A practice miracle
Saturday, Dec. 9th, 2017 Knoxville, TN
“Everything we’re looking for is at Ladies of Charity right now,” I declared to my roommate as we sat in my house, freshly repainted and re-christened post-divorce as Girl House. The name of the house was meant to be ironic, as we were two rather un-girly women in un-girly professions—me, an architect, and her, a woodworker. The house, however, being a dainty Victorian, had other ideas; it demanded pastel colors. We were happy to oblige.
Now, the ‘everything’ we were looking for included a giant round dining table, an assortment of silver frames for the purple dining room, and gold frames for the peachy-pink sitting ‘womb.’
Everything we were looking for was, in fact, at Ladies of Charity, and the giant round table for—gasp—$20! Object magic, I call it: an ability to sense the object you seek, or perhaps to sense an object that wants to be with you at a particular resale shop. This ability had gotten stronger since I started helping people declutter, organize, and all-around fix their relationship with their things. Back then, it was the only place in my life that I experienced magic on any sort of regular basis. That was about to change.
“I’m going,” I decided after our comically fruitful and efficient shopping spree. For a while, I had been toying with the idea of visiting a small church in Plains, Georgia, to see Jimmy Carter teach Sunday school. This apparently happened most Sundays and was free and open to anyone who would like to attend. I had hesitated for months, fearing that I would be crowed out by tourists simply trying to catch a glimpse of a former U.S. president. Now the time was right: a cold snap had engulfed the state, with the National Weather Service predicting a low of 27°F for the area. The idea of waiting in line for hours in unusually low temperatures would surely keep out the casual presidential sightseers.
My interest in Jimmy Carter was anything but casual. In fact, he was part of what I called my secular Holy Trinity, alongside David Attenborough and Dolly Parton—three elder figures who embodied wisdom, kindness, and care for the Earth. Each inspired me in different ways. Although I lacked any kind of faith myself back then, what I admired most about Carter was the way he lived his faith, even as president, remaining true to his principles even though he was often mocked for it. His integrity translated across religions and lack of religion.
An Atheist Goes to Church
Sunday, Dec. 10th, 2017 Plains, GA
So that’s how I found myself pulling into the parking lot of Maranatha Baptist Church well before dawn. To my great relief, volunteers were mercifully handing out laminated number cards to mark our places in line for the first-come, first-serve event. I was delighted to stay in my car and out of the cold.
This car time also gave me the chance to crack open a Bible for the first time—specifically, the Jefferson Bible that found me at an antique book shop a couple years prior. For those unfamiliar, Thomas Jefferson took scissors to his own Bible, excising all references to the supernatural and the miracles of Jesus. What remained were the now de-miracled gospels—a Bible an atheist could handle—presenting Jesus purely as a philosopher. When people say America was founded on faith in God, I think, yes—faith in God and scissors!
I had somehow only made it through the Sermon on the Mount before it was time to go into the church. I might have taken a nap too. Having expected to stand outside, I was way too bundled up for the cozy church, peeling off some of the accessible excess layers of my onion costume to stuff under the pew. I was seated in the third row across the aisle from two pieces of printer paper marked "Secret Service." These, as it turned out, did not reserve seats for secret service agents as I had imagined but, to my delight, for the former president and first lady. And so, I found myself spending the service sitting just five feet away from Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.
I can hardly recall what was said that morning. I’ve forgotten the sermon entirely, except that the preacher seemed earnest and very young. Jimmy’s class? Mostly a blur, though I distinctly remember the moment he amused us all by talking about using Google to find every reference to the word "faith" in the Bible for his upcoming book, Faith. "I guess I have faith in Google," he seemed to surprise himself by saying, causing everyone to burst into laughter.
But what truly stayed with me was the FEELING of the space. It was lit, y’all! I’m sorry, but it’s the best word to describe it. The church felt alive with something I found impossible to name—a kind of energy I’d never encountered before.
And the fact that I could even feel it back then, being as spiritually dense as I was, meant it must have been intense. I believe it was the combination of the enlightened Carters being there, their small but adorable congregation that meets there every Sunday, and the most gentle and sincere of seekers who came to see a man so uniquely dedicated to service. We had collectively filled the space to the rafters with what I would now term Christ consciousness, Buddha Nature, or Universal Love. Yes, exactly the sort of thing I could finally stop “not believing in.” It was actually happening; now I could simply know it.
Blessed by Rosalynn
While at the service, I perceived that Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were a group deal. A true “duprass” if you’ve read Kurt Vonnegut’s brilliant and hilarious novel Cat’s Cradle. There would have been no President Carter without Rosalynn, and that truth became self-evident as I sat so close to them, mentally re-editing my Holy Trinity to reflect this change—Rosalynn and Jimmy, Sir David Attenborough, and Dolly.
Then to my surprise, we were encouraged to take pictures with the couple after the event. What a time it was before Covid when you could stand right next to 90+ year-old national treasures with no protection! We were at least instructed not to touch them. We went up one by one or in couples or groups, however we came. I noticed groups stood around the couple, pairs stood on either side, but every individual person stood next to Jimmy. I decided to stand next to Rosalynn, and she seemed so shocked and ‘touched’ as I approached her side, that she touched me! So that’s how it came to be that I received that special blessing from her.
Looking Back
Thomas Jefferson was wrong thinking it was all about the words. The miracles are just as, if not more, important. Jimmy’s accidental ‘gospel of Google’ was immaterial to my experience, while being in that space had changed me profoundly.
I have experienced that feeling since then. First with the person who was to become my Covid boyfriend (may we all remember who we were with at that time). It was in the before times, and we were in my adorable and colorful kitchen—well designed to hold higher states of consciousness, I might add. We were discussing some now forgotten spiritual topic and both becoming pretty excited and animated about it. And then I felt it. “It’s back,” I thought. Whatever ‘it’ was started to fill the space, until I could feel the whole kitchen was full of it. Since then it has come back many times, when I’ve been with a friend or client where sincere discussion causes us to stumble onto a particularly profound truth. And then I can feel the space around me vibrate with a new lightness, time appears to be frozen, us suspended in this special place where only helpful thought and words are admitted.
I have since gone on to read the unabridged gospels, as well as countless other texts from many different spiritual traditions. In doing so, I’ve come to see that the mystics of all faiths often echo the same profound truths, each in their own language. But it happens to be Jesus who said, “Where two or more are gathered in my name, I will be among them.” Whether you call it, the essence remains the same—a sacred presence that transcends labels and beliefs.
The Graduation of Jimmy Carter
December, 29th 2024
Over the past couple months, I’ve been slowly reading Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. The book had given me some FOMO regarding my non-existent guru-disciple relationship. I recognize the challenges of such a path in modern America, where the role of guru has often been perverted—sometimes literally. And let’s be real, my natural temperament makes it impossible for me to actually truly follow any living person.
Still, Yogananda’s words have impressed upon me the importance of being in the presence—at last once—of a sacred being or spiritual master. Just their presence, he writes, we can transform your consciousness. I even found myself lamenting this to my own witch during our last session of the year, confessing how much I yearned for such an experience.
Then, upon hearing of Jimmy Carter’s passing—or rather, his graduation from this earthly incarnation—I suddenly realized that this had already happened for me. Sitting in that little church in Plains, Georgia, I had already been in the presence of enlightened masters. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter had bestowed a blessing upon me, one I failed to fully recognize at the time but feel profoundly now. There was a transformation their presence sparked within me. That sacred energy I’ve since felt with increasing frequency began there, with them.
The author of this post is delightfully dyslexic, so please forgive and perhaps let them know at monika@spacewitch.com about any mistakes you see. Thank you.
I love everything about this. My grandmother loved Jimmy Carter and I have always admired him and the relationship he and Rosalyn had. So much beauty in two people.
A beautiful story Monika. Thanks for sharing,