MIRACLES

"Canadian Sunset",  oil, by Carol Keene

“To me, every hour of the night and day is a miracle.”
    -- Walt Whitman

    If a miracle can be defined as a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws, then each moment of my life is definitely a miracle. My days -- my moments -- are made of miracles. Each second is a complete surprise to me, and each one is welcome. I may not personally like what happens in each moment, but I welcome it the way I welcome winter after autumn, or the sunset after all-day sunshine. Each moment is made from the most mysterious materials, created by the unaccountable comings and goings of the imposing universe I am part of, and all I can do is drop to my knees, figuratively speaking, and respectfully receive whatever it has to offer. Again, I may not love what a moment looks like, or what a moment makes me feel or do, but the miracle of each moment is that it’s always a surprise, always something sent to stir and rouse me and spur me on, always a brightly packaged bonus. I should bring a gift to each moment as a way of thanking it. I should stand silently before a moment -- any moment -- and make a salute of some sort, offer a toast to a total miracle.

AN ADMIRER BY NATURE

"Sun and Rain", oil, by Thaw Malin III

“Mr Borthrop Trumbull had a kindly liquid in his veins; he was an admirer by nature, and would have liked to have the universe under his hammer, feeling that it would go at a higher figure for his recommendation.”
    -- George Eliot, Middlemarch

Although I’ve been the butt of gentle jokes about it, I am proud to be what Eliot’s auctioneer was, an admirer by nature. I have only so many years left to live, only so many minutes in which to admire the world around me or pour scorn on it, and I choose to admire. It’s exhausting to constantly find fault with what’s happening, and I guess I would rather rest and relax in my admiration for the gifts this world gives me each day than wear out myself with worrying and complaining.  Like Borthrop Trumbull, I’m happy to have “a kindly liquid in my veins”, a soft and thankful force that finds something to praise in just about everything. Yes, there is evil in the world, and there is failure and insufficiency and malfunction, and there are disappointments and duds and also-rans, but there are so many more successes and wonders and stars. Finding fault in everything is like seeing flaws in sunrises, or getting a gift of a great amount of money and making a fuss because it’s not more. I would rather work to find the value and pleasure in a rainy day than rail about it. Life is short, far too short to spend it in grievances and protests. There’s sunshine to be seen in even the darkest day, and I’m out to find it.  When my friends playfully poke fun at my habit of praising rather than disparaging, I’ll take their taunts with a smile -- and somehow turn them into gifts.  

A FRIEND LIKE A CANYON

"Grand Canyon", oil, by Karen Winters

  

A dear friend is finding his way through tough times these days, and, surprisingly, it has started me thinking about the Grand Canyon. It would be so easy to feel “sorry” for this friend, to pity and sympathize and commiserate with him, but that would be viewing him as a fragile and pitiful person. That would be like bending down to offer help to the hopeless, and this friend is far from hopeless. In fact, he is as grand as the Grand Canyon, something I hope to help him clearly see in the next few weeks. He was made by the same universe that made the stars that flash above us, and therefore he is just as extraordinary. The Grand Canyon was carved over billions of years, and so, in a very true sense, was my friend -- carved out in magnificence by the mysterious processes of the universe. Somehow the cosmos came to a point, a few decades ago, where my friend floated into existence, every bit as breathtaking, in his special way, as the canyon created by the Colorado River. This is what he needs to know -- not that he has an overwhelming, unworkable problem, but that he is as majestic as the mightiest rivers and seas. He was made by the same force that set sunrises and sunsets going, that gives us winds and starlight, that spins the earth the same way century after century. Does this “problem” really think it can cause him to hang his head and feel hopeless? Does wind think it can create confusion for the Grand Canyon?    

MY DAILY CRUSADE

"Afternoon Walk", oil, by Sharon Schock

“ Every walk is a sort of crusade.”
    --  Henry David Thoreau, “Walking”

    I could say, with Thoreau, that not only should every walk be a sort of crusade, but so, for me at least, should every day  and every hour and every moment. I’m not talking about taking up arms against life and living like a fighter who wants to force his way through, but rather about battling against boredom and a weary way of living.  I’m talking about fighting to find the treasure in a typical day, the secret abundance in each hour, the store of riches in every second of my life. I want my life to be a campaign to uncover the wealth that always waits around the next corner, in the next hour, not far from my fingertips.  Thoreau thought of a walk as an adventure,  a feat of fearlessness and discovery, and that’s the way I want to live my life. The vast wealth called contentment and well-being waits to be stumbled upon each second, if only I can be brave enough to stay lighthearted and on the lookout. I look forward to striving to see the miracles being made all around me. I wish to lobby for the good fortune that wants to give itself to me, moment after moment.

"WHAT DO I DO?"

    How many times in my life have I said something like, “What do I do?”, meaning “How in the world can I work my way out of this terrible situation?” -- and this morning an amazing answer comes to me: Relax. Let the Universe do the work. That may sound silly and a little reckless, but isn’t the Universe always doing astonishing things to keep me safe, and isn’t it sensible to entrust all my rescues to a power that prepares startling sunrises and sunsets day after day? Shouldn’t I say to the Universe, “You make mighty storms and the sunshine that sends us life each day, so I’m sure you can take care of this problem I’m having.”? I don’t mean that I should literally do nothing about a problem, just that I should see any so-called “personal” actions as the actions, in fact, of the impressive, everlasting Universe I’m part of. A breeze bending a branch on a single tree is a small but inseparable part of the weather forces of the whole planet, and my private actions -- and all of ours -- are part of the steadfast and streamlined work of the whole universe. When faced with a challenging situation, I should do something about it, yes, but only the way breezes do something about making branches bend and sunshine does something about bringing flowers to bloom -- with ease and gracefulness. I should give my attention to a problem, not by sighing and tensing up, but by seeing the problem as simply another opportunity to watch this Universe -- with me included -- do its smooth and skillful work.  

THIS THEN IS LIFE

“This then is life,

Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.”

      -- Walt Whitman, “Starting from Paumanok”

      It’s fun for me to imagine how many billions of years it has taken for the universe to produce any particular moment – how many “throes and convulsions”, for instance, finally fashioned this moment of me sitting on this couch in Connecticut typing on this computer on this cold morning. “This then is life”, as Whitman wrote – this tumbling and tossing together of uncountable numbers of factors and influences that finally makes a single moment of life, and then another and another and another. The man who’s sitting and writing this morning is a product of unimaginably complicated machinery, of an immeasurable system of stimuli and powers. Like most of us, I like to pretend that a separate entity called “I” creates the moments of my life, but that’s simply a fantasy. The fact is that I am as much a product of swirling and inestimable forces as a wisp of smoke is a product of fire or a small strand of my shirt is a product of fields of cotton and factories full of workers. I am here on this couch on this quiet morning because big explosions among the stars happened billions of years ago, starting the inexplicable process that still produces moments of charm and magnificence, like the ones that just transpired as I typed these altogether surprising words.  

Cold and windy weather the last few days, good days for finding things to do inside. Each day when I arrived home from school, Delycia seemed almost out of breath from working on different indoor projects – washing walls, cleaning carpets, sorting out our budgets. She’s a hard-working wonder who can’t wait to get outside with her gardens.

We saw a strangely superb movie on Tuesday – the French film, Amour, about an elderly couple dealing with the wife’s terminal illness. It was a sad but stirring film, one we won’t soon (maybe ever) forget. Oddly, one of the previews before the film was for the upcoming summer blockbuster based on the novel The Great Gatsby, which, from the previews, looks to be utterly long-winded and superficial, the exact opposite of Amour. The film was delicate, distressing, and so real that we felt like we were truly watching two people prepare for their sad end. We left the theater in astonished silence.