II. SECTION 13. What is a Miracle?
- A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time’s limits. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love’s awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings.
- A miracle contains the gift of grace, for it is given and received as one. And thus it illustrates the law of truth the world does not obey, because it fails entirely to understand its ways. A miracle inverts perception which was upside down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest. Now is perception open to the truth. Now is forgiveness seen as justified.
- Forgiveness is the home of miracles. The eyes of Christ deliver them to all they look upon in mercy and in love. Perception stands corrected in His sight and what was meant to curse has come to bless. Each lily of forgiveness offers all the world the silent miracle of love. And each is laid before the Word of God, upon the universal altar to Creator and creation in the light of perfect purity and endless joy.
- The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there.
- Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality.[1]
While I am writing this post, I see that the miracle takes place in my mind. There I can look on devastation – the train wrecks that the ego makes of relationships, say. And I am reminded by the miracle that this is false. The train wreck is reversed but only within perception, and only because of forgiveness. This is how the miracles stays in time and obeys the limits of time. Outside of time we cannot perceive devastation because outside of time devastation simply does not exist!
Yet when we perform miracles, we are paving the way for eternity – for love’s awakening. It is such a kind and gentle remedy that fear fades and is replaced by security. The miracle does not understand the ways of the world. The miracle doesn’t look at our wrecked relationships the way we do. The miracle puts our upside-down thinking upside right! No more are we looking at our loved ones through the skewed eyes of suspicion, mistrust, jealousy, and resentment. Now forgiving them their shortcomings is justified because we see that shortcomings are a thing of this world and the ego and not a thing that we will have to put up with forever at all!
The ways in which the ego would curse us and cause us to despise one another is corrected with the vision of Christ. Now we are blessed. Here is the quiet miracle of love – we see with the vision of Christ, we see those we have come to resent and despise in the light of purity, innocence, and endless happiness. We are not denying what is real – we are celebrating what is real and denying that what we have suffered at their hands was anything but their sorry egos usurping their holiness, casting its dark shadow over their love and goodness.
Brothers, we need faith to perform miracles! Our egos would much rather cherish the thoughts of wrongdoing and victimization. Our egos would take sorry pleasure in gushing over our wounds and broadcasting the slights that have wreaked havoc upon the Sonship. Our egos thrive upon drama and discord. And yet our egos evaporate when we recognize what it is and what role it plays in the Brotherhood of Christ. Without the Holy Spirit we are unable to see past the perception of our bodily senses; we are at the mercy of our ego perceptions which always seeks attack and defense, comparisons, one-upmanship and unholy relationships it calls special. It is the ego that hinders our return; for its persistence depends on the dissolution of oneness, separateness, and fear.
The faith we need to perform miracles indicates our readiness to let the ego go and ask for what is beyond our understanding. And our faith will bring witnesses to show us the reality where our trust and confidence is now placed. The miracle then justifies our faith in it – showing us a world more real than anything we saw with our eyes or perceived with the ego-darkened mind. The redeemed world of light, love, and laughter replaces the shadow world of drought, disharmony, destruction, and death.
Our love for one another never dies, never fades, never goes away for we are born to live and love forever. When we know this as a fact and trust in this with certainty, we have experienced a miracle.
[1]A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. 13. What is a miracle…Foundation of Inner Peace, Second Edition, p. 473.
the friar patch 