Isaiah 49:8-13 • David Orendorff

David: One of the best books I have read in a long time is a management book on leadership, Synchronicity: The Inner Path to Leadership by Joseph Jaworski. A friend recommended it to me and he gave me an unexpected gift I didn’t know I was looking for. The word “synchronicity” comes from the work of Carl Jung and he defines it as “a meaningful coincidence of two or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved.”1 Joseph Jaworski, Synchronicity, The Inner of Leadership, (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, 1996), 88 We speak of synchronicity as being serendipitous, or a lucky accident. Synchronicity is when what we really need comes when we really need it. It is a God thing.
Jaworski, who had been divorced for awhile and was living in London, describes synchronicity this way:

Joseph: I took a trip to the States with my son to visit colleges and universities that he was interested in attending. We were in O’Hare Airport, running down one of the crowded aisle ways in an effort to catch a plane that was about to leave. Joey and I were running two abreast, dodging our way through the crowd. Up ahead, I noticed a very beautiful young woman walking quickly toward us. As I came within a few feet of her, I looked into her eyes, which were absolutely gorgeous. I stopped dead in my tracks, and as she passed me, I turned around and said to myself, “I’ve got to go get her. I know her from somewhere.” I was absolutely dumbstruck. It was very mysterious; almost as if … the future life I was going to have with her had already been told to me. It was something talking to me from what was to be. It had to do with the mystery and transcendence of time.

As she walked away, I just stood there, looking back in her direction. Joey (my son) had run far up ahead and when he noticed I was not there, he came running back to me and pulled at my arm. “My God, Dad, what are you doing? We’re about to miss the plane. Come on!” I turned around to Joey and remembering an old John Wayne line I said, “Joey, there comes a time when a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. You go ahead and catch the plane. I’ll catch the next one. I’ll find you some way.” As I think about it now, this was probably the most irresponsible thing a father could have done under such circumstance. But at that moment I was acting on instinct, and there was not a trace of guilt within me.

Without another word, I turned around and started running after the woman. I found her at an American Airlines gate, just about to board a plane for Dallas. I ran up to her as she was giving her ticket to the gate agent and pulled her back. I said, “Pardon me, but I have to talk to you. Please come over here.” The woman took a step away from the entrance to the ramp, and before she could say anything, I said “Tell me, are you married?”

She looked at me and said “No, are you?”

Somewhat flustered, I said “Well, of course not, but look I live in London, and I know we’ve never met, but I feel that I know you from someplace. I need to get your name and telephone number so I can contact you.”
The woman looked at me and without another word pulled out one of her cards and wrote her home number on it and gave it to me and said, “I’d love to learn more about London.”

Her flight was closing, so with that, she boarded the plane. I stood there for a few moments and then turned around and realized that Joey had been standing nearby, watching the whole affair. As we ran to catch our plane, I was trying to explain to him what happened, but I couldn’t.2 ibid., 84-85

David: A little over a year later Joseph Jaworski and Mavis Webster were married. If we stay in prayer, watching for God to come, God comes in unexpected times and ways.
Jaworski’s book turns out to be more than another business book on leadership, it turns out to be a work on the coming of God not only in retreats, therapy, and marriage, but how God comes in the fullness of our lives with meaning, purpose, and possibility.

Through most of the book Jaworski avoids speaking of God. At one point he is reduced to saying that within the universe there seems to be a “supernatural assisting force.” I suppose that could be God.
In the last chapter he does speak of God. At a conference sponsored by MIT Jaworski told his story of the forming of the American Leadership Forum and of writing this book. Others shared their stories of synchronicity, serendipity, lucky accidents.

The flow of the conversation led to a discussion of destiny.

Joseph: It was at that point that a man in the audience joined the dialogue and asked about the role of the Supreme Being in all of this. He said he was a senior officer in a large corporation, and it was an “undiscussible” to mention matters of the Spirit or the Supreme Being in business. Yet it seemed to him that a conversation about such predictable miracles necessarily raised the question. Should we speak of God in the corporation, he asked?3 ibid., 191

David: Jaworski responded by quoting an inscription in Latin over the door to Carl Jung’s residence,

Joseph: “Invoked or not invoked, God is present.”

David: The discussion of a divine presence that serves life in all life followed and then silence. From the silence Claire Nuer, a participant in the conference, rose:

Joseph: She was from Paris and spoke in French, with her daughter Lara interpreting for us. … Claire stood up and said very deliberately and forcefully,

Claire: “This is a decision we can all take. We can put our minds to that service.”4 ibid., 192

David: It was then that the full meaning and purpose of Joseph Jaworski’s journey came into focus and he explained to the conference how God’s purpose for him had unfolded. He spoke of his father, Leon Jaworski:

Joseph:… “When my Dad was about thirty-five, he volunteered for the army and was in Europe just before the war ended. He was assigned to try the first war crimes trials, which set the precedent for the later Nuremberg trials. He supervised, planned, and was the chief prosecutor in two precedent-making cases, the Hadamar Trial and the case known as the Russelsheim Death March. He also supervised and prepared for trial the Dachau Concentration Camp case. In this capacity, he went into these camps or other facilities just as they were being liberated in order to gather and preserve the necessary evidence. And in this process, he saw the horror of it all.”

When I got to this point in the story, I couldn’t speak any further. I was suddenly and unexpectedly overcome by emotion. I sat there in front of those 350 people with tears streaming down my face…

Finally, I went on. “In 1945, after the war was over and my Dad was trying these cases, my mother, my two sisters, and I would sit by the radio in the living room of our home in Houston and listen to the Sunday broadcasts where my Dad was describing what was occurring in these trials. Later he came home and told me he had put some files in his study and that I was never to go in there and look at any of that. He wanted that to be clearly understood. So the next day I promptly went to his study and looked at those pictures - the horror of what he had seen and what he had dealt with in those trials. So that’s what I’m crying about,” I told the audience. “Because it was so horrible and because he had to carry it with him all those years.”

At that moment, at a deep level, I realized I was also crying my father’s tears for all the victims and the horror. … And I felt the pain of the overriding question in his life: How could good people do such evil things? And how could we ensure it would never happen again? I began sobbing again, and it was the longest time before I could continue: “It was so horrible for him that he didn’t want to think about it and couldn’t deal with it for fifteen years. He then wrote a small book entitled After Fifteen Years. In the introduction, he said he was inspired to write the book in part because he hoped the questions that were asked in this book would have a lasting effect on the world and particularly on his son, who was just entering his second year of the practice of law….

So my father dedicated his book to me, and in the process of my work … I discovered that this is the work I intend to do … to discover how to transform institutions as well as the individual human heart to ensure that this kind of pain doesn’t continue to occur in the world again and again. It’s happening in countries across the globe and it’s happening in its own form in companies and other organizations as well.”

The room fell silent again. After a few moments, I saw that Claire Nuer and her daughter Lara were making their way up to the front of the room to the speakers’ platform. They were very close to me as they sat down. Lara held her face very close to Claire’s, and her arm was holding Claire. In the other hand, she held the small lapel mike, in order to interpret for the others to hear. Claire’s head was bowed as she began to speak directly to me, very softly, almost in a whisper. I could tell she was in great pain and overcome by grief. This was not surprising to me. As the story I had just told unfolded, I saw on the faces of those present a reflection of my deep pain. This had allowed me to go on. But the first words Claire whispered to me simply took my breath away.

Claire: “My father died in Auschwitz.”

Joseph: She paused for a long moment and took a deep breath.

Claire: “It’s incredible to me, that fifty years later I am sitting beside you at this moment. I have come to say to you thank you for making the decision to write this book and for sharing with us what you have said today.” (a long pause)

“My father was born just a few miles from Auschwitz. His ten brothers and sisters lived near there as well. Now they are gone. Everything is erased, as if they all had never existed. Before today I thought the way to go on was just to surrender to it. But with what occurred today, things are better. The path we must go is now clear. My father had no degrees - he was a simple working man. Your father had many degrees and was a great lawyer. I feel their presence here with us today. Together, I feel they created the world. That’s what I see as I sit next to you now. “(another long pause) “I did not have the time to come here this week from Paris. I had many, many conflicts presented to me from my business, but something was calling me to come.” … “I now know why I was meant to be here today.”

Joseph: With that, Claire fell silent. We all sat in that large room, all 350 of us. Not a sound was to be heard. Not a movement in the entire room. But the power of what was happening filled the space….

Momentarily, Claire spoke again to Peter. She said that she had a videotape of something that she felt was important for those assembled to see. Would it be possible to have it played on the big screen on the stage so everyone could see it? … Within a short while the lights were lowered and the video was played. It was a tape Claire had shot of Auschwitz just a year ago. She had summoned the courage to go there after all this time in order to record the horror of that infamous death camp. The footage was beautifully shot. In surreal images, we saw the barbed wire enclosures, the guard towers, the gas chambers, the huge gas ovens. I sat there silently, sobbing from my gut as I watched the scenes which were underscoring all the grief and pain I had been feeling as I told the story of my father during the war.

But than at the end of the tape there was beautiful, soft music and the most surprising image appeared on the screen. It was an image of two birds, sitting on a slender branch of a tree in winter. Here’s what was written there:

Claire: “Tell me the weight of a snowflake,” a coal-mouse asked a wild dove.

“Nothing more than nothing,” was the answer.

“In that case, I must tell you a marvelous story,” the coal-mouse said.

“I sat on the branch of a fir, close to its trunk, when it began to snow - not heavily, not in a raging blizzard - no, just like in a dream, without a wound and without any violence. Since I did not have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the 3,741,953rd dropped onto the branch, nothing more than nothing, as you say - the branch broke off.”

Having said that, the coal-mouse flew away.

The dove, since Noah’s time an authority on the matter, thought about the story for awhile, and finally said to herself, “Perhaps there is only one person’s voice lacking for peace to come to the world.”

Joseph: Finally, after (a) long silence, the moderator came up on the platform and closed the session by simply saying: “Invoked or not invoked, God is present.”5 ibid.  selections from pages 193-197

David: God is always present. And no matter what challenge we face, God is with us, loving and assisting us with just what we need when we truly need it. This is the Holy Spirit. In prayer with God and each other we watch for the unexpected, follow the Holy Spirit with faith, and grow in soul by divinely lucky accidents. So God comforts the people.

Shalom and Amen.

[1] Joseph Jaworski, Synchronicity, The Inner of Leadership, (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, 1996), 88

[2] ibid., 84-85

[3] ibid., 191

[4] ibid., 192

[5] ibid.  selections from pages 193-197