The Whole World is a series of miracles

It was Hans Christian Andersen who said that “The whole world is a series of miracles but we’re so used to them we call them ordinary things.”

I find myself surrounded by ordinary things. But aren’t those the very things that make us thrive? These extraordinary ordinary things that are our daily miracles?

“Just living is not enough” said the butterfly “One must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."

How incredible that those miraculous things are there for the taking!

And if you think of it… it also seems to be quite an ordinary thing, this going to sleep each night and waking up each morning, we do it 365 times a year and yet isn’t it quite a miracle to get a new start that often? A fresh chance to conquer a new problem or whittle away on an old one.  A chance to make better choices; a chance to say I love you to the ones you care for the most.

Early on in our marriage Dale and I purchased a large gold framed copy of a painting that touched our soulful hearts through the power of its ordinary things. It was never “home” until that painting was hung in each new house along our life’s journey.  Imagine our joy when meandering through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City one morning we entered a room and there on the wall, was the painting.  “OUR” painting.  Gigantic in size (the original painting itself is 9 feet wide and over 6 ½ feet tall and it is encompassed by an ornate gold frame making it even more massive) and gigantic in power, we sat on the bench in front of it, he put his arm around my shoulders and I scooched over and nestled into that safe embrace and absorbed the peace of the ordinary things both in the painting and in his hug.  

The painting was created in oil on canvas by the brilliant artist, George Inness.  We learned that day that as an ardent abolitionist, Inness tried to enlist in a Massachusetts regiment during the Civil War. Although he failed the physical examination, he organized rallies and frequently gave speeches to drum up donations and volunteers and as the war was ending he created this masterpiece that he called Peace and Plenty (1865) to give hope to a war torn nation by illustrating farmers peacefully producing fields of ordinary wheat under a burst of ordinary sunlight representing the miracle of "plenty" that could once again be the nation’s norm.  Dale and I felt the miracle of those ordinary things; I feel it even now as I look at the painting after all these years. And amazingly, the artist's depiction of these miracles has bolstered the hopes of millions for well over a century.

Last week I made the decision to make joy a daily choice and today I see that paying attention to the phenomena that are in ordinary things is a good way of doing that. I am constantly reminded by newsflashes that bling in on my cell phone of all the trauma and angst that surround us today adding to my own daily fears and frustrations but this observance and acknowledgement of the power of the ordinary gives me strength and a balance, I dare say even a solid base of peace and hope, an elevation in the thoughts and dreams of an ordinary person living an ordinary life.