Somewhere in us there is a need to believe in miracles. The most cynical, the most crass: even he will get teary-eyed watching A Christmas Carol, seeing Scrooge turn from his ways and saving Tiny Tim. It is something fundamental in our souls, that we imagine that the most horrible situations can turn on a dime, that courage can suddenly assert itself on a lifelong coward, that wine can come from water and the multitude fed. On some level, we require that the immutable laws of happenstance bend, or even break, just for a little while, just for a moment, and another order impose itself upon the universe: where nothing is impossible while the spirit rests here, where all is as it was meant to be, and heaven touches down to grace us with its fantastic hand.

I think it may be that the child in us is still there, the one who always believed in magic. It is the innocence in us that never died, and I think never will, that wants to know that miracles are possible — hope against hope, that such phenomena are somehow possible. And perhaps the implicit order of a miracle: maybe it indeed need not break any law of physics; maybe it is in actuality built into such laws, and this belief we have belie not any foolishness on our parts. And really, if we look around, here and now, in every corner, there is magic all around. We don’t notice that miracles happen every day simply because they happen every day. Maybe that goes into the equation, too: to believe in the miraculous is just noticing, subconsciously, what goes on everywhere....