& — Wednesday, July 15, 1992 — North Shore News

Finding the miraculous in everyday life

I HAVE always liked the
souad of the word
‘*miracle.’’ It is a word that
both soothes and tickles.

As I may have mentioned in
this space before, I happen to
believe in miracles. This probably
puts me ina minority position.
But then, for all | know, maybe
nearly everybody secretly believes
in miracles, or at least the possi-
bility of miracles.

Just because people avoid going
to church doesn’t mean they lack
faith in miracles.

Just because they reject orga-
nized belief-systems doesn’t mean
they are unable to experience what
you might call a cosmic buzz
every once in a while. An instant
where your hair stands up on end
because you sense something
amazing has just transpired before
your wondering eyes.

ft depends, of course, on how
one defines a miracle. [t can be
done on the basis of a sliding
scale, with a river of volcanic lava
stopping just a few feet in front
of a statue of the Virgin Mary be-
ing, say, a “10,”’ and your

‘neighbor's power lawnmower
conking out just as you step onto
your patio to sit down and have a
drink being a ‘‘1,’’ and the
lawnmower staying conked out for
the rest of the day being a ‘‘2”’ or
maybe even a ‘*3.””

‘You follow? Like, another ex-
ample: I’m driving, and the
freeway ahead looks totally jam-
med as far as the eye can see. |
can’t get over to the exit lane be-
fore the next turn-off. And if I
miss that, !’ll for sure miss my
oh-so-important engagement.

It’s 2 cloudy day. The car
blocking my way on the right
suddenly seizes up and grinds toa
complete halt. A beam of light
spurts down from between the
clouds, landing on the empty
patch of pavement that opens
beside me.

1 switch lanes instantly, finding
another tiny gap opening between
a tractor-trailer and a station-
wagon, just where the beam of
light is panning, and zap, I’m on-
to the ramp and out of the jam.
The beam of light from above
winks out.

Nobody saw anything unusual,
but me.

Bob
Hunter

STRICTLY PERSONAL

Miracle — or absolutely nothing
even worth mentioning? Pure

- coincidence, of course, and not

even much of a coincidence, at
that, you say firmly.

Yet it’s enough to give mea lit-
tle wee cosmic buzz. Not that !
think for a second there’s such a
thing as a personal God who wat-
ches over each and every one of .
us, with nothing to do but stand
by as a kind of super babysitter
cum Terminator.

Of course if there is a ‘‘higher
self”? or *‘soul"’ or ‘‘oversoul’’
functioning at some supernormal
level beyond mere human con-
sciousness, one would never know
what was going on — stuck, as
one inevitably is, on the ‘‘nor-
mat”’ plane of existence.

The best you could hope for
would be to see a pattern, an
outline. You'd have to be alert for
hints, signs, glimpses, clues. For
me, beams of sunlight at peculiar
moments will do.

The point is, it’s no big deal.
Maybe it was a tiny, fleeting,
glancing, passing, coming-and-
going quasi-miracle. Maybe not.
Made me feel good for a moment.
Better I should feel good than
bad.

Could be I'm too easily pleased.
But ultimately, so what? It’s a
kind of a tree-fall-
ing-in-th. forest dilemma. If a
miracle occurs and nobody
notices, it’s just a random event,
right?

If you happen to be in the

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44 Maybe it was a tiny, fleeting,
glancing, passing, coming-and-going
quasi-miracle. Maybe not.¥9

noticing mode, however, I do
believe it’s possible to see miracles
every day. Little routine miracles.
Stuff that would never lead to
anyone being canonized. But mi-
raculous nonetheless, at least if
you think about it.

That's the key, I guess. At-
titude. Mind-set. Expectations.
Perceptions. And all perceptions
are selective, remember. Obvious-
ty, if someone is primed to look -
for ‘“‘miracuious’’ coincidences,
that’s more or fess what they'll
see.

How such a person will explain
the truck that eventually runs him
over, or the grand piano that
crushes his skull, 1 dunno.

But I don’t think the idea of a
miracle should automatically be
assumed to be a ‘religious thing.’
There are all sorts of phenomena
— extrasensory perception,
metanormal behavior — which
can be described as miraculous,
but also can be described as sim-
ply ‘‘inexplicable’’ or ‘‘amazing.”’

The ‘‘miracles’’ I think I see
might just be ordinary astonishing
stuff. Maybe the fabric of life
itself is so thoroughly suffused
with miraculous material, let us
say, that you could argue there is
nothing that isn’t miraculous.

Now, I admit, to suggest that
random occurrences of good luck
or weirdness might be part of
some miracle-making process — a
kind of wavering of the event-
horizon in one’s favor — is prob-
ably to cross the line between deep
and wishful thinking, and shame
on me for pretending to know
anything for sure.

It's just that, what if our expec-
tations of what would constitute a
real miracle are too outrageously
high? We want burning bushes or
chaps hiking about on the water,
resurrection, blood from stones.

’

f ua KICK.

Maybe if you gear down the
expectations to something simple,
like somebody you know finding
your wallet in a parking lot a day
after you lost it, your child com-
ing home from schgol early just as
you were about to break down
and go back to cigarettes, some-

one catching a fish right in front
of your camera just as you arrive
looking for such a thing, a tele-
phone call coming through from
somebody you were just thinking
about, saving a lost essay by ‘“‘ac-
cidentally”’ hitting the right com-
bination of buttons on the com-
puter while trying to smash it,
running into the person you need
to meet on the elevator while both
heading in the wrong direction,
finding the piece of information
you've been looking for every-
where while goofing off doing
something entirely different, by
mistake picking up exactly the
present somebody wanted, arriv-
ing at somebody’s side just as they
happen to need you, and, of
course, vice versa..

can do wonders
for your ur days.

with

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