As a college student in the 1950s, Dan Wakefield was too smart and sophisticated to believe in God.
Growing up in Indianapolis, he’d gone to a Presbyterian church and pretty much bought the program. But after studying Sartre and soaking up the intellectual air and airs of the Ivy League, he’d discarded his embarrassing religious superstitions and become an all-knowing, self-satisfied atheist.
When he fractured a cervical vertebra in a car crash at the infamous S-curve on the Outer Drive during a visit to Chicago after his junior year and failed to treat it for 12 hours, the doctors told him it was a miracle he wasn’t paralyzed; his parents said God had protected him.
How hopelessly middle-class! With weary, life-is-absurd worldliness, Wakefield joked to his buddies: If God had really been looking out for me, I wouldn’t have been in an accident in the first place.
Wakefield went on to a successful career. He wrote for the right journals, ran in the right circles; created the “James at 15” TV series; had a novel made into a movie. Yet his life was a mess, muddled by divorce, alcohol and despair.
In 1980, at age 48, he quit drinking, began to heal, found his way back to church and described the process in “Returning: A Spiritual Journey.”
Today, he can use the word he shunned at age 20: “What’s happened to me, in my own life, in my own terms, is a miracle.”
He’s the author of “Expect a Miracle: The Miraculous Things That Happen to Ordinary People” (HarperCollins), which is worthy of the smartest, most sophisticated skeptics simply because Wakefield is a wonderful writer.
He examines attitudes about miracles, visits Lourdes, talks to people from a variety of spiritual beliefs and presents a compelling collection of first-person testimonies in chapters on healing, recovery, love, creation, encounter, presence and, finally, everyday miracles.
Although the concept is trivialized and ridiculed, a Gallup poll finds that 83 percent of Americans believe in miracles.
The book’s accounts of those cured of terrible illnesses in medically inexplicable ways are riveting. “When people say these healings couldn’t happen,” Wakefield says, “I refer them to a `Spontaneous Remission,’ which documents 1,500 cases compiled from medical journals.”
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He was more intrigued by spiritual transformations. “The most moving miracle for me was Lloyd Kantor, who lost both arms, both legs and an eye in Vietnam, married his sweetheart and has found the ability to live a joyful, fulfilling life.”
He was surprised by Lourdes. “The `wall of crutches’ is no longer there. The emphasis is on emotional and spiritual healing, finding peace.”
Definitions of miracles are diverse.
Says mathematician Mary Hesse of Cambridge University: “Someone may say `His recovery was a miracle,’ or `It was a miracle that a serious accident was avoided.’ What is pointed to by the use of the word `miracle’ is the remarkable, unpredictable, coincidental nature of the events, and also, usually, the fact the outcome was in some way significant and desirable in the context of human purposes. There need, however, be no suggestion that the events are in any way outside or in conflict with the general course of nature and its laws.”
Sister Chandru, a Hindu nun: “I’ve seen many (experience) miracles-alcoholics have changed, some have just stopped. People say it’s willpower, but I call it a miracle-it’s God’s grace, and it’s the last source. You try everything else, and at the last thing, people go to God.”
Writer Emilie Griffin: “I don’t like the idea of miracles being `supernatural’-people who are coming out of the old theology are looking for proof that God exists. The old `zap from heaven’ way of thinking about the miraculous-the intervention of a powerful God into ordinary life-that’s the old (Hollywood) kind of miracle.
“I experience what probably is miraculous all the time-the person you most needed to talk to turns up; or someone raises the hardest questions when that was just what I was wrestling with-like you coming to talk about miracles right now. When someone close to me was ill and the worst problem on my mind was death, I saw a TV interview with Billy Graham talking about resurrection-and it was wonderful.”
Rev. Ed Lane: “Grace is unearned. Life itself is a gift of grace. We didn’t `earn’ the right to be born. . . . When we think of grace, we think of something out of the ordinary, even what we sometimes call a miracle or supernatural. We think of the biblical stories of healing, of bringing the dead back to life, of turning water into wine. In the process we have forgotten the everyday grace that takes place under our noses all the time.”
Wakefield again: “Albert Einstein said, `There are only two ways to live your life. One is though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.’ “