

I also hope these moments of reflection might expand our attention to the presence of divine Love that embraces us, even in our suffering. How might God be there, holding our hand, winking at us, wiggling toes, in ways we haven’t yet fully noticed?

1. A Friend’s Letter 

On my fortieth birthday on May 28, 2023, my friend Dave Schmidgall gave me a hand-written book of forty prayers for my new year. In his opening letter, Dave told me I was entering “the year of the wilderness.” He then prayed that I would experience “a more profound sorrow and deeper joy” in that wilderness journey. An invitation to “a more profound sorrow” isn’t exactly a traditional birthday wish for a friend.

At that time, neither of us had any idea that my dad would die in that year of my life. But after he did, I reread Dave’s book, and I was astonished by his words. This year of my life was “the year of the wilderness.” And I did experience both “a more profound sorrow and deeper joy” than ever before in my life.

As I navigated the uncharted wilderness of my dad’s death, reading Dave’s book from a year before comforted and reoriented me. It reassured me that my experience of loss and shattering sorrow was not random or meaningless; it didn’t take God by surprise. I wasn’t abandoned or alone in it. Somehow, as I was entering a year unlike any other in my life, my friend had discerned and alerted me that it was going to be a new wilderness of sorrow and joy. I had been lovingly summoned into it before I fully realized it.

As Lisa Miller wrote, these “two apparently disparate events” – Dave’s birthday gift and dad’s death – were “joined at the level of meaning” for me. As I noticed this connection, I felt guided and cared for.

2. A Journal Entry 

After my dad’s death, I also spent time reviewing my journal from that year. I wanted to remember the events surrounding our final months together on earth.

Like reading Dave’s birthday book, I was astonished by what I found. On New Year’s Day, I had written early in the morning: “The first words in my heart in 2024: To him who sits on the throne and unto the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and power forever.”

These words may not seem obviously significant or “synchronous” with my dad’s death. But in the Book of Revelation, they’re said to be the song of heaven. It’s a chorus of universal safety, belonging, and joy that resounds when humanity enters the unmediated presence of God.

Reading this deeply moved me. During my first conscious moment in the year that my dad would transition to heaven, the first words reverberating in my heart were the song of heaven. In retrospect, it felt like I was being given a glimpse of the safety that my dad was entering into.

My journal entry, written months before I knew that my dad was in any immediate danger of dying, reassured me that he wasn’t simply gone; dad had gone home and was now calling me onward into the hope of heaven. Like Dave’s letter, it was also like God was letting me know that I wasn’t left alone in the process of letting dad continue his journey beyond death. Somehow, we were being guided in this painful but precious process.

3. An Easter Meditation 

Easter Sunday in 2024 came less than a month before my dad suddenly died. That weekend, four dear friends had invited me to spend the holiday with them in California. I had never been away from Lily on Easter or made a special trip to celebrate the holiday. But Lily encouraged me to go, and I went.

On Sunday morning, the five of us sat at the Pacific Ocean and reflected on the significance of the day and what was happening in our lives. Joelle invited us to see Jesus’ death and resurrection as the universal pattern of being human. Like Jesus, we journey from life into death and from death into life. “What might be dying in us? What new life might be emerging through that death?” Joelle asked us.

Joelle’s meditation was not abstract theologizing. Her daughter Jenna had recently suffered a miscarriage and was aching with grief. On the beach, Jenna told us with tears, “I feel older in my body.” As she confessed her pain and her husband Tyler held her, I thought of the hidden decrepitude I felt creeping in my soul and body. Each of us shared places of grief, uncertainty, liminality. We cried together, laughed together, held one another.

Remembering Jesus’ resurrection has always been deeply important to me. But this Easter felt more personal than ever before. Joelle gently emphasized that Easter isn’t only about what happened to Jesus; it’s also about what happens to all of us. We live into death, and we die into life. There’s no bypassing this process and no need to deny it.

After my dad died, this special time of intimate sharing by the ocean felt like another divinely given orientation to what I was about to experience. Dad was following the pattern of Jesus and all humanity – from life to death and from death to life. I didn’t need to deny it or war against it. As I’ve grieved dad’s death, becoming aware of this preparation I was given with loving friends has been profoundly comforting.

4. A Dream 

Around 5am on April 18th, my phone’s buzzing woke me from a dream. It was my mom calling. She said with a froggy morning voice, “Your daddy has fallen out to bed and needs your help.”

When mom called, I was having a dream in which I was being hunted by dinosaurs. The room was white, and I was hiding behind a door in what seemed to be a hospital.

After dad was hospitalized, I noticed how uncanny my dream was: on the day that I rushed with him in an ambulance to the ER, I was dreaming about facing death in a hospital.  My friend Dave, who is finishing a graduate program in psychology, told me soon after that dinosaurs in dreams can symbolize primal experiences, life-changing moments that awaken us to our radical smallness and the wonder of life.

My days with dad in the hospital and his death there were certainly a primal experience. They expanded my awareness of our human fragility and radicalized my reverence for life.

As unsettling as my dream was, it mysteriously reassured me that what was about to happen wasn’t meaningless and didn’t take God by surprise. This primal experience would be life-changing, yes; but, again, I wasn’t alone in it. God was witnessing me, with me, whispering that I was being led through this and we would all be okay in the end.

5. A Song of Heaven  

In the days leading up to dad’s death, the doctors were still holding out hope that he might recover. They encouraged us to be present with dad but to continue living our lives. So that Saturday night, my sister Abby attended a concert of a band she had been looking forward to seeing for several months.

When Abby got the call from our sister Elizabeth that dad had suddenly died, the band was singing a song about heaven. It was a song that Abby had loved long before dad got sick and specifically hoped the band would play when she bought the tickets. Sure enough, they played that song – in the shatteringly sacred moment when Abby learned that dad had transitioned to heaven.

Abby’s synchronicity loops back to mine on New Year’s Day. In the first moment of the year that dad died and in the first moments after he died, songs of heaven were echoing in us and around us. A soft gaze was witnessing us and whispering that God’s presence was with us.

6. A Painting  

That night, our whole family gathered at the hospital and spent our final moments with dad’s body. We cried. We laughed. We shared memories. We sat in silence.

After several hours, it was so strange to leave – to return home knowing that dad would never physically meet us there again. Home now felt less like home than it did just a few hours before.

A series of firsts then rapidly unfolded. Pulling in the driveway for the first time without dad alive in the world. Opening the gate. Stepping through the door. Helping my mom sit down in her chair. Seeing her there by herself without dad by her side ever again in this life. Everything felt changed, holy and painful.

I had anticipated this moment many times for many years. When I thought about it, I often feared that it would ruin me beyond repair. But now it was happening in real time.

When I went to bed later that night, another subtle sign of divine presence gently greeted me.

Before dad had even gotten sick, Lily started working on a new painting. It depicted Jesus’ face hovering over the branches of a tree. Half of the tree was black and apparently dead. The other half was green and glowing with life. Jesus’ face was equally present with both parts. Lily made the painting to visualize how God is with us in everything – in life and death, in joy and grief.

When I finally laid down in bed that night, Lily’s painting was leaning against the wall on my side of the bedroom. I was astonished beholding this sign of divine presence.  Somehow, without even knowing it, Lily had made a grounding image to guide me through one of the most unworlding experiences of my life.

Her painting showed me that Jesus’ face is intimately present with us in life and death, just like I had pressed my face to my dad’s hours before. With this presence, I can be present in this painful process of being human with trust. Like Lisa Miller wrote in The Awakened Brain, this synchronicity between dad’s death and Lily’s painting helped me experience “guidance, connection, and unity” when I needed them most.

7. The Presence of Friends 

A seventh synchronicity enfolded the days before and after dad died.

Three days before dad was hospitalized, my friend Dave Schmidgall visited Chicago from the east coast. His trip was planned long before, and he didn’t come to see me. But we got to spend an afternoon together and visited my dad.

At the time, we didn’t know that there was any need to make a special visit to dad. But, in retrospect, it was deeply comforting to me that I got to spend one more moment with him in the presence of a dear friend. Dave witnessed dad and me together, along with dad’s playful humor and loving service with my mom. (Dad was about to wash mom’s hair in the kitchen sink when we stopped in.) As Dave helped me process dad’s death, we had a fresh, shared memory of who my dad was and how he lived to root our conversations.

Six days after dad died, my friend Roger Sandberg visited Chicago from the west coast. Like Dave, his trip was planned long in advance, and he didn’t come to see me. But we got to spend an evening together in the first week of my grief process.

Roger gave me a huge hug, and we talked late into the night. He told me about visiting a Japanese museum that included a section on how Japanese culture relates to ancestors. Instead of viewing them as absent like much American culture, Japanese people commonly understand their ancestors as still present with them but in a new way. Roger and I talked about the irony that Christians affirm the resurrection, but we often assume that our “dead” loved ones are simply gone. Roger helped me open my heart to a continuing connection with my dad in that “great cloud of witnesses” that transcends death and calls us onward.

Both Dave and Roger booked their tickets long before I had any clue that dad was about to die. The “happenstance” of two of my closest friends being with me when I needed them most — right before and right after dad’s passing – felt like a gentle hug from God. My friends embodied the presence of divine love that I longed for.

8. Soul Food 

A few days later, I was home alone and hungry, and there was no food in the fridge. Everyone’s grief is their own, but I know that I’m not the only one whose grief makes going to the grocery store or simply leaving the house feel more burdensome. It was one of those empty days.

Instead of getting food, I decided to visit my mom. When I got to her door, there was a box on the steps. My dear friends from Easter Sunday had sent us delicious soup, mac n cheese, and chocolate chip cookies. The quote inside from Cookie Monster reminded me of my dad and made me smile. “Today me will live in the moment, unless it’s unpleasant. In which case me will eat a cookie.” That was me that day.

A box of food may seem like a small thing if you haven’t had this experience. But in that grief-stricken moment, that food from my friends felt like manna from heaven. What I needed literally showed up on my doorstep exactly when I needed it. I felt surrounded with loving presence through my friends, and I ate the food they sent like a sacrament. Lightness returned on a heavy day.

9. Clouds in the Sky 

A ninth synchronicity floated in the sky a few months after my dad’s death.

When dad got sick, I was in the middle of finishing my book Blessed Are the Others. I had a thousand edits waiting for my response, but I told my publisher that I needed time to process dad’s passing. Kate graciously said to take all the time I needed.

Bittersweetly, my dad had never expressed much interest in my writing. He wasn’t a book reader, and it didn’t come naturally for him to ask me about this important part of my life. Through time, I learned to see the loveliness in this limitation to my dad’s love for me: whether I was writing books or not, he loved me the same, unconditionally.

But after I spent time grieving dad’s death, I returned to finishing my book. I wasn’t sure what would happen, but it felt like a powerful wave of energy carried me through the editing process. It wasn’t stressful or burdensome. I felt like I was dancing, like I found the beat of my book and was able to finish it in the way I had hoped but didn’t think I could.

This fresh energy to write felt like dad’s final gift to me. It was almost like his last laugh with me after never having expressed much interest in my writing. Somehow, his death unlocked the ability to finish what several friends have called my best work.

I’ll never forget the evening that I finished Blessed Are the Others on June 25th. It was dark and stormy early in the morning when I began working. I sat on our back porch and wrote there the entire day. I finished just as the sun was beginning to set.

My book is about the eightfold path of Jesus in his Beatitudes, what I call his way of humane happiness. I had decided to dedicate my book to my dad, quoting his paradoxical words on the cover page, “It hurts so good.” When I looked up from my laptop that evening after making the last revision to my manuscript, the sky had become clear, and I saw eight unmistakable bars of cloud floating in the open blue in front of me.

I was so amazed that I took a picture of the sky: eight bars of cloud in the precise moment I finished writing my book about the eight blessings of Jesus. It was an awe-inspiring synchronicity that I received as a smile from God and my dad on my life and writing.

10. Sunlight, Starlight, and Texts 

Later, on September 6th, I was walking on the prairie path and listening to the song “Love Goes On” by my friend Jon Guerra. For me, this is one of the most moving song’s Jon has written. It begins by confessing the “ache in the chest” we feel in the face of death. He asks, “Will anything last from the end to the start?” Then in the chorus, Jon sings, “Love goes on / Even through death / You are my breath / You don’t give up on us / Where can I go from your presence?”

As Jon’s voice soared in my earphones, I looked up at the sky. The sun melted through the clouds and shined on my face. In the dazzling light, I saw flashing images of my dad’s face –  when he was a baby, when he held me as a baby, when his beard turned white, when his skin was yellow after he died, and then again when he was a baby.

In that moment, it was so brilliantly clear to me that he was alive and that we were connected across death in the presence of God which shines like the sun. Tears burst from my eyes. I took a picture of myself in that moment, because I felt so intimately seen by Love and didn’t want to forget the moment.

Months later in January, I was walking on the prairie path at night. The golden warmth of September had given way to the cold darkness of winter. I was shivering and ready to turn around. But before I did, I realized that I was standing at the exact spot on the path where I had looked up and seen flashing images of dad’s face in the sunlight as I heard Jon sing, “Love goes on.”

I decided to pause and look up in the sky to see if there was another sign for me. In that exact spot, I saw a single star twinkling down at me in the darkness. Once again, it felt so meaningful to me that I took a picture.

While I raised my phone to take the picture, I received a text from my friend Laura. Earlier that morning, I had woken up thinking about her. I texted her to say that she was in my heart and wrote, “All your thoughts and feelings, all your past and future are held in God’s love.”

Eight hours later, when I looked up at the star where I had seen my dad’s face in September, Laura texted me back. She told me that she had been praying about her past and future and that she was thinking about how I was processing my dad’s death when my text arrived that morning. She added, “I was struck by how close your wording was to the words I’d given God in prayer. It’s a wonder how connected we all can be when we are connected to God.”

I was so astonished that I sent Laura the picture I had taken when her text popped up. That morning, I was praying for her when she was praying and thinking of me and my dad. That night, she was thinking of me and naming how inseparably connected we are in the precise moment I was thinking of my dad and experiencing another heavenly sign of our connection. Laura replied and aptly called these “intertwining times of God’s faithfulness.”

11. Flames of Fire 

I had experience another intertwining time two months before.

The last major outdoor project that dad and I did together before he died was to burn his wood pile. In retrospect, it felt like we were enacting together what was about to come: an almost unbearably hot fire that was also filled with beauty and would clear the ground for new growth.

Seven months after he died, I decided to burn the pile again in November. I did it as a kind of ritual to revisit that last special outdoor memory that we shared.

The wood pile had grown tall since we burned it together. After I lit it, the fire became nearly as high as the surrounding trees and emitted a fierce heat. As so often, I took a picture to remember the moment.

When I looked at the picture I had just taken, I could hardly believe my eyes. It was another synchronicity, another moment when my outer experience and inner meaning aligned with a flash of divine presence.

In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter story, there is a powerful charm called the Patronus. This charm offers protection from the attack of Dementors – terrifying wraiths that literally suck your soul out of your mouth. To perform the Patronus charm, you must remember a time of intense joy in your life and then exclaim, “Expecto Patronum!” — Latin for “Expect a deliverer.” When Harry performs this charm, a stag of light emerges from the tip of his wand and drives away the soul-sucking Dementors.

This charm in Rowling’s story has always been deeply meaningful to me. The true magic behind it is profound for the human journey: when our soul is being sucked out of us by despair, we are delivered by allowing a memory of joy to fill our being with presence.

When I looked at the picture I had taken of the bonfire as I remembered the joy of doing this with my dad a year before, the flames had unmistakably made the shape of a stag – Harry’s deliverer.

Tears rise up in my eyes again as I remember this moment. While I was symbolically letting go of my dad once more by burning a pile of dead wood, a symbol of delivering presence rose out of the fire. Somehow, my dad was present with me still, winking at me through the flames.

Expecto patronum.

12. A Stranger’s Graffiti 

There have been other synchronicities that have visited me in this first year since my dad died. But the last one I want to mention came on Christmas Eve.

When I woke up that day, I was feeling unsettled and off. It took me time to discern what I was even feeling. Eventually, I realized that I was feeling angry. For the first time after dad died, I felt cheated, robbed, wronged. I wanted to share this special holiday with him once more. But I couldn’t access his physical presence because of his death.

As so often, I decided to take a long walk in the prairie to process my life. Along the way, there was a new message chalked on the path. It said, “Drop trou / defecate / don’t wipe.” 

An Unconcluding Invitation to Attention

The longer I live, the more astonished I become by these mysterious signs of God’s presence in our material experience. They can come in a friend’s text, a twinkling star, or even an unsettling dream – in seemingly anything. I resonate deeply with Miller’s observation: “The more we pay attention to synchronicity, the more it becomes apparent, as though when our eyes are more open to it, synchronicity picks up steam, growing more forthcoming and abundant.”

There is so much here that I don’t understand. Why does God allow us to suffer to begin with? Why are there so many experiences and spans of life in which divine presence seems so unbearably absent? Weighty questions like these have not gone away for me.

Still, experiences like the ones I’ve described in this essay enliven my trust that God is witnessing us, suffering with us, and will ultimately heal us. Somehow, in ways that far exceed my understanding, we are always being held in the presence of God. As Paul wrote, nothing can separate us from divine love.

In this second year of my life after my dad’s death, my wish is to expand my attention to God’s presence with us, even as waves of grief wash over me. I want to notice and cherish these moments when our hands are being held, our eyes are being met with a soft gaze, and playful toes wiggle under the blanket of reality.

Perhaps in heaven, we become fully aware of the divine love that has always held us, even through our most unbearable moments of felt absence. Let us walk together and remind one another of this love at every chance we get.