Miracles

What is a miracle?

It is anytime something happens to you and you absolutely know that ‘someone’ or ‘something’ outside of yourself affected you in some way, and you could not have done it on your own.

Three major miracles have happened to me, among many others. What are some of yours? If you send them to me to include in upcoming issues, please let me know if you want your name published or not.

The following are my miracles:

1. I’m late for class at NYU, going for one of two master’s degrees. Though I always sit in the back, it is a full house, and the only seat available is in the second row next to an older woman. It is the last class before the final exam of one hundred multiple-choice questions. There were two books with the same title and the same authors, one theoretical and the other one factual. The professor holds up the book. I realized immediately and said out loud, “My God, I read the wrong book!” The woman next to me, whom I had never seen before, leans over to me and says, “Come to my house tomorrow night. I have the final exam!” Go figure!
2. I am in a car crash, and suddenly my entire seeing, thinking, feeling, and consciousness is outside the car, and I am witnessing the entire event with no fear and total acceptance.
3. I was surfing at Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York, with my good friend, Mike Kelly. The waves were abnormally large, 5-6 feet. In Rockaway Beach, there are wooden jetties that reach out about fifty yards into the ocean. A wave flipped me off my board at the end of the jetty. I was drowning as wave after wave kept pushing me below the surface of the water. My board was on one side of the jetty and my body on the other side. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was thinking, “It’s my time to die.” I was dizzy and blacking out. Mike was paddling like crazy trying to reach me. Suddenly, a miracle! A wave pushed me to the shore. After upchucking salt water, while we were walking to my board, both Mike and I saw the thick rope that attached the plastic cord from my ankle to the board and commented that the cord must have broken. But NO! Even though it had been tied with ten square knots and made tighter and tighter by the water and sun, it had, at that very moment, become UNDONE. It hadn’t broken! I swear!

What do we do with all the miracles we have had in our lives? Most of us take them for granted. Yes, we might tell a friend or two for a couple of days. Then we simply, and stupidly, forget about them instead of embracing them as a spiritual miraculous component of our lives.

STOP! STOP this insanity and forever! STOP taking them for granted! For this is the very spirit of God and the Holy Spirit showing themselves to you. What more do you need to believe totally without any doubt?

Start anew right now by writing down your own miracles. Do this religiously and you will change your life forever.

Etchings in Homage to Greatness

(Dedicated to all the great people I was blessed to meet
in my life, and to all those I studied and learned from the
wisdom they had learned from people before them, and
on and on and back and back.)

1.

There was a large courthouse. A giant vulture carried me in its beak to the witness stand. The prosecutor condemned me and the jury agreed that I was guilty. There was a plea for clemency from a woman with Botticelli hair covering her naked body with its tapestry. I asked what I must do. She said, go there. I found myself within the prison cell of Nelson Mandela. Dampness enveloped me like death. The Holy Spirit entered the cell. The dampness receded, and I awoke.

2.

We were in a black hole at the end of the galaxy. Our capsule was free falling and the missile shield had crumbled. We prepared for nothingness. The Venus de Milo appeared on the computer screen. I asked her where we should go. She said outside the box. Gorbachev’s book Perestroika gave us directions for restarting the engines. The Spirit of Light entered the cabin. The engines ignited, and I awoke.

3.

It was a dinner party on the avenue. The wine flowed freely and the talk was cheap. About stocks and bonds. I went to the bathroom to take a pee. On the wall was a picture of the Pieta. I asked her what the boundaries are. She said ignorance and attachment. Mother Teresa appeared holding a dying man in her arms. They were pitiful to look at and I cried. She took me in her arms. The Spirit of Love came upon me, and I awoke.

4.

There was an operation going on. Everyone was concerned. The lights were so bright. Latex fingers probed my body. They were looking for the bug that had consumed my soul. A nurse sang the Ave Maria. Paul Simon held The Boy in the Bubble and T.S. Eliot recited The Four Quartets. I asked the surgeon to show me the way. She said you must find it through yourself. Pope John Paul II appeared before us. He asked for reconciliation and placed his shaking hands upon my body. The Spirit of Forgiveness entered my body, and I awoke.

5.

Merlin appeared out of nowhere. All else was darkness. Even the moon was black. I asked him how he had arrived. He said we are always and never there. He transformed himself into W. E. Deming and held a candle in his hand. The flame scripted the words, caveat emptor be damned. He whispered the word quality. That one word lit the entire universe. The Spirit of Truth entered the earth, and I awoke.

6.

A child was being beaten. Alice Miller, Renee Eisler, Carl Jung, and Robert Lawlor were dancing in a circle. I asked them why the world suffered. They said the suffering is the fear. Eleven million souls rose from the ashes. The ashes were drowning me. Marcel Proust appeared with Remembrance of Things Past. My Soul was cleansed, and I awoke.

7.

Mary Magdalena was guiding us. I asked her about passion. She said, passion without commitment is a blister on the soul. Pablo Picasso handed me a burning brush. It tattooed my entire body. I screamed in pain. The tattoo turned into a purple aura of hope. The scream became a lullaby, and I awoke.

8.

It was a miracle. Helen Keller could see and hear. Plato was interviewing her. He asked her what could be worse than losing one’s sight. She said losing one’s vision! In the iris of her eyes I found humility. I asked her about love. She said love is God liberating your mind, and I awoke.

9.

We were standing on a balcony listening to maidens sing lullabies to the world. Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, John Lennon, and Yoko were having a discussion. Jacqueline Kennedy read to us from The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I asked her about the meaning of life. She said, it’s your gift to yourself in concert with Creation, and I awoke.

10.

There was a meeting going on. No, it was a parade. No, it was a symphony, yes, definitely a symphony. A symphony in a concert hall containing the whole of humanity. The conductor held a cross in one hand and a peacock feather in the other. The musicians had no score. The string section contained the martyrs, from Socrates to the Holocaust to the Africans, Indians, and Asians.

The concert began with one long note, a C chord. The trumpet section contained all the artists. In staccato they filled the C with a sonorous B flat. The trombones, sax and clarinet section were comprised of the humanists. They added a mellow A sharp. At the back of the stage stood the chorus, scientists all, chanting the Magister Ludi. The timpani group contained the thinkers, banging their drums and cymbals to the beat of the heart.

In the front rows of the hall sat the children. Behind them were the lovers. The box seats were reserved for all those who had taken the unknown highways. The balcony was filled with the revolutionaries. All the humble and poor filled the second and third tiers. Still filtering in were the searchers and seekers, some only half intent on finding their seats. At the rear, standing room only, were the codependents. The corporate interest groups mingled over cocktails in the lobby with the politicians, hardly noticing the music at all.

After the encore the composer appeared. It was God. I quaked with fear, for every sin I had ever committed was viewed by the audience. People gasped. Lightning struck my entire being. I asked Him what we must do for the future. He said, go within, and I awoke.