The Miracle Show

We’re all looking for our own personal version of the one big miracle or lots of little ones that will immeasurably enhance our lives. Some people want to be seen as nobler versions of themselves, regarded as more virtuous and respectable in the eyes of the outside world than they think they currently are. Hiding in the wings of our personal miracle show is something so amazing and profitable to our lives that no one will ever be able to recall a time when we weren’t stunningly capable and accomplished beyond mere human expectations.

If what we want are the sun, the stars and the moon, the miracle surpassing all miracles, we are in for trouble. I’ve met movie stars and other famous people who the media tell us have it all. I didn’t want their lives then and I still don’t. They told me how they had to deal with the exact same things as all the rest of us mere mortals. The problem being that they can’t do it in private. PR machines and news rags interfere with going to their kids’ ball games or junior high band concerts. They have to hide from the public to fulfill their passions.

My spiritual fires burn, but they are mine. I have my own obsessions, the fires in my soul that cannot be quenched. The difference from some other men and women being that I lead my life in private. Lucky me, there’s no PR machine. The rags and their television and podcast equivalents don’t know I’m alive.

I am such a lucky man.

I have seen wide swaths of skies above mountains, oceans, deserts and unending grain fields. I have stood in the middle of forests. The sun, the moon and the stars have all shown me their miracles. I’ve ridden on Ferris wheels, taken elevators up the Eiffel Tower and driven on a bridge across twenty miles of open sea. I’ve been in yurts and mansions. I’ve been inside a German World War II submarine and flown in luxury airplanes.

Goodness help us all the day I can actually keep my crayons inside the lines while drawing with a child. That will be a miracle. On the other hand, I’ve walked in wonder through buildings holding miraculous works of art from thousands of years ago to last week. Horses have walked up to me and nuzzled me for apple slices or a carrot. I’ve been on ranches and farms and walked down the streets of some of the most populated cities on earth.

I have seen miracle shows.

I have lived in the middle of a lifelong miracle show.