Words Gather Here: It's A Miracle

What's a miracle? No surprise:
the word has several meanings,
as do most words.

1. Divine intervention in human affairs.

2. An unexpected or unusual event.

3. Something inspiring wonder.

4. Whatever I mean when I use the word.

5. Whatever you mean when you use the word.

Today there was a question about miracles answered on the Progressing Spirit website. It got me thinking. I hesitate to explore my thoughts here because whatever we mean when we use the word (#4 & 5) may look like an invitation to an argument. We get invested in ideas that we trust (beliefs) and the collective understanding of our community (culture: creed, ideology, groupthink, zeitgeist). But as we are more thoughtful, however much we would like things to be simple and settled, we find they are more complex than we can imagine, and they look different as circumstances change, and we need to move on.

Early on, contrary yes-butting person that I am, I became aware that the human mind, though wonderfully capable, is also a sloppy mess of approximations and contradictions, even when we think we have things figured out.

Figuring things out involves abstraction, paying attention to what is important and disregarding the rest.

Figuring things out involves rationalization, making information fit with what we know, either by fiddling with the information or by revising what we know,

pointing imagination toward

an understanding

that fits

better

!
*

Figuring things out dresses up information in metaphors, maps and models, emotions and values.

As the mind does all this, information becomes knowledge, which then gets stored in memory to be recalled imperfectly when needed so we can make sense of new information.

Furthermore, passing knowledge to others requires language, using words with fuzzy, fluid meanings. As recipients of second-hand knowledge, we decode language and in the process endow it with our own meanings.

Knowledge is information (facts) plus affect (what the mind does with the facts). Knowledge remembered and retold is less about information and more about affect. Knowledge frequently retold may hide information under layers of accumulated affect, becoming story, legend, myth.

Here is a story. Jesus resuscitates the decomposing corpse of his dead friend Lazarus ( John 11). Whatever that story meant when it was originally told, it can't mean the same thing to me, with my head full of biochemistry, microbiology, thermodynamics, and cosmology. Resuscitation just doesn't fit. But I can find meaning that does fit because I have experienced loss and grief. For me, the miracle is not a violation of natural law (a prequel to the zombie apocalypse), but rather an adjustment to how I hold death in mind. A loved one is lost and love remains.

miracle

points

here
God changes what happens

by changing the mind

to make beautiful

loving things
happen

!
*

As for the blissful experience of wonder

when we encounter the unusual,

philosophers have parsed

that paradox, disclosing

the awesome truth
in plain sight.