Monday, Aug 02, 2010 This week’s Food for Thought – August 2, 2010

MIRACLES

Sometimes a scientist—often a very great scientist—realizes that miracles pervade everything.  Einstein was such a person.  As he put it, “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.”

When Wilbur and Orville Wright invented the airplane, the experts considered human flight impossible.  In spite of this, the Wright brothers learned the principles of flight, how to turn and steer their plane, and how to manufacture one.  Although they flew their plane up and down and around over two main highways and a railroad track for five years, the experts took little notice.  Even though commuters could look out the windows of their trains and see them doing so, the newspapers they were reading at that very moment decreed that it was completely impossible for a machine heavier than air to fly.

We are in a similar situation with miracle cures.  While experts assure us that they are impossible, they keep on happening.  If we look out the windows of everyday experience, we can see them for ourselves.

When we are confronted with a spectacular cure that lies outside our current understanding, we need not agonize about whether or not it was really a miracle.  We can be grateful that it happened, and we can strive for greater understanding of what occurred.  If we are lucky, we may find out.  If not, we can be thankful that the universe behaves in benevolent ways.

By measure, a miracle.

—Larry Dossey, M.D., The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things