One of the questions people often raise with me about A Course in Miracles is what consitutes a miracle? Generally, these people are thinking in terms of the New Testament miracles of Jesus – turning water into wine, restoring sight to the blind, enabling the lame to walk. To them, a miracle is something that manipulates the laws of physics. It’s a spectacle.
But – at least from the perspective of ACIM – miracles are more likely to be simple, even pedestrian. The urtext is actually helpful in this regard. On page 10, Jesus gives Helen Schucman an example of a miracle. Someone had written a report for an institution that Helen cared about – the report was bad and might have injured the institution. Rather than complain or call attention to the errors, Helen simply rewrote it.
Similarly, on page 21, Helen forgets to ask whether certain notes she is channeling should be transcribed. She does not project this fault onto Bill. Jesus thanks her for “blessing him with a miracle rather than cursing him with projection.”
Still another example of a miracle (also on page 21) is when Helen restrains herself from piping up at a meeting, thus allowing someone else to do the talking.
I think the abstract nature of the text can be overwhelming at times. We read that “miracles occur naturally as expressions of love” (T-1.I.3:1) and it sounds good – it sounds great – but what exactly does it mean? How are we supposed to use it?
The urtext examples above give us some clues. Those examples are pretty basic – the sort of thing that shows up in our day-to-day life all the time. A miracle is when we cover for somebody’s error without pointing it out. A miracle is not blaming somebody else for our mistake. It’s holding our tongue and trusting that we don’t need to solve every problem.
Seen in that light, there is no end of opportunities for miracles. Indeed, in that light, we can begin to readily see how a miracle is simply a change of mind, a willingness to act from love rather than fear.
I’ll give an example from my own life, as well. Yesterday I took my father to the movies. Just before it began, a family entered the theater and sat behind us. All of a sudden, everything got loud and hectic. And then, one of the kids actually decided to sit apart from his parents – right next to me.
He slurped his coke. He chewed popcorn with his mouth open. He turned to talk to his parents. He drummed his knees with this palms. When his parents asked him to quiet down, he dialed it up a notch.
He was ruining my movie experience.
But then I remembered: a miracle is a moment when fear and guilt are changed to love. And they’re not big moments – like winning the lottery ticket or becoming famous. Rather, they’re the little aggravations right in front of us.
This, I realized grudgingly, was a chance to practice A Course in Miracles. So I uttered a quick small prayer. Please Jesus, help me to see this differently. Whatever guilt and anger I feel, please help me to keep it away from this kid.
The kid kept up his antics, but they stopped bothering me. I can’t really explain that. I’m not by nature a forgiving guy. I can hold a grudge like nobody’s business. But somehow I was able to let it go and enjoy the movie. Leaving – watching him with his family as they walked up the aisle – I felt gratitude.
The way to Heaven is right before us. It is the world that we see, the people that we encounter. As we are increasingly able to accept this, we are increasingly able to ask Jesus to help us forgive it. It’s ordinary stuff. Boring even. But it will lead us home, as surely as any map.
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