Manners and Miracles

Andrew Sullivan quotes atheist Christopher Hitchens:

Usually, when I ask some Calvinist whether he is really a Calvinist (in the sense, say, of believing that I will end up in hell), there is a slight reluctance to say yes, and a slight wince from his congregation. I have come to the conclusion that this has something to do with the justly famed tradition of Southern hospitality: You can't very easily invite somebody to your church and then to supper and inform him that he's marked for perdition.

Well, no, of course not.  That would be rude.  Along with so many other things that damnyankees our friends from the frozen North just don't get about the South is that in these parts, rudeness is an even greater sin than atheism.  We learn that at our mothers' knees.

Atheism is very much the vogue now in the blue states, it seems; and believe me, I do get the why of that.  After half a century of living here, where old times are damn well not forgotten, and the terms Christian and American are considered to be exact synonyms - it's quite plain to me that religion as commonly practiced has very little to do with God, and everything to do with man.  And this conclusion is readily confirmed by even a cursory survey of other cultures, other peoples, from the earliest times down till now.

Though of course it's always easier to see the principle at work in other cultures, not our own.

And yet - and yet.  Despite all the evidence of humans fashioning God(s) in their own image, time and again - and despite all the evidence of an apparently indifferent universe - still, what the glib atheists overlook, like the glib religionists, is the evidence in their own hearts - a truth within that no microscope can ever reveal.

Feelings are not facts; I know this.  I'm talking about something that lies much deeper than the ebb and flow of emotion:  a Something that glows faintly at the end of the corridors of consciousness, a white pebble at the very bottom of a long, dark well.  Something I can perceive but not grasp, always there, still and patient and good.

And then beyond that, there are those few, those very few times in life where Something greater than me, and definitely not me, has directly intervened in my life, and effected a good result that I could not accomplish at all, myself.  I'm not talking about the cozy, cloying Jesus-came-and-sat-on-my-couch-and-talked-to-me kind of things you read in some silly religious magazines; nor am I talking about ecstatic visions or angels crashing through the ceiling.   That's so amateurish, so Hollywood.

No.  A miracle, when it happens, is the most ordinary thing in the world.  Seamless, smooth, and silent.  You are bumping along through the minutes of your life, this and that happening as usual, and then one time a certain thing happens, or doesn't happen.  That's all.  Though the effect, the result, is much to your benefit, or someone else's.

The most ordinary thing in the world.  As it should be.  One minute, standing in the familiar confines of your own kitchen, you reach your ladle into the jar and dip up a cup of water.  You turn around, and dip up another cup:  wine.  Just like that. 

No horns, no bells, no voices.  Just wine.  Just like that.

As you would expect, if you stopped and thought about it, from Someone to whom matter and time are simply draftsman's tools.  A master artist leaves no trace of his minor corrections.

Not an everyday occurrence, far from it.  And not something I can command, not hardly.  In my experience, these corrections, if you will, come only at the extremities of life, the moments of most desperate need, and not always then.  But sometimes they do come, invited or not.

None of which, I realize, will make the slightest sense to anyone who has not experienced the workings of a higher power.  Some atheists - such is the fallible human condition - are as shrill, as obnoxious, as some fundamentalists, and use evolution in exactly the same way that the other camp uses the Bible - as if that explains everything.  (Hint:  it doesn't; neither the one nor the other.)

And yet - this is not merely what I believe, but what I know from concrete experience.  Not meditation, not theorizing, not ecstasy - but cold, hard experience.  Like holding a pebble in my hand:  an unremarkable reality.  And yet from another point of view, quite remarkable and quite real.

There are myths, religious and otherwise, and some of them are lovely, and some of them are useful - for children and for adults.  And then when all the myths are said and done, there is still to be learned the incomprehensible, inexpressible reality of things unseen.  Something known to thoughtful, humble people throughout all times and in all lands.  Something far above and beyond all creeds, doctrines, and scriptures.

I don't know much, but I know that much.

Photo swiped, with apologies, from rayraydel at flickr