Miracles

Interesting... One of my former Lutheran pastors had a wife with a similar experience. She was wanting a sign of God's presence, being a bit dry, and was praying (to God, not Mary) about it, and was overcome with the scent of roses.

At our previous Presbyterian church (we moved a couple years ago) our minister and some elders "exorcised" a house -- the furniture had been moving of its own accord (or, better, someone/thing was moving it), doors and windows opening and shutting, that sort of thing. Minister went over with the elders, prayed, did as much ritual as Presbyterians do, and voila -- peace in the house.

Wise men today still see, understand and pay careful attention to signs from God, exactly as three others did on hearing of the birth of our Savior.

Okay, I'm not Catholic. And most of the time, I'm not much of a Christian, and I haven't given much thought to the Virgin Mary, But after I read this post, I walked out to my patio, and I was thinking to myself, maybe I ought to try to learn about her, and maybe I should even devote myself to getting to know her - and this monarch butterfly lands on my swimming pool pump (one of those above ground, blow-up things), then it flys over to a branch not three feet from my head, then it lands on the wall of my house about a foot away and, I say, Okay, if this butterfly lands on me, what the heck am I going to do?! . . . Then it lands on the inside of my arm. I swear, that's never happened to me before. Maybe a moth or something, but never a butterfly. What's going on here?

Not sure, but I will give it some serious thought. Oddly enough, I started reading the "Seven Storey Mountain" a few days ago - only the second "religious" book I've ever undertaken.

I think I will finish it and go from there.

"Anonymous for this one", please read "Disappointment With God" by Philip Yancey. It will help you, I promise.

God works in mysterious ways.

The habits of butterflies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly

"Brad: Having just exited my air-conditioned house, I probably wasn't very salty; but I'm not claiming it was necessarily miraculous, just very, very odd."

Such an experience is always wondrous.

AFTO (and everyone):

(This is gonna be a LONG post ...)

Since I'm a very lapsed Catholic, let's just say for now there was some serious Jungian synchronicity in your assumption that I would not only read your post, but that I would reply within an hour or two.

When I first decided to reply to this post, before your combox observation, AFTO, I wasn't even going to mention my bipolar disorder. Yet it is essential I do so to be complete in my response, because such a comprehensively life-altering disease inevitably either spurs or challenges one's faith. In my case, it has helped to challenge it.

Please don't get me wrong. I had my issues with the Church before my original breakdown in 1997 -- the usual litany of liberal Catholic complaints which I will recite, without meaning to argue today with Rod and the majority of comboxers who disagree (Humanae Vitae, divorce, the all-male priesthood) -- as well as, of course, the issue that has galvanized most lay Catholics, the sex abuse scandal. Which so easily could have claimed me, since I was an altar boy for 6 years in the late '70s and early '80s.

Interestingly, even when I was a more faithful Catholic, I was never fascinated with Lourdes or Fatima or any of the other sites of miracles around the world. The Church's attraction to me was not the miraculous, but rather order in a disordered world -- having an alcoholic father and, despite my mother's best efforts, a generally dysfunctional family. (Plus I was the "picked-on" kid at school, so serving each Sunday was one of my few sources of self-esteem.)

Then, of course, puberty hit with a bang. And the list of "I took my sister's toy" type offenses for confession suddenly got exponentially longer. Which made me wonder why G-d was giving me these thoughts and feelings, if they were so desperately and horribly wrong. Instead of being a positive, my Catholicism became an overwhelming source of guilt and shame -- very disordering emotions. While I am glad my Jesuit college education gave me more grounding in the intellectual foundations of Catholicism (and thus, Western civilization), I never recovered that childlike sense of Catholic order. (Despite the fact, ironically, that until well into my 20s, I never disobeyed the Catholic teachings on sexuality in fact, only in thought -- and, of course, in that peculiar manifestation Monty Python had such fun with.)

But bipolar disorder is, as the name indicates, disordering in a similar way. It necessarily focuses one on the self and away from the outside world, which is environmentally overstimulating and, in most cases, whose members are horribly misunderstanding. While it is not true in my case, many people with bipolar disorder -- not just schizophrenics -- have hallucinations, which would make one tend to doubt miraculous visions.

And the manic side of the disease, of course, makes one act like nothing short of a false prophet -- or at least a Pied Piper, making "miraculous" promises to people that you actually convince them with snake-oil charm and pure, driven energy that you can keep, despite all rational evidence to the contrary.

Unlike many of my fellow comboxers on Rod's sister blog, Beyond Blue, I tend toward a very reductionist view of the disease -- that it is a brain disease to be treated (if imperfectly) with medication, rather than to be floridly experienced whole cloth as a gift from G-d. Otherwise, the horrendous things I and others do while manic could be themselves construed as "miracles" rather than irresponsible -- which is beyond blasphemous, IMHO.

In general, beyond the perspective of my disease, I also tend to think many "miracles" are projections. For example, a dear friend of mine and her mother visited Medjugorje a few years ago. Both are devout Catholics; but my friend is more of a rationalist and her mother is charismatic -- her house is filled with statues of saints, for example. Her mother swears to this day she saw the sun move toward the earth and spin on its axis -- which, of course, was the EXACT apparition reported by thousands at Fatima in October 1917 (and which she of course knew from her devout study of Catholic history).

My friend, her daughter, saw nothing. Take of that what you will.

Then there's the generally odd way miracles are distributed. The logical way for them to be distributed, IMHO, is to be given to holy people as rewards for their faith and to be withheld from the relatively unfaithful (like me) to both punish them and show them what they're missing. (The theory that G-d allowed Katrina to hit New Orleans to punish the city for its wickedness, a la Sodom and Gomorrah -- somewhat related to the theory that Pat Robertson has kept the Virginia Tidewater safe from most hurricanes with his faithfulness and prayers.) But of course, many of the faithful never have such miracles, and many of the unfaithful not only are not cursed but instead experience enormous miracles (see Damascus, Road to).

Now, of course, one could also argue that G-d has His own inscrutable logic not for little ol' me to understand, which is almost certainly true. (My favorite author, Borges, no practitioner of small "o" orthodoxy he, said as much in his amazingly complex "ficciones," or short stories.) And, also, that there are little miracles in everyone's life -- nothing close to the scale of Fatima or Lourdes or Medjugorje (or, to involve our Protestant friends, a mass revival like that portrayed onscreen with Robert Duvall in The Apostle), but the things that are turning points in life, a bit like Robert Frost portrayed in "The Road Not Taken."

Perhaps, perhaps. But when miracles are not exactly all that, well, miraculous, how can we tell whether they are of human or divine origin? When a sick child is cured of cancer, was it chemotherapy or crying for G-d's intervention? (Maybe both?) And what does it mean if he/she dies tragically anyway, despite both care and prayer? (Not exactly a situation where you would, like Garth Brooks sang, "thank G-d for unanswered prayers.")

And finally, there is the paradox that my observation about miracles rewarding the faithful and punishing the "wicked" in their absence (or with the presence of curses) has at least some truth to it. If everyone experienced miracles, after all, they wouldn't be, well, miracles. Which means necessarily, if G-d is bestowing them, He is choosing who gets them -- and therefore, who DOESN'T get them. (Forget me -- what about that 6-year-old with leukemia?)

Apparently, even G-d plays G-d ...

One last note:

There is one experience I have had in my life that was far more than synchronicity and was the closest I have seen to direct divine intervention in earthly events.

It was the summer of 1993 near Washington, D.C. I lived in Kensington, Maryland -- the town where the incredibly massive and beautiful Mormon Temple is, looming literally like Oz for miles around (especially since it sits along the Beltway).

Anyway, as I was riding a bus home from work one afternoon, a vicious line of thunderstorms was rolling in. Suddenly, I saw a pitch-black funnel cloud appear directly above the Mormon Temple and a tornado descend directly toward the temple. The funnel was just seconds from literally touching (grabbing) the massive spires.

And then, just as suddenly, the funnel stopped and retreated back into the sky (just as said sky opened with torrential rain, thunder and lightning).

THAT could not be explained by Jungian theory. It was an experience that gave a whole new meaning to the phrase "finger of G-d" used to describe an F-5 tornado in the movie Twister.

I have been much more polite to LDS missionaries ever since this experience -- I always speak courteously to them, never shutting the door on them as many people do (and I had before). I've tried to study about the LDS Church -- it's not something I would be interested in converting to, but it's an important part of the American past and present (and future) and, I realized since that day, deserves respect as such instead of being stereotyped by Big Love and the like.

Maybe I should vote for Mitt Romney after all? ;-P

Anon:

No apology needed at all. I was just explaining ... and explaining, and explaining (bloviating?) my own thoughts.

PS -- Very little chance I will be voting for Mitt Romney, but simply because I disagree with his current platform (and because I am skeptical of the many inconsistencies in his political career) -- not, as so many other people have sadly prejudged him, because he is an LDS Church member.

fbc:

I'm not saying there might not be a perfectly logical meteorological explanation that only involves phenomena in the atmosphere and not any above.

It was the fact that the funnel descended DIRECTLY on top of the temple spires -- and then stopped and turned around -- that was so freaky.

I saw an image of the Virgin in my taco yesterday.

It MUST be a sign from God!

Rod, do you think God only helps Christians with these signs? Or is He pretty mellow and liberal and also sends helpful signs to mystic Sufi Muslims, Hindus, Tibetan Buddhists, etc? As an ex-Catholic atheist, I've actually got no problem with Christians thinking that God is trying to lead all people to Christianity, even though I don't believe it. But these other religious people are taking their signs to mean that God is affirming their religion. An honest mistake on their part?

MEH, I don't consider it my place to limit God's miraculous movement among his creatures, all of whom He loves.

H.S., what did you do with the information was communicated to you? I'm not prying, I'm just trying to figure out how it affected your life. I've known people who witnessed the very same miraculous, or seemingly miraculous event, and agreed that it was miraculous ... yet those present had very different reactions. Some changed their lives. Others, while saying, "Yes, that was amazing," went on as if nothing at all had happened. That's something I just don't get. If you don't believe you really saw a miracle, OK, fine. But if you believe that God suspended the laws of nature to intervene in a situation of which you were a witness, and it doesn't change your life ... well, I'm not sure what to do with that.

>MEH, I don't consider it my place to limit God's miraculous movement among his creatures, all of whom He loves.

Rod, then in what sense is Christianity "true" compared to other religions? I actually sympathize with Erin Manning's emphasis on the truth of Roman Catholicism. I too want to know what's real. I found it in scientific materialism. Not what's useful, but what's true.