Googling and Serendipity

When I surfed for more on "there are no accidents, only grace", which Gerry Esquivel mentioned in his commencement address (see earlier blog)< my search yielded the following:

1) A link to a homily at the Ateneo where the homilist said, "The great German Jesuit theologian, Karl Rahner, said it very simply: Keine zufall, nur gnade. “There are no accidents; only grace.” - from the baccalaureate mass homily of Fr. Danny Huang, SJ


2) There Are No Accidents: Synchronicity and the Stories of Our Lives
by Robert H. Hopcke
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Synopsis
In this inspiring book, Robert H. Hopcke, a Jungian psychotherapist, explores the role of synchronicity in our love life and our work life, in our waking life and our dream life, in our everyday life and our dream life, in our everyday life and our spiritual life. Through interviews with people whose lives have been changed by some unexpected chance encounter, he presents us with a rich array of true synchronistic stories: a woman is set up on a blind date with the same man, years apart, on two different coasts; a singer's career changes direction when she walks into the wrong audition; just when he is feeling particularly alone, a man runs into a college friend at a remote outpost on an island in the South Pacific. Not only does Hopcke present these stories to us, he shows us how, by looking at our lives as coherent narratives, with synchronistic experiences the turning points in the plot, we can use the synchronicities we experience to lead our lives more meaningfully.


Publishers Weekly

While people have "a tendency to deny, dismiss, or discount" synchronistic events, Hopcke contends that when greeted with openness and acceptance, these occurrences, which briefly connect one's inner and outer life by shattering normal interpretive frameworks, have the power and purpose of transformation. As Hopcke, Director of the Jungian Center for Symbolic Studies, explains Jung's 45-year-old coinage, a synchronistic event must take place at a transitional moment in one's life and must defy a simple cause-and-effect explanation. It must also be personally meaningful or symbolic; one person's life-transforming event is another's banality. The bulk of the book focuses on relationships, work, dreams, spirituality and "matters of life and death," anecdotally illustrating how synchronicity often leads people in the direction they unknowingly need to go. While synchronicity has gotten a lot of play in psychological and New Age circles, skeptics remain. Hopcke's lively, accessible interpretations of a plethora of real-life events will make their doubts difficult to maintain. BOMC, QPB and One Spirit Book Club selections; audio rights to Audio Literature; foreign rights sold in the U.K., Australia, Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, Holland, Germany, Sweden, Japan and the Czech Republic. (June)
More Reviews and Recommendations


If I find Hopcke's book, I just might buy it. Sounds interesting...