Yesterday, I watched a moth. Up close and personal. I could tell that she was faltering, on the edge of letting go of this world, her last little bits of time here. You see, I am a bit of a stickler about floors. It is a “thing” for me. I like them spit spot clean. And that’s when I noticed her, on the rug in the living room. I thought she was a leaf, and for the life of me, I could not understand how a leaf got WAY over there. Of course, upon investigation, I discovered her identity, a fallen moth.
I wondered what her existence was like in that moment? Was she in pain? Did she know she was dying? Was there somewhere else she’d rather be? Do moths have other moths in this world, ones they recognize and fly around with? After a moment or two of watching her, I gently scooped her up and carried her outside. I figured she would rather spend her last minutes looking up at wide skies, as opposed to the underside of someone’s living room chair. I am guessing she was already past this life, onto whatever energy moths turn into. She gave no resistance. She did not lift a wing.
So much of our days are filled with the things we need or want to do. We make our lists, we carry out our tasks, we keep our schedules and in my case, we sweep our floors. But stopping, for a brief moment, to feel gratitude for the miracles of life, can be such a thing. So much in this world goes on around us, the things we never consider.
Our continuous breath, our heartbeat. No help from us, those things just go and do. The world, this huge, massive planet, spinning on its axis in exactly the right way, so that we don’t go careening off into space on some wild, unaligned tangent. All of these things take care of themselves without any checklist on our part, nothing that we do, or even think. They happen perfectly. Miraculously.
I think they are miracles, or at the very least, natural wonders. We also have an infinite amount of wonders that have been created by our human factor. It wasn’t so very long ago that we didn’t have things like indoor plumbing, or electricity. The world of medicine has made remarkable advancements, as well as science. We hold little devices in our hands that reach halfway around the world in the flash of a second. A hundred years ago, people would have doubled over laughing if we told them we were from the future and we had ways of expressing our thoughts, sharing our photos, instantaneously, to millions of people worldwide. Or that we could turn on a thing called a television, with the sound of our voice, and see hundreds of shows at any minute. In another hundred years, people will be amazed by how uncivilized we are today. Or, depending on how things go, they will be cooking on outdoor fires and catching lizards for dinner by pelting them with rocks. We’ll see.
When we wake up tomorrow, we should take the time to notice how many things are running exactly as they should. The refrigerator is keeping food cold, a plane flies overhead without dropping from the sky, a late-season daisy blooms in the garden. The flutter of a moth’s wing. When we see tomorrow, we should remember just how many miracles touch our day. We should take at least a moment, to give thanks to that wondrous fact. Miraculous. Tremendous.
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Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.
— C.S. Lewis
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I think miracles exist in part as gifts and in part as clues that there is something beyond the flat world we see.
— Peggy Noonan
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Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.
— Pablo Picasso
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