Expect a miracle.
That's what the bookmark / business card from one of the spiritual bookstores that was popular when I first came to Sedona in 1997. I still have a few of those cards in some of my timeless books.
This saying came to me recently. Monsoon season has officially begun. It is the season within the season that visits Arizona in the summer. It has historically been the time when we see big clouds that produce amazing thunderstorms and deliver much needed rainfall. Expecting a miracle, for me, always meant to expect that lovely things are just waiting to manifest in my reality. That I should remain in a state of standby - that some sweet surprise is coming, practically here. This is a way to hold on to joy in your heart and to know that our world delivers what we expect it to. Expect suffering and BOOM that's what you see around you. Expect beauty and BOOM that what the world presents. Expect a miracle and TA-DA - you receive blissful surprises that delight and awe.
And then comes Monsoon season. A time of amazing displays of nature. Lightning, rainbows, intoxicating smells, relief! For the past few years, however, folks here in Arizona have called it a "non-soon". The clouds and wind come but no real rainfall. Some localized areas receive some rain, but the region, as a whole, has not received enough rain. Desert-evolved trees and cacti are dying. Fires are ravaging the landscape. Climate change is upon us.
Expect a miracle. Are we creating our dystopian reality by expecting gloom and doom? Can we simply expect-a-miracle our way out of climate change? Or is it foolish to expect a specific miracle as the solution to save us from decades of ignoring the warnings about fossil fuels and habitat destruction?
This is what I find myself pondering these days. So far, the best solution I can come up with is to GO WITHIN. Find peace within and teach others to do the same. As we re-friend our inner selves, perhaps we can make more peaceful and harmonious our behaviors and those of our families, communities, and the entire world one little step at a time.
And isn't this the miracle we all want to see?