This is pt. 1 of a series:

• pt 1.  But I Bet You Can’t Explain THIS
• pt 2.  Math Really Is Cool, pt. III
• pr 3.  The Logic Of Ghosts
• pt. 4  How Can We Know That Anything Exists

I

Imagine that you are living in late 15th Century Italy.  The Renaissance is in full swing: all around you you are witnessing the rebirth of art, poetry, philosophy, and science in Europe.  These are exciting times.

One day, as you are resting quietly in your room, you are awakened by what sounds like a tumultuous gathering of people out in the streets.  You stumble to the window, and sure enough, a large crowd has gathered in the streets:  Some of the people are frightened, others are overtaken with joy, even tears; but they all seem to be staring at something in the sky.  So you decide to go outside and find out what’s going on.

You are absolutely astonished by what you see:  there are three suns in the sky!  they are surrounded by rainbows, and they form the sign of The Cross!  You fall to your knees in amazement.  You have not gone mad, your eyes are not deceiving to you; the whole town is witness!

The event brings to mind one of your close friend.  His name is Leonardo Da Vinci.  He is an extremely gifted painter and is becoming rather well known around all of Italy for his magnificent artwork and clever mechanical inventions.

Sadly, however, there seems to be something wrong with his mind.  He does not believe in miracles.  He believes in all sorts of crazy things: he believes that natural laws underlie unexplainable phenomena like the flight of birds, natural laws that man will some day harness and use to build machines that will allow him to fly.  He believes that fossils and sediments are not evidence of the great flood, but rather evidence of many generations of marine animals that once lived where there is now land.  He believes that the Earth is much older than a few thousand years, maybe even millions, and that mountains and seas and rivers form very slowly.  He refuses to eat animals, because he belives that they suffer the same as humans.  He believes that our bodies are like machines that can also be understood and studied.

He is quite mad.

So you run to his house and you bring him to the town square and you point to the cross in the sky, and you say “There! Do you see that!”

“My God!” he answers, astonished: “That is very strange!”

“So,” you ask him: “Can you explain me that?”

“No,” he says: “I must admit I can think of no explanation.  That is most baffling!”

“Aha!” you say: “So you admit it! There is no explanation for three suns to appear in the sky and form a cross! So now you see that it must be a miracle!”

But he says “No, of course not.  It is most intriguing, but I’m sure there is a rational explanation… I must investigate further.  I’m sure some day we will find an explanation for this.”

Now the two of you fall silent. Poor Leo, you think: So stubborn and unwilling to open his mind that even in the face of such an inexplicable event, he refuses to give up his wild notions.

II

“Miracles Of The Sun“ are among the most commonly reported miracles.  They have been documented throughout history, and have been interpreted as omens of impending doom, calls to battle, and countless other messages from the Spirit world.

In the 16th century, Jacob Hutter describes such a miracle of the sun:

My beloved children, I want to tell you that on the day after the departure of our brothers Kuntz and Michel, on a Friday, we saw three suns in the sky for a good long time, about an hour, as well as two rainbows. These had their backs turned toward each other, almost touching in the middle, and their ends pointed away from each other. And this I, Jakob, saw with my own eyes, and many brothers and sisters saw it with me. After a while the two suns and rainbows disappeared, and only the one sun remained. Even though the other two suns were not as bright as the one, they were clearly visible. I feel this was no small miracle[.]

Such events have even been caught on film:

Spooky stuff…

III

But of course, as it turns out, Leonardo was right to be skeptical.  (Or our hypothetical Leonardo, rather ).  Because within a few centuries, we would come to discover the natural laws behind the refraction and dispersion of light, the composition of our atmosphere, the presence of ice crystals… and soon enought these mystical rings and suns in the sky would finally be understood to be parhelia, or “sun dogs”.  Beautiful and sometimes spooky, but ruled by explainable natural laws none the less.

In fact, many would say, made even more beautiful once divested of the veil of mysticism and illuminated by the natural laws that rule them.

(To be continued…)