Cheap Miracle

There are some amazing things in this world, and many of them people tend to recognize readily. There are the seven wonders of the world, both of the natural persuasion and the ancient one (although given that only one of the latter survives, it is more difficult to be impressed). There are modern, man-made feats like the Hoover Dam that everyone must concede are fairly great achievements. There are also, though, those things for each of us that are personally that impressive, but unlikely to sway others.

I saw such a thing, and why I'm so over the moon for it I cannot really explain. All it was is a spotlight. There I was, standing up in the balcony of a nightclub configured more like a theater. We were using it for a church. In any case, at one point there shone above my head a brilliant light which targeted a figure down on the stage. It mesmerized me, looking like a solid cylinder of light encompassing all these flecks of dust.


It was like one of those phony miracles, not a real one. It had the effect of a real one on me, though. I wanted to reach out and touch it. I keenly felt the urge to interrupt its path and feel its luminescence. To do so would have brought on me tremendously negative attention, and so I restrained myself even from brushing my fingers against the light's edge as I would touch the metal skin of a plane I was getting on. I really wanted to.

Some things seem too special to manhandle with one's clumsy, grubby human form. I know it must sound silly and dumb to say this about a spotlight. It makes me think of the man who was ridiculed for the child-like amazement he registered when faced with two rainbows materializing at once before him. That man probably was under the influence of drugs, but then in that he is even more justified than I, a stone-cold sober grown man who ought to know better. I guess I don't, though.