Miracles

Miracles are easy.  It’s the before and after that are difficult.  The miraculous is daily:  life, love, blueberries, sunlight, beauty, clouds, my wife’s face, breath, good questions, the smell of new-mown grass, consciousness, apple cider,  children’s laughter, sunsets – my list runs for pages.  What’s hard is the before, when we’re caught in emotion or pain or doubt or all three, and nothing seems wonderful; everything, to quote Hamlet, seems “stale, flat and unprofitable.”  And the after can be just as difficult.  The sense that the wonderful will never again be as wonderful, the sense of loss, the inevitable let-down from the emotional high that I too often mistake for the miracle itself, but which is only a passing thing, delightful but temporary as one of those miraculous sunsets; the sense that my capacity for wonder is blunted, dulled; the self-disgust that mutes the world and everything in it, that shuts down my alertness to the “daily-ness” of the miraculous.  Then, too, that annoying, cynical voice that says these daily miracles don’t count, that anyone can experience those, as if the miraculous were anything but democratic in its appearance and opportunity.  Miracles for the elite only, the chosen, the blessed, as if blessings do not pour constantly on us all!

So the before and after, paradoxically, serve as excellent indicators that the miraculous has happened, because of my human anticipation and then reaction to it.  Instead of praying for the miraculous, I should pray in the miraculous — acknowledge the gift already given.  “The only true miracle is a changed consciousness.”  Beautiful, but I’m not sure I believe it.  The miraculous is profligate, abundant and running over, spilling out of every single life, too much for any single person, not something I can hold onto.  This is how Spirit seems to work — not just full, but overflowing.  And when the miracle happens, and I acknowledge the presence of the miraculous, the miracles continue.  One powerful key is gratitude — sometimes I think it’s the only prayer we need.