This is a blog about the profound, the mundane, and the miraculous. In fact, I am named after a guy who performed miracles- Gerard Majella…. Saint Gerard. He was a catholic monk who lived in a monastery in Italy in the 1700’s. He is the patron saint of expectant mothers. The story goes that one day he dropped a handkerchief and a young girl picked it up. She tried to give it back to him but he told her to keep it because she may need it someday. Years later, when the girl had grown into a woman and was married, she was having a difficult time with a pregnancy. So St. Gerard’s handkerchief was laid on her and prayers were said and she got better. (CatholicMiracles.org) Bing-bang-boom, St. Gerard became the patron saint of expectant mothers and the reason for my birth….so to speak.
You see, my parents decided they wanted another child after my brother and sister. (Dan and Rose were perfectly good kids but I think my parents wanted one who was just a little nutty. So thank God I came along.) Anyway, after three miscarriages, my mom decided to bring in the big guns and started praying to Saint Gerard so that she could have a baby. Apparently her prayers worked because nine months later out popped an eight pound baby boy.
I personally think that is a pretty miraculous birth story. (Maybe not as miraculous as some others you have heard.) I’m sure if we looked deeper there is a perfectly rational, scientific explanation for my birth- one that does not involve the intervention of an Italian guy who died centuries before. But I don’t want to look deeper. I enjoy resting in the perspective that something improbable is the reason I am here.
In our world of ever increasing instantaneous knowledge, it may become possible someday to explain the nature of the improbable and the miraculous. On one level, I think we need access to that kind of information so that we have better control of our lives and destiny. But on another level, I don’t want the mysteries to be solved. I want to look into the sky and wonder at the darkness and consider the stars. I want to follow the wisps of questions that rise from deep within and see where they lead. For some, the questions have led to the discovery of electricity and steam engines and cell phones and trips to the moon. For others, the questions have led to prophecies, levitations, miraculous healings, and ecstatic unions.
There is a scene in the movie The Matrix where Trinity meets Neo in a nightclub. The music is pounding. Lights are flashing. Bodies are pulsing and grinding on the dance floor. Trinity and Neo are standing in the shadows in the corner of the room. Trinity knows why Neo is there. He has been searching. So she leans in close and says to him, “It’s the question, Neo. It’s the question that drives us.”
So join me as I share my wonderings about the world we live in. Where it has been, where it is now, and where it might be going. I don’t promise to provide all the answers. But I do promise to be someone who will stand next to you and peer into the darkness and wonder.
Wisps And Wonderings 