I’ve always loved words: what they mean, how they are used, and how the words came to be. For anyone who is a writer, or a speaker, or just a communicator, words are the paints of the artist, the notes of the musician. With them, we create moods, rhythms, textures and emotions.
The subtle differences in meaning between two or three similar words intrigues me. Just as a fountain pen yields a different weight to the words on paper from a ballpoint or gel pen, so too the use of a slightly different word brings an entirely new meaning to a speech or an article. Take for instance, “confluence” and “congruence”. Confluence refers to things, ideas, that come together to form a different whole. Congruence refers to things or ideas that exist alongside one another, but which may not necessarily come together, but which still add to each other.
I got to thinking about these somewhat nerdy loves of mine as I read a novel by the brilliant Chaim Potok, whose works I’ve enjoyed for years. This book, The Book of Lights, came out in 1981. Amazingly, it was a Potok work that I had never read before. My reading of this novel at this time came about completely by coincidence: my wife and I were doing some straightening up and reorganizing, and I came across the book.
I didn’t remember buying the book, and my wife didn’t remember doing so either initially. However, as I turned the first pages, there was an inscription in the book that cleared up the mystery. It turned out that my wife bought the book for her father in 1981, when it first was published. When I showed her the inscription, her memory was refreshed.
In The Book of Lights, Potok writes about a young man who grew up in New York, during the World War II and Korean War era, and who is drafted into the military as a chaplain in Korea after he becomes a rabbi.
Now, one of the smaller congruences in the entire experience of reading this book is that Potok lived several houses away from me and my family when we moved onto the street in 1982. I didn’t know this fact when we first moved in, but I had already read several of his books, starting with The Chosen, written in 1967. I loved Potok’s style, one which was, in a number of ways, similar to Hemingway’s style.
Potok, like Hemingway, often used two different forms of dialogue: the real dialogue, the actual spoken words set out by quotation marks, and the internal dialogues, those in the protagonist’s mind, shown without quotation marks, but perhaps depicted as long italicized paragraphs. To read such a work leads one into the thoughts of the author, and not just into character development or action description.
In any case, Potok’s protagonist, Gershon Loran, goes to a college and seminary in New York, not specifically identified, but recognizable to me, by the descriptions of the neighborhood and the architecture of the buildings. Potok attended the same seminary as his character, Gershon Loran. Potok’s background, and the path of his life, followed a path of congruences and confluences with Loran’s.
To return to the uniqueness of coincidence in the course of our lives, my son ultimately attended this very same institution. I was able to recognize Loran’s seminary by my visits there when my son was in attendance. Potok mentions Grant’s Tomb, located in the neighborhood of the seminary; my son told me that he used to like studying there, finding a quiet corner where he could immerse himself in his work.
I thought of the many coincidences of life as I read the book, a book which I might not have read were it not for it being in the house after the death of my wife’s mother. Coincidence, confluence, and congruence came together in the fact that I would never have met my wife if I had not been encouraged by a dear friend to get involved in the Philadelphia Bar Association, which led me to meeting another dear friend who introduced me to my wife. All of these coincidences, brought about by the congruences in our lives which came together to create the world in which I now live, made my enjoyment of the book, and the appreciation of my life, even more wonderful.
I’m sure that many of you can reflect on the small coincidences which came together in your lives to create a whole that you may never have planned for or anticipated. Our lives may exist as separate strands, but coincidence, confluence and congruence often bring about a weaving of these strands to create a painting, a composition that is so much more than the single strands we first saw in our own individual worlds. I am so grateful that I have experienced life in a way that I never imagined; I hope that you might feel the same way about your own lives.
Mike Snyder
msnyder@adrdri.com
