Saint Material

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Miracles don’t often make the New York Times.  The Gray Lady was reluctant to release stories about verified UFO cases, for crying out loud.  But the story about a twenty-first century saint made me pause.  Well, Carlo Acutis isn’t technically a saint yet (at least he wasn’t at the time of the story), but you can’t become a saint without miracles.  Miracles are difficult situations for which to set up a control group.  Often they involve human beings and we really don’t understand ourselves well enough to say what might be supernatural from time to time.  All we know, at least from the “educated” establishment, is that materialism accounts for everything so miracles don’t happen.  QED.  That’s why I found the account of Carlo Acutis so interesting.  A story about a young person dying from leukemia is always sad, but this report doesn’t end there.

In his brief life, Acutis tried to bring good into the world via the internet.  In this shadowy realm where trolls and hatred thrive, here was a young man trying to spread positive things through this collective of anybody who can afford connectivity.  That does make a remarkable news story in and of itself, but that miracle.  Two, in fact.  Catholic practice is not to assign sainthood without out two very carefully studied miracles.  The Vatican has been involved with science for many decades.  The idea of the Big Bang, after all, derived from Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest and physicist.  Controls are set up for miracles, and the church even used to use Devil’s advocates to try to disprove miracles in such cases.  Skepticism was an essential part of the process.  In its own way this is the scientific study of miracles.

The miracle that may put Acutis over the top, according to the Times, is a spontaneous remission of a brain hemorrhage after a prayer was made to the young man.  Such things happen and doctors can’t explain them.  We as human beings have no way to determine what actually causes such unconventional healings—miracles—often deemed impossible by medical science.  A saint is as good an explanation as any other.  What’s fascinating here is that this miraculous recovery in all likelihood would’ve been overlooked by the New York Times, had it not been for this pending sainthood case.  Such cases as this aren’t everyday occurrences, but they reflect realities that modern people may be very slow to acknowledge.  They still do happen, whether they make the papers or not.  Perhaps our world would be a bit better if they did get reported a little more often.

Thinking Power

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Thoughts are powerful.  An idea can change everything.  While materialism tells us that thoughts are only electro-chemical signals in an organic mass of tissue, those who have them know differently.  I don’t know you, kind readers, well enough to share the full truth of the matter, but I am more and more convinced that materialism is woefully overconfident in its ability to explain everything.  As a friend once told me, science accomplishes a lot and it clearly works, but it also sweeps anomalies off the table as statistically insignificant.  So when we read accounts of educated, rational individuals describing the impossible we laugh it off.  We shouldn’t.  Science and spirit working together is a powerful combination.  Getting the mix right is part of the process.

Our thoughts affect the world around us.  This can be as simple as deciding to mow the lawn.  By doing so, based on a thought, you physically altered the environment in some small way.  Isn’t it merely a matter of degree to let the thought do more of the work?  We’re a long way from mowing the lawn by mind power alone, but we’re at the point where belief (and I’m not talking facile follow-the-leader kinds of belief) should be allowed to grow a little bit.  There’s a lot more to the world than we’re often told there is.  What’s happened to our curiosity that we don’t explore it?  I have some theories regarding why we’ve cut ourselves off from potentially world-changing thoughts—thoughts that really could make the world a better place for all.  We’re tied to old paradigms.

We tend to be too busy to put large amounts of time into thinking.  As a society we undervalue that, in any case, until we need a professor in a specific specialization.  Thinking can lead to action.  We still can’t explain, scientifically, how the thought that I should mow the lawn translates to me standing from my chair, grabbing my hat and gloves, and a battery-pack, going to the garage, and hauling out the mower.  We do know that a thought starts a chain of events, but how does that thought move arms, legs, hands, and feet?  “For verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, ‘Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea,’ and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith.”  Or so the perhaps most influential sage in history once said. 

Miracles

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“Expect a miracle,” Oral Roberts used to say, “and a miracle is yours today.”  The famed Evangelical probably didn’t have Catholic-variety miracles in mind, although a story on the Catholic News Agency does.  Miracles come in big and small varieties.  In case you’re feeling encrusted in materialism, there are plenty of things science hasn’t yet explained.  It helps to have a little wonder in your quotidian routine.  So what was this miracle?  It took place in Hartford, Connecticut.  Specifically, at St. Thomas in Thomaston.  In case you’re not Catholic, or high church Episcopalian, a brief explanation: after the consecration of the host (communion bread), ordained clergy pass communion wafers to those who come forward to receive them.  Believing in transubstantiation, this is done with a great deal of attention to detail.

Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash

The vessel that holds communion wafers is called a ciborium.  (My years at Nashotah House were good training for this.)   Since consecrated wafers should never be defiled, only a certain amount are consecrated at a time—enough to cover those present for the Eucharist, usually.  Any extras are locked in a tabernacle for future use.  In this miracle, a minister handing out the wafers noticed he was running out.  Believe me, this is something to which clergy pay close attention.  Then suddenly there were more wafers in the ciborium.  A multiplication of loaves, but in much smaller and pre-ordered form.  One child called them, I once heard, “tiny little quesadillas.”  Perhaps a small miracle, but we take what we can get.

A miracle is defined as “an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency.”  Since we can’t observe all phenomena all the time, they do occur now and again.  What happened in Connecticut?  I don’t know.  No scientist was observing, and no vestment cams were in use.  We have the word of a clergyman with no cause to lie.  Maybe something unusual did happen.  Yet I can hear the evangelicals protesting that if God were to perform a miracle it would have something to do with Donald Trump rather than some popish fetish.  That’s the problem once religions get involved around miracles.  Too much is left to interpretation.  Sometimes I think of the miracle of the sun at Fatima, Portugal.  Or of people miraculously healed from late-stage fatal diseases without medical intervention.  These things happen and when people are pressed for an explanation they tend to turn to the divine.  Perhaps, however, things just aren’t what they appear to be.

Seeing Things

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SchwebelWe have to learn to see the world. Traditionally religion and science both had roles to play, but as science grew better at explaining physical causes, many consigned religion to mere superstition. In such a paradigmatic world, Lisa J. Schwebel’s Apparitions, Healings, and Weeping Madonnas is something of an anomaly. Schwebel begins by noting that the Catholic Church has long accepted the reality of psi. As the branch of Christianity with the strongest commitment to furthering science, this itself might seem unusual. We are taught to see the world in a binary way: either this or that, not both. Books such as this challenge that convention, asking us to look at a world that doesn’t always conform to expectations. Parapsychology has made inroads from superstition to science because of testable hypotheses and statistically significant results. What it might mean is up for grabs.

Some claim that Catholicism is credulous. Actually, as Schwebel adequately demonstrates, criteria for declaring even spectacular events as miracles are amazingly high. Merely paranormal events seem common in comparison. In many ways, this is a disorienting book: the supernatural is assumed to exist, but miracles are treated as less common than the everyday supernatural. Those of us raised in a rationalist scholarly world might find the acceptance of that which we’ve learned is impossible just a bit unexpected. No doubt, visions of Mary are reported. Crowds often visit trees or highway underpasses where pareidolia impresses an image on the faithful. Schwebel, however, is discussing visions of another sort, and finds that they may involve the power of suggestion rather than the miraculous.

Faith healing, on the other hand, is something for which empirical evidence exists. Doctors still disagree about whether prayer speeds healing, but there have been many instances of unexpected healings that have occurred, apparently in relation to a person noted for bringing wellness about. Causality, of course, can’t be proven, but many people find themselves believing in a spiritual world after such an encounter. Perhaps that is what is so intriguing about books like this; they make readers uncomfortable in a world that is purely material. Finding a credentialed author who actually believes and has evidence to back her up is a rarity. Challenging conventions is part of the territory in most religions. Schwebel is simply straightforward about it.

Private Miracles

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Despite rumors to the contrary, the Roman Catholic Church is skeptical of miracles. Quick to point out pareidolia where it occurs, looking like the Blessed Virgin in a tree stump or highway underpass, this is no credulous organization. Everyday miracles, doctrinal ones, of course are accepted. Transubstantiation is a quotidian miracle as the mass is no mere ritual. Flashier miracles—even some very impressive ones—are treated with suspicion and the rigor of Scotland Yard. When one of my regular readers pointed out the bleeding communion host in Kearns, Utah, I knew I had to check it out. As is to be expected in such cases, the Catholic Church does not disappoint. Some are calling it a miracle, but those who are do not speak for the Diocese.

Keeping in mind that my source for the story is Fox (Fox news seems more interested than most in this incident), apparently what happened is that a parishioner returned a host to the priest during communion. The priest put the host in a glass of water to dissolve it, but instead it began to “bleed.” Church officials were called in to investigate. There are several things odd here, although I’m no inquisitor, that make me wonder about the veracity of the story. First: Fox news. There are other outlets as well, so I’ll let that go at the moment. When a person was given a wafer at Nashotah House and for whatever reason turned it back in, the celebrant simply ate it. Priests, by definition believers in miracles, need not worry about germs. Protecting the host from desecration was the main thing. Putting it in a glass of water? I suppose that’s acceptable in some places, but even an Episcopalian would be shocked. And why was the host returned? Surely it wasn’t defective.

The Eucharist is the central rite of the liturgical churches, and it isn’t taken lightly. Although it is a miracle-laced event, it is expected that the transformation will follow the prescribed rite. I sometimes ponder what priests would do in the face of a genuine, unexplainable wonder. The side of the believer that yearns for validation would surely want to put it on Fox news for all the world to see. The private side would want to let it happen without any need to say anything about it. Keep it a private miracle. In a year when Starbucks red is a sign of an impending war, I wonder if a bleeding host is the most apt way to get the attention of the unfaithful when a simple cup of coffee will do.

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To the Tower

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A recent article in The Independent shows once again how deep our human need of magic can be. The Tower of London, among the oldest buildings in the city, and often considered the most haunted, was apparently protected by magic. Archaeologists have discovered ritual marks on the support timbers of the representative of the Queen’s residence that they believe were intended to keep the devil out. Given that building has been around for a few hundred years, that’s really not all that surprising. The amazing aspect, at least to me, is that the signs are a rare admission on the part of those in power that they are occasionally not in charge. In any case, now that Halloween is in the air, it seems appropriate to think about how even the most rich and powerful aren’t secure from spiritual anxieties. It’s no wonder that bishops were so powerful, back in the day.

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Since I’m writing a paper that discusses grimoires, magic has been on my mind lately. Anyone who follows the books I post on either this blog or Goodreads might easily discern that. The concern that Medieval people had with witches was their supposed ability to work magic. Ironically, historians of science are now suggesting that the study of magic may have led to what we now think of as science. In order to manipulate the physical world, you have to understand how that world works. Magic might have had some benefits for society after all. And we are still prone to magical thinking. It is deeply embedded in the human psyche. Magic, like miracles, can be fortuitous, but the prudent know better than ever to count upon them.

The Tower of London was the, or one of the, castle(s) of the city. Political prisoners were held there and often left with their heads in separate compartments. Even a regular tour of the grounds will include references to ghosts. A city as large and as sophisticated as London still can’t escape the past. The hex marks found by archaeologists may date from the early modern period—the time of the Reformation and thereabouts—but the human mind has not much changed since then. While we may not put secret marks on our buildings any more, we still instill them with a sense of magic. And people move out of haunted houses so often that some states have requirements to reveal troubling histories of properties before someone decides to buy. We are a society enamored of technology and future progress, and yet we stop and wonder when Halloween is in the air.

Holistic Universe

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HolographicUniverseThings have been so busy that a satellite landed on a comet and I didn’t even know. I have always wondered about the universe. In fact, as a young man, vying with my tendencies toward ministry I had a vibrant interest in astronomy. The universe, however, has a predilection towards mathematics that frustrates my attempts to understand. I did well enough in my college astronomy class, but I knew it could never be my major. My recent reading reminded me of Michael Talbot’s The Holographic Universe—a book that has been on my shelf since about the time it was published. In my mind, holograph had translated into arithmetic, and every time I picked it up, fear gripped me anew and I vowed I’d read it later. Later caught up with me the last few days, and I found myself plunged down a rabbit hole that I did not even know was there. When I took physics there was no talk of quantum mechanics. It was all the three laws of thermodynamics and the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection and things like that. Nevertheless, I continued to read science written for the laity, and Talbot’s book rather caught me off guard.

First off, I still have no idea how a holograph works. It is something that seems, to my pragmatic way of thinking, impossible. As Talbot explores this strange concept, however, he introduces a universe I began to recognize. This is one of those realities where the edges don’t quite meet and things that shouldn’t exist show up anyway. In other words, phenomena that are often called “religious” can be made to fit into a holographic universe. Talbot spends a great deal of time discussing miracles and healings. We know that they happen, but we’ve been conditioned to question them. They don’t fit into that universe Mr. Wynecoop told you about in eighth grade. And yet, there they are.

Even after reading the book, I can’t claim to understand how a holographic universe works, but I did come away with a model of reality that allows for the evidence generally swept off the table. Everything from ghosts to time warps are possible in a universe that is a holograph. I’d step off the bus never sure which reality I’d encounter. Still, glancing up at the dark sky, I knew that millions of miles away, someone had recently scored a direct hit on a comet and if we can’t even interpret all that we see on Mars, we’d better be prepared to open our minds for something new. After all, we only see what we allow ourselves to see. Society programs us, just as surely as any computer. And if, like a virus, you play by your own rules, you’ll be the enemy. If you’re willing to ask the uncomfortable questions you’ll be labeled as having tea down a rabbit hole. Maybe, however, I can find a home here. As long as Deacon Dodgson can take care of the math.

Medjugorje Matrix

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Miracle Detective“Expect a miracle,” Oral Roberts used to sign off, “and a miracle is yours today.” Physicists tend to be a bit more hard-nosed about the issue. In a mechanistic universe miracles are disallowed. How can you predict the outcome of any experiment or scenario when the whim of the divine could change the results? Nevertheless, most churches at least hold out the possibility of the rare miracle either set in centuries far past, or even occurring today. Randall Sullivan’s The Miracle Detective is, therefore, an almost unbelievable book. A reporter for Rolling Stone, Sullivan began investigating Marian apparitions. Although in the popular mindset, even among skeptics, such things are seen as promotions by the church to shore up the faithful, as Sullivan points out, the Catholic church is extremely cagey regarding miracles. It might be easier to convince a physicist than it is the Vatican, that a miracle is occurring.

Spending part of the tragic war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sullivan interviewed most of the six children who claimed to have visions of Mary at Medjugorje. While he remained skeptical of what he found, it is at times a decided head-rush to read his book. We tend to dismiss non-academic reporting of events by hoi polloi as unsophisticated, or superstitious. The events at Medjugorje, however, have been thoroughly tested by physicians and communist-appointed scientists and have left them scratching their heads. In some cases, getting them to convert to Catholicism. Rome, however, did not give its seal of approval to what was happening there. Sullivan, not religious himself, but open-minded, found the investigation compelling, if not life-changing. In this lengthy account, the reader is drawn into a rational world where something mysterious is clearly happening. A world that both the church and the academy deny might exist. And yet, something incredible stands on record nevertheless.

Lourdes, Fatima, and numerous lesser-known locations boast erstwhile visions of Mary that include miracles in their wake. Although the events in Medjugorje were unfolding the year I started college, majoring in religion, I had never heard of them until I read The Miracle Detective. As Sullivan notes, at times it seems better not to know about such events because they disturb a comfortable worldview where intrusions from the outside just don’t happen. Life, however, includes many incidents which we simply take off the table because they don’t fit into our scientific paradigm. The implications are just too discomfiting. Climbing off the bus after having read several chapters of the book was like stepping back into a world somehow so effaced that I felt there must be something on the other side. Many of those experiencing these miracles were barely Catholic, or were not religious at all. And yet something happened to them, causing them to wonder. And that wonder is catching for those who read the strangely compelling account of an open-minded, if accidental, miracle detective.

Feeding the Multitudes (on a Budget)

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Commuting to New York City by bus can be an epiphany. When an hour-and-a-half scheduled ride stretches into two-and-a-half (I spent three-quarters as much time commuting as I did actually at work yesterday) you have plenty of time to look at the scenery. In New Jersey this translates into several towns and cities of differing socio-economic viability. The bus is a great leveler of people: corporate, business types sitting next to those who can’t afford a car or bicycle. As we trundled through Plainfield yesterday I spied a restaurant called Two Fishes & Five Loaves taglined Soul Food for all occasions. The name, of course, is borrowed from the story of the miraculous multiplication of food from the Gospels. This story fits particularly well in this setting.

According to the Gospel writers—this is the only miracle to appear in all four of the Gospels—a crowd following Jesus in a lonely place grew hungry. Instead of sending the crowds away, Jesus took the five loaves of bread and two fish they had with them and fed the crowd of 5,000 with that little morsel. When I was a student it was customary to interpret this story as one of a human-dimension miracle. The crowd, seeing Jesus sharing the food he had, each offered to share with their neighbors. Once the idea caught on, those without food had enough and those who’d brought extra had the right amount. They even had leftovers. This naturalized version of the story illustrates the message of Jesus quite nicely, although those who prefer supernatural intervention naturally reject it.

Plainfield is a town with stunning wealth and abject poverty. This situation is not unique to this location; indeed, it is a hallmark of capitalism. Those who have do not willingly give it up for the sake of those less fortunate. The free market is not really free. Today most readers like to see the story of the feeding of the five thousand as divine intervention. That matches our bail out mentality. When our circumstances make us too selfish, God comes to the rescue with conjured seafood and crumpets—or Tea Partiers—and the rest of us look on hungrily. By the end of the day, enduring that long bus ride home, I too was hoping for a miracle. Instead, as we crawled by Two Fishes & Five Loaves, loaded with people of every status, I was living in a Gospel story.

The Very Blustery Day

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What is it with car service and religion? After a long drive to and from Montclair yesterday to teach my mythology classes, I realized the poor car was due for an oil change. I try to be religious about auto service since the gods of mechanics seem to have bypassed me when handing out their gifts. I am pretty good at taking things apart, but when it comes to reconstructing them, well, they seem to work in new and interesting ways when I’m done. I don’t trust too much auto repair to myself. At the same time, Jiffy Lube is not my favorite hangout. I always take a book along, but the waiting area always has a television going and stale coffee perking, and other people chatting. It is sometimes hard to concentrate. A Friday afternoon seemed like a good time to go since weekend warriors would not be spending their first free hours at the Lube.

I had a choice of seats. I sat behind a Plexiglass divider from the television, figuring it might muffle the sound a bit, and began trying to focus on my work. The TV was on ABC, an early news show was running. I hadn’t been reading ten minutes when I heard the Bible mentioned on the news. I scrunched forward to peer around the windshield wipers suspended from the rack on the other side of the Plexiglass. An official looking authority named Carl Druze of the National Center for Atmospheric Research was explaining to an unseen journalist how he’d discovered the miracle of the Exodus! The government scientist explained, with a fancy graphic illustration, how if the wind blew all night the Red Sea would part into a marshy bit of mostly dry land for up to four hours, giving the Israelites an opportunity to walk right out of Egypt. The woman tending the register was so curious about my bent-over posture that she came around to see what the story was about. When she saw, she gave me a doubtful smile. The story concluded by mentioning that Carl Druze is a devout Christian, but that had nothing to do with his research.

Scientists have long tried to explain mythological episodes. Over the years I have read many implausible conjectures of “perfect storm” conditions that could lead to a dried sea bed, a series of horrific plagues, a world-wide flood, or even the earth itself holding still on its axis for 24 hours. While clever, these scientific fictions miss the point. The Bible is presenting miracles as unaccountable acts of God. No formulas or figures can explain them. I was bemused since four hours would hardly be time enough for the (at least) three million Israelites cited by Exodus to have made it across marshy swampland with their considerable material goods. The fact remains that no archaeological evidence for the exodus exists, claims of chariot-wheel shaped coral in the Red Sea notwithstanding. If the Bible had been intending to be literal here, it would have been the end of Egypt since the army was completely wiped out. And this was on the eve of the invasion of the Sea Peoples. There is a reason I let automotive experts work on my car. It is always interesting when scientists tinker with the Bible, but I’m glad that such tinkering doesn’t involve a half-ton of metal that is capable of racing down the highway at speeds the fleeing Israelites would have been overjoyed to have achieved on the road out of Egypt.

Dive low, sweet chariot