Six Degrees of Separation?

In writing the previous post I was struck at how easy it seems for people and places in my life that are otherwise unrelated to intersect one another in all manners of unlikeliness.  How many times have you said to someone upon meeting them unexpectedly, or discovering an unlikely connection:

‘Fancy meeting you here’!

‘What a coincidence’!

‘What a small world’!

The longer I live and the more I travel, the more convinced I become that we truly do live in a small world.  Have you ever heard of the rule, ‘six degrees of separation’?  The theory is that there are only six steps between one person and another on the globe, so that any two people on earth are only separated from knowing one another by six ‘friend of a friend’ statements.  Though the theory is contested, some days I wonder if it isn’t more like four or five steps of separation.

Previous to the last fifty years, six steps was entirely unrealistic.  But given the global society in which we now live, with the internet, Facebook, cell phones, and plenty of iTechnology I have no idea how to use, somehow all the people and places in our lives seem to be interconnected.  And yet, I’m still struck at the coincidences that seem to increase from year to year and place to place.  Here are just a few that I can think of off hand:

- While in Kyrgyzstan I remember meeting someone who knew the location of Zumbro Falls, MN.  Zumbro Falls!  In Kyrgyzstan!  Doesn’t sound like a big deal?  You may know one or the other, but do you know where both are?  Not many will, but here’s a hint for one… it’s not in Africa!

- On this day six years ago, I left Kyrgyzstan and flew to Hungary to visit my friend Kim.  Two days shy of exactly six years later, my friend Kim flew to Kyrgyzstan. 

- My friend Faye from my Kyrgyzstan-Kazakhstan team knows my friend Bonita from Camp Victory.

- Mary, the pastors wife from Kyrgyzstan, lives near to me here in Scotland.

- In Florida I met someone who knows the location of Bellechester, MN, where a total of about 100 people currently live. 

   

- While in Massachusetts I discovered that a seminary friends’ mom and my mom not only went to high school together, but both grew up in Bellechester together!

- My friends, Andrew and Susan, from here know my friends, Betsy and Alex, from Massachusetts

- My friends, Betsy and Alex, from Massachusetts now live just south of me in England

- My friend, Susan, from here knows my friend Maria from Minnesota

- A new professor here at St Andrews came from Gordon-Conwell at the same time as I did last year.  But what’s more… he’s originally from Winona, MN.

These probably don’t seem like big deals to you, but stop for a moment and remember all of your ‘small world’ experiences, and soon enough you will find yourself equally as struck by the kind of world in which we now live.  It truly is becoming a global society, and that even includes places like Bellechester, Zumbro Falls, Cooke City, and Kyrgyzstan. 

Not quite Mazeppa though.  Peoples’ response to that place is still, this.