Innholdsfortegnelse for December - January 2019 i Mysterious Ways

Do more miracles happen around Christmas? One September, I was researching sacred places online and came across a peculiar phenomenon—goats in trees. Apparently in Morocco, goats climb right up onto the branches of argan trees to feast on fruit. I was so delighted by these hungry goats that I e-mailed myself a reminder to write about them. Then completely forgot. Two months later, the weekend before Thanksgiving, I met up with my friend Ada. She had an early Christmas gift for me. One she’d been talking about nonstop since buying it in September. (Ada likes to buy presents early and then hype them up for months!) I pulled the gift from its bag and almost fell over. It was a calendar of goats. Goats in trees. “Ada,” I said. “Did…

A sudden left turn. That’s how Sam and Amy Somwaru ended up on Ocala, Florida’s Northwest 27th Avenue. They were on their way home from dinner with their kids and usually took a different route. But when Amy questioned Sam about it, he shrugged. “We’ll just go this way for a change,” he said. It turned out to be the right way. Shortly after they turned onto the road, they came upon a stalled car. Amy and Sam stopped to investigate. They discovered the driver slumped over in his seat, unresponsive. His young daughter sat in the back seat, terrified. Amy jumped into action—she’s a registered nurse, after all. She directed the girl to unlock the car and began CPR. The compressions weren’t working. Before she could think of what…

Lisa Guernsey Blech! Beets! I stared at the produce I’d just received as part of my community-sponsored agriculture share. In return for a seasonal fee, we got fresh fruits and veggies every week. I usually loved the selection. But beets? Nope. My family didn’t care for them either. A thought popped up: Give them to Anya. The lady next door? We weren’t exactly the produce-sharing kind of neighbors. Then again, wasting the beets wasn’t an option. So I sent my nine-year-old over to drop them off. The next day, I ran into Anya. “You’re a lifesaver!” she said. She’d been making soup for dinner, but her husband forgot to pick up the main ingredient on his way home. Before she could get upset, my son showed up at her door…

It’s not hard to understand why Francis of Assisi is every animal lover’s favorite saint. He preached to the birds. He calmed the wolf that was menacing the little Italian town of Gubbio. (Or so the story goes.) He would stop and pick up worms on the road out of concern that they would be crushed. Once, one of his followers brought him a hare caught in a trap, assuming it would provide welcome sustenance for the humble group. Francis simply picked up the rabbit, stroked it and put it down to hop along on its way. But the animal refused to abandon Francis’s side. It kept coming back to be with this man who loved all of God’s creatures. When writing about Francis, there’s no reason to embellish the…

When we’re overcome with doubt, we contemplate the hard questions that we often avoid: Why is there evil? Why do righteous people suffer? Doubt pushes us in search of answers and leads us to return to prayer, to our community, to studying the Bible. It’s the fertile ground in which faith grows.Eric Yoffie, RABBI AND WRITER I respect a God who not only allows us the freedom to feel doubt, but shows us through the Bible the words we can use when we do—words of lament and of anger. Nothing can happen to us that God cannot use.Philip Yancey, AUTHOR OF A SKEPTIC’S GUIDE TO FAITH Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts, you are…

There’s nothing my husband Jeff’s friend Ed, associate pastor and music director at our church, loved more than a good joke. When he wasn’t reading theology, he was planning his next prank. Ed died in 2014. We were all devastated. His kids invited congregation members to select a book from his extensive office library to remember him by. “Pat, I can’t go into Ed’s office,” Jeff said. “Will you pick out a book for me?” For more than an hour, I thumbed through books on everything from medieval history to gardening. Then a cover caught my eye. The Spark, a business title about Cirque du Soleil. Jeff had no interest in the circus that I knew of, but Ed had made notes in the margins. Jeff would at least like…

You might be surprised to learn that there’s a real sword in the stone. The Arthurian legend’s likely inspiration is found not in England but in Chiusdino, Italy. The man who left it, Galgano Guidotti, was a saint born in 1148. At age 32, he was inspired to give up his wealth and knighthood after Archangel Michael told him to renounce his earthly possessions. Galgano protested that he could no more relinquish his wealth than a sword could split a stone. To prove his point, he thrust his sword into a rock—the blade went through. Visitors today are welcome to view the sword but dare not try to pull it out. Local lore holds that the last guy who tried in-explicably lost his hands; the mummified remains are reputedly displayed…

Kansas City, Missouri “You guys are so alike.” That’s what people always told Miami University running back Deland McCullough and his coach, Sherman Smith. Deland’s adoptive parents had divorced when he was little—he didn’t see his father much. So Sherman had been more to him than a coach. “He was everything,” Deland told ESPN. “If anything was going on, I was going to talk to Coach Smith.” After Deland graduated, the two stayed in touch. Deland got married, had a family and became a running backs coach for the Kansas City Chiefs. Having kids reignited his desire to find his birth parents. He got a hold of his birth certificate, which showed his mother’s name. Deland gave her a call. She told him she’d had Deland at age 16. His…

It hit me in the middle of the checkout line at Marshall’s. I was thirsty. As thirsty as a camel. I couldn’t wait another minute to get something to drink. But four days before Christmas, the place was packed. The line? Moving like molasses. Just ahead, though, I saw something by the registers, like a mirage in the desert. A refrigerator of drinks. I abandoned my cart and headed straight to it, only one thought on my mind—getting an ice-cold Coca-Cola. I needed the pick-me-up. And not just because of thirst. It hadn’t been the easiest holiday season. My neurofibromatosis—a condition that causes benign tumors to grow all over my body—had resurfaced with a vengeance. I’d had seven surgeries in the past year alone to remove tumors from my face…

Anne McCoy TULSA, OKLAHOMA ATL → TUL TUL I stood in the security line at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, exhausted and a little blue. I’d woken up at the crack of dawn to drive to the airport from South Carolina, where I’d attended an educational conference with my husband. He was still there—I had to return home early to Tulsa for work. The only thing awaiting me there was an empty house. All my kids were grown and spread across the globe, even as far away as South Korea. My oldest, Austin, lived the closest. He and his wife had recently moved to Oklahoma City. Despite being in the same state, though, we’d been playing phone tag for weeks. The night before, I’d vented to my husband about how disconnected…

“We cannot take a step toward the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us.”—SIMONE WEIL French philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a mystic known for her ascetic lifestyle and ecumenical spirit. Born into a wealthy Jewish family, she was highly empathic. At age five, she gave up sugar because soldiers on the Western Front had none. As an adult, she spent time on assembly lines to better understand the working classes. Simone was first moved to her knees to pray in an Italian chapel in 1937. Later, while reciting a George Herbert poem, she said, “Christ himself came down and took possession of me,” although she remained open to all faiths. Simone compared humanity’s relationship with God to two prisoners banging on a wall—they communicate via the very…