You Are a Miracle

And so is everything else

Zinnia blooming at Evergreen. The closer you look at life, the more miracles you see. Photo by Rob.

Are you waiting for a miracle?

Do you want to be miraculously healed, fed with a free loaf and a fish on a mountainside, or be talked to by a burning bush?

Maybe you will be. Who knows?

But while you’re waiting, why not look around and notice all the miracles you’re surrounded with every day.

In his poem, ‘Miracles’, the exuberant American poet Walt Whitman wrote:

Why, who makes much of a miracle?

I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water . . .

He goes on for another 18 lines, itemizing everyday things he perceives as miracles, including:

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.

What a way to live! To Whitman, even the space between things is a miracle, as is the space our bodies inhabit as we move around to work, play, and sleep.

Imagine the joy that would flow endlessly from us like light from the sun if we saw life this way!

You Are Surrounded By Miracles

It’s common to think of a miracle as something to be wondered at. It must be amazing, inexplicable, not normal.

Well, let’s think about ourselves for a few minutes. We’ve gotten used to thinking that we are a common thing. There are over eight billion of us so we’re hardly miraculous.  

But imagine for a moment that there are no humans on the earth, then suddenly there is one. Just one. You (an eye in the sky for the sake of this article) gaze at that human. What would you think? You would call it a miracle. Moveable body parts. Two eyes reflecting the universe. Ears. Tongue. Teeth. Intelligible words coming out of its mouth. Skin that breathes. Fingers that curl. A neck that swivels. And what is that strange new thing those two lips are forming? Ahh. A smile. What a miracle! How wondrous! How inexplicable!  

We are all to be wondered at. We are all amazing, inexplicable, not normal.

We’ve become complaisant.

We see a sunrise, a stone by the roadside, a kingfisher diving, a grass shoot slowly emerging in a crack in the pavement, and we say ho hum.

Let’s be more like Walt Whitman.

Let’s look around at everything, including ourselves, and say, What a miracle all this is!

Can you feel that surge of joy?

With love, Marlane