What a Miracle!

It must have been 2001 still, not so long after the tragedies of 9/11, and I was at the mercy of my then hairdresser who was regaling me with a story. Brandishing sharp scissors she said, “You are a minister aren’t you?  You’ll love this then.  I just tear up every time I think of it.  Have you heard about the man who was in World Trade Center and when the buildings collapsed he found himself straddling a girder? He rode that girder all the way to the ground, and survived!  God saved him!  What a miracle!”

A born skeptic, I muttered my doubts about the veracity of that account, keeping my wholly incredulous response to myself.  What, I wondered, did God have against the three thousand who didn’t ride girders to safety? Didn’t they deserve miracles, too?

I read recently of an indigenous woman who was captured by Coronado on his march through Mexico into what became the southern states. In a stroke of luck, she escaped her captors.  Unfortunately, she ran smack dab into Hernando de Soto who was trekking across from the Florida peninsula. Coronado and de Soto never encountered each other, but, one very unlucky woman managed to cross paths with both slave-hungry explorers.  Was that a miracle?

The exclamation “What a miracle!” is reserved for extraordinary events we consider good news. Turning a blind eye to all coincidences that cause misery, we focus on stories of unlikely events that might serve the idea that some ‘good intentions’ undergird life on earth.  Even more, it seems that people like to recount tales that suggest divine forces will single them out for special notice in times of need.  

How might we live if we weren’t waiting for God to thrust a girder under us at just the right moment?  I hope we would live in expectation of the little miracles, like the dedication of rescue workers who refused to give up looking for one more person trapped under the rubble, or the compassion that turns us aside from enslaving our sisters and brothers, and the hope that human hands outstretched in love will be miracle enough to elicit our praise and thanksgiving.

A Simple Story

We strode into the service with one short rehearsal behind us.  The congregation watched with a bit of skepticism as five people fumbled with microphones and chairs at the front of the sanctuary.  We sat in our ragged semi-circle, and the narrator began to read.  We all read and a story took center stage. Some of us mugged and mimed, and some simply read with feeling, The children moved to the front of the room or stood on their parent’s laps to see this minor gaggle of readers as they told the story of La Befana, the Italian Christmas witch.

 

Reader’s Theatre is a very low-tech, low budget technology for story-telling. It requires a nicely developed script, a few props, willing readers, and an investment in rehearsal time.  It’s that simple, almost too simple to work.  But, it does work.  We all love to hear a story.  Our very brains are designed to follow a plot, to anticipate twists and turns, to dash ahead to our own imagined ending and back again to hear what is really happening.  

 

After the service, one member commented that his son had a book about the holidays, and in a pictorial representation he’d noticed a witch on a broom.  He said he’s always imagined the Italians had some special Halloween celebration, and now he’d connected that picture with the legend of Befana, the woman who refused to follow a shepherd to Bethlehem to see the baby Jesus. 

 

We are all driven to made connections, even between a child’s picture book and a story told at church.  We can’t help but gather all the bits of information at our disposal and make something out of them.  That is how stories of every kind came to be in the first place.  A good story satisfies something deep within.  In the story of  La Befana, the message of hope the story conveyed was a bonus, a pleasant connection with our first foray in the simple world of Reader’s Theatre. 

 

 

More Miracles?

The universe wants to be heard on the topic of synchronicity.  Last week I complained that ‘miracles’ were few and far between in my life, even the narrowly defined miracles of Littlewood’s Law.

 I was leaving the hospital when I almost stumbled on the machine that exchanges dollar bills for the special coins that guarantee an exit from the parking garage.  While it is hard to miss the big signs that herald a $1 parking fee at the entrance of the garage, I often drive around with nothing more than a credit card in my pocket.  Confronting a machine that dispensed tokens, and having not one, but two, $1 bills in my possession I decided to purchase two tokens. 

I approached the automated booth behind a small red truck.  A few moments passed and truck didn’t move on.  I watched then as the driver tried to insert a $1 bill into the machine, time and time again, with no success. He carefully smoothed the bill out and re-entered it.  The machine spewed the bill back at him every time like a belligerent child sticking out a thin, green tongue.  The line of cars behind us grew.  Remembering that I had a token to spare,  I walked to the head of the line and asked the gentlemen if I could try a token in the defiant machine.  Even while he asked if I really had a token to spare, I dropped it in the proper slot, and the gate responded.  He stuffed the useless $1 bill in my hand with thanks, and drove off, unblocking our mini-traffic-jam.

The first time I ever bought tokens, I bought two, and both were needed that very day.  But, I’d already had one miracle this month, so now I’ve exceeded the limit of ‘one in a million’ exceptional experiences of note.  Yet,  we live in a random universe.  Random events, even Littlewood’s miracles, can cluster in twos or threes, spread themselves out evenly in thirty day cycles, or go into hiding for years. The folks at MacIntosh learned that most people don’t appreciate the truth about random events when they programmed the first iPods.  So many people complained about the same song showing up two times in a row that the inventors had to reinvent ‘random’ to prevent a truly random repetition.

We may not like it, but, all signs point to a random universe that disregards our need for an orderly progression of events, and likely doesn’t care about the meanings we attach to simple events. But, that makes us the meaning-makers, doesn’t it?  It gives us the power to define ourselves and our lives even in the random intersection of tokens and bills, to make a memorable moment in an otherwise ordinary exchange with machines.

A Pocketful of Synchronicity?

Some people find miracles around every corner.  A good few of that number attribute the miraculous events to divine intervention in otherwise pedestrian lives.  People name miracles when they escape unscathed from disasters great and small.  Miracles are attested when the slow process of recovery yields to unexpected healing.  Miracles are prayed for, expected, and lamented when they don’t arrive.

Littlewood’s Law of Miracles suggests that each of us should expect to experience a ‘miracle’ about once a month.  A mathematics professor, Littlewood posited one experience per second and a common sense definition of miracles as  noteworthy, ‘one in a million’ occurences to calculate that it would only take 35 days to accumulate more than a million experiences – and therefore, at least one miracle. The good professor wasn’t implicating the divine in these miracles, just an amazingly large number of events.

I have not set my personal expectations on divine miracles, but, even using Littlewood’s Law as a guide my life seems a bit short on miracles lately.  When I cull back over the last 35 days I can’t recall any experiences that would meet the common sense definition of a miracle.  I do recall thinking that I needed to jump up and dash away to retrieve my cell phone during a meeting in progress – and nearly the moment I sat down again the phone rang. I remember, too, searching for  an important bit of  bureaucratic paper, only to find it two days after I paid for its replacement.  Both notable moments, neither one high on my list of miracles. 

Perhaps what Professor Littlewood calls miracles, I find to be the effects of synchronicity – two events that have no causal relation but come together in a meaningful way. This week a professor returned unexpectedly from a long sojourn in Beirut and Lebanon to hear a sermon pondering the Eid al Adha festival he just left behind.  There was no miracle in the juxtaposition of those two events, but, I choose to ascribe a bit of meaning to them.  I think of it as an unplanned, warm, welcome for a highly-regarded friend.  It was the welcome he should have received anyway brought to life by a pocketful of synchronicity.

 

Sliding Home

In 1978 I was living and working in Massachusetts.  One lunch time, a co-worker and I left the church in a gathering storm. But, snow in New England is like sunshine in Florida, it’s easy to take it for granted. When we got back to the office, my co-workers husband called and queried, “What are you still doing there?  Don’t you know this is a big Nor’easter?”

A quick glance out the window confirmed that a foot of snow had already accumulated. I lived thirty miles from the church, and sighed as I thought it might take twice the normal commuting time to get home.  Tracing several possible routes in my mind, I decided that there was no access to the highway that wouldn’t involve at least one steep hill. The route I chose was almost deserted, and covered in slushy, white snow.  Climbing up the short side of the hill, I breathed a sign of relief for the snow tires that gave me sufficient traction to make it to the wee summit.  On the long downside my car quickly began sliding out of control.  Soon, I discovered the only way down the hill was to turn gently toward the curb, hit it softly, come to a brief stop, and then resume rolling and sliding down the hill only to hit the curb, stop, and slide again.   Soon I joined a long line of traffic moving ever so slowly toward the highway. Snow drifts were taking over the interstate. A thirty minute drive took three terrifying hours, and an unnamed snowstorm became known as The Blizzard of ‘78. 

There’s a lesson here, possibly more than one.  First, that day reminds me of the role chance plays in all our lives. It was chance that the route I chose was passable just at the moment I traveled on it.  By chance I made it all the way home, unlike thousands of motorists who were stranded in snow-covered cars that night. 

There’s another lesson, too, about being ‘out of control.’  Had I been determined to stay in control of how the car made it down the hill by holding to the middle of the road and giving it more gas, I would have come to some bad end. I had to give up my need to be in control in order to make it to my destination. Just so, when I realize I am not in control of the people and the events around me — even though I firmly believe I ought to be in control — then I can begin to make a useful contribution.

Stop HallowThankMas

Here we are in the midst of the longest holiday debacle of the year. This is the holiday I’ve come to think of as HallowThankMas, an orgy of shopping and eating that begins mid-October and tears a path through three months, stopping only to exchange orange and gold decorations for red and green, with just a touch of yellow and blue to include a nod for Hanukkah — the unfortunate Jewish observance that finds itself stuck in the middle of this mess.  

I’ve never been a fan of Halloween.  Even as a child, I found the ritual of selecting and wearing a costume less than attractive.  I enjoyed getting candy, but, it’s subsequent consumption was so bounded by rules and limitations that it took what spontaneity the customs afforded right out of the day.  As I grew older I tried to focus on the day that follows All Hallows Eve – All Saints Day – but, quietly reflecting on the great deeds of those who have gone before us just doesn’t sell Hersheys or encourage costumes dripping in fake blood, so All Saints Day remains the quiet observance of a few. 

Fortunately for the Presidential and other candidates, only one of the ‘big three’ encroached on their special day at the polls.  In fact, in my neck of the woods Halloween was a decided ‘non-event’ this year.  I did hear about a family that hoped to take their children trick or treating at the mall — yep, they do that here — but by early evening the mall had run out of candy.  They ended up buying candy and taking it home to dole out on a day by day basis. Those mall stores don’t miss a trick…and they ended up with a treat when parents of disappointed youngsters had to spend money on chocolates and gummy bears.

The rituals of Thanksgiving – a table laden with harvest foods, a large family gathered around one happy and thankful table are the ones that are closest to my heart.  I remember a few childhood Thanksgivings that had the quality of joy those images inspire. I also remember stilted conversations with relatives who rarely visited, long journeys to houses where I might be the only child in attendance, and the pressures the cook feels when everything has to be perfect and perfectly timed.  Still, it is hard to pause and enjoy the memories of good times, or even to start new memories, when all around us is now focused on the biggest shopping season of the year, Christmas. (Oh, and Hanukkah, too.)

Let’s hit rewind and pause before we leap beyond thanks and into the crazy days of the secular shopping spree attached to Christmas.  Let’s stop long enough to give thanks for the people who’ve sheltered us with love, and the people who challenged and inspired us, and our own personal saints.  Let’s give thanks for the food that graces our table every day of the year, in good times and bad, in small quantities or great. Let’s give thanks whether we’ve been spared the pain of this economic season or not.  Let us give thanks for the ability to stop, to remember, to reflect, to act.  And if we have any abundance to share, let us give it away with gratitude, that people in pain, in crisis, living their own hard times, might have ease because of something we did, and money we set aside to give them aide.

Let’s stop before the siren call to spend, spend, spend money on gifts reaches too deep into our psyches. Let’s pause long enough to give so that others can know a time of thanksgiving in their own lives.  Let’s breathe in thanksgiving, and share our gratitude with others.

Overheard at the Polls

This is a ’swing’ state.  Fortunately it is also the Sunshine State. Long lines of eager early voters have been filling the parking lots at every site. Some people have had to wait three hours to fill out their ballots.  Early in the second week of voting, it was announced that one-fifth of registered voters had voted already and the polling sites would be open four additional hours each weekday. I waited over an hour to take paper ballot in hand and file my choices in national, state and county races.  While I was waiting, I couldn’t help overhearing some of the conversations around me. Cell phones were snapped open with some regularity, and after “Hello” most everyone continued to explain that they were waiting in line to vote.  One young woman (young enough to be voting in her first presidential race) described her experience saying, “It’s great to be voting in a state where the candidates care about you and they actually come to see you.” It’s true. Barack Obama and Joe Biden have been here, even in Tallahassee.  John McCain hosted Governor Charlie Crist at a high-falutin’ picnic that also served as an interview for Vice President. All the candidates want to gather the good will and votes of Floridians. But, I suspect we weren’t waiting in that outrageously long line because the candidates have been interested in Florida voters.  I suspect we endured that trial because we were very interested in the candidates.  Both presidential candidates are offering a promise of change.  Floridians want change.  They want a sound economy with jobs for all, and opportunities to get ahead and get along. How much change they want, and what kind of small and not-so-small sacrifices they are willing to make to insure change happens will be known when the votes are finally tallied. When that young woman ended her phone conversation, she turned to her companion and noted that she didn’t know who to vote for in the race for Congress.  Her companion couldn’t pull up the name of the candidate he preferred, but, instead told her to vote a straight Democratic ticket.  She countered that she didn’t know anything about the Democratic candidate, and it didn’t seem right to vote for someone who might not represent her interests. Suppressing the answers that sprang to mind, and chiding myself for eavesdropping, I quietly pondered the possibilities and pitfalls of a race where the voters respond only to being courted by the candidates, and fail to return that interest before entering the polls.

A Brilliant Future

Reflections on the future,  inspired by memories of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki —

I grew up in a world where the very idea of the existence of a ‘future’ was in question.  Some of you remember those days.  Heads down on your desk, you waited, as I did, for the atomic bomb to fall not far from your hometown.  Fallout shelters, early warning signals blasting out of radios and test patterns interrupting television programming were all part of the preparations we made, hoping to insure that the greatest numbers of people would survive that big blast. Somewhere along the way, someone got the bright idea that outgunning each other wasn’t the only way human beings might proceed to live together on one small planet.  Nations began to adopt treaties and agreements that could safeguard the trigger happy from themselves and each other. The ‘mutually assured destruction’ of atomic and nuclear weapons led governments to the brink of taking action for mutually assured survival.

 

As we consider the prospects for annihilation that still threaten our future, we do not stand so very far from the observation shared by Gen. Omar Bradley after the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he said, “The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom.  Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.  We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.”

 

Today, it seems we know more about Weapons of Mass Destruction than we do about Strategies for Mass Survival.  But, those strategies are just where we need to put our energies in our future…in the future we want to create, in the future we can create for our children, and their children, and their children’s children.

 

There are Strategies for Mass Survival that can be attended to today to aide in securing our future.

 

We can follow, support, and work to enhance the half dozen treaties that protect portions of our future, like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Seabed Arms Control Treaty.

 

We can accept as a fact of our human nature that new and equally destructive methods of mass murder have been invented, and we can follow, support and enhance agreements that attempt to control the use of biological and chemical weapons.

 

We can accept as a further fact, that in our brilliance – new and terrifying weapons are being developed, like the class of weapons known as directed energy weapons.  While those weapons are not operational today, we’re already being told that they will be useful for defense, not necessarily aggression.  But, we’ve heard that story before haven’t we?  The bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were used in ‘defense’ against an aggressor – and the thousands upon thousands of lives lost generation upon generation were treated like so much collateral damage that couldn’t be avoided.  Because we know our past includes the potential to visit generations of innocents with the consequences of war, we need to be especially careful to carry not only the ‘brilliance’ of weaponry into the future, but, also the wisdom to turn aside a new era of horror.

 

In the future we need to nurture the wisdom that will lead us closer to a world free of nuclear weapons.  We need to nurture an ethical stance that cares for all humanity, not just our own nationals.  We need to make peace our goal as small conflicts threaten the stability of our world.  We need to make ourselves brilliant in the tactics of living together in justice, compassion and equality.  We need to learn the fundamentals for mutually assured survival.

 

You Can Help

When called upon to help a friend, a family member, or even a stranger most of us will do our best to rise to the occasion.  For some helpfulness is a vocation.  Social workers offer concrete services to people in need — sometimes without regard to whether or not the recipient wants that particular form of assistance.  Police officers have a duty to help others, even to the point of defending those who have fallen in harms way. Firefighters put their lives on the line as well when a call for help sends them into extraordinarily dangerous situations.  

Having been a social worker, and for a brief time, a chaplain for a police department, I have experienced the good feeling of being able to help; and, I have also felt the frustration of not having any tangible help to offer.

One icy January day, one of the elderly clients at the Boston settlement house where I worked called to say she was fed up with her living situation. Her absentee landlords had left the entire apartment complex without heat during one of the coldest holiday weeks on record.  She wanted help, she wanted it immediately, and she wanted it from me. Together we were able to fuel a tenant’s group in the building, and put the landlords on notice that they could not neglect the rights and needs of their rentors anymore. Formerly powerless individuals found the power in numbers, and I was only too glad to be able to help them along that path of discovery. 

Once, as a police chaplain, I was called to the side of a woman whose husband had committed suicide in their home.  I felt utterly without resources for helping.  The wife, her family and I huddled on the sidewalk, prevented from entering the yard by yellow tape that cordoned off the area. I didn’t have any chairs to ease their sore feet, or even a thermos of hot tea to offer the weary band as twilight deepened into a cold, inhospitable evening.  All were strangers to me, and I was just plain strange to them.  As lapsed Roman Catholics they didn’t know what to make of my presence. The woman I had been called to help seemed to feel slightly guilty about consorting with a Protestant clergyperson.  I brought only my condolences, and a willingness to listen to the events that led up to this tragic day.  Three hours later, I left feeling that I had not been able to help at all.

When someone needs help, and another is able to provide it, two people end up feeling better.  But, helping isn’t just about being able to change dire circumstances or even providing concrete assistance.  Showing up is part of the helping process.  Helping includes being willing to be present in times of mourning and loss, being willing to be tongue-tied and uncomfortable, and even to walk away knowing the only assistance you’ve been able to provide is as intangible as listening to a very, very sad story several times over.

It’s What You Bring To It

Unitarian Universalism is a non-creedal faith. Lots of people find that hard to understand. Some time ago a young woman visiting a congregation I served spoke up during the Joys and Concerns portion of the service. She described herself as relatively new to Unitarian Universalism. Like all Unitarian Universalists she found herself having to answer two questions posed by people who have only a vague understanding of our traditions.

“Why are you a Unitarian Universalist?” they ask, and “What do Unitarian Universalists believe anyway?”

She answers, “It’s not about particular beliefs, it’s what you bring to it.”

Her own journey described the truth of her understanding. Raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints she found herself increasingly at odds with what she was being taught. Finally, one day, she realized that a portion of her tithe, paid in one state, was going to pay for anti-gay marriage lobbying in two other states.

“I don’t believe in abortion,” she explained, “so I don’t go anywhere near Planned Parenthood. Why should I give money to a church when it doesn’t support my values?”

Removing herself from the Latter Day Saints was relatively easy. Living outside the church wasn’t easy. She was alone and lonely. Her mother suggested trying to connect with a Unitarian Universalist church. She took that advice, and found a congregation and a tradition that embraced values close to her heart.

What she brought to Unitarian Universalism was a firm conviction in the worth of every being and a desire to see justice distributed fairly to all. The story of how those convictions grew in her is a part of the complex story of her becoming. Her passion and convictions grew despite some who tried to tell her she was just plain wrong. Her yearning for companionship and community brought her to a Unitarian Universalist congregation. She has faith, her own hard-won faith, which blessedly she found others share.