By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

TODAY, a big miracle happened to Vishwas Kumar Ramesh, a British national, lone survivor of the Gatwick-bound Air India flight, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner that crashed in less than two minutes after take-off. There were 242 passengers, including 12 crew members. Of the 230 passengers, 169 of which were Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, 7 Portuguese and one Canadian. Perhaps it was his seat location (11A), his body constitution, and luck, all playing a part in his survival. To me, it was a miracle.

Years ago, when we were very young, my father, on his routine duties to check his men in maintaining the electrical connections several feet down the mine shaft, related how he had to tuck-in his stomach when the front side of the shaft started to crumble as the conveyor descended. He could have been crushed, but the stones and the soil just passed through, an inch from his tucked-in belly. Accidents in the area happen often, and there have been people injured or decapitated. He jokingly dismissed his luck to being a masamang damo (bad weed), but my mother, who prayed to the Virgin Mary and all the saints she could memorize, didn’t have any doubt that it was a miracle.

I believed my mother, although we had arguments about the images she prayed to, and her belief that Mary was a virgin, and the three persons in one God. Under the influence of a teacher who questioned everything, I subjected these beliefs against a framework of scientific and logical analysis. Growing up, I learned that some things could not be explained given the level of knowledge at that time, and some questions didn’t have answers. If they did, my mind was inadequate to grasp them. Matters of survival where no survival could have been possible, I deferred to my mother’s belief, and called them miracles.

There is a part of us that wants to believe in miracles, even when we are not fully convinced that they happen. I see this in people with deep faith in their particular religions, expecting a miracle by changing their ways, and others without doing anything. Maybe they are right, because miracles could happen whether you believe it or not, like salvation is possible not through “good deeds”, but by grace alone. Take, for example a relative of mine, who had done “bad deeds” resulting in a broken skull, a broken arm, and a broken eye at different times in his young life, but he lives. He didn’t do anything to deserve it, definitely not doing good deeds. I think he lives, by grace alone, and his survival in the three accidents are truly miracles. Even the doctors who attended to him told us: “His chances are not good. Let’s pray for a miracle.” We prayed, but it was my belief that even without our prayers, God decided to give him another chance to live.

I’ve had so many miracles in my life, the miracle of a feather, for example. Under serious circumstances, a feather drifts into the air, which I instinctively relate as the spirit of my father, and presents me with a solution. I have resolved most of my conflicts this way, and I have to count the feathers I picked, in various places, even without a passing bird.

 

Scent of a feather

Are you saying Hello?
or just wanting to smell your garden
from the soil in my palms?

Have you come to console the bird
that sings to you each day
hoping you will bring back her beloved?

Or have you become the feather of the bird
felled by the slingshot you aimed in the air
hoping for an Indian mango to fall?

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