I share a story written by my brother-in-law.

It is the kind of mini-miracle I want to notice.  And he did.

Watch for them in your life and share them too, please.

They are an extra-ordinary good fortune that is unexpected and unusually good. Mini-miracles have a sense of quickening to them no matter how small.
My brother-in-law recognized this.  Here it is:

   A Christmas Story

I had an interesting Christmas experience.  It was shaping up to be a very difficult day.  This was the time two years ago that we were struggling to save Romie’s life.  In addition I was faced with the prospect of being alone Christmas Eve and morning for the first time in my life.  My son John and his wife Cara come down mid day after they visit his wife’s Mom and my son Eric and his wife Jackie normally come home for the holiday from CA but he is not well at the moment and could not travel.  That in itself was tragic.  So what to do?  I found that Romie’s sister was going to also be alone so I spent Christmas Eve with her.  In the morning I planned to go to church even though this has been very emotional for me in the past few years.  Shirley in the parish has been very supportive and I normally sit with her but she was going to church Christmas Eve.  Nonetheless I thought I would find someone I knew.  In the morning I fired up my courage, found my old red Christmas sweater at the bottom of a trunk, and ventured off to church.  When I arrived there was only one car there and I then suddenly realized that most go to church Christmas Eve.  I was faced with the prospect of sitting alone and it occurred to me that this might be the occasion where I finally came completely unstuck.  I was not looking forward to going into church.  At that moment another car pulled up and a very animated guy emerged and came quickly to where I was standing.  “Good morning, Merry Christmas and how are you doing today.”  He was a stranger and so animated and friendly that my first reaction was that he was some sort of aberration.  Strangers are not normally that outgoing and I really expected that after we greeted he would disappear in a puff of smoke.  Not so he was a real person and we went into church together.  The ones who were there were all sitting on the left but my family has always sat in the same pew on the right.  The prospect was that I would be really alone there so I asked the stranger if he would care to join me and he was very pleased.  We visited a bit before the service.  It turned out that he lives in Florida and was visiting the area.  He is an Episcopalian and very familiar with the service and had researched the local churches to find ours. He was very friendly and outgoing so much so that this saved the day for me.  During the service I spent some time wiping away tears and I think he noticed.  At the end we got onto the subject of what ails me and he was enormously supportive.  Out of the blue he suggested “why don’t you become a deacon?”  This was odd in that I have been thinking about what I could do in the future that might benefit mankind in some way.  Becoming a deacon was not under consideration but not knowing what I have been contemplating how did he happen to suggest something on a humanitarian level?  Further on in the conversation he said “you are fortunate that your wife went first and she does not have to suffer as you are doing.”  This was also odd in that this has been my train of thought as well.

All of this struck me as unusual so I have written it down.  There are several scenarios that might explain the experience.  One is that this man who is very outgoing happened to arrive at the right time and happened to meet someone who needed support.  The minimum take away is that there can be a profound effect when one human meets another on this level.  Another scenario is that his being there was the result of intervention on a divine level.  How did it happen that an outgoing empathetic stranger arrived just then?  It turned out to be a good day.

PEACE ON EARTH HAS TO BE POSSIBLE!!

If Peace on Earth HAS to (no choice, must happen) possible, what would you do differently?  
I'm thinking about my own answers.  Send me yours.
We'll talk next week.

PEACE ON EARTH HAS TO BE POSSIBLE

Read my very personal message at www.truthburps.blogspot.com
for my thoughts about Peace on Earth.
Back to I PRAY ANYWAY next week.

THE RICHNESS OF NOT WANTING

Kabir (1440-1518) was an Indian poet known to be a smart-aleck or Zen bruiser.  He hated how stupid people could be about religion. His poems can be quite ironic and tender.

Here is one of his more biting poems:

The fish in the water that is thirsty needs
serious professional counseling.

And here is the one that I liked for this especially frenzied time of buying and wanting.

                                     I was

                            looking for that shop

                   where the shopkeeper would say,

                   "There is nothing of value in here."

                             I found it and did

                                  not leave.

                      The richness of not wanting

                                 wrote these

                                    poems.

Doesn't that sound good? Not wanting. No yearning. No disappointment.
No goofy expectations.  There is peace.  There is comfort.  There is joy.

MEXICO KEEPS CHRISTMAS SACRED AND SAVES THE PRESENTS FOR LATER

My first Christmas Eve in Mexico was a let down.  I did my usual Christmas 
rituals with my family which, miraculously, were all present.  Twelve of us. No grandchildren yet. I traipsed out to find a church expecting very special trappings. 

I don't especially like Mexico churches at night because their beautiful
lamps and candelabras often have LED lights or there are neon strip lights highlighting statues in their niches.  So the atmosphere can be a little bleak and 
harsh. But I thought Christmas would be different. Nope.  Normal mass and communion.  Not lots of people.  I went back to our Mexico house disappointed.

Christmas morning is the time for a more elaborate and celebratory service.
The streets were full.  No one was home unwrapping presents; there weren't any. Christmas is not secular at all.

The 6th of January is all about presents.  And it makes sense.  It is Three Kings Day when the three kings made it to the manger.  So----presents are set out for the children to find in the morning and families gather for the festive,
crowded, hectic parties we associate with Christmas Eve and Day.

I so prefer the Latin or Mexican approach.  I hate tainting the holy with the secular, commercial aspects of Christmas.  And I'm fine with the gift giving for kids only on Three Kings Day.   Keeps every thing in its right place.  Makes sense.  

EVEN THE POPE IS EXPLORING THE RELIGION/SCIENCE CONNECTION

How to Talk About Religion is the sub-title of Krista Tippett's book, SPEAKING OF FAITH.  My brother (who was a Methodist Minister and who died two years ago) gave it to me when I was in phase he called "evangelic agnosticism".
His book suggestions to me were often astute.

When my mind turns,not to mush,but to muddle I pick up this book because it is clear about the muddle (if that is possible) between science and religion and finds a middle path through that dichotomy.

Tippet  quotes John Polkinghorne, a quantum physicist quite a bit who became a theologian and Anglican 


          —Religious insights about the nature of God and the scientific insights about the process of the world seem to me actually to be very consonant with each other.  You can't deduced one from the other, but you can see it and they don't seem to be at odds with one another.  
         Science treats the world as an object that you pull apart and constantly put to the test. But we know there are whole realms of human experience
where testing gives way to trusting.  There are times to look at 'wholeness'
and times to 'dissect' parts.  What we need is a complementary way of looking at the world—

These words encourage me.  I read and see science opening up to a transcendent unseen reality.  I wish religion would do more of the same with science. It is coming.  Even the  Pope is evolving.  He says—The 'Big Bang' theory, which we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the diving creator, but rather requires it.  Evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve—

OK, one step for mankind, one step for the divine.