An interesting story (religious, but I post it due to the unexpected motif)

[Kyriakos]

A few days ago I learned of this story, which is from the life of a monk who died only a few years ago - and has been canonized as a saint.
He is certainly very famous, but I wasn't aware of this anecdote, which did impress me due to its tone and type of resolution.
According to the witnesses, he once visited a boy that had lost the ability to move and was confined to a wheelchair. After the monk touched his legs, the boy stood up and walked for a few minutes, but then returned to the wheelchair and again could not move.
The monk said that this miracle was done to show how easy it is for god to cure the boy - and that it is the deity's will that people are saved through learning of the miracle, which rests on the return of immobility.

I found this development, narrative-wise, very interesting. All that happened decades ago, the (then) boy died, at 51(the story is at the core of a book published after he died). Imo regardless of whether one has faith or not, it is a rather striking twist and in that regard I found it worth sharing

 

[Gori the Grey]

and that it is the deity's will that people are saved through learning of the miracle, which rests on the return of immobility.

Don't follow the logic here.

 

[Kyriakos]

Don't follow the logic here.

That if it was a cure, people wouldn't believe it, perhaps after a while not even the boy would think of it as a miracle (?) , whereas now they would hear of it as a momentary and unexplained recovery. To a degree there is something of the prorsus credibile est etc, but far more personalized and also cruel.

 

[Birdjaguar]

How about a link?

 

[Gori the Grey]

but far more personalized and also cruel.

but then the monk is crazy, b/c insofar as the miracle is a testament to the existence of God, it's of a cruel god.

 

[Kyriakos]

but then the monk is crazy, b/c insofar as the miracle is a testament to the existence of God, it's of a cruel god.

It is imo more of the sense that god cannot be understood in terms of the world etc - which was of course there since at least Parmenides. Maybe in orthodox christianity it can be said that it takes at times a more resigned tone than in catholicism - let alone protestantism.
If this had been a typical story about a wonder, I wouldn't post it - I think it has a peculiar and (to me at least) from a literary point charming (and not darkly charming, as I focus on the plot as if it wasn't a reported 'miracle') quality.
It can also perhaps be poignant that the cover of the book which has this story, is of the 'boy', much later in his life - who looks gloomy and resigned to his fate.

 

[Thera32]

Another cope lie from the Catholic? church, making vague assertion's with no actual evidence, nothing new, like religious people asking to make a fake piece of noah's ark and claiming it was real, claiming the Turin shroud is real despite dating showing it was from 1200, claiming it was repaired by some magical lost weaving techniques.
Wouldn't take anything religious without a HUGE grain of salt, it's all just "believe hard enough and they'll happen for real and if they don't you're not believing hard enough!", but believers seem hardwired to believe anything if it lines up with what they already believe in without a shred of evidence.
.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yes, that is imo likely. But I only posted for the literary aspect - it's not like I could remove the religious one and keep the other ^^
Religion/belief does create some unique situations, at the very least from a psychological angle. A very short story that has such is Tolstoy's "The three Old Men", about some monks in an island in the White Sea.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Well I'm convinced.

 

[warpus]

Imagine if Jesus did something like this

"Jesus, thank you for bringing Lazarus back from the dead.. However.. It appears he has died again, mere minutes after you brought him back"

"SURPRISE! Now nobody will forget this miracle" Jesus walks away into the sunset

 

[Kyriakos]

Yes, but if this had the format of the typical "miracle" story, it wouldn't be memorable at all
Imo it is notable for literary reason. I didn't post it as a religious topic.

 

[warpus]

Yes, but if this had the format of the typical "miracle" story, it wouldn't be memorable at all
Imo it is notable for literary reason. I didn't post it as a religious topic.

That's the thing, IMO a miracle works way better if it happens and isn't undone.

Perhaps the undoing works as a literary device in some way that makes more sense in another language? Or in some other context?

The way I see it, if the undoing was that powerful as a storytelling device, it'd be a lot more common. But 99% of the time when it's a story about a miracle, it either happens or it doesn't, I don't seem to remember any such stories of "It happened and was undone so that you'd remember better". I'm not buying it, IMO it only makes more sense with more context somehow.

 

[Kyriakos]

That's the thing, IMO a miracle works way better if it happens and isn't undone.

Perhaps the undoing works as a literary device in some way that makes more sense in another language? Or in some other context?

The way I see it, if the undoing was that powerful as a storytelling device, it'd be a lot more common. But 99% of the time when it's a story about a miracle, it either happens or it doesn't, I don't seem to remember any such stories of "It happened and was undone so that you'd remember better". I'm not buying it, IMO it only makes more sense with more context somehow.

I think this is complicated by the fact that it wasn't presented as a story, but something that supposedly happened - while I am only sharing it as if it was originally written as a story.
For the latter case, imo there is nothing to make it memorable if the miracle remained - say you read in a fantasy novel that someone was cured and no longer was ill, and they claimed some religious person cured them; it's not a memorable story at all, in certain types of fiction miracles do happen. Likewise, of course if we were to take it as real, a miracle would impress regardless (but it would also depend on how many would believe it actually happened etc; trying to explain a possible logic, I argued that maybe the idea was that given enough time even the boy would stop believing it was a miracle).
But with the miracle happening and then being cancelled, it leaves a lot of room for interpretation (for example, that this implies a cruel or aloof deity). I think it's reasonably close to the 'credibile est quia ineptum est' motif.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Meh. It's not great as a story either. Return of the Status Quo Ante.

 

[Kyriakos]

At any rate, it would be difficult to argue it is worse as a story than having the miracle simply happen and continue - because that's just boring
Although looking for more sources about this anecdote, it doesn't even seem that there are that many - just republications of the same in a few places (and the book), so it may well be fake itself...

 

[Gori the Grey]

At any rate, it would be difficult to argue it is worse as a story than having the miracle simply happen and continue - because that's just boring

I don't think so.

In a story, we want our protagonist to move to some new state.

Not just come back to the very place he started out from.

 

[amadeus]

In a story, we want our protagonist to move to some new state.

Easiest: Rhode Island

Hardest: Hawaii

 

[Theov]

I find it amazing that gods never leave a trace of proof. Astonishing how they do that.

 

[amadeus]

I find it amazing that gods never leave a trace of proof. Astonishing how they do that.

If man can command God, then who is God?

 

[Gori the Grey]

Famous works of literature as rewritten by the Kyriakos method:

One day Gregor Samsa awoke to find he was a bug. But a little while later, he turned back to a human. So, you know, no worries.

In a village in La Mancha, a certain gentleman read so many chivalric romances that he began to imagine that he was a knight errant. But then he got a good nap and went back to the management of his estate.

The Achilliad, or Life Here among the Maidens of Skyros.

Spring Term at Wittenberg U: "Hey guys, you'll never guess what happened to me over winter vacation: The ghost of my father visited me telling me he'd been murdered. Anyway, which frat has the kegger this weekend?

Midway along our journey through this wood,
I woke to find myself in a dark wood;
I'm growing old here in this darkened wood.