Small Miracles

A book launch and a conversation the following day about hydrangeas got me thinking about the place of miracles in our lives.

After writing twenty-three children's books Anne Booth has published her first novel for adults and Waterstones in Canterbury was the venue for the launch. Small Miracles tells the story of three nuns who need a miracle to save their crumbling convent, not to mention their rapidly dwindling 'Order of St Philomena'. Sr Cecilia decides to try her luck on the lottery, to the annoyance of Sr Margaret, the recently and reluctantly appointed Superior but one week the ticket wins. I've only just started the book but I understand from Anne's talk at the launch that this bit of good fortune leads to incredible transformations happening in the lives of the three nuns, as well as with and amongst some of the people of the local town.

Praying for miracles is a fairly common and universal religious practice, with many people travelling as well to places like Lourdes where they might hope for a cure to an apparently uncurable condition. Yet, this holding onto hope in the most impossible of situations is just as common in the secular world. Take football, for example. At the end of each season, the fans of those teams who find themselves at the bottom of the table can be heard saying, "We'll need a miracle to stay up!" And occasionally, it would seem, their prayers are answered! Though whether they would give thanks to the almighty for their salvation is another matter. And on the subject of divine intervention in football matches, many of us of a certain age will remember the famous/infamous world cup match in 1986 between Argentina and England in which Diego Maradona scored what appeared to be a header. The video after the game (this being long before the days of instant, pitch-side VAR) showed that Maradona had in fact punched the ball into the net. To the England team and their supporters it was cheating. To the Argentinians it was, in the words of Diego, "La mano de Dios", the hand of God! I happened to be in Lourdes that summer, helping, amongst other things, as people were led into the healing waters where they hoped there might be another of the many miracles which have occurred there. A common joke amongst us as we chatted with other male volunteers from different countries was to say 'Maradona', whilst holding our hand just over our head in a fist and giving it a little nod!

The day after the launch of this lovely book of Anne I was having my weekly phone call with John, a Galwayman who lives in West London, and we were discussing hydrangeas. When I'd visited him a few weeks previously I was complimenting him on the huge and thriving hydrangea in his garden. I told him sadly that when I returned from my four weeks in Korea a hydrangea we'd planted last year was completely shrivelled up. He explained that he'd been giving his plant a bucket of water all through the heatwave. I did likewise with our hydrangea and slowly but surely, little bits of green appeared at the base of the plant, which then became fully-blown leaves. "It's a miracle," I declared to John. And, to me at any rate, it really was. So too in the Springtime, when the first tips of the daffodils begin to poke through the ground, which had appeared so bare and lifeless through the winter; when buds start to appear on the trees and the bushes. When the first bits of yellow appear on the forsythia. What an annual miracle it is.

Gerry Hughes wrote about visiting the Marian shrine at Medjugorje where it is said that one of the miraculous signs is the sun dancing in the sky and he noticed many pilgrims constantly glancing upwards to check. He said that for him the real miracle was that the sun rose in the sky every single morning.

When I was walking on the Camino to Santiago de Compostela in Spain I became so accustomed to seeing little daily miracles take place that I began to almost expect them: 'It's the Camino, of course miracles happen!' An example I sometimes mention to people is when one of the straps of my rucksack frayed and was about to come off completely. I still had a lot of the route to walk and it would have been tricky to carry a rucksack for such long daily distances with just one strap. On that very day I met Agnieszka, a pilgrim from Poland. She was a horse vet and in her bag she just happened to have the heavy duty needles and thread that she used to stitch up the horses. She happily sewed up the strap on my rucksack and I had no further problems with it. That was just one of many such incidents and I started to wonder if these little miracles were happening around us all the time, not just whilst walking on the Camino, but that we were, in the normal course of life, just too busy or too preoccupied to see them.

If that is the case, then let us recognise and delight in and be thankful for all of these miracles that come our way, big or small; whether they be in sport or on pilgrimage or simply when waking up in the morning and looking out of the window.

PS Small Miracles by Anne Booth is published by Harvill Seeker (2022)