The Mathematics of Miracles

Although most people have never read Walt Whitman's long poem "Song of Myself" in its entirety, many people have heard or read stanzas taken from it.  One such stanza concerns a mouse.  The poem as a whole is Whitman's celebration of all people and all of the natural world as they resonate through Whitman's experience of himself in the world.  The mouse appears in these lines:

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,

... And the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels."

Whitman has, of course, chosen a mouse in part because of its small size -- in contrast to many Christians of his day citing grand events as miracles. But when I first read that line in college, I was able to appreciate his choice of a mouse because I had for awhile had a pet white mouse when I was in high-school.  My mouse was part of a science project.  (The mouse was not going to be harmed in any way -- I was too soft-hearted for that.  I was just going to try to measure its output of carbon dioxide.)

Whitman's statement "a mouse is miracle" evoked my memory of my little white mouse's miraculous features when observed up close:  The slender flexibility of its tail.  The softness of its body despite so much energy.  Its countless white hairs.  Its small round eyes. (Can they really see like mine, although being so tiny?).  Its pointed nose, always seemingly sniffing.  The way it bent its body slightly from side to side as it explored its world.

John Donne

Whitman's line about the mouse came back to me recently when I read a quotation by a poet who lived two centuries before Whitman.  It was an observation by the poet and church minister John Donne, which struck me as being insightful:  "There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of Nature, and which is therefore done every day, but would seem a miracle and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once;... The ordinary thing in Nature would be greater miracles than the extraordinary, which we admire most, if they were done but once... and only the daily doing takes off the admiration."  Donne points us toward everyday miracles.

Today, most mainstream Christian, Jewish, and Islamic theologians would join John Donne in cautioning against searching for the miraculous in some rare interruption of the working of natural laws that science has discovered.  As I go about my day, from getting out of bed to going back to sleep at night, everything going on about me can on some level be described as being natural processes.  I might never find God if I expect to find the Divine only in some interruptions of natural laws.

Donne's theological observation, coupled with my memory of Whitman's mentioning a mouse, made me think about the sextillions of little mice throughout the world, sometimes labeled "pests," but each a little miracle in its own right if seen up close.

~~~

Is there something in Nature you encounter everyday that you think is marvelous?

(The Whitman line is from "Song of Myself,"

 originally in his 1855 collection Leaves of Grass.)

(The Donne line is from a March 25, 1627 sermon, as quoted in Rebuilding the Matrix by Denis Alexander, © 2001, p. 426.)