These are not chance encounters
Date: March 6, 2007
In last week's Tuesday class here in Sedona, Robert talked about Section 3 of the Manual, "What Are the Levels of Teaching?" This section says that literally every encounter with another person has been arranged by the Holy Spirit, because it has the potential to become what the Course elsewhere calls a holy encounter—an encounter in which two people give salvation to one another. This is true even of even the most (apparently) random and trivial encounters:
The simplest level of teaching appears to be quite superficial. It consists of what seem to be very casual encounters; a "chance" meeting of two apparent strangers in an elevator, a child who is not looking where he is going running into an adult "by chance," two students "happening" to walk home together. These are not chance encounters. Each of them has the potential for becoming a teaching-learning situation. Perhaps the seeming strangers in the elevator will smile to one another, perhaps the adult will not scold the child for bumping into him; perhaps the students will become friends. Even at the level of the most casual encounter, it is possible for two people to lose sight of separate interests, if only for a moment. That moment will be enough. Salvation has come. (M-3.2:1-8)
Later in the week, I had an apparently random encounter in which it seems that at least some of that potential was realized. I was on a run in a residential area, and all of a sudden, a little Chihuahua dog came running toward me. This often happens when I'm running; usually, once I get beyond the dog's property, it turns around and goes home. But this dog kept following me down the street. I kept trying to get it to go back home, but it wouldn't turn around. Then, it dawned on me that perhaps this particular dog was actually lost. Most people don't let small dogs like this one run loose. As I looked more closely at the dog, it seemed to have a look that said, "I don't know where the heck I am." It also had a tag that I assumed had contact information for the owner. I thought: "This dog may be totally lost, and if so, I bet the owner is worried sick about it."
I therefore decided to try to catch the dog, so I could get the information from its tag and bring it back to its owner. If you've ever tried to catch a Chihuahua that doesn't want to be caught, you know how slippery those little guys can be. I must have been quite a sight, running down the street chasing this tiny dog, the dog eluding my grasp again and again. I wasn't getting anywhere with this. Then, just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, a car came down the street, and the dog ran right for it. "Come back here!" I said. "Do you want to get yourself killed?"
Then, something amazing happened. The car came to a stop, a woman stepped out, and the dog jumped right into her arms. You guessed it: It was the owner of the dog! I told her that I was trying to round him up because he looked lost, and she told me that indeed, he wasn't supposed to be outside—someone must have inadvertently let him out. I could tell that she was incredibly grateful that some complete stranger was going out of his way to rescue her dog and bring it back to her. She said, "That was serendipitous." We smiled at each other and waved, she drove off with the dog, and that was that.
I felt really good as I continued running down the road, and I immediately thought of the Tuesday class. It would be easy to say that this was just a random event, but according to the Course, this was arranged. If a child running into an adult is arranged, then it seems safe to say that a dog running after an adult (followed by an adult running after a dog) is arranged as well. It brought me and this woman together, we lost sight of separate interests for a moment, and we had what sure felt like a holy encounter in which salvation was exchanged. Wow! What would our lives be like if we saw every encounter this way?
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