Small Miracle

There are many who will say that what happened here is just an example of the power of healing, rather than some sort of miracle. Of course it's true that any healing that heals is a miracle in itself, but in this case both the context and the event were so different that I will always think of it as a small miracle in its own right.

This happened at the funeral in New Zealand for James K. Baxter, who was something like a poet laureate and a national figure. He was also a troubled soul - he had a love-hate relationship with the Catholic Church, had been banished and brought back into the fold at least once. He was a frequent drunk and looked like a tramp, and was not best-liked by many of the great and good of the country. His wife was Maori (the first settlers in NZ), and through his wife he had links to the old Maori ways and the land where he was buried. Back in the days of "communes" he created a small community in a house at the top of a hill on this same land, a quiet and peacful place with campfires and many people. He was always quiet and intense, and a little sickly, never a "leader" nor fond of large crowds.

There was a large crowd at his funeral though. The same great and good who had avoided him in life came to honour him in death - politicians, bishops, others - and of course those who knew and loved him were there too.

This all happened in a tiny village down the Wanganui river, lazy and half-a-mile wide at that point with weeping willows along the banks and a gravel road all the way down. This village was only a handful of houses, a Maori meeting-house (marae), and across on the other hill a small church and the priest's manse together, and it graced itself with the name Jerusalem.

Each group that walked onto the land around the marae had to follow protocol and announce who they were and why they were there, and then file past the coffin and listen to or make speeches. There was much genuine emotion and love - this was a man who had fought his demons and come off bloodied, this was a man who knew the gutter just as intimately as he knew his god, this was a man who had left behind volumes of fine poetry and solid respect from his peers, this was a man who could be seen by some as a tramp on the outside while nurturing the light of Spirit inside.

When the funeral was over many of us went over to the manse beside the little church, where the little old Catholic priest lived and was holding a wake. As I walked through the door something completely unexpected happened - a cascade of liquid honey, cool and strong but oddly neither wet nor sticky - poured over my head and down through my soul. This was so startling and powerful that I stopped and turned around to see what it was, and there hidden behind the door was the priest, blessing everyone as they came through the door.

The spirit that blesses is of course the same spirit that heals, and both are miracles in their own ways. But this was not a 'healing of the sick', and it came through a path that no longer considers the old miracles to be possible in these modern times. Yet this transcended religious doctrine, this was pure and direct, this was the touch of Spirit and the hand of God, and this was truly a small miracle.

Lyn