"The purpose of miracles is to teach us to see the miraculous everywhere." (St. Augustine of Hippo)
"The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." (Eden Phillpotts)
When Brett was four years old, his preschool teachers had to coax him to draw. His mind and spirit were usually racing in other directions with endless curiosity and abundant energy. He saw no point in coloring within the lines, preferring to dabble in chaos when forced to sit with his crayons and paper. But one day he came home bubbling over with pride at his creation, waving his drawing like a flag as he ran into the house. I had spent the morning pruning begonia bushes, unaware of the red ants that had crawled up my arm until they decided, in unison it seemed, to bite.
There I sat at the table, my arm covered with angry bumps and calamine lotion, as he joyfully thrust into my hands his landscape picture of a flower garden complete with a stick-figure gardener, and red ants climbing everywhere. It was an early experience with the miracle of synchronicity, the grace that leads us to a sense of wonder for all that is larger than life. And to this day, he rarely calls that I don't say to him: "Funny you should call right now," having just thought of or talked about him, or read something I knew would be of interest to him.
It was with the same sense of wonder, but not surprise, that the week after writing about the artist I had lost track of for two years, we encountered her at an obscure garden art show. More than any other person I've met, Sharon has a way of turning life's frayed threads into the proverbial coat of many colors. She had broken her back last fall, she said, and used her recovery period to break into new art, winning awards for her carvings, and accepting new invitations for shows around Canada. It had also brought about a renewed relationship with her estranged daughter, forced to help her mother at her art shows, and thus seeing her through the eyes of an admiring public instead of a critical son-in-law.
A month ago we walked along the pounding Campbell River below Elk Falls, watching through a light-filtered forest as the fly fishermen whipped their lines in arcs above the water. In the midst of all this beauty, I felt a sudden sense to turn around and go back to the parking lot. As the others walked ahead, I encountered a woman who introduced her beautiful Great Dane, Libby. We shared the coincidence that a friend in Louisiana also had a Great Dane with the same name. Inexplicably, I began telling her about a book I had just read, the story of the man who began Three Dog Bakery, how he had rescued a Great Dane pup, only to find that she had digestive issues and was literally starving. She stared in wonder and told me Libby was a rescue pup who is having severe digestive issues, and she was frantically searching for a solution, and would look up his book. We parted slowly, watching each other in wonder, as I realized that Libby had been leaning against my leg the whole time.
Philip Yancey writes about "rumors of transcendence - (finding) the footprints of God - in places I had never before thought of looking." We somehow expect to find a sense of this Presence in church gatherings, in quiet places of ritual, in prayer groups. Then we encounter them in what my friend calls 'the minor miracles' of life, that surround us everyday. It's not a great leap to see them in the eyes of a delighted child, or on the faces of those we love. We see them in the feather-like clouds resting on the wing of a timeless morning, helping the day to take flight.
As I sit on the driftwood beside the so-still water, I hear them in the hum of a local ferry through the mist, in the rough blow of a sea lion, in the whistling through the wings of the immature eagle flying straight towards the tree over my head. The gift of miracle on this morning is wrapped tenderly, like the ribbon of mist around the islands off-shore, as I'm invited to see Divine footprints through the experiences that challenge us, or that confront those we love and hold precious: a painful divorce, a heart attack, a reoccurrence of cancer, the death of a spouse, a new illness. We bow humbly in the face of the courage of those around us, and realize we are hearing the footfall of profound grace.
"In the world of faith," Yancey suggests, "some things have to be believed to be seen." When we believe that there is, in the Light of all that is around us in this ever-changing world, something larger than what we see, what we hear, even what we currently believe, then miracles occur, moment-by-moment. Life itself comes alive in the magic of 'coincidence,' and compassion becomes our compass in tracking the Divine along the Way.
YAY GOD
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