A few weeks ago I was looking through books at a bookshop in Scarborough, a beautiful market town, on the coast of Yorkshire. I picked a new book on a fellow named Robert “Mouseman” Thompson, a man famous for hand-made oak furniture. The quality of his work makes it very collectible and already valuable.

His trademark is a mouse that usually appears somewhere on the piece. I found that all very interesting and put the book down and went on my way. A few days later I was visiting the Sisters of the Holy Paraclete in Whitby and studying in their library. While make notes on my computer, I glanced up and  on the bookcase next to the table where I was sitting was a mouse carved into the shelf. There it was Mouseman Thompson’s trademark. Upon investigation I found four or five cases of his work in the room.

It was an example of the synchronicity of life, when your inner and outter life interset in a unique and non-causal way.  If I had not picked up leafed through that book I would never have known what I was looking at or perhaps never noticed the mouse at all.

I believe that the Holy Spirit is always working through pattern of intersection in our inner life. Even when it is something as, frankly unimportant, as learning about a craftsman only to see an example of his craft to the happy meeting of strangers and the cobbling together of relationships through the unexpected sudden insight.All is it can be the work of the Spirit if we are willing.