By Glenn Koller
Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation on December 7, 2014
Being a Unitarian Universalist, when I learned that the theme for this month’s sermons was “miracles,” I was at the very least perplexed. The primary definition of a miracle is:
a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.
For me, this should have culminated in a REALLY short list of things upon which to expound this morning because I profess to live by the scientific method and do not believe in divine intervention. I decided, therefore, to consider not the literal interpretation of what is miraculous but, rather, to embrace the spirit of this month’s theme.
Those of you who know me also know that I am a “numbers and science-geek” type having spent the majority of my professional life assessing risk. This, of course, requires loads of analyses and equations that involve uncertainty and probabilities. This type of work is great as far as it goes, but falls short in so many fundamental ways.
I earned an advanced degree in potential fields physics – gravity and magnetics types of things. Why is it then that I, and humankind, don’t really understand just what are gravity and magnetics and how they actually work? Just like for the atom, we have classical models for such things – those models make us feel better about ourselves – but we can only understand these things through empiricism. As far as we know, these things just ARE, and, therefore, might be perceived as miraculous.
Sometimes I look up at the night sky. I see space. I wonder: How far does that extend? What’s beyond space? What contains the universe? What bounds it? Can I really conceive of the infinite? It would almost seem to be a miracle.
Closer to home, my wife Karen and I met on a blind date. We had both been married before and were COINCIDENTALLY in the hunt for new partners. I JUST HAPPENED to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma where she lived. Her sister’s husband and I both COINCIDENTALLY worked for the same company in Tulsa, but not at the same location, so we didn’t know one another.
COINCIDENTALLY, the company had a meeting in New Orleans to which he brought Karen’s sister. On the flight home, American Airlines COINCIDENTALLY assigned me the seat right next to my future sister-in-law.
COINCIDENTALLY, right after that trip, Karen asked her sister if she knew any single guys. At first her sister said “No,” but then remarked that she had COINCIDENTALLY met this guy on the plane.
She had her husband – my now brother in law – give me a call at work to see if I’d want to go out with his wife’s sister. More than 3 decades and 3 kids later, I am COINCIDENTALLY standing before you relating this. Man, ALMOST miraculous, huh?
We then raised three children. This, of course, included seeing them through their teenage years. If you’ve raised teenagers, you know that it’s almost a miracle that they don’t kill themselves because of the truly silly and, yes, stupid things they sometimes do. It’s almost a miracle that YOU don’t kill them. Given the irrationality exhibited by teenagers, it’s a bit of a statistical miracle that we are all here today.
Yep, I don’t understand things that I studied for years, I’m mystified by the universe, and miraculously, I met and married my wife of more than three decades – – it’s a bit of a miracle that I don’t believe in miracles.