I saw an Air France poster the other day in the window of a travel agency. It had a lovely photo of the Eiffel Tower, shot at night, from high above Paris. Oddly enough, it got me thinking about miracles.
The date was May 1, 1972 and I was where I usually was at 9:30 in the morning – in French class at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley. There were only a dozen of us juniors present that day and Mr. Schwarzbart, our teacher, was taking a short break by having us listen to French pronunciation tapes on the headphones that dangled down from above each desk. He had left the room and we were immersed in the sounds of La Belle France. Whatever the lesson was is lost to me now, for we were rudely interrupted by events beyond our tiny classroom.
Just as we settled into the lesson, with our headphones drowning out the noises coming from the hallway and adjoining classrooms, there was the barely muffled sound of an intense explosion that rocked the classroom and thumped me firmly in the chest. Shattered windows rained glass on the floor and we were suddenly more wide awake than teenagers are used to being at that hour. Shucking our headsets, we were greeted by the wafting smell of high explosive and concrete dust. We were also coming to the realization that we had been very, very lucky. First, that we had been wearing out headsets, thus protecting our eardrums. Second, that all of the windows facing the light well were covered with French travel posters, which kept the window glass from blowing freely across the classroom.
Mr. Schwarzbart quickly returned and led us out of the building. Naturally, school was cancelled for the rest of the day, and we all went home. As it turns out, the explosion was caused by half a stick of dynamite planted in a urinal in the boy’s restroom, just across the light well from our class, only 15 feet away. A student had planned the explosion to coincide with a series of May Day anarchist demonstrations that included two similar bombs at local Bank of America branches. One had gone off and one was later disarmed.
What our explosion had to do with May Day was, and is, beyond my comprehension. But I was struck by the double coincidence that certainly prevented serious injuries in our French class. What if we hadn’t had our headphones? What if the windows hadn’t been covered? What if? Some might hasten to call it a miracle, somehow staged by a divine power. I can understand that point of view. But if I go along with that interpretation, then what to do with other so-called miracles that are similarly credited?
Just a few weeks ago, a plane crashed in Libya with only one survivor, a nine year-old boy named Ruben van Assouw. A miracle, some people claimed. But what of the other 103 passengers who perished, including his parents? Did the same “miracle” take their lives instead of saving them? Or what of the tornadoes that “miraculously” spare one house and family, while devastating another? Can the Divine be so capricious, or do we put our faith in miracles simply because we hope that fate will be kinder to us if we believe?
I am beginning to think that miracles are simply unexpectedly positive outcomes arising amidst dire circumstances. Not that they aren’t cause for celebration by the fortunate recipients, but a measure of respect is due for those on whom the “miracle” has not shown its beneficence.
Getting back to Mr. Schwarzbart, I found out many years later that when he was seven years old, his father, an Austrian Jew, was arrested in Belgium and shipped off to Vichy France. Persuaded to do so by Belgian Resistance workers, Paul's mother let her son be taken into hiding during World War II. Assuming the last name of neighbors, Paul was sent to a Catholic boarding school where he learned the prayers in Latin, served at Mass, and took communion, all the while keeping his true identity secret. He did his lessons and was an active Cub Scout. He thought he was the only Jewish child among 125 pupils. Much later he would learn that, in fact, 60 of his schoolmates were Jewish boys secretly hiding with him. He was reunited with his mother after the war, but his father died at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. Paul and his mother eventually settled in the United States where he attended university and embarked on a 45-year teaching career, ending up in our French classroom in Mill Valley.
I am sure Mr. Schwarzbart would not have connected the miracle of his successfully hiding from the Nazis, with the tragic death of his father. But I know he would have seen the miracle in the willingness of others to risk their own lives to rescue innocent children from persecution. That is the kind of miracle that I do believe in, and that is clearly within our grasp.
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