What Is Synchronicity? A Story of Birds, Memory, and the Wild Intelligence of the World
A red-crowned woodpecker. A phrase in a book. A knock that matches your heartbeat. What if the world is speaking to you, too?
One of the quietest moments of the retreat came at dawn, when Tina lifted her binoculars to the canopy. She told the students about the acorn woodpecker, how they live in chosen clusters, caching their acorns in shared trees, raising their young as a collective.
“They’re egalitarian,” she said. “No single bird owns the food. They feed the whole group.”
Tina Stoner, Chapter President of the Pomona Valley Audubon Society, had joined us to lead a bird walk. She’s a naturalist, a poet in field boots, and a woman who listens more than she speaks.
I thought of my mother, who talked about acorn woodpeckers like kin—bold, strange, communal. Even though the shape of my life has changed since I was a girl, I still believe in chosen family. In storing nourishment for others. In making space for the wild ones.
Tina asked the students to focus on a bird in the distance, pecking at the dirt.
“Raven or crow?” she asked.
They guessed raven, correctly.
“You can tell by the beak,” she said. “But when they’re in flight, look at the tail. Ravens have a wedge. Crows a fan.”
Then she smiled and added, “If you want to sound knowledgeable, talk about them in plural. A murder of crows. An unkindness of ravens.”
Later, the students hiked in silence, phones useless, listening to the wind like it was saying their names. They saw something ancient in those birds, something waking up inside themselves. And it connected them.
I didn’t expect to see the acorn woodpecker again so soon. But the next afternoon, as I was packing up, I heard a rhythmic knock on an oak. And there she was, red crown flashing, body taut with intent. I felt my mother before I saw the bird. That’s how it works sometimes.
Synchronicity. The soft intelligence of the world. A knock that matches your heartbeat. A glint on the trail. A phrase in a book that feels like it was written for you.
We don’t have to explain it. We just have to listen.
Lately, I’ve been noticing improbable overlaps. A hawk appears just as I think of someone I’ve lost. A sentence I write echoes in a student’s journal, hours later. A stranger names the exact fear I’ve been carrying.
Some call this magical thinking. But I think it’s the deeper pattern surfacing, the one we’re woven into, whether we believe in it or not.
Like mycelium threading messages below our feet.
Like birds navigating by the light of the stars.
Like breath returning to the body after grief.
Synchronicity isn’t proof, it’s permission. To soften. To open. To remember that not everything that matters can be measured.
Animism teaches that the world is alive with spirit. The raven’s gaze. The stream answering a question I haven’t asked. Science calls this projection, but science, too, is a form of storytelling. And the best science leaves room for awe.
I think we crave synchronicity because we crave conversation with the world. We want to feel met. Whispered to. Not by algorithms, but by something older.
To me, synchronicity is a form of kith—not kin by blood, but by resonance. A tree that feels like home. A poem that breaks you open. A bird with your mother’s voice.
These are the ways the world says: You belong. Not because you earned it. Because you’re here.
What if we stopped trying to explain it all?
What if we let ourselves be astonished?
Tell me—what synchronicities have been showing up for you?
We have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it.
And to take good care of it, we have to know it.
And to know it and to be willing to take care of it, we have to love it.
—Wendell Berry
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For our Artist’s Way cohort:
The comments section below is exclusively for you. It’s designed as a way for you to share your artist way experiences this week with other members of our group.
Please answer as many of the following questions as you have time for in the comments section, and feel free to respond to one another as support in our shared journey.
How did it go for you this week?
How many days this week did you do morning pages? How do you feel about the process so far?
How was your artist date? Please share what you chose to do!
Have you experienced synchronicity this week?
Have you experienced any resistance to any of the above activities? Do you know why? Tell us about how resistance manifests itself for you.
Did you do any of the tasks? If so, which one/s? Any discoveries there?
Can’t wait to see your faces on Zoom on July 5!
Thank you for being on this journey with me. I am grateful for the gift of your presence. Walking this path, knowing so many of you are walking it too, gives me hope. May we recognize our interbeing, with one another and the anima mundi, supporting each other in growth and recovery, like a mycelial network.
This morning’s
synchronicity: barely 12 hours ago somebody I was with mentioned “Like mycelium threading messages below our feet.”
Thank you, Michelle. The importance of silence, spirit, and synchronicity resonates with me — it is hard to have one without the other! Stopping the chatter in our brains makes us aware and truly alive. Love the images of the birds. I can see them fly, one with a wedge tail and one with a fan!