Sacred Collisions

I am re-reading Breakfast of Champions right now, and in it, there is a section where the author is explaining how he sees the world around him:

"As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or about any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions." - Kurt Vonnegut

In Carver's story, there are collisions of all kinds going down. There is the very physical collision of the car and Scotty, the collision of people's lives intersecting (the various doctors, nurses, orderlies, patients, and families), and collisions of understanding (Ann realizing who is making the disturbing calls, the baker's realization of what he has done). As opposed to the cynical narrator of Vonnegut's novel, I believe that Carver is implying that there can be something sacred in the way that our lives collide. The scene at the end where the couple and the baker "break bread" together is a very spiritual scene, it reminds me of Caravaggio's painting of the Biblical story where Christ reveals himself to two mourners after he has died. They are seated at a table, breaking bread, when they realize who they are seated with. I included the painting for dramatic effect...

Also, when Ann sees the woman silently praying, and knows they are in very similar situations, "She had an urge to ask what those words were." There is a sense of a Communion of pain and worry, just as when Ann and Howard stand next to each other at the window: "...they seemed to feel each other's insides now, as though the worry had made them transparent in a perfectly natural way."