Of men and miracles

Miracles often happen when no one is looking. Or perhaps they are only seen by those whose lives they touch. In life and literature, some miracles come in such surprising forms that they may be overlooked as miracles.

The miracle of the season

In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel Love in the Time of Cholera, for instance, two almost-lovers, Florentino and Fermina, spend decades apart or with other people, and then reconnect in their twilight days to enjoy the love that had eluded them for more than 50 years.

Is that a miracle?

In another Marquez story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” a couple’s son is ill, and after much prayer a strange man arrives at their home. As they looked at the mysterious visitor, they “had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings.” The stranger spoke a language that no one understood, and the couple, Pelayo and Elisenda, along with townspeople and religious “authorities,” debated over whether he was an angel or an oddity. It seemed “his only supernatural virtue” was “patience,” and “the few miracles” he did produce “showed a certain mental disorder” — miracles “like the blind man who didn’t recover his sight but grew three new teeth.”

Not knowing what to do with the stranger, Pelayo and Elisenda let him sleep in the chicken coop, but his presence attracted so much attention that the couple started selling tickets to religious pilgrims who wanted to see for themselves if the old man was a “supernatural creature” or a “circus animal.” Was it only coincidence that the couple’s son got well and that the family, formerly impoverished, gained prosperity from the ticket sales to see the “angel”? One December, the old man took flight, soaring over the houses and the town until, finally, he was only “an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.”

When my students and I discuss this story, I often wonder how I would perceive such an individual if he arrived at my own door: Would I have thought the old man with wings an angel or a carnival creature?

In the 21st century, where social media, false news stories and air-brushed and photo-shopped everything have rendered many of us more skeptical and cynical than we used to be, if the miraculous happened, would we recognize it? A miracle could take many forms, and I am hopeful that, if ever I saw an angel or a miracle, I would be able to recognize it.

L.B. Cowman writes that “difficulty is actually the atmosphere surrounding a miracle or a miracle in its initial stages,” and I agree. When I reflect on the times I believe I have experienced the miraculous, they have always occurred during seasons of suffering. The miracle may have been related to financial uncertainties, the health of loved ones, career unknowns or shattered souls.

I remember once at a store, I saw a picture of a cowboy on horseback carrying a calf in his arms through what seemed a dark night of storms. There was a verse on the picture that resonated with me: “I have made you, and I will carry you; I will sustain you, and I will rescue you.”

A few weeks later, while looking through an unfamiliar magazine, I saw the same picture, this time without words, but the verse had become a part of me.

Perhaps to another person, the “coincidence” of the two pictures would have been unremarkable. But to me, the experience was an example of how divine reassurances can emerge in everyday life, and I realized that some miracles are known only to those to whom they are given.