I checked into the barracks at Capodichino (one of the sites that the U.S. Navy leases from the Italian government in the Naples metropolitan area). The next day, I went to my eye appointment at the Naples Hospital. The doctor looked at my eye and said that he had never seen anything like that before. He gave me some kind of ointment to put on my eye each night. When the appointment was finished, I boarded the shuttle bus to take me back to Capodichino barracks.
At the bottom of the hill, the bus came to a jerky stop. I stared out the window and saw two guys in suits on bicycles. One waved nervously to the bus driver. The bus drove and as we passed the guys on bicycles, I was shocked to see that one of the guys on the bicycle looked like my old friend from 7th grade, John Adams. He never kept in touch after I moved away from Nebraska in 1985, but I always remembered him. He was a Mormon and these two guys on bicycles were definitely Mormon missionaries. Back at the barracks, I looked up information about the Mormon church. I learned that one of the Navy Chaplains on the base was a Mormon, so I called him and told him about that coincidence in coming across this possible old friend of mine. He investigated for me and got back with me.
What I learned was that the missionary was indeed John Adams, but he was not assigned to a mission in the Naples area. He was in a Rome mission and I was able to get the address. After I received the confirmation of my hunches, I was shocked by the meaning of it all. I had not seen or heard from this guy in eight years. What was the likelihood that his path and my path would intersect on the road leading up to the U.S. Naval hospital in Naples, Italy in an afternoon in the spring of 1993?
As the Navy Chaplain told me, Elder Adams had to come to the American hospital to get new contact lenses. So, we both had an eye problem. And this chance meeting could have been missed if I had taken a later bus that day, or if I had gone to Naples weeks earlier as my squadron doctor recommended. It was a coincidence that depended on both of us being at that exact spot at that exact time and day. It also required that I had the ability to recognize an old friend (for John had no way of seeing who was on the bus or might not even remember me).
This coincidence opened the way for a new understanding. It was the one event I needed to shatter the logic-based view of atheism forever. I know that atheists and agnostics dismiss coincidences as “just a coincidence” but when I think about how improbable that situation was, I knew that there was an unseen force in our world that works in a mysterious way that defies any sense of logic or mathematical probabilities.
When I was released from the doctor’s care, I dealt with another of the Navy’s bureaucracy…getting back to my command in La Maddalena. I had to wait on a MAC flight, with no guarantees that I would get on a specific flight. MAC flights were twice a week, if I remember correctly. I kept my command up to date on my status. The Yeoman I worked for kept referring to my stay in Naples as a boondoggle, which annoyed me. The Navy was keeping me in Naples. True, I took advantage of being in Naples by shopping in the Navy Exchange and buying the latest paperback novels in the Stars and Stripes Bookstore (which La Maddalena did not have) and eating at Wendy’s (no American fast food restaurants in La Madd either).
But I decided that rather than wait for a MAC flight, I would return on my own dime and get reimbursed. Talk about initiative! The Navy was giving me an extended “vacation” in Naples by delaying my MAC flight spot, but I used my own travel abilities to get back to my command.
In Rome, I stopped by the Mormon mission office to talk with John Adams, who didn’t remember me as much as I remembered him. Everyone was curious about this coincidence story and I got to see how a mission office operated. They even gave me an Italian language Book of Mormon. Normally, American missionaries aren’t permitted to use a military hospital, but since Adams was an Air Force dependent, he had an I.D. card that allowed him use of the hospital. Back in the seventh grade, my circle of friends were all sons of Air Force personnel, since our junior high school was near Offutt Air Force Base.
After the short visit, I made my way to Civitavecchia to catch the overnight ferry to Olbia, Sardinia. The next day, I caught the bus from Olbia to La Maddalena, and my trip was completed. Did I receive thanks from my Yeoman supervisor? Hell, no. He was a complete dick. He thought the whole thing was a scam to get a free vacation to Naples, even though I had medical documentation. I think in retrospect that he was jealous that I got to go to Naples while he had to work for two of us. Besides, it seemed like the universe conspired a way to get me to that place of having an amazing coincidence.
What does that coincidence mean? To be honest, even eighteen years later, I still haven’t a clue to the meaning. I did get a letter or two from John Adams after our meeting, but no friendship sustained itself, so that’s another dead end. The best answer I could come up with is that this coincidence was a wake up call. The kind that God knew I needed to experience for proof of the spiritual force that operates in our world. It was the coincidence that began a series of coincidences.
My eye returned to normal. I think my red eye lasted for three or four months. I still don’t know what was wrong with it. Its one of those spiritual mysteries, I suppose, whose sole purpose was to get me to Naples to be in the precise location to experience that coincidental meeting. I consider the coincidence in Naples to be the biggest one of my life.
Yes, Rob, I have been there on more than one occasion. During one such dream, a very close friend of mine since the fifth grade came to me in a dream and told me goodbye. She lived in Atlanta but we kept in touch over the decades. I picked up the phone before I even got out of the bed, called her; asked to speak to Bev. Her sister, who had answered the phone, said, “Bev’s dead”. I didn’t believe what she’d said, and I asked, “Nancy, what did you say?” “Bev’s dead”, she repeated, then told me Bev had transitioned from stomach cancer, so quikly I hadn’t even known she was sick. In a subsequent dream, I asked someone if Bev could come and walk on the beach with me, and some unseen voice in the dream replied, “Bev’s resting now”. In another dream, I was dancing with my granddad, my mom’s father, and he told me he would always love me, and said goodbye. I learned the next day he had just died a few hours previously, from complications of Parkinson’s. I never, ever discount dreams of death, because historically, for me, they seem to be lucid and true. But I cherish these dreams, because they allow me to comprehend spirit contact that I might otherwise overlook or disregard. And I truly am convinced these are definite illustrations of synchronicities in our lives.
This was a great but perhaps subtle awakening for Nicholas, subtle because it nudged him as opposed to hitting him in the head with a baseball bat, as synchronicities sometimes do! What a cool story. I’ve had several powerful synchronicities these last couple of years that have come to me through dream work and compulsive nudging from The Other Side: essentially, re-occurring dreams of persons whom I’ve neither seen nor heard from in decades but who at one time or another I deeply loved and who had tremendous impacts in my life. With these dreams of various people, I ultimately would be so compelled that I would spends months searching for them using every venue available, and in each and every situation, with each of the people, I would FINALLY locate the person within a few days or weeks of the person’s transition into spirit. One of the most amazing examples is that of my first sweetheart, my first true love, initial J. I suddenly dreamed about him over and over
until I finally felt coerced to try to locate him. We had lived in Alabama when we were sweethearts, and I began my people search there, going so far as to attempt to obtain a yearbook from the year he would have been in our high school after my family has moved away. I spent almost 24 months constantly looking for him, with no luck. Then I just happened to find a person with his name on a people finders
computer site, (it hadn’t previously been there), and under his name it said “Florida Fish and Game Wildlife Commission” I was stunned, because we live less than a mile from the Alligator farm, which is a national tourist attraction. I immediately phoned there, and the head honcho went to school with my sons. I asked him if he knew J. he said he’d check and call me back. In a little while, he called me back and said, “I hate to tell you this, but JF passed away six weeks ago. He had a heart attack while wrestling an alligator trying to trap it, in Fort Lauderdale. We had a memorial for him during our most recent state-wide meeting”. He went on to tell me that J lived in Ft. Lauderdale but that he had been here many, many times to the Alligator farm. I was astonished beyond words, and contacted his family in S. FL who sent me a copy of his obit and also some photos, etc. What are the chances of such a thing? He and I could have been in a Walmart line together over the years, or eaten in the same restaurant here in adjacent tables, and never knew it. And why was I so urgently compelled to find him, only to succeed six mere weeks after he left this world? My first true love….my heart broke all over again these decades later, that we were so star-crossed. He has come to me once in a while from the Other Side now, and I weep. Such a close call…WHY? I’ll not know until I see him Over There.
Wow, math. This is profoundly dramatic and sad.
I’ve had several instances of dreams in which I received a vivid image of someone from the past only to learn that the person died. The first one I recall happened when I was about 21. My old friend John Bussey, who I hadn’t seen for a couple of years, appeared in a dream. Speaking in his usual deadpan blunt manner, he simply said: “I’m dead now.” A short time later, I heard he’d died in a car crash. – R
I like the idea expressed above that it’s perhaps not the person who matters always, but the significance of the coincidence. The person can serve as a “wake up”, even though no real significant relationship is present……..I think of someone I kept running into in different parts of the world (literally) – I never even liked him, and to this day wonder what the heck the meaning was of running into this person. But from this I consider that what he served to illustrate for me was just the linkage. Thanks!
i agree, lauren – that the person might simply have been serving as the link to the real meaning – and not a part of the meaning itself – great take –
Great points, Lauren! Good to hear from you and hope England is treating you well!
I keep thinking that John Adams himself was actually inconsequential.
Look at his name : John very common, John Doe = person not known
Adams : The first man, “Didn’t know him from Adam”
He was just a tool of awakening as you say. Just chuckling at the Universe’s humour in choosing him. 🙂
So could this be a trickster synchro?? I hadn’t thought of it that way until you brought up this stuff, Nat.
I felt and heard laughter as I read it. Not at Nicholas and his sore eye, but just the fun in awakening us. Humour is very uplifting and certainly gets us to remember funny events /occasions.
I don’t think the person was inconsequential, though. John Adams was one friend from junior high that I hated losing touch with. I had hoped a friendship would’ve rekindled from that synchronicity, but as I learned, he didn’t really remember me as much as I remembered him, so that’s not a basis for a friendship.
I think the Mormon angle is a little more significant, since the Mormon church does seem to play a larger role in my life than for others (and I’m not even a member!). I hesitate telling Mormons about this experience, though, because they take it to mean that its a clear sign that God wants me to join the Mormon church!
I do think the eye problem, though, is most significant. Because for both John and myself to be at that particular place in time, we both had a problem with our eye / vision that required a special trip. After that episode, my red eye disappeared and I’ve never had such a thing happen to my eye in the years since. I have no idea what that problem was, so I do think it was definitely a spiritual affliction that set into motion those chain of events.
I wish I could have significant synchronicity experiences like that at least once a year!
It was definitely a real ‘eye opener’ for you! Wishing you many more synchros and blessings. 🙂
yes, a great story with those many layers that are always so fascinating – a lot to be taken from it by him – funny how we can “see” so much with impaired vision –
and as an aside, do i remember having heard this story before here – as a comment or post maybe? seems vaguely familiar? –
What a wonderful awakening. I’m so glad you shared it.
It made me think about the other fellow in this story. I wonder if it ever occurred to him what an important coincidence this was for him, too. There he was, following “the spirit,” however he defined that, and it led him to cross paths with you, and that path-crossing changed your life. It appears to me that his missionary work was very effective!–but maybe in ways he wasn’t even aware of at the time. He probably did more good just by being there for the “coincidences,” than he ever did by knocking on doors and trying to convert people.
Good points, Nancy!
‘The coincidence that began a series of coincidences’ – I guess sometimes we need an ‘unlikely’ coincidence, such as this, to make us pay attention to the ones that folllow. Great story again.
It’s a life changing syncrho, for sure.