Backward Miracles:
Reclaiming the Single Loaf of Bread
As Jack the theologian basks in the notion of the Eucharistic bread's transformation into the body of Christ, his daughter appears, presenting him with a freshly baked loaf. In that moment, he feels a sudden jolt. The particularity of the bread, physically brought to him by his daughter, knocks away the abstractions swirling in his mind.
The bread and his daughter are just themselves, in their suchness, and therein lies the beauty. They don't need to turn into anything else. As they are is just fine.
It's a sort of miracle, but one that defies expectations—a backward miracle. The miracle is not that Jack has awakened to the divine. It is that Jack has transcended "transcendence" by reclaiming the bread and his daughter in their singularity. He has turned back to the concreteness of life.
Of course he could interpret the moment theologically if he wished. He could say to himself: "God is in this moment, in the bread and my daughter." And this might be true. But he also realizes that there is no need to add such an interpretation, There is no need to say the word "God" in order to recognize value in life itself. Life is its own value.
Whitehead's concept of "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness" comes to mind. We fall into the fallacy when we are lost in abstractions, forgetting the world in its concreteness. The specificity of a single occasion of experience is always more than the generalities by which we try to understand it.
We need miracles, to be sure. We need moments when we are pitched into heights beyond the mundane: into music, into love, into ecstasy. And we need moments when the pain of life is transformed into something more beautiful. When people forgive each other, and resentments are transformed. Indeed, forgiveness is much more miraculous than walking on water.
But we also need backward miracles, when the world presents itself as it is. We need times when the body of Christ falls away, and we just taste the bread, hug our daughter, and say: "This, in its concreteness, is wonderful, God or no God."
A danger of theology of any kind, including mystical theology, is to be so attracted to abstract principles and big ideas concerning God that we neglect ordinary life. The solution is not to find God in the ordinary, saying, "Ah, the ordinary is a miracle, too. Everything that happens is a burning bush, if only we have eyes to see." The solution is to transcend the need to turn everything into a theophany, a revelation of God. It is to let the ordinary be ordinary. This the backward miracle. It is the miracle of finding value in a single loaf of bread, and in your daughter who proudly brings it to you, freshly made, not because they reveal God, but because, in their sheer finitude, quite apart from questions of God, they are so beautiful.
- Jay McDaniel
The bread and his daughter are just themselves, in their suchness, and therein lies the beauty. They don't need to turn into anything else. As they are is just fine.
It's a sort of miracle, but one that defies expectations—a backward miracle. The miracle is not that Jack has awakened to the divine. It is that Jack has transcended "transcendence" by reclaiming the bread and his daughter in their singularity. He has turned back to the concreteness of life.
Of course he could interpret the moment theologically if he wished. He could say to himself: "God is in this moment, in the bread and my daughter." And this might be true. But he also realizes that there is no need to add such an interpretation, There is no need to say the word "God" in order to recognize value in life itself. Life is its own value.
Whitehead's concept of "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness" comes to mind. We fall into the fallacy when we are lost in abstractions, forgetting the world in its concreteness. The specificity of a single occasion of experience is always more than the generalities by which we try to understand it.
We need miracles, to be sure. We need moments when we are pitched into heights beyond the mundane: into music, into love, into ecstasy. And we need moments when the pain of life is transformed into something more beautiful. When people forgive each other, and resentments are transformed. Indeed, forgiveness is much more miraculous than walking on water.
But we also need backward miracles, when the world presents itself as it is. We need times when the body of Christ falls away, and we just taste the bread, hug our daughter, and say: "This, in its concreteness, is wonderful, God or no God."
A danger of theology of any kind, including mystical theology, is to be so attracted to abstract principles and big ideas concerning God that we neglect ordinary life. The solution is not to find God in the ordinary, saying, "Ah, the ordinary is a miracle, too. Everything that happens is a burning bush, if only we have eyes to see." The solution is to transcend the need to turn everything into a theophany, a revelation of God. It is to let the ordinary be ordinary. This the backward miracle. It is the miracle of finding value in a single loaf of bread, and in your daughter who proudly brings it to you, freshly made, not because they reveal God, but because, in their sheer finitude, quite apart from questions of God, they are so beautiful.
- Jay McDaniel