God as the Great Weaver

There are no chance encounters. 

Simply, there is no "chance" about the way people meet and come into each other's lives—it is all part of a plan; and perhaps it will be easiest explained if we think of God as the Great Weaver, the Earth as the frame, and all the people on it as the strands that move in and out, forming a pattern on a wonderful carpet. The Great Weaver is also a great magician, and as He attaches each little coloured thread to the frame, He endows it with life and willpower, and shows it what line it must follow to form the pattern He intends to make. Let's take Mr Yellow Thread, and say he has to help to make a rose. As he starts whirling and twirling his way across the frame, fitting in with various other threads each in their correct position, all goes well; then, suddenly, he tires of his part and goes off at a tangent, causing tangle and confusion to Mr Red Strand and Lady Blue, whose lines he crosses. Eventually he mixes things up until he is almost choked, and comes to a standstill. If he realises his mistake and is truly anxious to repair the mischief he has done, he will do his very best, first of all to disentangle and put straight Mr Red Strand and Lady Blue, as he is responsible for their troubles, and then try to work back to his original place. No amount of repentance alone will help him; he must have the will to undo the wrong. If he does not have the will, the Great Weaver does not do the work for him; what He does do is to cut Mr Yellow Thread where he joins the frame, and withdraw him. By the intrusion and compulsory withdrawal of the alien thread, Mr Red Strand and Lady Blue are left with little loops, uneven, and sagging; by making strenuous efforts they can tighten up their own pattern again so that it shows no trace of having been crossed by the wrong thread, and through this experience may even be firmer than before.

The work of the Great Weaver never stops, so another takes Mr Yellow Thread's place, and the pattern continues to shape itself. He is not broken to pieces and thrown away as useless, but is straightened out and put into correct shape and later on will be fastened to the frame again, and this time he will have to weave into a less conspicuous place, the background probably, where he will help to show up the beauty woven by Mr Red Strand and Lady Blue. There are some underweavers also, the assistants to the Great Weaver (they are the highly developed spirits who live on the seventh sphere); they help all who desire it by directing them along the right lines. They can see the pattern, though not in such detail as the Great Weaver, and so can tell along what lines certain lives will fall, and therefore sometimes they foretell events. They can see that Mr Plain Thread is now forming a "stem," and, if he works to the pattern the Great Weaver intends, he will eventually finish up in a beautiful rose; but if, instead, he runs amuck, he will be responsible for the disaster that results, for he cannot avoid involving others. The Great Weaver does not intend any thread to work its way alone, though it has an individual place; it must cross and recross the frame with all the others, each weaving his little bit in the great colour scheme which none of us can understand, for we are too near to it to see it in the right perspective, and it is not yet complete.

Claude's Second Book, L. Kelway-Bamber, New York, 1920

This graphic represents a slice of the spider-web-like structure of the universe, called the "cosmic web." These great filaments are made largely of dark matter located in the space between galaxies—NASA, ESA, and E. Hallman (University of Colorado, Boulder)