Musings: Miraculous

It's been the best kind of day, as in dominated by rain, and I had the chance to really watch it, falling straight, with spaces between the drops, floating in through the bamboo, creeping past the peaks of Makaleha. The sounds were mostly drips, and in the distance, the river, rushing ever more loudly, and much nearer, the birds, which chirped as they took cover during the heaviest showers and chirped when they returned, in the lull times, to feast on the insects and worms that must surface, or drown.

The dogs and I followed the pattern of the birds: taking cover in the screen porch, which though technically inside, feels almost outside, when the rain came; walking among the glistening plants, atop the quenched, nourished soil, in the short spells when it departed.

During one of the taking cover times, Farmer Jerry called — people who really love the rain call each other on days like this, to share in the exultation — and somehow we got to talking about how it's hard to be an atheist when confronted with a seed, especially on a day such as this, when everything is so alive and thriving. And from there it was an easy enough segue into how the legendary six days of creation did not end on the seventh, but continue each and every day, an ongoing miracle evident to anyone with a farm or garden or connection to things that grow.

I am a believer in miracles — the kind that grow, the kind we can't explain or barely understand, the kind that change people, upend beliefs and their associated systems.

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in saying it feels like the world is waiting for a miracle, a paradigm-busting event on the scale of discovering the earth rotates around the sun, an atom can be split. It's gotta be something really major, seeing as how the global economy is teetering, the planet is warming, the population is skyrocketing, solutions are scarce, our collective will is weak.

But what if there isn't any savior out there who's gonna give us the answers, and instead, it's up to every one of us doing something really daring, like living as if each time we witness someone having an emotion, taking an action, the very same neurons that are firing in them, are firing in us, too?

Because they are. We're that alike, that interconnected.

What sort of profound impact do you suppose it would have on how we treat one another, behave in the world, heck, choose what to watch on TV, if we really, truly understood that dynamic?

Perhaps nothing short of miraculous?