What is a Miracle?
Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson
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Readers sometimes ask: What is a miracle? How might open and relational (process) theologies understand miracles?
Thomas Oord, a leading Christian theologian in our time, offers a powerful suggestion when he proposes that we can understand them as expression of, not exceptions to, the non-coercive yet immensely influential love of God. His book, The Uncontrolling Love of God, has an entire chapter on miracles, well worth the read. Here is an excerpt from a postscript to the book:
Thomas Oord, a leading Christian theologian in our time, offers a powerful suggestion when he proposes that we can understand them as expression of, not exceptions to, the non-coercive yet immensely influential love of God. His book, The Uncontrolling Love of God, has an entire chapter on miracles, well worth the read. Here is an excerpt from a postscript to the book:
"Law-like regularities are also present in the cosmos. These law-like regularities are the natural expression or entailments of the all-embracing, all-sustaining and uncontrolling love of God. In Fact, God's self-giving, others-empowering activity makes possible both regularity and randomness. God provides free will, agency, self-organiszation and spontaneity because God's love makes life possible. God's gifts and the ongoing flow of time mean that neither the creatures nor the Creator can foreknow with absolute certainty which possible events will someday become actual."
For Oord and others in the open and relational (process) tradition, miracles are not interruptions of the laws of physics and chemistry; indeed, those laws are miracles, too. Another leading process theologian, John Cobb, says the same in an article for Open Horizons: Miracles. We recommend John Cobb's article as a complement to work by Thomas Oord.
But this talk by Rabbi Bradley Shavit, given to the members of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, California, for their annual Rosh Hashanah sermon, brings it all together. It is an excellent place to begin a consideration of miracles, and perhaps to conclude such a consideration as well. I know of nothing quite like it.
Rabbi Artson re-frames the High Holidays as a “wake up call” to the innumerable miracles in our lives that we might otherwise let slip by unnoticed. And he shows how each day above the ground is, in its own way, a miracle. He is among the leading process theologians in the world today, articulating Jewish wisdom in a way available to everyone all the time.
We've come to expect such wisdom from Rabbi Artson. He has many articles in JJB that help many people. Still, this sermon, is itself a miracle for our times, filled as they are with fear and sadness. Listen to it. You'll be glad to be alive.
-- Jay McDaniel
But this talk by Rabbi Bradley Shavit, given to the members of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, California, for their annual Rosh Hashanah sermon, brings it all together. It is an excellent place to begin a consideration of miracles, and perhaps to conclude such a consideration as well. I know of nothing quite like it.
Rabbi Artson re-frames the High Holidays as a “wake up call” to the innumerable miracles in our lives that we might otherwise let slip by unnoticed. And he shows how each day above the ground is, in its own way, a miracle. He is among the leading process theologians in the world today, articulating Jewish wisdom in a way available to everyone all the time.
We've come to expect such wisdom from Rabbi Artson. He has many articles in JJB that help many people. Still, this sermon, is itself a miracle for our times, filled as they are with fear and sadness. Listen to it. You'll be glad to be alive.
-- Jay McDaniel
Transcript of Rabbi Artson's Talk
The way many of us live our lives, we go from task to task. We proceed from obligation to obligation. Often we forget to enjoy the opportunities that are in front of us so we turn them into chores.
Some of us this year may have planned a wedding and forget in the process to rejoice in the love, the gathering, and the ceremony because we were so worried about the caterer, the flowers, the photographer, and (sometimes) the Rabbi. We turn life’s great moments into tasks to be checked off on the list and then we’re surprised when life passes us by. The novelist Rebecca Goldstein, in her wonderful book Properties of Light notes, “the impossible has a way of passing unnoticed among us.” How often do we in retrospect, wish that we had savored, slowed down, taken a breath, and enjoyed what we had while we had it? And we only notice that bounty after we don’t have it any longer.
What we need is a wakeup call. We need an event to shake us by our shoulders and to tell us “This is your life, this is the moment! If you don’t enjoy it now, another moment may not come. This is it!” It turns out this very holiday is that moment. Maimonides, the great medieval sage, writes Uru Yeshanim! wake up you slumberers! you who are asleep in the bounds of time.” He adds, “this is your chance to examine your deeds.” So I want to invite us to take that wakeup call right now, to be able to emerge from this moment not asleep, not slaves to the tasks in front of us (although they are real) but to be able to breathe, to look up to see that this moment now is the good old days of ten years from now. If we don’t enjoy it now, then ten years from now, we won’t enjoy that moment either.
So I bring you a miracle story. I want to share this story with you, not because it’s unique (although it is), but because we all have such stories.
Some of you have watched my children grow up, so you already know my son, Jacob. Jacob is now 24 years old and he struggles with a pretty severe autism. He is not what they call “high functioning”, in fact his personal challenge is that he is extremely motorically challenged, yet he is simultaneously very smart. That combination means that he is fully aware of what he can’t do and of his own burdens. Jacob communicates through facilitated communication. He is able, with assistance, to type messages. He does his work, or he communicates his most sophisticated thoughts, using an iPad or sometimes his mobile phone. We have an app on it that has a speaking technology; Jacob types his thoughts into the app, and and it transforms his typing into speech. That way he is able to communicate in a fairly sophisticated level. Like many of your teenage children, the one thing he doesn’t use his phone for, ever, is to make calls. I’m not aware that teenagers even suspect that people once used phones primarily for making calls!
Here’s the miracle story: I’m in the kitchen. It’s Friday afternoon, I’m preparing the Shabbat meal, and I, like the good teenager I am at heart, am using my phone to play music. Meanwhile, Jacob is in his bedroom, using his phone to play some of his favorite electronic games. He’s doing what he’s doing, I’m cooking what I’m cooking, when suddenly my phone rings.
The phone rings and it lights up with the caller’s name: “Jacob Artson.” Jacob has never in his life called anybody! I pick up the phone, and I say, “Hello.”
Jacob says, “Hello Abba.”
I say “Jacob, did you just call me?”, and he says “Yes.”
So I say “Okay, do you want to hang up, or do you want to talk?”
Jacob says, “Let’s talk.” This has never happened before, so I’m improvising.
I say “Okay, Jacob, do you want to talk or do you want to sing”, and he said “Let’s sing.” So we sang two of his favorite songs, both of them Disney, and after we were done singing together, I said “Do you want to talk more or do you want to hang up?”, and Jacob said “Hang up.”
I said “Okay, goodbye Jacob,” and he said “Goodbye Abba,” and we hung up.
You could have peeled me off the ceiling! Twenty-four years I had never gotten a phone call from my son; twenty-four years! I still don’t know how he made that call. He hasn’t done it since.
That call was a miracle, wasn’t it?
Miracles aren’t when the laws of nature are broken. Miracles are when something you never thought possible happens, which means that it’s now possible. When a miracle occurs, your world expands by precisely the impact of that same miracle. Something that had been pure fantasy became real.
We get so distracted by the unexpected miracles that we don’t see them when they surround us, but that’s only half of it. A few minutes after I calm down from thinking about Jacob having called me, what a miracle that was and how I never expected to experience that joy, my daughter calls. Now it turns out that Shira is neurotypical, and Shira calls all the time. But isn’t that a miracle too?
Just because something happens often doesn’t mean it’s not miraculous. For example: think of someone you love with whom you used to spend the holidays, someone who used to sit with you in the synagogue, but who is no longer alive. Wouldn’t you give anything for them to be with you now? It would be a miracle! But it didn’t feel miraculous until it was taken away, until they passed on.
Keeping that transient reality in mind, look at the people around you now and realize that we are all mortal, all on the same escalator leading to the same inevitable destination. We have a finite number of holidays to sit together. It’s a miracle that we can be with each other now.
Think of the miracle of a universe in which inorganic matter became organic matter, in which some of that organic matter complexified in such a way that it gained rudimentary consciousness and the ability to organize itself. Some of that self-organizing matter acquired the ability to replicate itself, creating another generation, and some of that self-organizing organic matter got smart enough to crawl out of the wet and onto the dry. And some of that matter on the dry climbed up a tree and developed binocular vision and prehensile thumbs. And then they climbed down from the trees, our distant ancestors, and here we are, a piece of the universe emerged into life; emerged into consciousness; emerged into awareness. Isn’t that a miracle within a miracle?
Let me share an extraordinary insight by Rav Yosef Caro, a Sixteenth Century Kabbalist, mystic, and legal authority. You may know him if you know him at all because he wrote the Shulchan Aruch, to this day the dominant code of Jewish law. He writes in his book Minchat Shabbat:
"The usual order of creation is the work of a wisdom that far surpasses any idea or concept of ours, and this is our Creator. But people are fools. For everything that seems to them the usual course of nature, they pay no attention. They only pay attention to what’s unusual. So they pay attention to the sea splitting at the Red Sea, whereas an insightful person would say to them, “Isn’t the fact that those waters have existed for thousands of centuries, a greater testament to the light of their maker, than any single magical moment could possibly be?”
We focus on the biblical story of the Nile water splitting as though that splitting is extraordinary, when what’s really extraordinary is water - just water! Similarly, our lives are surrounded by countless invisible miracles: we breathe, we love, we suffer, we cry, we reach out to each other. How many miracles have we witnessed in prayer this morning as someone felt the power of this ancient liturgy and spontaneously broke into tears, and then another miracle as the person crying is immediately is surrounded by people who see the sorrow and pain, empathize with those feelings, and hold person who is crying. Isn’t it a miracle that we can bind each other’s wounds, that we can touch each other’s hearts? Isn’t that extraordinary?
Wake up! Wake up to the gift that life presents us, now and in every moment. Any day above ground is a glorious day, and we have that gift now.
My Jacob gave me the gift of a miracle with that phone call, didn’t he? And we can give each other that same gift any time. Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler, great Reform Rabbi at the turn of the 20th century said, “The whole cosmic order is one big miracle.”
So if the holy day of Rosh Ha-Shanah means anything, let it mean this: today, every day, is miraculous. Life is a miracle within a miracle.
The Talmud speaks of “Nes Betokh Nes,” miracle within a miracle. The fact that we remember our loved ones means they live on with us, they are not really separate from us. Miracle within a miracle! They breathe with our breath and they live in our hearts.
The fact that there is a loved one next to you, is a miracle: put your arm around that loved one because you can’t embrace them forever, neither they mor you will be around forever. They grow up, they move away, they pass on. But we have the divine power to connect, to relate, to hold. Miracle within a miracle!
Hold each other while you can, and then hold on to this glorious beautiful tradition. A tradition that reminds us once a year: you fell asleep again. We can’t afford to do that; wake up because time is precious and fleeting. Life is passing us by.
Ours is a tradition that reminds us that we — along with all humanity and all creation — are children of God. We have the privilege and the task of shining that light in a world that is broken and sad, lonely and cruel. Across the ages, our Torah has ignited the world with an illumination that will never go out and which shines in each and every one of us. So let’s leave this beautiful space and this time together awake, alive and grateful.
Let us truly see the miracles that are ours. The problem with being alive today is not the lack of miracles. Our problem is that there are so many, that we don’t notice them anymore.
Life is a miracle. Wake up! Wake up and know that each and every one of us is a spark of something great, glorious, and timeless, and that we have a brief moment to say “thank you,” and “wow,” and to reach out to each other in celebration. It is, after all, a New Year!
Some of us this year may have planned a wedding and forget in the process to rejoice in the love, the gathering, and the ceremony because we were so worried about the caterer, the flowers, the photographer, and (sometimes) the Rabbi. We turn life’s great moments into tasks to be checked off on the list and then we’re surprised when life passes us by. The novelist Rebecca Goldstein, in her wonderful book Properties of Light notes, “the impossible has a way of passing unnoticed among us.” How often do we in retrospect, wish that we had savored, slowed down, taken a breath, and enjoyed what we had while we had it? And we only notice that bounty after we don’t have it any longer.
What we need is a wakeup call. We need an event to shake us by our shoulders and to tell us “This is your life, this is the moment! If you don’t enjoy it now, another moment may not come. This is it!” It turns out this very holiday is that moment. Maimonides, the great medieval sage, writes Uru Yeshanim! wake up you slumberers! you who are asleep in the bounds of time.” He adds, “this is your chance to examine your deeds.” So I want to invite us to take that wakeup call right now, to be able to emerge from this moment not asleep, not slaves to the tasks in front of us (although they are real) but to be able to breathe, to look up to see that this moment now is the good old days of ten years from now. If we don’t enjoy it now, then ten years from now, we won’t enjoy that moment either.
So I bring you a miracle story. I want to share this story with you, not because it’s unique (although it is), but because we all have such stories.
Some of you have watched my children grow up, so you already know my son, Jacob. Jacob is now 24 years old and he struggles with a pretty severe autism. He is not what they call “high functioning”, in fact his personal challenge is that he is extremely motorically challenged, yet he is simultaneously very smart. That combination means that he is fully aware of what he can’t do and of his own burdens. Jacob communicates through facilitated communication. He is able, with assistance, to type messages. He does his work, or he communicates his most sophisticated thoughts, using an iPad or sometimes his mobile phone. We have an app on it that has a speaking technology; Jacob types his thoughts into the app, and and it transforms his typing into speech. That way he is able to communicate in a fairly sophisticated level. Like many of your teenage children, the one thing he doesn’t use his phone for, ever, is to make calls. I’m not aware that teenagers even suspect that people once used phones primarily for making calls!
Here’s the miracle story: I’m in the kitchen. It’s Friday afternoon, I’m preparing the Shabbat meal, and I, like the good teenager I am at heart, am using my phone to play music. Meanwhile, Jacob is in his bedroom, using his phone to play some of his favorite electronic games. He’s doing what he’s doing, I’m cooking what I’m cooking, when suddenly my phone rings.
The phone rings and it lights up with the caller’s name: “Jacob Artson.” Jacob has never in his life called anybody! I pick up the phone, and I say, “Hello.”
Jacob says, “Hello Abba.”
I say “Jacob, did you just call me?”, and he says “Yes.”
So I say “Okay, do you want to hang up, or do you want to talk?”
Jacob says, “Let’s talk.” This has never happened before, so I’m improvising.
I say “Okay, Jacob, do you want to talk or do you want to sing”, and he said “Let’s sing.” So we sang two of his favorite songs, both of them Disney, and after we were done singing together, I said “Do you want to talk more or do you want to hang up?”, and Jacob said “Hang up.”
I said “Okay, goodbye Jacob,” and he said “Goodbye Abba,” and we hung up.
You could have peeled me off the ceiling! Twenty-four years I had never gotten a phone call from my son; twenty-four years! I still don’t know how he made that call. He hasn’t done it since.
That call was a miracle, wasn’t it?
Miracles aren’t when the laws of nature are broken. Miracles are when something you never thought possible happens, which means that it’s now possible. When a miracle occurs, your world expands by precisely the impact of that same miracle. Something that had been pure fantasy became real.
We get so distracted by the unexpected miracles that we don’t see them when they surround us, but that’s only half of it. A few minutes after I calm down from thinking about Jacob having called me, what a miracle that was and how I never expected to experience that joy, my daughter calls. Now it turns out that Shira is neurotypical, and Shira calls all the time. But isn’t that a miracle too?
Just because something happens often doesn’t mean it’s not miraculous. For example: think of someone you love with whom you used to spend the holidays, someone who used to sit with you in the synagogue, but who is no longer alive. Wouldn’t you give anything for them to be with you now? It would be a miracle! But it didn’t feel miraculous until it was taken away, until they passed on.
Keeping that transient reality in mind, look at the people around you now and realize that we are all mortal, all on the same escalator leading to the same inevitable destination. We have a finite number of holidays to sit together. It’s a miracle that we can be with each other now.
Think of the miracle of a universe in which inorganic matter became organic matter, in which some of that organic matter complexified in such a way that it gained rudimentary consciousness and the ability to organize itself. Some of that self-organizing matter acquired the ability to replicate itself, creating another generation, and some of that self-organizing organic matter got smart enough to crawl out of the wet and onto the dry. And some of that matter on the dry climbed up a tree and developed binocular vision and prehensile thumbs. And then they climbed down from the trees, our distant ancestors, and here we are, a piece of the universe emerged into life; emerged into consciousness; emerged into awareness. Isn’t that a miracle within a miracle?
Let me share an extraordinary insight by Rav Yosef Caro, a Sixteenth Century Kabbalist, mystic, and legal authority. You may know him if you know him at all because he wrote the Shulchan Aruch, to this day the dominant code of Jewish law. He writes in his book Minchat Shabbat:
"The usual order of creation is the work of a wisdom that far surpasses any idea or concept of ours, and this is our Creator. But people are fools. For everything that seems to them the usual course of nature, they pay no attention. They only pay attention to what’s unusual. So they pay attention to the sea splitting at the Red Sea, whereas an insightful person would say to them, “Isn’t the fact that those waters have existed for thousands of centuries, a greater testament to the light of their maker, than any single magical moment could possibly be?”
We focus on the biblical story of the Nile water splitting as though that splitting is extraordinary, when what’s really extraordinary is water - just water! Similarly, our lives are surrounded by countless invisible miracles: we breathe, we love, we suffer, we cry, we reach out to each other. How many miracles have we witnessed in prayer this morning as someone felt the power of this ancient liturgy and spontaneously broke into tears, and then another miracle as the person crying is immediately is surrounded by people who see the sorrow and pain, empathize with those feelings, and hold person who is crying. Isn’t it a miracle that we can bind each other’s wounds, that we can touch each other’s hearts? Isn’t that extraordinary?
Wake up! Wake up to the gift that life presents us, now and in every moment. Any day above ground is a glorious day, and we have that gift now.
My Jacob gave me the gift of a miracle with that phone call, didn’t he? And we can give each other that same gift any time. Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler, great Reform Rabbi at the turn of the 20th century said, “The whole cosmic order is one big miracle.”
So if the holy day of Rosh Ha-Shanah means anything, let it mean this: today, every day, is miraculous. Life is a miracle within a miracle.
The Talmud speaks of “Nes Betokh Nes,” miracle within a miracle. The fact that we remember our loved ones means they live on with us, they are not really separate from us. Miracle within a miracle! They breathe with our breath and they live in our hearts.
The fact that there is a loved one next to you, is a miracle: put your arm around that loved one because you can’t embrace them forever, neither they mor you will be around forever. They grow up, they move away, they pass on. But we have the divine power to connect, to relate, to hold. Miracle within a miracle!
Hold each other while you can, and then hold on to this glorious beautiful tradition. A tradition that reminds us once a year: you fell asleep again. We can’t afford to do that; wake up because time is precious and fleeting. Life is passing us by.
Ours is a tradition that reminds us that we — along with all humanity and all creation — are children of God. We have the privilege and the task of shining that light in a world that is broken and sad, lonely and cruel. Across the ages, our Torah has ignited the world with an illumination that will never go out and which shines in each and every one of us. So let’s leave this beautiful space and this time together awake, alive and grateful.
Let us truly see the miracles that are ours. The problem with being alive today is not the lack of miracles. Our problem is that there are so many, that we don’t notice them anymore.
Life is a miracle. Wake up! Wake up and know that each and every one of us is a spark of something great, glorious, and timeless, and that we have a brief moment to say “thank you,” and “wow,” and to reach out to each other in celebration. It is, after all, a New Year!
For more on the Jewish New Year you might also be interested in Rosh Hashanah: A Process Appreciation.
For more on miracles, you might also be interested in John Cobb on Miracles.
For more on miracles, you might also be interested in John Cobb on Miracles.