The Greatest Miracle in the World Page 2

  Through the falling snow I could see the wooden cross on his chest and perhaps that’s what triggered the illusion … long hair, beard, hands extended at a forty-five-degree angle over his head … the gate bar … the cross bar … the patibulum carried by the condemned man on the way to Golgotha for his crucifixion …

  His voice, now touched with urgency, broke through my fantasy. “Hurry. Drive in! Drive in!”

  I scrambled back into my car, shifted into low gear, gradually applied pressure to the accelerator, the tires grabbed, and I moved slowly past the stranger, under the bar and through the gate.

  I eased the car gently into a low spot among the drifts and cut the ignition. My hands were trembling. My head was throbbing. My legs felt weak. Then I reached behind my seat, pulled out my attache case, opened the door, and fell headfirst into the snow. I arose, brushed myself off, and locked the car.

  I turned toward the gate to thank the old man.

  My parking lot savior was nowhere in sight.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I didn’t see him again until late spring.

  It had been one of those Fridays that never seem to end. Problems concerning routine matters involved with publishing a monthly magazine had increased in velocity and number during the day, and by the time all the brush fires were extinguished I was alone and beat, both physically and mentally.

  I sat at my desk listening to the gentle tick of my desk clock and dreading that long drive home in traffic. Even at this hour Edens Expressway would be jammed. Once more those nagging and recurring questions popped into my mind.

  “Why are you working so damn hard?”

  “Did you think it would be easier once you got to be Number One?”

  “Why don’t you resign? Your book royalties are already four times larger than your salary.”

  “What are you trying to prove now that the magazine is a success?”

  “Why don’t you go somewhere where it’s peaceful and quiet and write all those books you’ve still got burning inside of you?”

  Habit, and my own pride, seemed to be the only logical answer to these questions. I had taken Success Unlimited Magazine from a monthly circulation of only 4,000, with three employees, to its present 200,000 and a staff of thirty-four. Yet, I knew there were still 120,000,000 potential subscribers in our country and it was a challenge going after them. Then I tried to remember who had written, “The beginning of pride is in heaven. The continuance of pride is on earth. The end of pride is in hell.” No luck. Bad memory.

  I tossed my reading glasses into my attache case, grabbed my jacket and topcoat, turned off the lights and locked the office. Except for the street lamp on the corner of Broadway and Devon, it was dark as I walked slowly past the window of Root Photographers, across the alley mouth behind our building, under the overhead train bridge, and through the small opening into the parking lot with its garish and cracked orange-and-yellow sign flashing, “Park Yourself, Only 50¢.”

  I was halfway across the shadowy lot, now nearly filled with neighborhood cars, before I saw him. His tall silhouette moved silently from behind a parked panel truck, and even in the blackness I recognized him before I saw his dog trailing behind. I turned and walked toward him.

  “Good evening.”

  That basso-profundo voice replied, “I bid you greetings on this most beautiful of evenings, sir.”

  “I never had the opportunity to thank you for helping me in the snow that day.”

  “It was nothing. We are all here to help one another.”

  I reached down to pat the basset, who had been nuzzling at my pant leg then I extended my hand toward the old man. “My name is Mandino … Og Mandino.”

  His giant fingers wrapped themselves around mine. “I am honored to meet you, Mr. Mandino. My name is Simon Potter … and this four-legged ally of mine is called Lazarus.”

  “Lazarus?”

  “Yes. He sleeps so much of the time that I never know whether he’s dead or alive.”

  I laughed.

  “You will forgive me, Mr. Mandino, but your first name—it is very distinctive. Og, Og … how do you spell it?”

  “O–G.”

  “That was your given name?”

  I chuckled. “No, my real name is Augustine. Back in high school I wrote a column for our school paper, and one month I signed my piece AUG. After I had written it I decided to be different and spell it phonetically … OG. It stuck.”

  “That is a rare name. There cannot be many Ogs in the world.”

  “I’ve been told that one is too many.”

  “Do you still write?”

  “Yes.”

  “What sort of writing?”

  “Books, articles.”

  “Your books have been published?”

  “Yes, five of them.”

  “That is marvelous. Who would expect to meet an author here among the empty wine bottles?”

  “I’m afraid that’s where you’re liable to meet a lot of authors, Simon.”

  “Yes. Sad, but true. I, too, write a little … but only to pass the time and to satisfy myself.”

  The old man moved closer as if to study my face. “You look tired, Mister Mandino … or rather, I think I shall call you Mister Og.”

  “I am tired. Long day … long week.”

  “You have far to journey before you reach home?”

  “About twenty-six miles.”

  Simon Potter turned and pointed his long arm toward the drab four-story brown-brick apartment house facing the parking lot. “I live there. On the second floor. Before you begin your long drive come have a glass of sherry with me. It will relax you.”

  I began to shake my head but, as in the snow that day, I found myself wanting to obey him. I unlocked my car door, tossed in my topcoat and case, closed and locked the door and fell into step behind Lazarus.

  We passed through the unswept lobby, past the pock-marked brass mail boxes with their yellowed plastic name-holders, and climbed the worn and pitted concrete stairway. Simon removed a key from his pocket, turned it in the lock of a pine-stained door on which number ‘21’ had been stencilled in red, pushed it open and made a sweeping gesture for me to enter. He flipped the light switch and said, “Forgive my humble retreat. I live alone, except for Lazarus, and housework was never one of my better skills.”

  His apologies were unnecessary. The tiny living room was immaculate, from the lint-free braided oval rug to the cobwebless ceiling. Almost immediately I spotted the books, hundreds of them, spilling from the two large bookcases and stacked up in neat piles as tall as their owner.

  I looked at Simon quizzically. He shrugged his shoulders and warmed the room with his smile, “What else can an old man do but read … and think? Please make yourself comfortable and I shall pour our sherry.”

  When Simon went off to the kitchen I walked over to his books and began reading titles, hoping they would tell me something about this fascinating giant. I cocked my head and ran my eyes along some of the book spines—Will Durant’s Caesar And Christ, Gibran’s The Prophet, Plutarch’s Lives Of Great Men, Fulton’s Physiology Of The Nervous System, Goldstein’s The Organism, Eiseley’s The Unexpected Universe, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Aristotle’s Works, Franklin’s Autobiography, Menninger’s The Human Mind, Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ, The Talmud, several Bibles …

  My host walked toward me holding out my glass of wine. I took it and placed it gently against his glass. The rims touched with a soft lovely note in that silent room. Simon spoke, “To our friendship. May it be long and filled with good.”

  “Amen,” I replied.

  He pointed his glass toward the books. “What do you think of my library?”

  “It’s a great collection. I wish I had them. You have wide interests.”

  “Not really. They are an accumulation from many years of pleasant hours in second-hand book stores. Still they have a common theme which makes each volume very special.”

  “Special?”

  “Yes. Each in its own way deals with and explains some aspect of the greatest miracle in the world and so I call them ‘hand of God’ books.”

  “Hand of God?”

  “It is difficult for me to put into words … yet I am positive that certain pieces of music, certain works of art, and certain books and plays were created, not by the composer, artist, author, or playwright but by God, and those whom we have acknowledged as the creators of these works were only the instruments employed by God to communicate with us. What’s the matter, Mister Og?”

  Apparently I had jumped at his words. Only two weeks earlier, in New York City, Barry Farber, a popular radio host, had used those exact words, ‘the hand of God’ when praising my book to his audience during my appearance on his program.

  “You mean you believe that God still communicates with us as He did during the days of the ancient Jewish prophets?”

  “I am positive. For thousands of years this world witnessed a countless parade of prophets pronouncing and explaining the will of God: Elijah, Amos, Moses, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Samuel, and all the other marvelous messengers until Jesus and Paul. And then … no more? I cannot believe that. No matter how many of His prophets were ridiculed, chastised, tortured, and even murdered, I cannot conceive that God finally gave up on us and turned His back on our needs, causing some of us to finally assume that He must be dead since we hadn’t heard from Him in so long a time. Instead, I truly believe that He has sent, to every generation, special people, talented people, brilliant people … all bearing the same message in one form or another … that every human is capable of performing the greatest miracle in the world. And, it is man’s
most grievous fault that he has not comprehended the message, blinded as he is by the trivia of each succeeding civilization.”

  “What’s this greatest miracle in the world that we can all perform?”

  “First, Mister Og, can you define a miracle for me?”

  “I think so. It’s something that happens contrary to the laws of nature or science … a temporary suspension of one of these laws?”

  “That is very concise and accurate, Mister Og. Now tell me, do you believe you are capable of performing miracles … of suspending any laws of nature or science?”

  I laughed nervously and shook my head. The old man rose, picked up a small glass paperweight from the coffee table and held it across to me. “If I release this weight it will fall to the floor, is that not true?”

  I nodded.

  “What law decrees that it will fall to the floor?”

  “The law of gravity?”

  “Exactly.” Then, without warning, he let the paperweight fall from his hands. Instinctively I reached for it and caught it before it hit the floor.

  Simon folded his hands and looked down at me with a self-satisfied grin. “Do you realize what you have just done, Mister Og?”

  “I caught your paperweight.”

  “More than that. Your action temporarily suspended the law of gravity. By any definition of a miracle you have just performed one. Now what would you judge has been the greatest miracle ever performed on this earth?”

  I thought for several minutes. “Probably those cases where the dead have supposedly come back to life.”

  “I agree, as would a consensus of world opinion I am sure.”

  “But how does all this connect to those books you’ve got piled up. Certainly they don’t contain any secret methods on how to come back from the dead.”

  “Ah, but they do, Mister Og. Most humans, in varying degrees, are already dead. In one way or another they have lost their dreams, their ambitions, their desire for a better life. They have surrendered their fight for self-esteem and they have compromised their great potential. They have settled for a life of mediocrity, days of despair and nights of tears. They are no more than living deaths confined to cemeteries of their choice. Yet they need not remain in that state. They can be resurrected from their sorry condition. They can each perform the greatest miracle in the world. They can each come back from the dead … and in those books are the simple secrets, techniques, and methods which they can still apply to their own lives to become anything they wish to be and to attain all the true riches of life.”

  I didn’t know what to say or how to respond. I sat, staring at him, until he broke the silence. “Do you accept the possibility of individuals performing such a miracle with their own life, Mister Og?”

  “Yes I do”

  “Do you ever write about such miracles in your books?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I would like to read what you have written.”

  “I’ll bring you a copy of my first book.”

  “There are miracles in it?”

  “Yes, many.”

  “When you wrote it did you feel the hand of God upon you?”

  “I don’t know, Simon. I don’t think so.”

  “Perhaps I shall be able to tell you after I have read it, Mister Og.”

  We sat, after that exchange, in a stillness interrupted only by an occasional rumble from a truck or bus bouncing along the ruts of Devon Avenue. I sipped the sherry and felt more relaxed and at peace with the world than I had in many months. Finally I placed my glass on the small polished end table next to my chair and found myself staring at two small photographs, each enclosed in a small bronze frame. One was of a lovely brunette woman and the other of a blond male child in military uniform. I glanced at Simon and he sensed my silent question.

  “My wife. My son.”

  I nodded. His voice, now so soft that I could scarcely hear him, seemed to float across the small room to me. “Both are dead.”

  I closed my eyes and nodded again. His next words were barely a whisper, “Dachau, nineteen-thirty-nine.”

  When I opened my eyes the old man had his head bowed and his two giant hands were clenched together, tightly against his forehead. Then, as if embarrassed that he had momentarily exposed his grief to a stranger, he sat up and forced a smile.

  I changed the subject “What do you do, Simon? Do you have a job?”

  The old man hesitated for several moments. Then he smiled again, spread his hands in a self-effacing gesture and said, “I am a ragpicker, Mister Og.”

  “I thought ragpickers disappeared with the soup kitchens and hunger marches of the early nineteen-thirties.”

  Simon reached across, placed his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it gently. “By definition, Mister Og, a ragpicker is one who picks up rags and other waste materials from the streets and junk heaps to earn a livelihood. I would imagine that sort of ragpicker has almost disappeared from the American scene during these years of nearly full employment, but we could see them again if conditions change.”

  “I doubt it. Our crime rate seems to be telling us that we’ve discovered faster and easier ways of laying our hands on a buck—like mugging, armed robbery, and burglary.”

  “I’m afraid that what you say is true, Mister Og. Still, in this day of soaring prices for paper and metals, I would imagine that a ragpicker or junk man could do quite well for himself. However, I am not that sort of ragpicker. I seek more valuable materials than old newspapers and aluminum beer cans. I search out waste materials of the human kind, people who have been discarded by others, or even themselves, people who still have great potential but have lost their self-esteem and their desire for a better life. When I find them I try to change their lives for the better, give them a new sense of hope and direction, and help them return from their living death … which to me is the greatest miracle in the world. And of course the wisdom I have received from my ‘hand of God’ books has helped me immensely in my—what shall I call it—profession.

  “See this wooden cross that I often wear. It was carved by a young man who once was a shipping clerk. I ran into him one night on Wilson Avenue … or rather I should say he ran into me. He was intoxicated. I brought him here. After several pots of black coffee, a cold shower, and some food, we talked. He was truly a lost soul, nearly crushed by his inability to properly support his wife and two young children. He had been working at two jobs, more than seventeen hours a day, for almost three years and he had reached the breaking point. He had begun to hide in the bottle when I found him … trying not to face his living death and a conscience that was telling him he didn’t deserve his wonderful young family. I managed to convince him that his situation was common and far from hopeless and he began to visit me, nearly every day, before he went to his night job. Together we explored and discussed many of the ancient and modern secrets of happiness and success. I imagine I touched on every wise man from Solomon to Emerson to Gibran. And he listened carefully.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “When he had a thousand dollars saved he quit both jobs, packed his family in their old Plymouth, and headed for Arizona. Now they have a tiny roadside stand, just outside of Scottsdale, and he’s beginning to command fairly large prices for his wood carvings. Now and then he writes, always thanking me for giving him the courage he needed to change his life. This cross was one of his first carvings. He’s now a happy and fulfilled man … not any richer, mind you, just happier. You see, Mister Og, most of us build prisons for ourselves and after we occupy them for a period of time we become accustomed to their walls and accept the false premise that we are incarcerated for life. As soon as that belief takes hold of us we abandon hope of ever doing more with our lives and of ever giving our dreams a chance to be fulfilled. We become puppets and begin to suffer living deaths. It may be praiseworthy and noble to sacrifice your life to a cause or a business or the happiness of others, but if you are miserable and unfulfilled in that lifestyle, and know it, then to remain in it is a hypocrisy, a lie, and a rejection of the faith placed in you by your creator.”