I recently came back from a ski vacation. It is always a time for me to disconnect and lose myself in oceans of snow and palisades of pine trees. But I'm never too detached. I, like many skiers, have earphones plugged in and find motivation to make it through the next impossible mogul run by the energy that a song brings when it hits me at the right time. (High recommendations for how sweet the William Tell Overture sounds at the top of a double black diamond run.)

Every year, there is always one song from my playlist that stands out and connects with me in a deeper way. I never know what it will be, but it becomes the theme song for that year. This year, just as my spirit was open for a message, the beat dropped and the band Queen came on. It was from their thirteenth studio album released in 1989, just when I was leaving grade school and entering high school. I probably never remember hearing the song then, but it touched me now. The Miracle. Some of the lyrics go like this:

Every drop of rain that falls

In Sahara Desert says it all

It's a miracle

All God's creations great and small

The Golden Gate and the Taj Mahal

That's a miracle

The song goes on to name event after event that we see, hear, touch, smell, think, imagine and feel. These are all miracles if only we are apt to become aware of them. 

This insight pushed me back to my previous vacation when I began reading the book selected by Chicago Public Libraries for the 2021 One Book One Chicago - Bedrock Faith by Chicago author Eric Charles. A near throw away line by one of the characters in the book spat off, "The reason we call them miracles is because they don't happen very often." 

So as I danced to and fro between swiftly approaching trees on the ski run somewhere in the Arapaho National Forest, I wrestled with these idea in my head... are miracles all around us or are they as scarce as as starlight on a cloudy night? From the proverbs that slumber somewhere in my memory, an old axiom or perhaps a truism came forth. "If everything is a ______ then nothing is a __________." 

You can fill in the blank with anything and get similar results, but in this case, I was thinking, "If everything is a miracle, then nothing is a miracle." Certainly this fit the bill of the line from the book by Eric Charles. In a world of pervasive skepticism, it's perhaps a little comforting to believe that the exceptional is rare. 

And yet that song from Queen kept sticking out...

Open hearts and surgery (Wonders of this world go on)

Sunday mornings with a cup of tea

Super powers always fighting

But Mona Lisa just keeps on smiling

It's a miracle 

Somewhere on the mountain, when I got to take a breath, and my feet were lifted off the snow toward their 1,400 foot assent to the top of the mountain (a miracle?) I had another insight. Sometimes we are too ground-bound to see the bigger picture. We need to allow ourselves to be lifted up. Yes on a ski lift, but more precisely, light years beyond this planet. For indeed, if our perspective is the universe, miracles are rare. In the nearby hundreds of light years surrounding this solar system, the dominant constant is a bleak abyss of nothingness. But here, on this Earth, there is an enormous concentration of miracles. The density within our corner of the universe does not overshadow the relative scarcity as we look at the bigger picture, instead it blinds us with an overwhelming light. To see both the immanence and transcendence of God's glory here on Earth is akin to taking a sip of water from a streaming fire hydrant. Our own sensations are over-stimulated by the mere possibility of God's handiwork to which we sadly become numb. 

But once in a while, when we step back, we can see. We can see it in the institutionalized grace written into the living Body of Christ, the Church. We can see it in the haunts and hallows of nature. And we can even see it in a rock band like Queen. All of that, and much more beside... is a miracle

The one thing we're all waiting for

Is peace on earth, an end to war

It's a miracle we need, the miracle

The miracle we're all waiting for today

We've reached a 100 days of fun and learning! We can't wait to see what the rest of the school year has in store for us. 

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