Ordinary, Miraculous

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Afternoon Session of the October 1980 Conference.

I've written before about my realization that something doesn't have to be mysterious or incomprehensible to be miraculous. But it's something I have to relearn from time to time. I'll experience something overwhelming and amazing, and then later I'll be tempted to look back on it and think, "Well, of course I must have exaggerated it. It's easily explained by coincidence, after all!" I have to fight that feeling and remind myself that transcendent experiences must be acknowledged in order to be repeated!

One of my favorite quotes on this subject is by the physicist Richard Feynman:

I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe… 

I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.

I thought about this quote when I read Elder Gene R. Cook's talk, "Miracles among the Lamanites." He recounts various remarkable experiences that he witnessed during his time in South America, and then he says:

Even though the Spirit has manifested itself in the lives of these people in many miraculous ways, the common way—the most effective way—continues to be by the still small voice simply going forth, converting them “in their inward parts” by the thousands.

When I was younger I used to think this viewpoint was a little bit of a bait-and-switch. "Oh yes, if you're faithful you'll see miracles!* (*If by miracles you mean boring ordinary things.)" But now I get it. The only ordinariness comes in the attempt to describe these miracles, in the inadequacy of words and mortal experience to capture what is eternal.

But when you are the one caught up in the miracle itself, there is nothing ordinary about it, as there is nothing ordinary in the cellular respiration of a flower, as there is nothing ordinary in the power of faith. When the miracle is upon you, your spirit KNOWS it has been touched and changed, and your heart fills with the joy of it. It is only second-hand, as we deny, downplay, or belittle ours and others' recollections, that the miracle becomes tarnished or common in our eyes.

In the Catholic liturgy, one uses the words "ordinary" and "common" to refer to the parts of the Mass that are ordered and communal—"ordered" meaning things are just as they should be; "communal" meaning they are shared among the saints. I can see those same meanings in some of our "ordinary" miracles like Elder Cook talked about: things like the way our Sunday meetings come together week after week, each person helping in his small calling, one brother teaching another brother's children, one sister doing extra where another less-experienced sister does less. It might seem like hyperbole to say "Every time we have a beautiful church service, it's a miracle"—but it is truth! We share the work as a community, following the order God has set out for us, and the result is miraculously more than the sum of its parts.

I know that sometimes it seems so annoying to have to deal with people! I can talk myself into being a misanthrope, for sure. I can barely even tolerate myself sometimes, let alone the quirks of others! But occasionally I feel like I get a glimpse of God's perspective—when I reach out to help someone, or join a ward fast, or learn of a friend's quiet struggle, or sit in a leadership meeting, or become humbled by someone's service to ME. And whenever I get a real glimpse into the individual workings that make up the body of the church; the private efforts and personal sacrifices that are behind our public acts of service—I have to echo Richard Feynman's sentiments: "It only adds to the excitement, the mystery and awe of [God's plan]. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts."

Elder Cook concludes:

Let us not forget the simple truths—those godly traits, the weightier matters of the law, that have been described… They are the very basics, the essence of the gospel, and possession of them in great abundance by Latter-day Saints will be in the end the greatest miracle of all. Yes, miracles have not ceased. Today is a day of miracles. We believe in miracles. The Latter-day Saints may expect miracles according to their faith in Jesus Christ.

We may expect miracles! But only if we get over the idea that they only "count" as miracles when they are removed from the everyday. After all, if we are to become like God, shouldn't we get used to seeing what he sees: every moment charged with beauty and meaning, every cloud shot through with gold and silver, every person magnificent and beloved and divine?


Other posts in this series:

• Learning Maturity from the Mature by G
• See That Ye Do Them by Jan Tolman