REsources for Living
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I’ve always loved the line from Alice Through the Looking Glass in which the Red Queen declares, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” It delights me to think about an actual practice of believing in things that will never be true, like being invisible or pet unicorns or flying without wings. Believing impossible things has led people to create and dare and dream and make the world of the possible bigger than we thought it was.
But I’ve become less enthusiastic about believing impossible things these days, or less comfortable at any rate. In the political world it seems like there are an awful lot of people who are determined to believe in impossible things in ways that do outright damage. Believing that giving money to rich people will help poor people, for instance, is a downright destructive thing that a lot of folks seem determined to believe.
When you believe that natural resources are unlimited, and that you can drill and mine and chop without consequences for everyone, you are believing in an impossible thing that ravages this earth. Denying scientific findings because you don’t like the results is believing in impossible things, and the costs can be dreadful.
So which is it? Is believing in impossible things a beautiful trait of dreamers and creative pioneers, or is it just an excuse to be intellectually lazy when what you want doesn’t match up with the facts?
Those questions seem especially relevant this time of year, when we celebrate two different holidays that tell stories that feature impossible things—what we usually describe as miracles when we’re talking religion. The Passover story is full of miracles: a bush that burns but is not consumed, a walking stick that turns into a snake, a whole series of punishing plagues, a sea that splits open to let people walk through. All of them quite impossible. The Easter story, of course, is centered on a man who is dead for three days and comes back to life. That doesn’t really happen.
So what do we make of these miracles? Do we declare them silly and unscientific, and dismiss the holidays that go with them as equally so? Or do we commit ourselves to trying to believe impossible things, so that we can keep the beauty of the holidays?
I think the key might lie in the subtle difference between an impossible thing and a miracle. An impossible thing, dreadful or charming, is really just a thing that can’t happen. Believing in it as an act of imagination or fantasy is fine, but it’s a terrible thing to base policy decisions on.
But a miracle is a little bit different. A miracle is an impossible thing that points us toward something greater. The miracles of the Passover story point toward God being on the side of the enslaved Hebrews, and making their liberation possible when there was no conceivable means of escape. The miracle of Jesus’ re-birth points toward the sacred truth that things are forever dying and being re-born, that endings often lead directly to new beginnings that we might never have imagined.
There are two words in the Bible that are translated as miracle, but a more accurate translation would put those words as signs and wonders. A miracle is something that catches your attention, a sign that points you toward some truth that you wouldn’t otherwise have seen. Or it is something that makes you catch your breath in amazement, fills you with awe and wonder.
A miracle doesn’t have to be impossible, but it does need to be extraordinary enough that it pulls you out of everyday stumbling around just getting things done and into something higher or deeper or wider than what you had seen before. Which means that you might experience a miracle seeing a baby being born or reading a really good book or climbing to the top of a mountain. You might experience a restored relationship as a miracle or you might miraculously find yourself free from a habit or addiction that was making your life too small.
Biblical miracles are events that remind people that God is at work in the world. That might not be a definition that appeals much to you, but the not-quite-impossible thing that I like to believe before breakfast is similar: we are connected to one another and to the other beings of this planet in ways that we can neither fully see nor fully understand. Sometimes a miracle drags us out of our self-centered ways and gives us a glimpse of that larger thing to which we belong.
- REsources for Living - December 1, 2020
- A Fond Goodbye - December 1, 2020
- REsources for Living - November 1, 2020
