The Miracle Already Here
I wonder how many miracles I have walked past today.
The word itself may be part of the problem.
Miracle.
I have made it too large.
I have imagined seas dividing,
fire descending,
the sky opening,
something so impossible
that I would have no choice
but to believe.
And all the while,
morning has been happening.
I woke.
Light found the window.
Somewhere beyond the glass
a bird sang
for no reason I could understand.
No audience.
No admission.
No applause.
It simply sang.
A cloud moved slowly across the sky
carrying within itself
enough water for a river.
Someone heard an old song
for perhaps the hundredth time
and discovered that on this particular morning
it contained something
that had not been there before.
Or perhaps it had always been there
and the listener had changed.
I am beginning to wonder
whether I have been waiting for thunder
while something quieter
has been speaking.
Perhaps I have spent too much time
asking life for a sign
while standing inside the sign itself.
This day, for instance.
Nothing remarkable about it
at first glance.
A Tuesday-looking sort of day,
even when it is not Tuesday.
Yet there it is.
A day that has never existed before
and will never exist again.
Then there is music.
I cannot think about ordinary miracles
without thinking about music.
Especially breath.
I take something invisible
into my lungs.
Breath.
Nothing more.
Then I send that breath
through a harmonica—
ten little holes,
a handful of reeds—
and somehow breath becomes sound.
It can laugh.
It can cry.
It can ache.
It can remember.
It can call something home
that I thought had disappeared.
I still cannot quite understand
how this happens.
How can air passing over metal
carry sorrow
from one human heart
into another?
How can three notes
collapse fifty years?
An old melody begins
and suddenly another room appears.
Another year.
Another face.
For a moment,
someone long gone
seems almost near enough to touch.
Books do something similar.
Ink on paper.
Little black marks.
Nothing especially miraculous
when considered materially.
And yet I open a book
and someone who died centuries ago
begins speaking.
A person whose bones became dust
before I was born
leans across time
and places a thought inside my mind.
I can sit beneath a tree in Virginia
and walk through ancient Rome.
I can lie in bed
and cross Africa.
I can be alone
and find myself in conversation
with Dostoevsky,
Dickinson,
Baldwin,
Bashō.
Ideas cross oceans.
Stories cross generations.
I have expected miracles
to be enormous.
But perhaps the things that matter most
have always been small enough
to fit in my hands.
A seed.
A loaf.
A cup.
A word.
A song.
A cloud.
A hand resting
on another person’s shoulder.
I have wanted spectacle.
Life keeps offering presence.
I have wanted the sky
to tear itself open.
Instead,
someone remembers my name.
I have wanted thunder.
Instead,
rain taps quietly on the roof.
I have wanted proof.
Instead,
there is this.
This ordinary world.
And I call it ordinary
because it keeps happening.
Perhaps it is a way
of finally seeing it.
Bread as blessing.
Rain as refrain.
Kindness as holiness.
Music as prayer.
A book as doorway.
A stranger as neighbor.
Sunrise as another chance.
The miracles I once imagined
somewhere beyond this world
may have been hiding
inside it all along.
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