Synchronicity?

I’ve been thinking today about coincidences. Once a friend and I were waiting to cross the road in Trafalgar Square in London when my friend saw someone he knew from his home town go past on a bicycle. I mean, what are the odds against that?

Sometimes these coincidences seem to havee a meaning. Jung called it synchronicity. I grew up in Shrewsbury. Nor far from where I lived there were several railway lines and a shunting yard. We children loved to go there to watch the steam trains. We loved to stand on the bridge as the train went under and become lost in a cloud of steam then we would run to the other side and watch it disappear behind a bend in the distance. I used to wonder where the train went to.

Now I live beside a railway in south Herefordshire, sixty miles south of that bridge, and it is the same railway track. So now I know where the trains went. They were going to my future home. Isn’t that strange? I certainly didn’t plan it that way. In fact I hadn’t worked out where the train came from when we bought the house.

Just down our lane there used to be a chemical factory. Well, that’s what they called it. They made things like tar and other building materials, probably for making up roads or maybe helping to build the railway. Our terrace of houses was originally built for the workers. It was called the Chemical Houses in those days. I’m really glad they renamed it. This factory was a subsidiary of one in Dawley, Shropshire, about ten miles from where I grew up. It was called Wrekin Chemicals. The Wrekin is a hill in Shropshire. It’s a well known beauty spot. When I was a child we used to go to pick bluebells there. I have ancestors from Dawley who lived right by that factory, very likely some of them worked there. So there is another connection.

We are going to the Shrewsbury Flower Show next weekend. We go every year, but for the first time we are staying over night. The show ends with a firework display and, now we are getting older, sixty miles is too far to drive home late at night. We couldn’t afford to stay in Shrewsbury as prices are sky high flower show week, so we have booked a little hotel in Wellington not far from Dawley, and the next day we will go and find the place my ancestors came from and maybe visit The Wrekin again. They have a saying in Shropshire. If someone has travelled the long way around they are said to have gone ‘All the way  round The Wrekin’ so I guess that’s what we will be doing on Sunday week going all the way round The Wrekin.

The Wrekin, Shropshire

The woods in springtime

While I was looking for these photos on the web I came across The Wrekin Forum which is about spiritual connections. It’s first principal is ‘The interconnectiveness of life and the unity of consciousness’

How weired is that?