D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
December 2009
Putting "Miracles" on Ice
Why Santa is not my co-pilot, except on Christmas Eve.
It may seem especially Scrooge-like to complain about "miracles" in this holiday season. But it's not actual instances of divine intervention that push my "Bah, humbug!" button. Rather, it's the way we describe everything from finding a lost puppy to a last-minute sports comeback to a breakthrough new vaccine as a "miracle." Doing so cheapens both the true accomplishments and the truly miraculous.
This struck me late one afternoon while watching the "NBC Nightly News." At least once a week, Brian Williams takes time out from intoning doomsday prophecies about the faltering US economy ("In another sign of the apocalypse, housing starts fell again last month") to introduce an inspiring — some might say treacly — segment on someone who is "Making a Difference." This night's two minutes of uplift amidst the gloom was about a Florida woman who started a food pantry. Inevitably, one of the beneficiaries of her efforts described the project as "a miracle."
Well, no, it isn't, unless God actually launched the food pantry and the Florida woman is just stealing the credit, in which case Brian Williams has been conned. "Miracle" should not be a synonym for "good deed" or "heckuva lot of hard work" or even "really wonderful act of human kindness." Describing such an undertaking as a "miracle" denies the good-deed doer her proper credit for an undertaking that I'm sure was a lot more difficult than just waving a magic wand.
A "miracle," after all, is "a violation of the laws of nature," as the philosopher David Hume defined it. So a gorgeous sunset or the sparkle of fresh snow or the sight of a doe and her fawn, however lovely or touching, are not "miracles." They are the very opposite of miracles — nature itself in all its glory. I'd put human achievements, however noteworthy, in the same category.
Now, I know that television and the Internet and Twitter have contributed to the rise of a lot of loose talk, and precision in the use of the English language is not what it used to be back when Abe Lincoln had to write his lessons on the hearth in coal dust and his speeches on the back of an envelope. But can we please be a tad more careful about tossing around words that involve divine intervention?
I blame hockey. Only marginally a sport in any case (as memorably expressed by Groucho Marx's "I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out"), hockey gave us the phrase "miracle on ice" to describe the 1980 US Olympic men's hockey team upset of the Russians. I haven't reviewed the tape of that historic victory lately, but I'm pretty sure that great skating by US captain Mike Eruzione and his fellow players, perhaps with a boost from coach Herb Brooks, was responsible for defeating the Russkies and going on to win the gold medal. If, say, a gigantic hand reached down out of the clouds and swatted away the godless-Commie goalie at a critical moment, I'm pretty sure I would have remembered it. At a minimum, it would be mentioned in the Wikipedia entry. ("US players credited God for their victory, thanking Him for smiting Russian goalie Vladislav Tretiak just as Dave Christian launched what would be the winning slap shot.")
Amazing, maybe. A stirring, patriotically tinged upset, sure. But calling that 1980 triumph a "miracle" shortchanges the players and coaches who accomplished something — well, let's not say "miraculous," OK?
More recently, we've had the "miracle on the Hudson," in which US Airways pilot Chesley Burnett "Sully" Sullenberger heroically guided a disabled Airbus 320 jetliner to a safe splashdown in the Hudson River off midtown Manhattan. It would certainly be understandable if Sullenberger or his crew and 150 passengers had prayed during the terrifying moments between both engines dying and the plane's deft touchdown. Perhaps, indeed, "Sully" got a little divine assistance in making his landing. (Although that raises the troubling question of why a higher power didn't simply keep flight 1549's engines going in the first place, and avoid all this excitement. I guess this is why I'm not a theologian.)
But I prefer to credit a remarkable performance under pressure by pilot Sullenberger, an airline safety expert even before the "miracle on the Hudson." He has 40 years of flight experience, 29 with US Airways, holds two master's degrees and has consulted with NASA. The 154 other folks onboard flight 1549 that day were darned lucky that "Sully" was in the cockpit instead of a 24-year-old regional-airline pilot who'd just barely earned his license on the third try. Or those two bozos piloting a Northwest jet recently who overshot the Minneapolis airport and wandered out over Wisconsin because — apparently — they got distracted by their laptop computers and an intense discussion over work schedules.
I'm OK with "luck," as in simple good fortune. After all, as another sports figure — Branch Rickey, the pioneering Dodgers executive — put it, "Luck is the residue of design." In this case, US Airways and those passengers were lucky that the airline's designs included employing such a capable and experienced pilot.
But a miracle? Blame New York Gov. David Paterson, who told the press after the successful ditching, "We had a miracle on 34th Street. I believe now we have had a miracle on the Hudson."
Evidently the governor is unaware that Miracle on 34th Street was a movie. Not a documentary, either. But we'll get back to Santa.
Most troubling to me is the loose talk of "miracles" in the medical world. We even have an oxymoron for it: "medical miracle." Again, I'm not talking about truly inexplicable cures or spontaneous remission of terminal diseases. Almost any aspect of modern medicine would seem like a "miracle" to patients of a century or two ago (as Arthur C. Clarke memorably put it, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.") — but it's not. It's science.
Is it amazing that we can take the heart out of a clinically dead person, put it into the chest of another person, and extend person number two's life? Absolutely. Is it astonishing that a simple injection can eradicate smallpox, once a scourge that scarred and slaughtered millions? You bet. But to call these things "miracles," as though they simply popped into being the way Samantha might conjure up an ad campaign for Darren on "Bewitched," is to disrespect the decades of scientific sweat and human ingenuity that led to them.
Am I being linguistically picky? Perhaps, but with "On Language" columnist William Safire having recently passed away, somebody has to.
If you believe in Santa Claus, as New York's governor apparently does, an appearance of sleigh and flying reindeer on your roof certainly qualifies as a miracle — I'll grant you that one. For believers of more standard faiths, I ask only that you reserve the M-word for those parts of your tradition that truly warrant it — a lamp that burns for eight days when there's oil enough for only one, or turning water into wine and raising the dead.
A hockey game, thrilling though it may be, can't quite match Santa Claus — or whatever miracles you choose to believe in. Give credit where it's due, whether to a gutty goalie, a skilled airline pilot or a brilliant scientist, and leave exceptions to the laws of nature to those with the proper pay grade.
If we hear jingling from the roof on this Christmas Eve — and I won't rule it out — count me in to the miracle camp. On other nights, however, I'd prefer my pilots to have jetliner rather than sleigh experience, and plenty of it.
Desert Exposure editor David A. Fryxell promises not to
sip Santa's milk or eat his cookies this year.