Synchronicity?

 

Within the last six months, events near me have included the reenactment of the Selma to Montgomery March, the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the Capitol of Alabama, and the release of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman.

In March of 1965 I brought some college friends to my house for the weekend, unaware until we arrived that it was the weekend of the Selma to Montgomery March. I remember well the concern that my parents had that perhaps violence would break out, therefore the friends I had brought with me and I were not allowed to leave the house. Although I was within only a few miles of the event, my actual experience of it was, as it was for many, through television and newspaper reports, or through what my father had heard about it at his work.

I do not remember the exact time when the Confederate flag began to fly over the dome of the Capitol in Montgomery, nor do I remember the exact year it was moved from above the dome to the capitol grounds, but I do remember, at least vaguely, the events. It was not possible to convey in a recent conversation with a visitor, someone much younger than myself who had never lived in the south, an understanding of the debates and protests swirling around the flag.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Harper Lee, but my college roommate was from nearby Beatrice, and took me to Monroeville in 1965 or early 1966. During that visit she pointed out the courthouse (where years later I attended the local production of the play, To Kill a Mockingbird) and all the locales that inspired scenes in the book.

Psychiatrist Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity in the 1950s.  I can’t say that I really understand his “acausal connecting principle,” nor have I usually put much store in coincidences. But in my reading, I’ve often been aware that sometimes books seem to land in my hands or work their way to the top of the stack to be read at an uncannily appropriate time.

How does this all tie together?  I’ve been a member of the Alabama Writers’ Conclave for many years, and attended the yearly conference for the last four years. During these gatherings I’ve met many authors, heard them speak, and/or bought their books.

Sometimes these books have become lost, or at least misplaced, in the many areas where books end up in my house. Knowing that I would see Chervis Isom at this year’s conference, I was relieved when his book, The Newspaper Boy, resurfaced in time for me to read it before I saw him. He grew up in Birmingham during the civil rights era, and bravely details in this memoir the development and changes in his own attitudes over the years. I finished reading the book on Tuesday, July 14, the same day that Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman was released. I began reading it the next day. To read the two books back to back was a very interesting juxtaposition.

Also attending and speaking at the conference were Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Four Spirits, a historical novel about the 1963 bombing at a church in Birmingham that killed four young girls and T. K. Thorne, author of Last Chance for Justice: How Relentless Investigators Uncovered New Evidence Convicting the Birmingham Church Bombers. Since the conference was planned well in advance, it was perhaps a bit of synchronicity that the speakers were lined up months before the events I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

Reviews, both good and bad, of Go Set a Watchman have appeared in almost every newspaper and flooded the internet, and I am not trying to add to that number. Someone recently said, “You can’t hold time in a bottle.” Certainly, there are times I would not want to hold, but I am thankful that there are those writers who can hold it in a book.  Their stories, perhaps better than anything else, can help others understand the past and move forward in the present.