Hidden in Plain Sight (Katie)

          There are a lot of miracle sentiments out there; believe me, it's an occupational habit to search and I've read a lot of them. My all time favorite quote graces the beginning of our book and was written by Willa Cather in Death Comes for the Archbishop:

"Miracles seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what there is about us always."

         Perceptions, like miracles, are a bit in the eyes of the beholder. We bring preconceived notions, expectations and well-honed worldviews to the way we encounter experiences. There is an iconic sketch that illustrates this, depicting a young woman, or an old woman, depending on your point of view. I could only see the young woman (which maybe makes me the eternal optimist) and could not, no matter how hard I tried, find the old woman anywhere - I needed the cheat sheet before she appeared.
                            
         I don't live far from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and rarely, if ever, pass it without admiring its façade. One morning this summer I noticed a crane near the top and workmen walking along the  upper ledge, which drew my attention to four stacks of concrete blocks placed on top. "Hmmm, what could the concrete blocks be for, and how did they get them up there?" I wondered. Intrigued, I took an evening walk with my husband; he, too, was curious and unsure why they were there. Obviously, for some construction purpose, but what could it be? After a few days the crane was gone, but the blocks remained.

         Several weeks later, while walking past a NYC tour group across the street from the Museum, I heard the guide say, "Does anyone notice anything unusual about the front of the Museum?" No one did, but I stopped and sauntered over to hear if she had an answer about the mysterious unfinished blocks. "If you look up, you will see piles of concrete blocks. Believe it or not, they have been there since this section of the Museum opened in 1902."
                     
         "What??!!" I've walked by the Museum a hundred times, and always made it a point to notice the beautiful building and architecture and I never saw the large, messy stacks at the top. (Turns out they ran out of money, then it became an historic landmark.)

         I think miracles are a lot like those building blocks: hidden in plain sight, sometimes even messy, and found in every day encounters. "...what there is about us always," as Willa Cather wrote.

         When I relayed my museum surprise to my daughter Laura, she told me a story that brings home this notion of hidden in plain sight. She was at a business school lecture last year attended by 40-50 people and the speaker showed a short film, asking the audience to count how many times a basketball quickly changed hands among three players. She counted 21 times. The speaker surveyed the audience and then asked, "Did anyone notice anything unusual in the film?" One person in the back of the room raised his hand.
 
         "There was a dancing gorilla that waltzed in and out in the middle of the film."

         When the film was shown a second time, it was impossible to miss the gorilla. I think miracles are also a lot like the dancing gorilla: surprising and sometimes only recognized in retrospect. Like the Reverend Bill Tully said, "A miracle is  change in perception, not a change in the rules." We see what we are looking for; we don't see what is sometimes right in front of us.
 
         With Halloween right around the corner, the dancing gorilla reminded me of more than miracles. We all need to remember to look beyond our expectations; those ghosts and goblins might be saints in disguise.  (Katie)