Dec. 20: Miracles

To some people, everything is a miracle. To others, nothing is a miracle.

That is a paraphrase of something allegedly uttered by the great Albert Einstein. It's hard to nail down a source, or a context. He probably wasn't drunk when he said it because he wasn't a heavy drinker. In any case, the statement has merit.

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I have just spent the better part of five minutes trying to hunt down a story that I once read in Ripley's Believe it or Not. It concerned a young boy who lost a watch while swimming in a lake. Years later, that boy was fishing in the same lake when he caught a big fish. He took the fish home and gut it and there, in its belly, was the watch he'd lost all those years ago.

If that man was an atheist, he might have reconsidered his worldview right then and there. I'm the kind of person who can see a divine imprint on anything but not everyone thinks like me. I have talked with unbelievers about things like this and they usually tell me that every single second, billions of events take place simultaneously around the world. They tell me that with that many things going on, some of them will have traits that will make them appear miraculous. 

"Millions of people buy lottery tickets but only one person wins," they say. "Is that a miracle?"

Maybe not but what would you say if the same person won the lottery 10 times in a row?

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I believe the miracles of the Bible. I believe Jesus walked on water and raised Lazarus from the dead. I believe Moses parted the Red Sea. I believe that the apostles were given the gift of divine healing.

But I believe these gifts died out at the end of the apostolic age. I have very little patience for faith healers who promise sick people that they will cure their cancer, especially if they put a whole lot of money in the collection plate. I keep urging these faith healers to read what Elisha said to Naaman after God used Elisha to cure Naaman of his leprosy. Naaman tried to give Elisha a gift and Elisha said one of my favourite things ever in the Bible (or anywhere else for that matter) which is this: “As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing.”

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People in my line of work - magicians, I mean - tend to be an irreligious lot.* That's probably because we're trained to approach any miracle as a puzzle. We look for the workings - the sleight of hand, the framing, the false bottoms - that make the trick possible.

And still, almost everyone knows that we can't do real magic. If people really thought that, my phone would be ringing off the hook. I'd have people wanting me to turn garbage into gold or water into gasoline.

When I was a child, my mother's cousin, Donald, entertained me with a whole bunch of magic tricks from his magic set. He had one where he fed a piece of paper into a machine and it turned into a dollar bill. Here is a picture of it in action:

See, if that was real magic, we could solve the poverty problem overnight. Just bring those magical printing machines to the poor folks of the world and they'll all be driving around in Ferraris the next day. But even a five-year-old dumbhead like me knew that Donald wasn't really printing money. I knew that it was all just an illusion.

Come to think of it though, that might have been the coolest trick I'd ever seen.

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Here is something that one of the members of Chumbawumba** said when asked if he or she saw any use for spirituality: "As for spirituality, what exactly is it? I've never trusted anybody who claimed to be spiritual. It's like claiming to have a sixth sense which nobody else can see. When people say they're spiritual what they usually mean is: 'I'm dead special me! Unlike the rest of you who are a couple of steps down the evolutionary ladder.'" 

I guess I thought that was a little weird since the only thing Chumbawumba is remembered for is a song called Tubthumping which they did in the 90s sometime. The music video for it takes place in a bar and it shows lots of beautiful young people consuming alcohol. I could be wrong in my interpretation but I always thought that song was about how great it is to get drunk.

Even though I hate alcohol (now) and I don't like drunkenness, I agree that I don't get impressed when someone tells me they're spiritual. As Aloysius Do once told the Electric Angel: "When someone says that they're spiritual, what they're really saying is that they really like sunsets."

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Last night, we all went up to see Christmas lights in Ottawa. At the back of my mind was the knowledge that someone in my family has been in the hospital for a few days. Everyone said this person was going to be fine so I wasn't worried much, but my thoughts weren't 100 per cent with me. Some of them were in Alberta.

Driving back home, Ash switches the playlist from Christmas music to 80s pop.** On comes All I Need Is A Miracle. There was a brief interval where we didn't know if that song was done by Mr. Mister or Mike and the Mechanics. It was Mike and the Mechanics.

I tried to listen to the lyrics of All I Need is a Miracle (I would have listened a lot harder if I knew that my title today was going to be Miracles) but it was hard because that song has a great chorus but everything else about it is boring. So I googled the song when I got home and found out that it's just another tune about a dude who lets a girl go and then wishes he didn't. At one point in the song, the narrator sings "And though I treated you like a child, I'm gonna miss you for the rest of my life." And I kind of though that sounds a lot like me and then another part of me said that that's just another way of saying you really like sunsets.

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Kyrie, which is by Mr. Mister, is a better song because the chorus is just as great as everything else in it. Kyrie Eleison is Greek for "God have mercy." The Mister Mr. song is not a Christian song; it is more of a New Age deistic follow your dreams After School Special on ABC kind of song.

But none of this matters because I just thought of a really really funny joke. Are you ready? Okay. Here it goes. What do you get when you cross Kyrie Eleison with the A-Team?

The answer is...

wait for it

wait for it

WAIT FOR IT!!!!

5

4

3

2

1

Mister Mr. T!!!!!!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I slay me. That is the funniest joke ever. Picky Leos everywhere are busting a gut at that joke.

And that, my friends, is a true miracle.

 Mr. T pities the fool that didn't laugh at that.

 

* Not all of us are atheists, agnostics, or religious skeptics. There's an organization called the Fellowship of Christian Magicians that boasts hundreds of members. 

** I never get to pick the music when we're out driving. Ever.