Be the Miracle - Katie

           Though earlier this month Mother Teresa was officially made a saint by the Catholic Church, many had her pegged as a saint long ago while she was still alive. Someone once asked her if they could help her mission of serving the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. "Find your own Calcutta," she is purported to have replied. While you might say that Mother Teresa, herself, created miracles every day, she understood well that each of us is surrounded by the opportunity, like author Regina Brett says, to "be the miracle" for someone else. 

          I saw a story on the nightly news recently about a photo taken of an elderly man pushing his paleta (popsicle cart) in a Chicago neighborhood. The man who took the photo started a GoFundMe campaign to raise $3000 to do something to help this man who appeared so defeated by his daily grind. 14 days, 17,000 people and over $380,000 later, 89-year old Fidencio Sanchez can finally retire. Turns out his wife could no longer help him due to illness and they had just buried their daughter.

          Supposedly, the smallest of gestures can cause enormous consequences. The Butterfly Effect in nature suggests that one flap of a butterfly's wings can cause unpredictable and large scale weather events on the other side of the world. Kind of like one photo galvanizing, inspiring and connecting 17,000 strangers to change a life. On the teensier scale, I've convinced myself that letting someone else go ahead of me in a traffic jam or a long line at the grocery story could pay dividends later for another random stranger, that it somehow alters the chemistry of everyone involved (it's true, according to studies, endorphins are released whether we are the givers or the recipients of a random act of kindness.) And then there's the added possibility of the pay-it-forward concept, that our simple gesture is contagious and prompts another and another and so on. We hold the power to light a spark for goodness sake. Think about it; that's a lot of power at our fingertips. As Meb says in the The Miracle Chase, "Sometimes miracles happen when we show up as ourselves and do what we can, when we can..." 

          I used to believe that the idea of "creating" miracles was too "new-age-y." I've come to realize that when we embrace the Divine that is part of each of us, we can exercise the power to partner with God. I like to pretend I have control so to "be the miracle" seems like a better bet than hoping for a thunderbolt from the heavens.