Everyday Miracles

Have you heard of sand mandalas?

They’re created by Buddhist monks.

It takes years of study for the monks to learn all that needs to be known about sand mandalas.

A group of monks work together to create them.

The group chooses a design and sketches it out with ropes and rulers on a table.

Then they use simple tools to form the mandala with colorful grains of sand.

They place the sand almost grain by grain onto the design.

Isn’t that amazing?

The design takes days and days to create.

The finished mandalas are colorful, wonderful, beautiful, and full of genius.

And when the monks are finished with their creations...they take brooms in their hands and sweep their mandalas away.

Can you believe it?

All of that time and effort swept away.

The monks simply gather the swept sand into their hands and drop it into water as a blessing for the world.

Then they begin working on another sand mandala.

Wow.

Writing is like building a sand mandala, you know.

I pour myself into a small story about a student from El Salvador.

I use words to paint a picture of her human face.

I write of her earthy brown eyes full of hope for food, shelter, clothing, health care and education.

Full of hope for love.

I use words to fight injustice.

I write against the ones who would deny my little student her human rights.

I use words to paint a picture of a human life.

I pour myself into a small story about Patrick.

He and his family are from Peru.

He has been in the United States for one year.

One day, his friend Alexander got hit on the side of the head with a soccer ball.

“Are you okay, Alex?” I asked. “Do you need to go to the nurse?”

His eyes filled with tears and he burst out crying.

“I’ll take him,”’said Patrick.

He put his arms around Alex and held him.

“Come on, Alex, I’ll help you,” he said.

Then Patrick teared up and began to weep.

He’s that kind of kid.

Kind and courageous, he feels the hurt of others.

As an elementary school teacher, I’m a witness to miraculous moments.

Moments like the life of Patrick.

A human life.

I try to create something beautiful out of those moments.

Then I sweep it away.

I drop it into the waters of newspapers and social media sites, offering it as a blessing to the world.

Then I pour myself into the next story.

The human faces, the human lives, are all around me.

If only I have the eyes to see, the ears to hear and the heart to write them.

A friend from high school sent a message to me this morning.

“The world needs your stories,” she wrote.

That lifted my heart as if it were a basket under a hot air balloon set free to rise into a blue, cloud dotted sky and float gently over the good green earth.

(I just watched the movie Up...can you tell?)

The world needs my stories.

Wow.

They are stories.

They are sand mandalas.

They are human faces.

They are human lives.

I hope the little grains of sand of them are blessings to the world that can make it more human for everyone.