It’s a Miracle!

Musings on Magic & Wonder

Yesterday our GP did a home visit to remove stitches from an amputated toe for my 93 year old mother – knowing she had Covid!  It’s a Miracle! Thanks to his goodwill we did not have to go to the ER, and that would have been the 3^rd time of the week. Today a 2^nd miracle happened – after my snow blower failed to blow the slush from my driveway I asked our neighbour if he could plow our slush – and he did! It’s a Miracle! We will be able to drive and walk on our long country driveway once the flash freeze comes tonight – thanks to the goodwill of our neighbour. So, are these really miracles? Well, of course it depends upon how you define a miracle. For me, in this age where human initiative is supressed by bureaucratic rules and computer algorithms that will employees what to do and human relationships are frayed or neighbours don’t know each other I consider all examples of “normal” human goodwill miracles.

Clearly, because it is Christmas Eve, I am a mood to “see” miracles where others might see mundane events that just happen to be positive, but otherwise are not special in any way. Well, that’s my first point right there! What we choose to “see” and how we choose to value it is, in that very act of choosing, a miracle! We have the choice to see the world as miraculous and thus make our lives, and thus the world, miraculous in its very nature. Now, there is a little detail here that needs elaboration: miracles are NOT magic. Being an Engineer and Physics teacher I realize the hard logic of the “real” world that has rules like “pigs don’t fly”, no matter how many incantations and waving of your magic wand you do. As a matter of fact I researched this distinction and found that, at least according to a website using the Jewish way of thinking Magic is the use of irrational that is “all about me” while Miracles are use of the supra-rational that is “all about God” [i.e.. NOT me, but rather it’s about US].

I like the thought of the philosopher E. Kant in his idea on the Limits to Reason. Basically it goes like this: reason is good and should be maximized, but it has limits. Think of miracles then as not irrational or going against reason, but as I described above, a supra-rational event/insight, defined as “not understandable by reason alone; beyond rational comprehension”. In that light Life itself can be seen as Miracle – it certainly does not obey the Laws of Entropy! This point of view is supported by  “The Miracle Planet” – my favourite science documentary which examines the geological and intertwined biological history of he Earth. It’s all very science based and yet, there is an underlying theme of the “miracleness” of the whole enterprise: it is just so unlikely that life, and us, can exist – and yet we do.

Now of course it is a given that everything written here is about the State of Crisis that our beautiful planet is going through. Figured out yet what that is? Could it be that we need a miracle to avert total disaster? Could it be that a miracle is possible? Could it be that IF, and only if, we are people of goodwill life on Earth, human and otherwise, will not just survive, but thrive? Could it  be that it is that when YOU believe in miracles, the miracle that we will not self destruct, that miracle can happen – but ONLY if you believe it is possible? Could it be that although I don’t believe in magic, I experience something even better? A joy in gift of wonder, the wonder a child and any adult who works hard enough to retrieve that wonder from their memory. Well, all these are possible – but mostly I leave it up to decide why I am writing about miracles 2 days before Christmas.

I leave you know with a summary and the ending to a famous miracle – the melting of the stone cold heart of Scrooge. As you know in the Dickens story, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge the miserable and cold-hearted miser is visited by the ghost of his former partner, Marley, who also spent his life making money and exploiting the poor. Marley warns Scrooge that if he doesn’t change his ways he will, like Marley, be damned. But in order to give him one last chance at redemption, Scrooge is visited by three spirits, the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of Christmas yet to come. All this, combined with a trip to his untended grave, transform Scrooge into the picture of generosity and bonhomie. Instead of keeping all his wealth to himself he buys a turkey and helps the Cratchit family. Dickens concludes the story of Scrooge by telling us:

“Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him…it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”

And now I must take my leave and put another log on the fire because, of course, we have a power failure due to the strong winds. But wait, is there a miracle in that? Of course there is! A friend of mine gave me a winter’s supply of free wood from this woodlot [he does not have a fireplace] and so the house is toasty warm.  By the way, did you notice how I used the word “goodwill” over and over again? It was not because I am senile, rather, it is because it is the secret sauce that turns the mundane into the miraculous. May you spread that goodwill this Christmas season, and EVERY season. When we do that, the challenges of climate change and species extinction and toxic food/soil/water will be easy to overcome. How dare I make this claim? Because I believe in miracles! I have seen a miracle – a simple GP who overcome a fear of Covid and overcome a bureaucratic mindset that says no to home visits to treat a fragile 93 year old woman who needed his help. Be like him, be a man or woman of goodwill and then you too will partake in the miracle we call life on Earth. Life may not be magic, but it is a miracle and it is wonderful if you choose to make it so.

 

“Peace on Earth and Goodwill Towards  all People”