Someone recently inquired about what I thought a miracle was. So, in response of course I sat down and wrote my thoughts in my journal. After all, everything is grist for the mill when it comes to spiritual journaling and the writer’s life.
The response came quickly because I have experienced many miracles in my life. Just yesterday morning looking out my window I witnessed a miracle.
Miracles often go beyond our ability to explain how they happened. Of course there is much around us that cannot easily be explained. However, when we have a miracle show up it is through our understanding of it that we experience it as a miracle.
There are many levels of miracles and depending on and through one’s view, one experiences a miracle. Your view includes your perspective, your mind set, your assumptions and your spiritual knowledge.
One “level” of miracle is through synchronistic encounters, another “level” is through experiencing our oneness with all of life (this can be a healing miracle or a spiritual epiphany). Paradoxically, I experience many miracles in nature and through scientific phenomenon. Seeing a redheaded woodpecker at my feeder can be understood as a miracle due to their rarity. Being in a terrible accident without a scratch on you could be a miracle. Someone recovering from cancer could be a miracle. Someone having cancer could be a miracle.
Miracles are relative to the person witnessing or experiencing one.
Just yesterday I was sharing a story of a personal miracle I experienced back in the late 1970’s. (And even though I consider this a more personal miracle it fulfills my requirement for an authentic miracle.) An authentic miracle is one that moves the individual and environment (social and natural) in the direction of one’s evolutionary destiny (destination). An authentic miracle is recognized as such. An authentic miracle is perfectly timed (but this timing cannot be explained rationally).
An authentic miracle holds an opportunity for the recipient.
So, back in the second summer after I graduated from High School I went to the admissions office of the University. I had attended my last two years of High School at one of the first alternative high schools: Malcolm Shabazz. Grades were not important, but one still had to get credits to graduate. Up until my senior year I had no plans of going on to college. But upon graduation I decided I wanted to be a writer and become a social worker. So with my “eggs all in one basket,” I took my transcripts to the admission’s office with the plan to attend the University that Fall. The woman at the admissions took my material and told me to come back the next day. Which I did. When she retrieved my transcripts she informed me that I did not have enough algebra credits for admission.
I left confused and stumped. My plan felt SO correct for me. I could feel the momentum of this idea I held for my self and my life.
I went for a walk down to a local drug store that at the time had a counter where one could get sodas, sandwiches and ice cream. (Back then they were known for grilled cinnamon rolls — buttered and flipped on the grill!) I sat down and ordered a coca-cola. As I sipped and considered my predicament (I was also asking Spirit, How can this be, and What should I do now?), someone sat down next to me. I was pretty self-absorbed but I did look up to greet this person.
Can you guess who sat next to me that day?
My algebra teacher from Malcolm Shabazz. I told him what just happened and he told me that I did in fact take enough algebra and that he would write a letter stating so.
I was admitted into the University that Fall. (I now have eight published books and hold a Masters in Social Work).
I know we have to show up for these miracles, they don’t come to us. We have to “meet the Creative” halfway as the I Ching consults us to do. We have to participate in the evolutionary momentum of our life and the life of the planet. When we do this, miracles show up to help us.
I witnessed a miracle recently. One that is relatively common — someone addicted to drugs and alcohol hit the wall, hard. The wall was the miracle. The miracle was his feeling the impact of the wall. The miracle was in his choice of recovery.
In the movie The Cave of The Yellow Dog the Grandmother shows her granddaughter the miracle of life. She asks her to try and get a grain of sand to land on the top of a needle. When she is unsuccessful her Grandmother says, “That is how difficult it is to have a human birth.”
Ideally, miracles are recognized as such and not wasted.
Journaling Around Miracles
What do you consider a miracle? Write about a recent one. What kind of miracle would help you at this point with your intentions or life?
Write about a missed opportunity (or wasted miracle) using the following words: precious, reluctant, chance, future, sunset, over.
How can such difficulty as cancer or losing something be a miracle?
Take a different bus or route home. Notice something unusual and write about that.
Tags: , Cave of the Yellow Dog, Oprah, Spiritual Journaling, Tibetan Wisdom, Writing Prompts
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Lovely. Thanks for the think! I always defined a miracle not as something you couldn’t explain but as something that fell outside of your usual expectations. Miracles work like tricksters that way, offering us an opportunity to choose to see them and break out of the cage of our habitual limitations.
If you walk on by, however, whatever opportunity for growth you just declined is infinitely available in other ways. Thinking you wasted an opportunity that will never return seems like an unnecessary mental burden, but perhaps that’s the conclusion you come to by journaling about it.
Love the last exercise! My dad quit smoking by breaking not just one habit but everything, driving to work a different way, eating different food, walking through buildings differently, rearranging furniture, etc. So great to step out of our daily cages. I’ll do that today too!