Contemplating Miracles

Just as I sat down to write my blog on miracles, a mature bald eagle swooped into view and landed on the branch of the "sacred" tree just beyond my field of vision. This is the sort of serendipitous moment that causes me to contemplate miracles.

The word miracle originally from the Latin "miraculum" means "an object of wonder", although it has come to mean many things to many of us. I do not understand it solely as something serendipitous, but as something soulful: An event, a moment, an unexpected experience that originates from a power outside myself and changes something within me, either momentarily or forever.

In the case of an eagle finding a branch with its prey outside my window, we understand it as instinct: Bird is hungry; bird catches fish; bird eats fish. True enough. But what of this majestic eagle with its white head and matching wing tips, glorious to behold -- an "object of wonder"-- miraculum.

Let's contemplate the rising Harvest moon silently appearing as a golden orb above the horizon three consecutive evenings at sunset.

Nothing miraculous if you think of the 29-day cycle as a recurring celestial event happening on cue. But in the case of the recent moon rises, rather than its predictable hour's delay in rising from night to night, the September moon consistently followed sunset due to some phenomenon of timing with the autumnal equinox. I can look to science or AI to explain the reasons for it, but when contemplating miracles, I am content to sit in my chair and watch the sky melt from pink into yellow while the river turns silver. For those of you caught in the Nor'Easter, sorry you missed it, but my daughter in Cambridge sent a photo of a rainbow just before the storm! No less a miracle in my eyes or hers.

Then there are the things that leave me completely in awe that raise my gratitude to a level beyond words. Yes, there is always an "explanation" behind the awesome "miracles of modern medicine", but as I contemplate my one-year anniversary of a so-called "common heart procedure" that changed each one of the 365 days since, the science doesn't matter to me as much as beholding a sunrise, a sunset, a moonrise, or a bald eagle on the wing. The fact that the surgeon performs the procedure two or three times a day, doesn't lessen the fact that for each person, there is nothing common about it and no greater miracle to behold with gratitude beyond words.