I once sat in contemplation of what constitutes a miracle. I tried to define the thing to myself, and as a result I concluded that a miracle, to me, was something for which there could be no explanation — it just happens, and it is not something anyone can make happen.
Having children and grandchildren, and having lived for 62 years on a planet that is full of life in all of its forms, from plants, to animals, to humans, I can not for the life of me explain where life comes from, why it exists, or even what it is. Life simply IS, and in that sense I consider life itself to be a miraculous thing that is beyond our ability to define or even comprehend. We must be content to experience it, and hopefully to enjoy it, its being, its very presence.
Beyond the well-known biological processes that cause life to come into being, nobody knows just how or why such a thing happens. That “spark” cannot be synthesized in a laboratory. We may be able to “re-produce” every life form in existence, but we cannot “create” an original, the soul, or spirit, if you will, that thing that is the “essence” of a being and makes every individual life form unique and different from the rest of its own kind. That “miracle,” as I call it, is reserved for “Nature” itself. It is man’s ultimate and absolute limitation. Man will never be able to create that essence, and for that we should be grateful We already toy with the notion of being “god-like.”
It thus astonishes me that so many of us strive with such passionate fervor to obtain the legal right to destroy life. What a terrible mess we are capable of making of the most beautiful of things. Even so, I’m not driven by an anger to judge and to punish such an offense, and it is profoundly offensive. I feel only a sadness to shed tears for our utter hopelessness as a species, seeing ourselves as being left with no option but to destroy the only real miracles in our otherwise short and insignificant lives.
Arthur Saginian
Santa Clarita
