Everyday Miracles

A lunchtime apparition suggests that Mary, the Mother of God, has a special project for me - and wants me to crack into it.

I live on the edge of nowhere.

It’s a miracle that I’m sitting outside in the car with my toddler today.

We’ve returned from Wednesday morning Bounce & Rhyme at the Dereham Public Library. It’s lunchtime. But the cleaners have arrived late (never happens - never before, never since). They need exclusive use of the house for another 10 minutes so they can do their thing. Most unusual.

It’s a miracle that I find a fruit jelly cup on the floor of the back seat. It’s my hungry wee one’s favourite food, and will tide h- over very happily till we can get inside.

It’s a miracle that a battered Toyota Starlet swings round the bend and comes to a dusty halt in the middle of the private road beside us. I know every car and piece of farm equipment that’s authorised to use this road. The Toyota Starlet is not one of them.

Out from the passenger seat steps a tall, snowy-haired priest. I know he’s a priest because he wears a collar. I wonder if he’s Catholic (I’m Catholic), but that seems a long shot because this is a very Church of England part of the world (England).

He asks me if I know where the convent is.

I have never heard of this convent. I’ve never seen nuns round here. I’m curious to hear about this convent. I’m reading a lot about the contemplative life (primarily through a historical lens - I’m surrounded by dissolved monasteries). I’m interested in what contemplative practices can offer my work. But I haven’t spoken to a nun since primary school, when Sr S-, who was a friend of my family, gave my brother and me a plastic Titanic bath toy filled with sweets.

Wait..

I just remembered: there's an unexpected visit to a nunnery in Dunedin on behalf of my elderly Irish great aunt some 20 years ago. I meet an octo(nono?)genarian nun who is deaf and has a whiteboard and marker pen around her neck for me to write questions for her to answer very eloquently. At one point she recites long passages of an epic poem by heart (Homer? Shakespeare? or Scandinavian? Or Irish? I remember a maritime theme).

Back to the future: the priest tells me he’s been navigating using Google Maps. He reaches into the car where the driver (another priest. I know he’s another priest because he also wears a collar) hands him a Google map that’s been colour printed on a printer that has run out of at least Cyan. Possibly Magenta too. It’s a miracle that I can read it. Yellow and grey on white.

It’s a miracle that they are this far off course.

It’s a miracle that they have stopped to ask me for directions. It’s a miracle I’m there to be asked. It’s a miracle I can be of assistance. They’re late for lunch. My hand sweeps and zigs and jabs to demonstrate the way.

Miraculously, they will make it to lunch.

As they barrel down the road in a cloud of dust, I am left holding a child’s hand and an empty jelly cup. My mind is whirring. I’ve seen the map. I know where these nuns are. I know who they are, and I know why they’re there. It all circles back to Mary. She’s been here before. And she’s coming back again.

The nuns are the Community of Our Lady of Walsingham.

Walsingham has been famous for more than 1000 years because of a miraculous apparition of Mary.

I’ll throw to Wikipedia for the detail

According to the tradition, in a Marian apparition to Lady Richeldis [in 1061AD], the Blessed Virgin Mary fetched Richeldis’ soul from England to Nazareth during a religious ecstasy to show the house where the Holy Family once lived and in which the Annunciation of Archangel Gabriel occurred. Richeldis was given the task of building a replica house in her village, in England. The building came to be known as the "Holy House", and later became both a shrine and a focus of pilgrimage to Walsingham.

There is still a shrine on that spot. It’s still a very important pilgrimage site for Catholics and Anglicans alike. The Catholic nuns have property there, but live in a community about 30 minutes drive from Walsingham, and 10 minutes from me. This is perfectly odd, and makes perfect sense.

Because I live in a miraculous part of the world.

You might remember another local miracle I wrote about, from the 7th century, when Mary appears to a nun who lives just down the road from me and saves her fledgling community, which will later become mine.

Mary is particularly active around these parts. The area is pregnant with miracles. And so I conceive, with great clarity, a plan. I know exactly what I’m meant to do with this unexpected information: I’m meant to speak to these nuns. About the public reading of a book that arrived in my life just days ago, and seems set to bring us all together.

How I meet these nuns is another story.

But that’s enough miracles for one day.