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The Home Dance: Hugh Nibley among the Hopi

1998; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 31; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/45226413

1554-9631

Boyd Jay Petersen,

Diversity and Impact of Dance

Hugh Nibley lives in a world of serendipity.As his son-in-law and intended biographer, I have discovered that, time and time again, he has miraculously avoided some catastrophe or dropped in on some fortunate eventuality.Call it happenstance, fate, or divine will, but these moments of pleasant coincidence have followed him throughout his life.Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck believes that these "miracles of serendipity," as he calls them, are "amazingly commonplace" and usually "in some way beneficial" to the recipient.1Those who don't experience them, he argues, are simply not aware of them -"serendipitous events occur to all of us, but frequently we fail to recognize their serendipitous nature; we consider such events quite unremarkable, and consequently we fail to take full advantage of them."2While this may be true, I have never known anyone who experiences these moments of serendipity to the degree Hugh Nibley does.More importantly, not only do they happen to him, but he makes himself aware of them.Though Hugh would not dismiss the significance of any good fortune, to me the most thrilling instances are the times during World War II when, through fortunate synchronicity, he avoided tragedy: On D-Day, he was originally ordered to fly in a glider to Normandy, but his seat was taken at the last moment by a general and Hugh was ordered to drive a Jeep ashore.All the occupants of the glider were killed when it crashed.On another transport, a glider headed to Holland, he happened to put a scrap of armor under his seat just as it absorbed three machine gun bullets while a fourth went between his feet.Once while he was sitting in his tent, a 16-inch shell landed in the mud a few yards away from him and slid along until it stopped, without exploding, its nose touching his tent.