Miracles

Public service announcement on the topic of the miracle.
 
We think it's going to arrive with a giant bow and gleaming red lipstick, a four-door convertible screaming into the parking lot doing a half moon and stopping just at the tips of our toes.
 
In fact the genuine miracle feels so ordinary you might forget how hard you wished for it it once you've gotten it.
 
The genuine miracle happens naturally, and all the time.
 
We think miracles happen when we pray hard enough, or work hard enough, feverishly trying every key until we find the one that fits the ancient lock, turning it with a satisfying click and bursting through the door from one reality to the one we’ve been praying for.
 
In reality, the reality is much less noisy.  Much less dramatic.  And without getting too romantic about it, miracles are happening all around us, all the time, each breath in and each breath out, one foot in front of the other. Garden variety, tiny miracles.
 
My own ingratitude startles me sometimes.  Sometimes I will be in the middle of receiving a miracle and I'll actually be dissing it in my own mind, like, “Oh sure, this is happening NOW…”
 
In those moments I am literally out of my mind, out of my body, and out of my own experience. I'm not experiencing my life for the fervent desire to be experiencing some thing different, and thus totally missing the miracle that is unfolding right in front of me.
 
I say this not to cajole you or change your mind about anything…but if you feel like it, look around. What just...works? What has been working for so long in the background so beautifully, but demands nothing of you, does not call for your attention, does not need you to fix it; if anything, it's been humming along fixing YOU. Feeding you, nurturing you, this whole time.
 
See if you can't find one miracle today. When you find it, let it take you by the hand and take you to the next one.
 
And if there's nothing that feels miraculous today, if your experience feels painful or difficult or boring or full of shame or rage or hurt, even THEN there is at least one thing around you that's working.

Try to find it.

Not to avoid the difficulty or bypass it, but to diffuse it. To render it powerless to come between you and the ordinary, everyday miracles that belong to you.
 
We all have a perfect right to the miracles in our lives.

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