The Happening of Miracles

Last Friday, I had lunch with Fr. Terry who had come to town for that purpose, bless his heart. I had not seen him in months, and it was wonderful to catch up and share thoughts. He had not known about the spontaneous healing of my torn rotator cuff during Mass. I don't know why that particular event came up during lunch, but it did.

Afterward, I got to thinking about miracles. Why do I seem to get so many of them? Then I wondered if I really did get a disproportionate share of them, or have I just learned to recognize them. My conclusion? I think miracles happen more often than people know (or recognize).

On a related topic, there has been some lively discussion on some blogs recently of distractions during prayer. This is, of course, not a recent or uncommon discussion. It's been a problem throughout the centuries, and I, of course, do experience such distractions. I try to follow the advice to ignore them and return to contemplation, but sometimes these distractions take on a life of their own.

Similarly, but with a happier result, sometimes while I am in the midst of work, particularly boring but important meetings, I become intensely aware of God's presence in the room. The result is that I become quite distracted from the business of hand, sometimes embarrassingly so. Nonetheless, if you had the choice of being present to your colleagues and supervisors or present to God, which would you choose? Is there a choice?

Perhaps God would talk more often to all of us if we took the time to listen more often, more intently, more openly. The signals are sometimes so slight that it is easy to miss them if we are not tuned in, don't pay close attention, or just dismiss the unusual as a curiosity. I might have dismissed the blue light that ran through my body while driving to the doctor for a pre-surgical examination had he not found upon arrival that I no longer needed surgery. I had temporarily stored the experience of the light as unusual, and only the doctor's near-immediate finding helped me to put two and two together. Similarly, the light touch on my torn-rotator-cuff shoulder during Mass might have seemed to be a figment of my imagination had not Doah, my mentally retarded son, not been with me and said "we no alone" and had not I been able to immediately move in all directions an until-then immovable arm (healing confirmed by MRI a few days later). And the warm hands and image of a male figure in sandals and robe I would have attributed to a dream except that I was wide awake, fell asleep only AFTER the warm hands lulled me to sleep, and found the urine infection that had been torturing me into the wee hours of the morning totally gone when I woke up. (See earlier post on these events, Healings, and other miracles in my life, Miracles in Real Life.)

I wonder how many miracles we miss through inattention, let alone through disbelief. I wonder why God would keep sending them to us when we treat them so cavalierly...

Double-posted on Modern Mysticism and 100th Lamb.

Spiritual Sunday #6: Miracles in Real Life

For more Spiritual Sunday posts, I recommend that you wander over to the website of Charlotte and Ginger, who host the Spiritual Sunday meme.

Because I do not blog on Sundays -- keeping it as the sabbath -- I use older posts (forgotten perhaps but hopefully still good enough) from one or another of my blogs that seem appropriate for this meme. Yes, I know I could post on Saturday instead, but typically I can pulled in too many other directions to post on Saturdays, or I have a post that has been written in advance and posts automatically on that day. In any event, it seems to work to bring out the older posts that many have not read before or ones from other blogs I maintain that readers of 100th Lamb may not know about.

I have been slow to identify a post for this weekend since I have been trying to escape from this virus which seems to have cornered me quite effectively. I have spent the weekend pampering myself and letting Donnie and Doah pamper me -- and putting up with a few annoyances such as a malfunctioning iPhone: when I answer an incoming call, the caller gets cut off and the phone takes a picture of my ear. Looking forward in a few minutes to a movie and pizza at home before the Halloween hordes hit. Nathaniel has decided to go out as Dr. Who, and Lemony did a great job with his outfit. (See his picture at the right side bar and a short post, Ghosts of Halloween Past, on Clan of Mahlou -- yep, broke with the not blogging on Sabbath tradition for that one.)

And here is the chosen post: Miracles in Real Life. It seems like an appropriate topic on the even of All Saints Day.

Work and Spirituality

I read a post today on Catholic Spiritual Direction, a wonderful blog, listed on my blogroll in the right sidebar, to which I would refer anyone interested in very insightful posts on living a godly life in today's world. The question a reader had posed was "how do I deal with issues of advancement and self-promotion at work?" The answer was splendid, and I suggest you wander over there to read it.

I have often commented on work issues on 100th Lamb, and its predecessor blog, Blest Atheist. As with anything else, if one lets go and lets God, as the saying goes, work goes better. One does not need to tout one's accomplishments. God will ensure that they become known and noticed when that is important, and otherwise it is not important. Among the things that I have noticed when it comes to inviting God to take over my work life are the following (far from a full litany of benefits and blessings):

(1) Servant leaders become powerful leaders even though that is not their intention. Jesus showed us the way to be good servant leaders when he washed the feet of his disciples. I ask of those managers who work for me that they think constantly of when the feet of their employees need washing and to tend to that task with alacrity. Recently, a would-be leader who had run into some complications with his team members asked me as someone he considers his mentor how to handle the situation, and I told him he needed more humility, to throw his inflated ego in the trash because it was doing him no good, and forgive those who were creating problems for him. Oh, he found that hard, but he tried all of it. He even sent me a self-learning plan for developing humility, at which point I called him to my office to explain that one does not achieve humility; humility simply comes as a result of something that is so easy that is almost impossible for some people: always put others first. Others can say whether or not our actions are examples of our humility; we cannot begin to measure our own level of humility without being arrogant about it. A strange characteristic this humility! But so desirable!

(2) Power grows the more you give it away. This fact is one of the most counter-intuitive realities with which immature managers must cope. Most new managers want to hang onto power. They want their employees to defer to them, even sometimes to call them "sir" and "ma'am." They want overt respect. As a result, they get the titles, the overt behavior, and the public respect. What they don't get is the implicit respect that is not demanded but freely given, the love and support that comes with it, and the willingness to go the extra nine or ninety yards, as needed. I am tickled pink with employees who point out some shortcoming or inconsistency in my behavior. It means that we are working as a team, and teams are more powerful than individuals. I also notice that when both responsibility and authority are delegated to them, employees are willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish the tasking. In turn, if the manager asks them to do something that they would prefer not to do, they do it anyway, without grumbling, because of the bond between them. That is real power. The power that comes with position is multiplied a thousandfold when it is bestowed upon a manager not by his/her superiors but by his/her subordinates.

(3) Dealing with difficult people becomes easy, fun, and rewarding. I have said it often, and I truly mean it. I love difficult people. They are my greatest reward for being a manager. Watching a disaffected employee become a contributing team member produces one of the warmest fuzzies that any manager could ever want. I have very few difficult people among the 400 or so who work for me although four years ago when I began this position the division was considered riddled with difficult people. Now the division is called the "black hole" of our organization by the EEO office and by the Union because even people who used to practically live in those places, complaining about their supervisors and work conditions, no longer visit. They are happy contributors to their teams' work. Once a senior manager, who no longer works for me, asked how to deal with difficult people. I told him that the key was so simple that most managers won't use it: genuinely love them. He told me sorrowfully that he could not do that and not long after resigned. I replaced him with someone who could do that, and the 30 or more chronic complainers in that particular subdivision now appear in the corridors and at group meetings with big smiles. When the new manager first appeared, many stopped me in the hallway to thank me for the change in leadership. Now when they are unhappy about work conditions, they do not run to the Union or the EEO officials for help; they come to their supervisor.

(4) The workplace becomes a place of worship as well, a place where people are inexorably drawn and from which they do not wish to depart. Many a night I have chased people home with the words, "we work to live; we don't live to work." Actually, it is not the living to work that compels people to stay in the office after hours. It is the palpable presence of God in our workplace. Who would want to leave that? Once I had a manpower team from headquarters visit for a week for the purpose of determining staffing needs -- were we understaffed (yep), overstaffed (nope), or staffed just right (not that, either). After spending a week of visiting and talking to employees, during which the visitors had open access to everyone, thanks to a building schematic and names/titles of employees that I gave them with the invitation to go wherever they wanted whenever they wanted and talk to whomever they wanted. They did. The head of the visiting team came to my office at the end of the week, ostensibly, I thought, to talk to me about staffing levels. Instead, she told me that she wanted to talk about the atmosphere in the work place. "I have read about places like this," she said, "but I have never actually seen one -- where people love to come to work, support each other, and willingly remain to make sure that all tasks are completed and everything is ready for the next day. I wish I could work here." There is nothing to my credit in what she found. Rather, that is what happens when one lets God into the workplace.

(5) Moreover, once God is in the workplace, God does what God does best. Miracles happen. Chestnuts get pulled out of the fire by unseen hands. Cutting-edge and seemingly-impossible-because-no-one-has-ever-done-it-before work gets done with amazing ease. Where task and mission require, 48 hours of work finishes itself in eight hours. Pride in the accomplishment of the division and not in the accomplishments of individuals appears; employees give credit to each other, supervisors to employees, and employees to supervisors. People talk about God and even pray together -- in an institution where separation of Church and State is the norm, the expected, the required. The most amazing, though, are the real miracles. We have had several people literally on the brink of death who have reappeared in our midst. I have blogged before about some of them, among these being Jackie, who ended up with a blog clot in her lung and comatose after surgery but survived and will be returning to work, and Tareq, an Iraqi immigrant to the United States who suffered from cancer and heart failure and did eventually die but not before a miraculous post-surgery recovery that gave him an additional year at work and at home, a year he desperately needed to put his family matters straight and save the life of his son who had to be rescued from Iraq when he was personally targeted by insurgents. For all these people, we have had employees of several faiths praying together, our own little ecumenical world, where religious flavor and fervor come second and God and each other come first.

Well, this is not at all the post I had planned to write today, but the writing of it took on a life of its own, inspired by my reading of Fr. Todd's response to the questioner on Catholic Spiritual Direction, and here it now is. So, I shall post it. Tomorrow I will post what I had planned to put up today.

(Note: I know that the image is not entirely appropriate, but it is also not entirely inappropriate. I found it on the web and could not resist including it!)

The Price of a Miracle

Here we go again with another Internet story. My sister keeps sending them, and they keep being good enough to share with others. I hope this one is true. I have seen it before, but each time I read it, it is a tear-jerker.

A little girl went to her bedroom and pulled a glass jelly jar from its hiding place in the closet.

She poured the change out on the floor and counted it carefully. Three times, even. The total had to be exactly perfect. No chance here for mistakes.

Carefully placing the coins back in the jar and twisting on the cap, she slipped out the back door and made her way six blocks to Rexall's Drug Store with the big red Indian Chief sign above the door.

She waited patiently for the pharmacist to give her some attention, but he was too busy at this moment. Tess twisted her feet to make a scuffing noise. Nothing. She cleared her throat with the most disgusting sound she could muster. No good. Finally she took a quarter from her jar and banged it on the glass counter. That did it!

"And what do you want?" the pharmacist asked in an annoyed tone of voice. "I'm talking to my brother from Chicago whom I haven't seen in ages," he continued without waiting for a reply to his question.

"Well, I want to talk to you about my brother," Tess answered back in the same annoyed tone. "He's really, really sick, and I want to buy a miracle."

"I beg your pardon?" said the pharmacist.

"His name is Andrew, and he has something bad growing inside his head. My Daddy says only a miracle can save him now. So, how much does a miracle cost?"

"We don't sell miracles here, little girl. I'm sorry but I can't help you," the pharmacist said, softening a little.

"Listen, I have the money to pay for it. If it isn't enough, I will get the rest. Just tell me how much it costs."

The pharmacist's brother was a well dressed man. He stooped down and asked the little girl, "What kind of a miracle does your brother need?"

"I don't know," Tess replied, her eyes welling up. "I just know he's really sick, and Mommy says he needs an operation. Daddy can't pay for it, so I want to use my money."

"How much do you have?" asked the man from Chicago.

"One dollar and eleven cents," Tess answered barely audible. "And it's all the money I have, but I can get some more if I need to."

"Well, what a coincidence," smiled the man. "A dollar and eleven cents -- the exact price of a miracle for little brothers."

He took her money in one hand, and with the other hand he grasped her mitten and said. " Take me to where you live. I wan to see your brother and meet your parents. Let's see if I have the miracle you need."

That well-dressed man was Dr. Carlton Armstrong, a neurosurgeon. The operation was completed free of charge, and it wasn't long until Andrew was home again and doing well. Mom and Dad were happily talking about the chain of events that had led them to this place.

"That surgery," her mom whispered to Tess, "was a real miracle; I wonder how much it would have cost."

Tess smiled. She knew exactly how much a miracle cost: one dollar and eleven cents plus the faith of a little child.

(Double-posted: 100th Lamb and Mahlou Musings.)

Monday Morning Meditation #19: Let Us Remember

While not feeling well last week, I wandered through the rest of Numbers, feeling very much bonded with the Israelites wandering through the desert. Even more so I enjoyed reading about the various locations because I know them. I lived there from 2004-2006. Some of the places still carry the same names in Arabic. Others have changed but are rather easy to pinpoint if they have been part of your routine life. So, unlike what might have been had I not lived there, I read through these chapters as if reading a travelogue, seeing in my memory the various places as they are today. And then I came to Deuteronomy, Chapter 4, Verse 9, where I found rather interesting order from God to the Israelites as they were about to enter the promised land: "Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes saw, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life; but make them known unto thy children and thy children's children."

Reading: Deuteronomy 4:9

Meditation: Are there not times that we, like the Israelites before us, forget all the ways in which God has helped us and provided for us in the past as soon as some new emergency hits when it seems that God is not responding with as much alacrity as we would like to our current need/request? How easy it is to forget the miracles! It is easy to remember that my colleague, Tareq, died this year, but how many people immediately recall the miracle that we all experienced together with Tareq three years ago when he was spared? (Well, yes, of course, we do, when we think about, and it did change us all in important ways; nonetheless, it is not the first thing that always comes to mind. Surprisingly (at least to me), there are even times that I have to remember deliberately God's conk on my head; at times, I still discuss what happened with Jean, still trying to get my head around it and to remember the details. For her, too, it is a special memory that she does not want human brain trace decay to rub away.

I wonder how many other people, once having received a miracle or an answered prayer, continue on their merry way, initially thankful but soon taking it for granted and then nearly forgetting it altogether? (Ones who did not are Stellan's parents who were so overwhelmed by Stellan's miracle that I doubt they will ever forget.)

Likewise, how often do we, caught up in our mundane lives (even the most exciting lives are mundane by comparison with the spiritual adventures that God offers), do we completely forget about God? How often has half a day (or even more) passed without one word of prayer? Advantages to living in the Arab world are the 5-times-a-day call to prayer that sounds throughout every city and town and the ubiquitous prayer rug that silently reminds one and all of a greater purpose than one’s current job or activities.

I, too, have a prayer rug at home and at work, both of which are used by Muslim friends, colleagues, and visitors. Yet, even though they are in front of me, I still forget to close my door and spend a few minutes in prayer, especially at work where I try to maintain an open-door policy for employees. Somehow, when the door is closed, some understand that policy to be an open-the-door policy, and so privacy is limited. Although I do have the power to change that, what I generally do instead is answer the door, and so time and again prayer is put aside, to be remembered next when some crisis hits, major decision is to be made, or someone stopping by needs or asks for prayer.

A visit by a Jordanian colleague to the conference I attended this week in Maryland revealed the limitations of my “memory” on more than one occasion. We spent our free time together, along with a colleague from Morocco. On the first day, as we ate lunch after a brief shopping trip, our Jordanian colleague looked at his watch and noted that we had passed the time for noon prayers, so we needed to return immediately after lunch to the hotel where he had left his prayer rug. I explained to him that American hotel rooms contain no quiblah, the arrow pointing to Mecca, so we used our sense of geography, poor as it might be, to determine the approximate direction. From time to time during the days of the conference, he would remind of us prayer times, quietly and without any thought that we might not be paying attention to the passage of time. When I was late arriving at breakfast Sunday morning because the taxi picking me up from early Morning mass at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church in Linthicum had arrived late, he smiled in approbation. Of course, he understood missing or being late to some earthly obligation because a spiritual obligation had taken precedence. Were we all to have that attitude I think our days would look (and feel) quite different!

How fickle is human memory! I think it was with reason that God reminded us to remember.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to repent for all those times that I put earthly appeals over spiritual ones, to thank God for patience in not forgetting me even though I sometimes forget Him, to give praise for his steadfastness, and to request Him to continue to clunk me on the head when I need reminding of the more important things of life, such is His presence in mine.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, remembering all the miracles with which I have been blessed. In addition, I am beginning my week with new resolution to remember always not only what God has done but that God is with me every minute of every hour and that I need to close my door more frequently in order to spend time in much-needed prayer.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Have a good day and a good week, remembering always God's past kindnesses to you, current love, and future promises. Let not your memory of the divine ever be fickle!

Blest Guest Wednesday #2: Like a Dream

Since early August, it has been difficult for me to post regularly although I have somehow managed not to let more than a few days go by between posts. Considering that my crazy travel schedule is definitely going to continue for a few more months, I have been able to bring a little sanity to the blogging part of my life by asking for help. Some wonderful fellow bloggers have been willing to write guest posts for me on Wednesdays, hence the name "Blest Guest Wednesday." As today's "Blest Guest," I asked Sarah, who has become an Internet friend and who writes a blog that I follow closely: Cult of Deception. (This is her little dog here, whom I find adorable.) Sarah's abusive childhood has chords that resonate with mine. I think you will find her life, her blog, and her post here interesting. Here goes:

Like a Dream

I never told anyone. I kept it all inside. I started to wonder if it was some crazy dream or if it even happened at all. I thought maybe I made it up? Other times I thought - it wasn't that bad - it was no big deal. But last year people I hadn't seen started surfacing - family, friends - people who knew....

You're a miracle they said. How did you survive?

Survive? Miracle? What did they mean? They started to tell me stories of their memories of how bad things were, how thin I had become, how out of control......My older sister who I hadn't seen for a long time returned from living overseas. She needed to talk. She forced me to listen....forced me to remember.

The memories hit. They hit hard. I wrote to get the images out of my head.

I couldn't eat or sleep. I wanted to get in my car, close my eyes and drive. It felt like it was happening all over again - the beatings, the confinement, the rape - throwing up day after day after day even if I had tasted even a small bite of something - shoving needles in my arm - three and four times a day - ripping my arms with jagged rocks to feel something because I felt nothing. I was numb inside.

Why now God? Why are you letting me go through this now? I didn't want to remember and yet in remembering it dawned on me - finally - just how far down God had reached to free me.

Everyday in the heat, rain and cold - I ran - alone in the woods - in the hills near our home. There I felt the gentle touch of God - And I heard His whisper - You're stronger now. It's time to tell the truth of what happened. Tell your story to give someone hope -

How could I have never told anyone what He did. Nothing worked. Nothing could break the chains that kept me in living on the edge. Nothing except the gentleness of His touch.

The power of His gentleness.......

This November, I will publish my story In the Eye of Deception. A True Story. Sarah from www.cultofdeception.blogspot.com

Monday Morning Meditation #10: A Tendency to Whine

Back in the land of the living (many thanks to all for their prayers and to God for His kindness), I have forged forward in the book of Exodus to the point where the Israelites, with the help of God, have left their Egyptian bondage, crossed the Red Sea, and are now living in the wilderness. And now, being in the wilderness, what is the first thing they do? Start complaining! Where will we get something to drink?, How will we eat? they ask. God provides them with water, manna, and quail, but in some quarters the complaints continue.

Reading: Exodus 15-17

Meditation: Having lived in that same wilderness a few years ago, spending time with a Bedouin family, eating what the family ate -- goat, sleeping where the family slept -- on the sand, sheltering with what the family sheltered -- a marvelously protective goat-hair tent -- I can understand the concern of the Israelites. Surrounded by sand, with an occasional plant (Now how did that get there?), and some deep dry channels where the spring runoff had long since passed through the sand dunes, one might indeed wonder where survival would come from. However, the Bedouin do survive. Donnie and I did survive right along with them. (Of course, today there are more options about how one survives.) Each time the Israelites whined, God provided, as He still does today when we whine and even when we do not.

What is there in our human nature that replaces what should be an attitude of gratitude for what God has done and does do for us with whimpering and whining for what we would like to have that is more or bigger or better or shinier or more expensive or more glittery? Why is it so difficult to be happy with what we have, which, in many cases, is more than many other people have, especially if we look at the poorest of the poor on this planet?

When "bad" things happen, why do we ask "Why me?" Should we not instead be asking "Why not me?" Ironically, even as an atheist, I never asked "Why me?" when it came to our children's birth defects. Somehow I knew that united gene pools can sometimes produce less than optimum results, and that is just a fact of life. More important, always, was the question "How do we live with this?" or "How do we fix it?" or "How do we at least make it somewhat better?"

If we can accept whatever lot we have in life, without whining, without telling God what it is we want Him to do for us, and instead abide in Him and see what He can and will do to make all things come together for our good, I think we will be very surprised by God's creativity in turning bad to good, into giving us far more than we would have dreamed of asking, of answering our prayers before we even say them. I have seen that happen so often that I fully trust God to produce miracles whenever they are needed to serve a higher purpose.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to keep me from whining, to express my regret for times in the past when I have been ungrateful or demanding, to give thanks for His great kindness in giving me more than I deserve, yes, in spoiling me, and to offer praise for the marvels of which He is capable and which He has shown our world.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, hoping and trusting that this great God will continue to infuse me with a desire for nothing except for His presence and an attitude for gratitude whenever I am granted that favor.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Exodus 15-17 or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to export the image of the mission church; maybe some time in the near future my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons. In the interim, you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.

Have a good day and a spirit-filled week, and may you find a host of blessings for which to be grateful.

Monday Morning Meditation #8: Certainly, God Will Be With Us

Another week has passed, and in slow manner, I have finished another chapter. Moses has now grown up and is tending sheep when he sees a bush on fire but not being consumed. Intrigued, he checks it out to find God there with a tasking for him.

What is it that they say about curiosity? Well, I'm sure God would have found him one way or another, anyway. I have learned that when God has a tasking for you, there is no way out except to do it, and that seems to be what Moses found out.

Moses found out something else, too: if God tasks us, we have help. God never abandons us to carry out the tasking unaided. Obviously taken aback and feeling inadequate to the task, Moses asked God, "Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?" to which God replies, "Certainly, I will be with thee."

Reading: Exodus 3: 11-12.

Meditation: Reading this passage, I immediately recalled the moment 16 years ago that I was tasked with rescuing a dying child artist from a remote little townlet in Siberia. Shura, a young teenager with spina bifida in a part of the world that had nearly no antibiotics, was already a published author and artist when I first heard about him. He had had two exhibits of his art work at the renown Dom uchenykh (House of Scientists), and a documentary film had been made of his life. I have no idea what Shura's role is supposed to be in this world. Nor does he. However, God clearly wants him alive. The number of miracles, serendipities, and downright people-pushing that God did on Shura's behalf is mind-boggling. I cannot relate them all here because there are so many. I will at some future time (not distant future) post Shura's fuller story on The Clan of Mahlou blogspot, but that will have to wait for now because the story has so many details. The story is the framework for the first two parts (of three) of Blest Atheist; obviously, it is a complex story. (Where God gets so highly involved, I don't think complexity and mystery is avoidable.)

Here are the major ones:

1. I was introduced to Shura's plight by his godmother in a serendipitous meeting in Krasnoyarsk, where she was the head of a delegation of teachers from Shura's home town, Akademgorodok, who attended a two-week seminar I was teaching at the behest of the Siberian Regional Ministry of Education. It turns out that we had a common mentor -- my consultant at the Academy of Sciences in Akademgorodok had been her graduate advisor at Novosibirsk State University.

2. It quickly became clear that I was supposed to take care of Shura. God did not seem to care that I was an atheist at the time. He tasked me, and I had no choice but to obey. (Well, I suppose I did have a choice, but I kept getting pushed so hard that I simply became caught up in a whirlwind of miracles with no time to think about backing out -- some of that story can be found in an excerpt from my book on Mahlou Musings.) People would tell me that I was being used. When I would remonstrate that this was not possible because I was an atheist and believed that everything that was happening was a matter of coincidence, they would tell me to hush and just keep following along, and basically that is what I did, not even knowing why I did it.

3. God prepared me with the basic skills I would need: the ability to speak Russian (at one time, my major in graduate school) and the knowledge of spina bifida care (my younger daughter Noelle being a child with spina bifida). In fact, Noelle's doctor in Washington, DC was the person who was most instrumental in helping to get Shura into the US, filling out all the embassy's medical documentation. Clearly God started that preparation long before I ever heard about Shura, who was born half a world away a year after Noelle.

4. When the consular officer at the US Embassy refused to give Shura a visa, two diplomats stepped forward on my behalf (for Shura). They were my former students. More pre-planning?

5. When US hospitals would not operate on Shura without a $50K deposit and evidence that we would be able to pay the anticipated $500K bill (it turned out to be closer to a million dollars), we went looking for funds and were directed to a billionaire, John Kluge, who responded with a check for $500K (and later with another for the same amount) and tickets to the hospital of his choice, University of Virginia Hospital. We later learned that we had sent our plea to an unforwardable address in Virginia (a follow-up thank-you letter was returned to us), and yet within three days Mr. Kluge had received it at his correct address in New York. Moreover, the clinic coordinator at UVA Hospital was a former art instructor -- she recognized Shura's talent and was able to get him a residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She also took him into her home when it became clear that he would be spending more time in Virginia than in California; she had a son the same age, and the two boys became friends. During his stay in the hospital and after, Shura was befriended by a cardiac surgeon from the Ukraine who spoke Russian and was on an internship at UVA Hospital. The surgeon acted as Shura's interpreter and advocate and, later, American father. He even got eventually got US residency although that had seemed impossible when we first met him. Hah! Nothing turned out to be impossible in Shura's case. I have found that when God lets you be part of His miracles, the word, impossible, disappears from your vocabulary.

6. At a Tuesday evening pre-surgery moleibin (special intentions prayer during mass) for Shura at the Russian Orthodox Church in Washington DC, we met the overseer of the INS. He had worked late, knew that there was a mass that day, and "for some reason" felt compelled to stop in on his way home. He had not been in that church for over a year because he had moved his residence to Baltimore and attended church there. I am told that since that evening 16 years ago he has not been back. This wonderful man introduced himself after the mass, gave us his card, and offered to help in any way and ultimately assisted in getting Shura the long-term permission to stay in the USA that he needed to ensure his good health. We thought that he was a very special Good Samaritan. We only learned how very special he was several months ago with the publication of a book about an unusual icon and the identification of this man's son as the recipient of an incredible miracle. The boy had become blind, and his parents, ethnically Jews and spiritually atheists, were desperate to help him in any way possible. Grasping for straws, when they heard that the icon that weeps myrrh and causes healing would be at a church nearby (the same church that conducted Shura's moleibin), they took their son there. Myrrh flowed and gushed onto the floor. The priest anointed the boy's eyes with it, and the boy saw. The parents converted on the spot. Years later, the father was able to pass on God's blessing to his blind son by helping Shura, the lame son of another man.

There is much more to the story and even a follow-on story of a blind orphan with brain tumors who will be coming to the US as a result of her benefactor learning about Shura, contacting me, and my experience in working visas through the embassy coming to the rescue. The Russian doctors had given Katya of Tula only five years to live, and she wanted to die with relatives, the only ones she has being two brothers who were adopted by a family in New Hampshire a dozen years ago. Just when it seemed that it would be impossible to bring Katya to the USA all of the key players (the benefactor, me, my connections with and at the US Embassy, and Katya's nurse) all ended up in Moscow last August 6. None of us knew in advance that any of the others would be there, and I personally had earlier had no reason to go to Moscow, but suddenly I was needed as a consultant for an educational matter there. Subsequently, when Katya's Russian doctor refused to sign the paperwork to allow her to travel, that doctor mysteriously disappeared from the clinic and a new, more helpful doctor appeared in her place. Katya will be here soon, and now, after consultation with doctors in Boston, it appears that she may be coming to the USA not to die but to live. The doctors in Boston think that they can remove all the tumors.

There is too much complexity to these stories to include all the details here. I would simply ask two questions: (1) Could anyone of sound mind claim that all of these things were mere coincidence? and (2) assuming that this was a tasking from God, is there any doubt that He kept the same promise that He made to Moses: "Certainly, I will be with thee."

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to keep using me for these marvelous plans of His to help the people of this world for I so very much enjoy being part of those plans, to express my regret for any and all pushes, nudges, and opportunities that I have missed as a result of my sometimes contrary and somewhat obtuse nature, to give thanks for these waves of miracles which God has washed over so many people in the cases of Shura and Katya alone, and to offer praise for the unimaginably skillful way in which God works to bring good from bad, to network dozens of people and institutions to help just one injured lamb, and to make the unbelievable real.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation with this wonderful God who does not care who we are, who will use even an atheist to help the hurt and lost, who equips us to accomplish whatever task He has set before us, and who is with us every step of the way, moving forests, mountains, and every other obstacle so that we might complete His tasking successfully and in full confidence that our trust in Him is never misplaced.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Exodus 3: 11-12 or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to export the image of the mission church; maybe some time in the near future my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons. In the interim, perhaps you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.

Have a good day and a blessed week, filled with all good things -- and may God task you with something wonderful! No need to fear: He will be with you. He has promised it.

Lizzie's Angel Story

The lives of my children and me have been filled with blessings (e.g., my miraculous healings and the miracles experienced by Shura and a benefactor). We have also been been helped by real-life angels, i.e. God's kind and talented professionals, as in the case with Noelle and Doah, whose bios can be found here.

Most puzzling and heart-warming was the rescue of my oldest daughter by what appears to be a bona fide angel. Lizzie at the time was living, working, and attending school in San Diego. Coming home late one night after babysitting, she was hit by a drunk driver. The small truck she was driving was totaled. The drunk driver, who did not stop to help, had pushed her into a concrete retaining wall near a place where the highway was being repaired, and that had caused the truck to roll, coming to rest on the passenger door. Lizzie could not get the driver's door open, so she tried to escape via the window between the cab and the truck bed. As she started to squeeze through, she heard a male voice telling her to stop and let him help her. A brawny man, whom she assumed to be one of the road workers, kicked in the window, helped her out of the truck, and carried her across the highway, pointing out that her truck was right in the middle of Highway 5 and she could easily have been hit by approaching traffic because drivers would have had trouble seeing her in the dark. He stayed with her at the construction side until the ambulance that he said had been called showed up, helped her onto the ambulance, then left. She was taken to a nearby hospital, where doctors examined her and found her in perfect shape and the police showed up to take a statement. When she told them about the kind construction worker who had helped her onto the ambulance, the police interrupted her. "Ma'am," one of them said, "the ambulance attendants told us that they found you wandering dazed by yourself at the construction site." (The ambulance had been called by a passing truck driver.) Confused as to what could possibly have happened, Lizzie called Caltrans. No, they had no one working that site on that night, but they put the story on the front page of the Caltrans newspaper, asking for the unknown hero to step forward. No one did. Lizzie, being a psychologist, then determined that perhaps she had dreamt up the incident and had simply exited the truck on her own. She went to the place where the truck had been towed. It was so demolished that it would have been difficult for her to get out -- and the window was broken where someone had kicked it open! Perhaps she kicked in the window on her own and did not know it. However, there were no scratches on her body, and the angle was difficult (directly over her head because the truck had been on its side). So, no evidence of any sort. No clear answer. And there ends Lizzie's story.

I have room only for a summary here, but I wrote about Lizzie's angel in detail in two places. The first was published in a book by L. A. Justice in a fairly straightforward story called "Angel on the Highway." Later, I wrote a more artistic version of the experience in a story called "The Merging," which was published in a collection of short stories from the Middle East. (I was living in the Middle East at the time that I wrote it.)

Tomorrow, I would like to share an Islamic angel story with a very interesting twist. I hope you will return here to read it.

In the meanwhile, Lizzie now collects angel memorabilia - dolls, pins, cards, you name it!

Fishes and Loaves for Colombia

Almost two years ago, I met a young priest from Colombia, Padre (Fr.) Julio. Padre Julio substituted for our noon Spanish mass one Sunday and mesmerized the congregation. Shortly thereafter I came to know Padre better (1) as he traveled more than an hour to Stanford University Hospital to pray for my daughter Noelle who was having brain surgery, (2) after he accepted my offer as a volunteer tutor of English when his duties were changed from the Spanish mass to the English mass (a mutually beneficial activity -- as I helped him convert his homilies from Spanish to English, I learned a lot of theology from him and a little more Spanish, too), and (3) during web design working sessions with my family (which consists of graphic artists, computer programmers, web designers, and me, a writer and translator) as we constructed a website for the organization that he founded: Por Amor a los Ninos de Colombia (for love of the children of Colombia). Padre's dream was to help the children of his native Colombia, a beautiful, rural region, full of potential that was being replaced by violence. Padre describes the situation as follows:

In recent years, violence and illiteracy have affected the communities of the village of Palomar and surrounding hamlets. The distance between the school and the houses where the children live can be between one and six hours, making school attendance impossible.

Because their families live in poverty, these children cannot afford transport to nearby towns or cities either. This has resulted in young people between the ages of 12 and 18 having no other choice than to join guerrilla or paramilitary groups, commit petty crimes, work in the fields without the possibility of an education, or worse yet, becoming addicted to drugs.

The need to provide alternatives to solve the many problems this school-age population is facing is an urgent one. They have neither the economic nor the material means to do it themselves.

But let me step back just a bit in time. When I first became acquainted with Padre as a result of his describing Por Amor during mass, I wanted to donate a little something -- and "little" was the right label for any monetary amount I could hope to scrape together. Having come from an impoverished farm family and then spending most of a lifetime raising children with serious medical needs, even spare change was hard to find. I reasoned, however, that I could offer family skill in lieu of money, and Padre and I began a conversation about how the website would look. In the midst of this conversation, I ended up being sent to work in Bahrain for three weeks, just as Padre was beginning a push to raise the initial funds for Por Amor. Padre and I maintained a running e-mail conversation, he in Spanish and I in English, about the website plans, but somewhere in the back of my mind was the understanding that most of our work would be in vain if he could not get together a reasonable fund in a reasonable amount of time. I would have liked to help with that, too, but I am no fundraiser. So, on both counts -- giving money and raising money -- I was not much help to Padre until a marvelous thing happened.

As soon as I had arrived in Bahrain, a friend, who knew I was coming, showed up in my hotel room and dragged me to dinner, in good Arab fashion refusing to allow me to pay. But I had per diem for my meals, one thousand dollars, in fact, to cover the time I would be abroad. As I walked up to my room, an idea flew into my mind (from where?). There would certainly be another friend or two who would react in the same way over the next three weeks and the Ministry of Education would also likely host me for at least one meal, so I might have a hundred or even a little more than a hundred dollars left over from unspent per diem. I made a promise to God that whatever amount I did not spend on food in Bahrain, I would give to Padre for His children in Colombia. After that, friends and colleagues appeared out of the woodwork, and none would allow me to pay my own way (it does not fit with the culture there). In addition, the Ministry of Education had several socials and formal dinners which were also free to me. When I left Bahrain at the end of the three weeks, I had not had to purchase even one meal. When I reached the USA, I handed all $1000 of my per diem over to Padre for his children.

Bahrain might be little more than a desert to some, but it does have the famous tree of life that flourishes in sand. How symbolic for what had just happened! I was living in a philanthropic desert and yet out of that wasteland tumbled one thousand dollars for children in need half a world away. Would God re-create the fishes and loaves miracle today? You bet!

Shura's Miracles

Next on the list of my children who have benefitted from the kindness of angels in the garb of professionals is Shura. (I don't know whether to include him among our children or not since he was with us for such a short while, but in the broader meaning of the word, he is our child even though Donnie could not even communicate with him in the beginning, Shura speaking no English and Donnie speaking no Russian.) Anyone who has read my book, Blest Atheist, knows the story of Shura in grand and glorious detail. I include it here in very brief form for everyone else and as part of the series of the positive things that other people have done for my children.

About Shura:
Shura was a dying child artist from Akademgorodok, Siberia, a place where I had done research, consulting, and teaching, and my second most favorite place in the world, the first being the little mission town I live in right now. (The picture on the left was drawn by Shura following his first surgery in the United States.) He was remarkably talented. As a very young teenager he had had two exhibits at Dom uchenykh (House of Scientists, which recognizes the leading academicians and artists in Russia, at that time the Soviet Union), poetry published in a collective volume, and a television documentary on his life. Shura was unusual in Siberia in that he was alive. Born with spina bifida during the Soviet era in a region with a paucity of antibiotics and no experience with these kinds of neurologic defects, accompanied by extremely harsh winters with temperatures dipping lower than 75 degrees below zero, and into a family of seven children (nearly unheard of in the USSR - the family required two side-by-side apartments in order to accommodate all its members), Shura grew up homeschooled by necessity in a country where such a thing was not only unheard of but also rejected out of hand. To make a long story somewhat shorter, through actions taken by Shura's godmother and me, Shura ended up in the USA for life-saving surgery. Here I was his guardian, and then he moved in with Julie Trudell (see Shura's caregivers below), and then began to live independently in Charlottesvile, Virginia as a chef and artist. While recuperating from his surgeries as a teenager, he was granted a residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the youngest person ever so honored. Last January he returned to be with his Russian family, now living in Moscow in the new Russia where antibiotics are more readily available and where Shura hopes to devote full time efforts to his art.

Shura's challenges:
Shura was born with lipomyelomeningeocele, a form of spina bifida, resulting in mild paraplegia (limited to no movement below the knee). He ambulated with crutches and, when allowed, on his knees. Over time, as result of untreated ulcerations that are typically for enervated skin, he developed gangrene in both legs, requiring an amputation of both. Ambulation is now accomplished with prostheses. Although he has a neurogenic bladder, he has refused to self-catheterize. Doctors were able to improve on his bladder functioning sufficiently to allow Shura close to normal bladder control. The lipomyeloneningeocele was not repaired at birth, as is usual in the USA, and until this day remains, now by choice, unrepaired; it has so far created no health damage. Concerns are that repair would result in hydrocephalus, which Shura does not currently have.

Shura's special caregivers:

Shura's family: These were the caregivers who kept Shura alive against all odds and then, when there was no longer any hope of keeping him alive in Siberia, handed him over to a stranger (me), fully trusting God to watch over him. (That faith was surely not in vain!) Shura's mother was a teacher, and she taught Shura at home; he is highly educated in spite of never having attended a regular school. She was also the faith center of the family. She knew that Shura was God's special child, and she made sure that Shura knew: he came to me full of faith. Shura's father, wounded in the war, walked with an energetic limp. A dreamer and printing press owner, he worked tirelessly on behalf of getting his son to the USA, gathering in money from visitors to Akademgorodok world-wide. When he delivered Shura to me, he handed me a large bag of coins and bills from many different countries, not enough to pay for anything of a medical nature but enough to help with clothing and feeding Shura. (Turning that sack of foreign money into dollars took an entire afternoon at Salts Bank, where foreign meant only Mexican -- everything had to be looked up in a book to ensure that the money was real.) A third member of Shura's family was his godmother, who had come to know me when I was lecturing in Krasnoyarsk. Ironically, she herself later developed cancer, and the doctors at the University of Virginia Hospital stepped in to take care of her, too.

Dr. Ronald Uscinski. Yes, the same doctor who played a vital role in the health and well-being of Noelle. Ron read Shura's x-rays and medical records originally and gave me guidance in how to proceed and what was needed medically. He then tirelessly filled out all the paperwork that the US Embassy in Moscow required to bring Shura to the USA three times. It seems that the embassy kept losing it. I had some doubts as to why the paperwork was getting lost, and the final time I noted that a copy of the fax was being sent to a resident of Moscow who could bring hard copy if needed. That took care of that. Hard copy was not needed. After examining Shura himself, Ron also stood by me and Shura when we made the decision not to repair the lipomyelomeningeocele for fear of causing greater damage, considering that Shura had already stabilized with the sac in place.

Julie Trudell. I first "met" Julie when she called me from UVA Hospital to tell me that she had tickets for Shura and me to come to UVA for Shura's surgery and a $500K for his care, all compliments of John Kluge. A mother of a son Shura's age, after our attempt at post-surgical follow-up from California (flying to appointments, instead of driving), she offered to take Shura into her house. Instantly, we had a triumvirate of motherhood: Siberian mother, Californian mother, Virginian mother. Early on, there was transcontinental, transatlantic communication among the three of us. Over time, Julie took on most of the late-teenage parenting. She and I have become like sisters over the past 15 years since that first phone call.

Dr. Vladimir Kryzhanovski. Vladimir simply appeared on the radar one day, telling us he had heard about a young Russian undergoing surgery at UVA. Vladimir was a cardiac surgeon on some type of exchange program at UVA Hospital, and he wanted to help. He was a ready interpreter in the beginning when Shura could not speak English. He inserted himself into the medical decision-making, e.g., insisting that the best kinds of prostheses, not the simplest (considered easier to maintain in Siberia), be made just in case Shura remained in the USA for a while (which he did -- 15 years). He spent hours talking to Shura about Russian and Ukrainian literature and other cultural phenomena, making sure that Shura never forgot his own culture (something he could do far better than I). Later, he helped Julie with parenting issues. (Oh, yes, Vladimir is still in Virginia.) My most vivid memory of Vladimir is the poignant picture of him walking beside Shura's gurney on the way to Shura's first surgery (the double amputation). I had to stop at the point that all parents have to say good-bye to their children, but Vladimir did not. He walked the rest of the way to the operating room with Shura.

John Kluge. Most of John Kluge's contribution is described above. I never met him. Shura never met him. He is now 94 years old and, the last we heard, suffering from cancer. I doubt that we will ever meet him, but Shura did paint a picture just for him. To give and not expect anything in return is true giving. The only requirement that John Kluge made of Shura was that the medical care was to be given at UVA and Shura followed by the Kluge Rehabilitation Center. You see, Mr. Kluge had given money to the hospital before and quite a bit of it. Mr. Kluge not only paid for the medical expenses, he also asked Dr. Gillenwater, who had just retired from the urology staff, to return for one purpose: to coordinate Shura's care. And then, to make sure that Shura was fully taken care of as time went on, he provided periodic money for clothes and painting supplies.


Shura's life has been full of miracles. The first was that he survived. A tethered cord, highly painful and if untreated highly damaging, typically accompanies a lipomyelomeningeocele. That was the second miracle; he has never had a tethered cord. The third miracle occurred when I happened to meet Shura's godmother in Krasnoyarsk and together set into place the series of events that would bring Shura to the USA at a time when the US Embassy was opposed to granting such visas. The fourth miracle was finding John Kluge as benefactor for we had no idea where to get the $50K upfront money that hospitals were requiring, let alone the $500K estimated total medical expenses (actual expenses have been nearly double that). Finding John Kluge was not easy: I had an address given to me my someone quite by chance from Charlottesville, Virginia, home of John Kluge -- except that was not his home; he lived in NYC. Nonetheless, the package and plea I sent to Charlottesville somehow found him in NYC within 72 hours of sending. The fifth miracle was the appearance of Vladimir in Shura's life -- who would have thought that there would be a visiting doctor from the Ukraine (in the former Soviet Union) just at a time when Shura needed translator, doctor-guide, and father figure in his life. The sixth and highly potent miracle was finding the overseer of the INS after a moleibin (Russian Orthodox prayer service) for Shura, a person who no longer attended that church, did not know about Shura's moleibin, and was 100% situated such that he could help with all visa and green card issues (and did); only later did we find out that this person was a convert who had been the recipient of a miracle himself (see Miracles in Real Life).

In the case of Shura, I often wondered, given all the miracles, anyway, why they did not happen faster. (Remember, I was still an atheist at the time, so I just considered it all serendipity, assuming that if there were a God, it would all have happened instantly.) Only now I understand. The journey was clearly more important than the destination. It was not the time for miracles that was needed. It was the time for people to see the miracles and to be part of them, the time to expand Shura's blessings beyond one young man to dozens of people worldwide.

Yes, indeed, Shura’s life has been full of miracles. Where there could have been great sadness, there has been great hope and joy. There has been only one stain on all of this: me. As an atheist at the time that all of this was taking place (Boy, could I make up excuses and shaky explanations for the series of miracles that rolled out before my very own eyes!), I set a poor role model for Shura, and I was, for him, a role model. As a result, he chose to abandon his faith for my atheism. There was logic, in both our minds at the time, for his choice. I was the one, in his mind, who had pulled him from Siberia and saved his life. He really did not understand that I was only the conduit that God chose and that God could have chosen another. Why would God send a strong believer to an atheist or allow that atheist to discourage the faith of His believer? That question, I suspect, will never be answered. I don’t really need an answer. I am just trying, somewhat unsuccessfully, to deal with the regret. (It is one of those situations where we know that God forgives us but we find it difficult to forgive ourselves – at least, that’s the way it works for me.) Shura knows of my conversion, and that has puzzled him. Perhaps there is hope for a reversion for him. (Please pray for that.) More important, now that Shura has returned to Russia, where care is at last sufficient for him, he will be living near his parents. I imagine that once again his real mother will take care of his faith.

Healings

Following up on the post below about answers (and seeming non-answers) to prayer, I would like to share with you three interventions in my life, only one of which came as an answer to prayer. The other two seemed to be gifts given without request, and for those amazing and unexpected gifts I am highly grateful.

While I have read much literature on the topic, unexplained (miraculous?) healings become much more meaningful when they happen to you.

The first incident happened as I was driving to see my gynecologist for a determination of surgical date to remove my 27-year-old IUD, the last 10 years of which it had been so entangled in uterine tissue that no doctor had been willing to remove it because it would have required removing the uterine lining as well. However, now the decision had been made that it simply was time (about 22 years past time) to remove the thing, and the doctor I had found was considered the best of the best and able to handle such things. So, I was not really focused on the medical problem at all but thinking about life and work and children and other things in general as I drove through past open fields enroute to the doctor's office. Suddenly, a streak of blue light appeared out of nowhere, ran through the entire length of my body, and disappeared. I was startled but not enough so to drive off the road. I arrived at the doctor's office on time and had pretty much put the incident out of my mind as perhaps my imagination--except that it was too "real" to be imagination. The doctor did a quick check prior to hooking up a scanner that would help him determine just how complex an operation he was in for. He looked at me, startled, and said, "We don't need an operation. The IUD is exactly where it should be. I can just pull it out in two seconds," which he did. Clearly, the blue light was not my imagination since I have medical records of long discussions with four doctors in two states about the entanglement of the IUD in tissue and now I have a second entry in a record from from a very surprised doctor who found the IUD all of a sudden totally free of tissue.

The next incident I want to relate here was not documented by anyone other than by me, but that is enough for me. I was in a very rural area of Russia, hours from medical care, when I developed a urine infection. It became worse and worse over 4-5 days and on the fifth evening my bladder seemed to shut down. I collected a urine specimen because I knew doctors would need that, and it looked very infected. (Having had a UTI before that sent me to the emergency room, I knew the symptoms.) There was no option for local care, and regional care was not only hours away but would not be available in the middle of the night. I tried to fall asleep, but the pain was too severe for that. After two hours of tossing, turning, running to the bathroom in the hope that my bladder would start working again, and trying hard to ignore pain that kept increasing in intensity, I prayed for the strength to tolerate the pain until morning when I could seek help. Suddenly, I was not alone. A male figure in a brown robe and sandals was with me. He laid his large hands on my abdomen, and I felt warmth spread through my body. Nearly immediately I was asleep. I awoke a few hours later, totally refreshed, and in no pain. Even my bladder was working. I collected another urine sample--perfectly clear. Convinced that I must have been dreaming the infection, I double-checked the urine sample from the day before. It was clearly infected.

The third incident, like the first, is medically documented and occurred very recently. I had fallen and injured the rotator cuff of my right arm, an injury that, I am told, rarely fully heals and often requires surgery. The local clinic sent me to a specialist in the city. The city doctor took two more x-rays, confirmed the diagnosis, and set me up for an MRI the following week. Saturday I attended mass with my youngest son. I often feel God's presence at our mission church; many people do. However, this time, while kneeling, I felt His presence right beside me along with a brief touch on my right shoulder. I leaned over to my son and asked if he had just felt the same presence, and he said he had. When we stood to say the Lord's Prayer, I noticed that for the first time in three weeks I felt no pain in my right arm. Then, during the kiss of peace, I hugged a friend who was in the pew in front of me. "Be careful for your arm," she warned me, knowing that I had not been able to lift it about waist level since the injury. "It doesn't hurt," I told her, "and it is moving now." Once I walked out of the church, I rotated my arm in all directions with ease and no pain. Nonetheless, I followed through with the MRI, the result of which was that no injury showed up on any of the scans. The orthopedic specialist was really spooked. I thought he might want to know what happened, but he did not. He offered no explanation and seemed eager to have me leave his office as soon as possible. Even though I am an extravert, I was unable to engage him in any conversation, and he had difficulty even looking me in the eye. I thought it a very odd reaction, but then, I suppose, he is not used to rotator cuff injuries simply disappearing.

All of these incidents were surprising because I did not ask God to heal me at any of these times. (Of course, who does not want to be healed, whether or not one asks?) Essentially, God answered an unexpressed request. Amazing! Moreover, in all cases, I was given hard evidence or medical documentation of the healing. (God knows I am a skeptic at heart; without evidence, I am not quick to believe.) I guess this is why my Sufi friends tells me that God spoils me. God does. I don't ask why. I just say "thank you!"

I know my experiences are not unique; I have met some other people with such experiences--and we have had such experiences among family and acquaintances in my prayer group, as well as at church and at my work place. However, I never tire of hearing about God's amazing grace. So, I invite you to please share your experiences with me and the readers of this blog!

Tareq Died Today

To protect the privacy of the individual involved and that of his family, I will use an alias--Tareq--to share with you a remarkable story.

Tareq was one of my employees, and it came as no surprise that he died. For more than three years, he battled tumors and heart disease and rarely missed a day of work. What was a surprise was that Tareq managed to spend three years with us that he supposedly did not have. More than that, Tareq was a reminder to all of us of God's love and power.

I came to know Tareq right after I had taken up the position as his boss's boss's boss. I suppose, given the managerial distance between us, I should not have come to know him at all. However, early on, Tareq had a problem, a serious one. An immigrant to the USA from Iraq, he had family members back home, ones who had not wanted to leave Iraq. Among them was a son. Somehow, members of the insurgency learned that Tareq was working with an organization in support of the US government and targeted his son. (Of course, just being Christian in northern Iraq has, even before the war, been enough to put one in danger.) In the case of Tareq's son, first threatening messages were left. Then, another relative was killed, a case of mistaken identify. Tareq's son went into hiding, pretty much in the same area where Saddam Hussein was able to go undiscovered for weeks. Tareq went to his supervisor for help; the situation was overwhelming for that supervisor, and he sent Tareq to his supervisor. In this manner, Tareq was passed upward until he rather quickly landed in my office in pretty desperate shape. Rather than send him to my supervisor, the "proper" thing to do, I helped him call the Washington office of our senator, which I considered the proper thing to do. It would be much faster, and the worst that could happen to me would be a reprimand for working out of channels. In the interim, we just might be able to save Tareq's son--and we did. The senator leapt into action, contacting the US Embassy in Iraq, which was able to ferret Tareq's son out of the country (one of those exciting adventures that does not get reported and should not, for the safety of all involved, be reported in any more detail than I have provided here).

And so, I knew Tareq, and Tareq knew me. In fact, after that he felt bonded to me in some way, as to a protector, both because of my assistance with his son's rescue and also because I extended his contract a couple of months past the surgery period so that he could continue to get medical benefits. Therefore, it should have been no surprise that he would want to say good-bye to me. He had worked every day throughout his period of chemotherapy for cancer, but once the tumors were shrunk, he was cleared for a long-needed quadruple by-pass.

On the morning before his surgery, Tareq cleaned out his office. He did not plan to return to work, the doctors having given him only a 3% chance of survival, the cancer and heart trouble being a deadly combination. He said an emotional good-bye to his colleagues, then headed for my office. I was out of the office. He left a note. I found the note and went to his office. He was gone, saying good-bye to other colleagues. I left a note. And so it went all morning until he had to leave without saying-good-bye.

The last thing he sent from his computer was an e-mail note to me, thanking me for my support and asking me to pray for him. Now, I had a dilemma. I work in an organization where not only is separation of church and state expected, it is required, and as the senior leader in my division, it is up to me to enforce it (along a myriad other rules). Was the prayer of one person enough? I asked myself. Well, yeah, probably it was, but I wanted more for Tareq. I wanted the prayers of his colleagues. And so, using careful wording to avoid raising many objections, I forwarded Tareq's note to the 400 employees who work for me with a request from me: "If you have a belief system that will allow you to honor Tareq's request, please do so."

Well, many people (actually, most people) responded to that request. We had Christians of several denominations, Jews of various persuasions, and Sunni & Shia Muslims all praying together, often in the same office. Even Buddhists joined in. They prayed, as well, in their churches, synagogues, and mosques and relayed that information to Tareq. We also sent flowers and cards to Tareq. All this cheered him up during his recovery. It was the prayers, though, that were special. They not only bonded all of us to Tareq but also bonded all of us to each other. My organization went from a place where religion had been sidelined to a place where one could feel the spirituality of those working there as soon as one walked through a door.

Three weeks later, I happened to be in the office area where Tareq used to work -- and there sat Tareq. "What are you doing here?" I asked in surprise.

"I beat the odds," he grinned, "and the doctors are still in shock!"

Those extra three years that we have had Tareq with us have continually reminded us of the power of prayer, of God's love, and of how God's people can work together, regardless of religion, for the good of each other and for the glory of God. Since that time, God has always come to work with me and with most of my employees. Not that God was not that before, but now we allow ourselves to speak of God, turn problems over to God, and deliberately include God in our work life. As a result, our organization has gone from being a business-as-usual, impersonal, unemotional set of offices to an involved, gentle, loving, happy, huge family of God where coming to work is something to look forward to every day.

Miracles in Real Life

My life has been filled with miracles. The most recent is the story of my granddaughter (see Notes from the Land of Splat!), considered by Stanford University Hospital to be its miracle baby of the year -- the university even made a special web page for her case for doctors worldwide to learn about it and perhaps to contribute to it. If you have read my postings on this situation, you know that she was born essentially unassembled and doctors had to put her lower half (or halves) back together and in the right places. She came home on Friday. She is missing some parts but can live without those. Later, the doctors may be able to bionicize some for her.

This unusual situation should not surprise those who have read Blest Atheist. I related there a series of miracles (or at least, highly implausible and unexplainable coincidences) in the lives of Shura of Siberia and Katya of Tula. In Shura's story, I told about meeting Maury, at the time the supervisor of the INS, in a very unusual way. We had requested a moleibin (Russian Orthodox prayer service) for Shura prior to his first surgery in the USA, a double amputation. Maury showed up at the moleibin, something that was quite unexpected by the congregation because he had moved to Baltimore a year earlier and no longer attended the church in Washington, DC. Although the moleibin itself had not been announced, that Tuesday when the moleibin took place was a holy day of obligation and since he had worked late at his Washington office, he decided to stop in at his old church after work enroute home. His appearance at the moleibin was the first and last time he ever came to that church after moving to Baltimore. At the church dinner that followed the moleibin, Maury asked us about our experience in obtaining a visa and upon hearing of the numerous difficulties we had encountered, he gave me his home phone number and told me to call him if we ever encountered any difficulties in the future with the INS. We did encounter them, and we did call him, and he did help immensely. That very fortunate collision of events -- one might call it a miracle -- I included in the book.

One would have thought that event and all its ramifications unique enough. However, yesterday I received an excited call from a reader of Blest Atheist. She had just read a recently published book about an icon that weeps myrrh. Many years ago, the icon was brought to the Russian Orthodox Church in Washington where Jewish parents brought their son, Christopher, to pray with the priest before the icon. Christopher had ocular tumors that had caused him to be blind. After their prayer, the icon began to drip with myrrh that splashed onto the floor in large puddles and took several days to dry up. The priest annointed the boy's eyes with the myrrh as it poured forth from the icon, and he was able to see. The parents converted to Orthodoxy on the spot. This story sounds implausible even to me, even though I know that miracles occur because they have occurred so ferquently in my life. I changed my mind about the plausibility, however, when the caller read me the name of the father of Christopher. It was Maury, our Maury, the one who showed up as if by divine inspiration and helped Shura.

As someone once said, perhaps coincidence happens at those times when God wishes to remain anonymous!

Katya of Tula

Is anyone following -- or interested in -- the story of Katya from Tula, the blind orphan I have been trying to pry out of Russia, which is similar to the story of Shura, the spina bifida boy from Siberia whose story is chronicled throughout Part I of Best Atheist. I began the story of Katya in Part II of Blest Atheist, but the book came out before Katya's story was finished. We left Katya in the process of getting a visa from the US Embassy in Russia, no easy task but one that had seemed to be facilitated by my trip to Russia last August.

Today I learned two very heartwarming facts. First, the lady who adopted Katya's younger brothers has completed all the paperwork for sponsoring Katya to live with her in the United States. Second, all the medical records have been assembled and reviewed. We had hoped that once Katya got to the USA she could receive excellent palliative care, her care being hit and miss at the moment in Russia although she has a wonderful nurse/caretaker there who really cares about her. Then, looking at old records, the doctors at Tufts, who would be the ones to care for Katya, thought that perhaps the terminal diagnosis, particularly the 5-year timeframe, was not the inevitable outcome. Today, with all the medical records updated and available, it was determined that all of Katya's tumors are benign.

Bottom line: Katya will be coming to the USA to live, not to die!

- e mahlou

Invitation to Share Blessings

I invite all those who have read my book, Blest Atheist, and those who have not, to share the wondrous blessings that God gives to us on a daily basis. So many miracles go unreported, even unnoticed, and God's love, so available to everyone on this planet, is too often either taken for granted and even more rarely returned.

To understand the miracles in my life took many years -- and it is likely that many people will not believe them because they were so extraordinary. And that is okay. God knows about them; God created them. And that is really all that matters.

This blog is for those who, like me, have been the recipients or the centers of miracles, who have experienced the presence of God directly in their lives, and who may not have others with whom they can discuss what they have seen, experienced, and felt.

This blog is open to believers from all religions and their denominations. I imagine that people care far more about how a religion is formularized than does God. All God wants, from what I have encountered, is a relationship with each of us -- and, of course, for all of us to really care about each another and help one another.

I look forward to hearing from each and every one of you who wants to join this blog, and I hope that the interactions among everyone will take on a life of their own.

Elizabeth Mahlou