SMALL MIRACLES

Here’s a practice I use when I’m feeling daunted by the immensity of the challenges in the world, which  seem overwhelming and more than I’m capable of handling. It’s been for me the most consistently helpful practice:  I just reach out and touch something and let love flow from me into it.

I see the universe as being made up of small miracles.  I remember that most everything in life around me exists because of the success of small activities.  As a writer, my fingers are essential to the work I do, but the fact my fingers work at all is because of millions of tiny lives in the bone and muscle, the sinew, the tendons, the blood veins and arteries, and so on, are at work.

All these little cellular beings are following their calling, and because they do, I have a finger that can move, or ten fingers, or a hand, or a leg.  For that matter, my fingers don’t have to be moving at all to touch something in a loving and respectful way.  They can do a work just by being still.  Touching something with love can set small miracles into motion.

If I want to reach out and grasp the water glass on my desk or type these words as they flow through my mind, it all starts with one cell reaching out and touching another cell in some way–electrically or chemically.  One cell acts, then another, then another, connections are formed, tissues act, bones act, muscles act, and the water glass is held, the words are typed.  Big miracles emerging from small ones.

I think the transformation of the world occurs in just this way, one small act of love at a time that connect and accumulate to produce large movements and actions of love.

I think of the great Being that is Humanity, the collective Soul of our species, forming an intent to love the earth just as I may form the intent to pick up a glass.   If I touch something around me with a loving touch, I am giving form to that intent; it becomes a small miracle out of which larger ones evolve.  Connections are formed, and love spreads. The loving expression of Humanity as a whole begins and grows from one human loving.

So no matter how small and powerless I may feel, I can still perform a small miracle.  I can touch something with heartfelt, heartflowing, heartsinging love.

I don’t have to do more than this.  But this small thing, I need to keep doing it.  Once is not enough.  It needs to become the pattern of my life.  I am never too small, never too constricted, never too surrounded by problems to do this one small miracle:  making a simple touch that allows love to flow.

Love will fill our world as we learn to let it flow one touch at a time. This is the power of small miracles.

David Spangler
www.lorianassociation.com

Photo by Søren Hauge