Miracles are by nature quite natural occurrences. Or as G.K. Chesterton phrased it, "The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen." What makes miracles so exceptional is that they often occur in the most commonplace situations: while driving a car you witness a woman walk placidly across the freeway without being hit; or while breakfasting, you receive a telephone call from a man who claims to be your lost brother; or when walking through a half-deserted park and gazing at the shapes of clouds, you see streaked against the sky the descent of a falling meteor. That a pumpkin should propagate another pumpkin and not a coach or a bag, asserts Chesterton, is miracle enough; otherwise, you haven't really considered a pumpkin for what it is. That the day breaks open as indubitably and as serendipitously as any hen's soft egg will for our breakfast, goes a long way to reduce the contingency on which the sun invites our speculations; the morning is accepted as a matter of fact, rather than as a matter of miracle: our hope is unnecessarily neutralized. Yet if the break of day were the dawn of all time, and if light's silence were thickened with the murmur of awakening consciousness, then would not our eyes suggest to us that creation -- life breathing anew each and every morning -- were as profound a miracle as the first day of Genesis? Carlos Reygadas' latest film is not a film treating of religion, but it is a film that treats of miracles: everyday miracles like that of the birth of a new day, or the birth of difficult refractory human loves.
Read the rest of the article at Hydra Magazine.
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