Miracles in March

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

― Albert Einstein

I was stuck on finding a way into this month’s prompt about miracles when this headline in a news feed caught my eye:

“Fish rained from the sky”

It was a piece on a recent event where a number of live fish came down from the sky in a rain storm. Follow the link at the bottom to read the full article. This seemed to be a perfect example to fit with the dictionary explanation of the word “miracle”

“an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency.“

What distinguishes miracles apparently is that they are a welcome event. There are no bad miracles. Another feature of a miracle is its attribution to a deity of some kind. The key here is the line in about the middle of the article which quoted a person saying “I think it’s a blessing from the lord”. However, I take the view that they are just more of the mystery of life being exposed to our perception.

Many arrogant humans insist on having an explanation for everything and if they can’t explain it in scientific terms that we can all agree on then they attribute it to a deity. This has been the case over centuries of recorded human existence and gave us things like the flat earth being a disk at the centre of the universe and the sun rising in the east in the morning and setting in the west in the evening. All of this earth-centric universe was created by God of course and the earth itself in seven days so the human-generated words of the bible would have us believe. Believe, that is a good word for it, faith is another. Faith is when you believe something but you don’t have a rational reason that makes sense to you. Faith in God is a miracle in itself really because how else do you explain it?

There is another book of human words put together hundreds of years before the bible called the Tao Te Ching. The title literally means the way of the Tao but the Tao is not something that human minds are supposed to understand or grasp. In fact, one of the first lines in the book states, depending on the translation, “the Tao that can be named is not the real Tao“. Therein lies the overriding lesson I have learnt from this marvellous book, accept the mysteries in life, such as life itself, the same life that permeates all living things on this planet. Yes, all living things because how do you separate the life that energises humans from the life that energises the rose bush in your garden?

Of course, it is the supreme mystery when we consider how life comes into being and where it comes from. Sure, we can explain the mechanics of the generation of new humans, trees, plants, and other animals, but how do we explain where that spark of life comes from that makes one union work and not another? There are literally millions of sperm cells released in a single human ejaculation but it takes only one to reach a female egg and create a life. But not necessarily every time, nor does every sperm cell released make a connection. Just one. What is it and where does that spark of life come from?

I am sure many medical people, particularly those involved in IVF programs, can explain all the intricacies of the process but would struggle to rationally explain the origin of that single spark, the lottery of life. Every single baby born, every new rose bush grown, and every puppy or kitten born is a miracle in itself. Take a moment to appreciate the next flower you see growing for the miracle of nature that it is.

I believe we are better served if we simply accept and appreciate all the mysteries like the fish raining from the sky for what they are, a mystery not necessarily within human comprehension. Enjoy them for the “miracles” they are and move on. This makes more sense to me than attributing all the unknowns to a fictitious deity of whom we have no real evidence.

As yet.

N.B. Why “in March”? The idea for these prompts, one for each month, came from a lovely post written by a writing friend of mine, Marquessa. I have added the “in” and month to differentiate them from any other posts I might write on a similar subject.

Links:

• Read the original article about fish falling from the sky on the ABC News site here.
• Read the dictionary definition of miracle, here
• You can also see Marquessa’s home page by clicking here.
• Featured image based on image by Szilárd Szabó from Pixabay