Last summer, or maybe the summer before, we had a bear death in my area. A bear dragged a young boy out of a tent one night while his family was sleeping, and took him into the woods. They found the child's partial remains the next day. They also tracked the bear, and killed it. A necropsy revealed human tissue in its stomach. The event was doubly sad as the same bear had broken into another tent earlier in the evening, looking for food. The young couple had alerted rangers, but no one thought the bear would come back, so the people camping in the area didn't know to be on the watch for rogue bears. A warning might have saved the boy's life. And it might not. We'll never really know for certain.
When it happened, they rehashed it over and over on the nightly news. One night, they interviewed an elderly gentleman whose granddaughter was also taken by a bear back in the mid-90s. Her life was saved because her grandfather, the gentleman in the interview, followed the bear. He fought for the girl's life with the only tool he had on hand--a big, large-cased plastic flashlight. In the interview, he related how the light broke, and how he continued, desperately, to jab at the bear with the plastic pieces in one hand, while clinging to the screaming girl with the other. He ended the interview by saying it was surely a miracle that she was spared. He was very clear in stating that God had intervened. I turned to my mother, who was also watching the interview, and I said, "Bullshit." My mother asked what I meant, and I explained that that was no miracle, or rather, there was no divine intervention. The man had managed to save his granddaughter because he acted quickly, and thought to grab something heavy as he left the campsite, and because he simply wouldn't stop hitting the bear about the face until the bear let go of the girl. If there was a miracle that night, it was one of his own making.
Which brings me to the Islamic lion in Turkey, who gets up in the morning, before dawn, and the first Call to Prayer, and says "Allah" many times while aiming his head at the sky. I am not sure why it was such a hot topic while I was in Egypt, as the film from YouTube suggests that it happened several years ago. However, one thing I noticed in Egypt is that the nightly news, and the newspapers, are entirely devoid of what Western journalists would call "human interest" stories, and what I would call "the bullshit which pads out the rest of the news broadcast". Al-Jazeera, which is sort of the CNN or the BBC of the Arab world, is based in Cairo, and it has a regular broadcast every evening. However, the entire broadcast is full of the misery of life in the Muslim world--refugees fleeing the Swat valley, lives still disrupted by the conflict in Gaza, people still looking for their dead in Iraq. There's just so much bad news they don't have time to report on "fluff" stories, which is, perhaps, why it has taken so long for the Turkish lion to become a hit in Egypt. And he is, believe me, a hit. Ask a Muslim with an iPhone, or other device capable of storing a video clip, and chances are good they'll have it on their device. It's a bona fide miracle, and people are eager to talk about it, and about the implications of an animal calling out the name of God.
There's just one little catch, a catch I was polite enough not to mention while there. And if someone should talk to me about the lion now that I am back in the US, and I see the light of faith in miracles in their eyes, I won't mention it to them, either. The lion isn't saying, "Allah." He's vocalizing, to be sure, but it's a specific sound which big cats, including lions and tigers, make on a regular basis. As explained to me by the wife of the former head vet at our local zoo, it's the sound they make when they know it is about time to be fed. They are, essentially, saying they are hungry, and are ready for their food. (I used to work with the woman, and she's one of the neatest people I've ever met. The subject came up one day when we were working together, because I wondered why lions and tigers, which are very different animals, should make the same noise. She told me she was positive she knew the noise I was talking about, and that she was positive she knew what it meant, but that she'd check with her husband, the vet. A few days later, she confirmed that they make that noise around feeding time. Since animals at most zoos are fed on a regular schedule, you can generally hear the noise around feeding time. As the first big cats are fed, the rest get louder and louder, as the smell of blood tells them their meat is coming. Many thanks to Cindy for the explanation, wherever she may be now.) So, while the lion in the video is saying something, he is not actually praising God. The fact that he does it at the very same time every day, just before the sun rises, suggests that it's tied to another schedule. Unfortunately, that schedule is not the schedule for Muslim prayers. It's the feeding schedule for the big cats at his home zoo in Turkey.
I believe in a Divine Creator, but I must admit, that where others see a lion calling the name of God in Arabic, I see a lion who is ready to eat. Where others have seen the Virgin Mary, or the face of Christ, I have seen only a window with water spots, or a piece of toast or a potato chip. I know for a fact that the waters at Lourdes have healing properties. I also know for a fact that the Placebo Effect is real. (When I was studying medical transcription, I read of several studies where the results for the group given the placebo were almost as impressive as those for the group given the actual drug.) And I know that faith is a very powerful force. If a little blue pill made up of sugar and some bonding agent can cure someone of debilitating pain which they have suffered for years, why can faith in the restorative powers of sacred waters not do the same thing? To argue otherwise would, I fear, make me a fool.
So what then? Am I cut off entirely from the miraculous? Absolutely not. I do see miracles. It is a miracle when a pre-pubescent child pulls her younger sibling's lifeless body from the family pool and performs CPR long enough for the EMTs to get there and take over. It is a miracle when a trapped hiker finds the courage to sever his own arm and drag himself to safety. And it is a miracle when a pilot, realizing his plane has suffered a double bird strike, blowing out the engines, puts the plane down safely in a nearby river, saving all on the plane, and countless others on the ground.
Many may argue on the nature of its origin, but there is no denying we humans have a highly developed brain. I believe we are supposed to use it. Doing so can result in the miraculous.
