麻豆约拍

From Rae Duke, Religion and Ethics teacher and broadcaster.

I recently showed one of my classes at school an article telling the true story of an adopted woman who, having spent years looking for her birth family, found her long-lost sister to be living next door. This lady had come across her sister鈥檚 name in her late father鈥檚 obituary and having never met her or seen a photograph of her, spent countless evenings searching the thousands of people with her sister鈥檚 name on social media, peering into their faces to see if they bore any resemblance to herself.

But it was when a parcel for a new next-door neighbour was mistakenly delivered to her house that the penny dropped.聽 The parcel had her sister鈥檚 name on it.聽 She was the sibling she鈥檇 been looking for. They stayed up all night talking and, reveling in the fact that they shared the same hands (just like Joey from Friends with his 鈥榟and-twin鈥�).

I asked the students after we鈥檇 read it; do you believe in fate?

Some were skeptical, thinking the tale was a mere happy coincidence. Others instantly regaled me with their own stories of destiny at work; grandparents who鈥檇 had chance encounters - resulting in a blossoming of love, marriage and kids.聽 One family bumped into the same person the last four summers on holiday in a random bunch of locations.

I shared my own recent anecdote of discovering, on the day we moved house, that I鈥檇 taught the daughter of the previous owners and that, sweetly, my daughter was going to be sleeping in that former student鈥檚 old room. (It was a school disco snap left at the back of the wardrobe that revealed the connection.)

The writings of Sister Mary David cast some light on this sense of things being 鈥榤eant to be鈥�. She had a robust faith in providence, seeing these kinds of moments as divine gift. She mused that the gateway to joy is to 鈥済o towards whatever is coming; go along with these things - people, circumstances鈥�. Her positive interpretation of life didn鈥檛 just apply to jollier moments, but held out through alternating weathers; she continued to write having being diagnosed with cancer.

Sister Mary David was a remarkable person with ideas that resonate 鈥� and that chime with the lyrics of John Lennon when he sung, 鈥淭here's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be...鈥�