"Jerusalem the Golden, with Milk and Honey Blest"

Sometimes I get the dates mixed up. I know I was past five because that was the year I was in kindergarten in Tuckahoe, New York. It must have been very early in the following spring that my mother, brother, and I set out for the Azores to unite with my dad who was on a secret assignment there. It was the beginning of a dangerous time. Even the start of the journey with the ship sailing across a stormy Atlantic, with the possibility of u-boats stalking, was worrisome. My mother remembered jokingly that we had only been on the island a few months when I told the soldiers who visited how I was going to be "sick," meaning that I was going to be having my sixth birthday soon but already, there was something growing on my vocal chords and my voice was husky. I felt well and happy romping around with our cocker spaniel and exploring the old stone fort behind our house. However, the medic at the nearby army base who examined my throat flatly refused to operate. He said he was only equipped to patch up the wounded on the planes which refueled there. He did know of a fine surgeon in Jerusalem, a Russian Jew in hiding. Maybe we could locate him. Was there a possibility of going to Jerusalem? My poor mother! They didn't know about anti-anxiety pills in those days. She had only Camel cigarettes and vino. This story is so long, it would take a couple of months of blobs to tell you all the in's and out's, to cover the geography and the intrigues. I offer this nutshell version in order to show you why miracles are a given for me. Yes, during dangerous time, 1944-48, we took a troop plane which was downed in Casablanca and then a train to Cairo. We found the doctor in Jerusalem and met with him at regular intervals to practice the operation. He used a form of surgery which I can only call a symbiotic sort of hypnosis. I see it all so clearly even now: the little girl sitting on a stool, still as a statue (is this why I love statues?) no anesthesia, while her brother recites a poem and the doctor says a prayer in Hebrew. My voice was saved in the city I most wanted to see, the "holy city," because by then I was a believer in the Prince of Peace who once shared bread in an upper room off a dark alley. And I concluded that my voice was saved in order for me to sing and to tell stories. My mother, who couldn't bring herself to believe in God, believed in what she called, "Christine's miracles." She accompanied me to see all the places I longed to see: despite waiting for the clearing of landmines, we ventured to Bethlehem. Despite the barbed wire detours, she saw me playing the part of an angel in the parochial school pageant. She said of all the places she had traveled, Jerusalem was her favorite and clearly a miracle had gotten our family there. That was neither the first miracle nor the last; there was a procession of them. People question me, "Why don't you doubt? What is the source of your unshakable faith?" I can conjecture and tell of the missionary who comforted my mother during my difficult birthing by singing, "Jerusalem the golden with milk and honey blest." I can quote Scriptures. "Suffer the little children to come unto me." I can give other reasons but I think it simply comes down to the fact that I was a child and when I heard that message, I went on an expedition of discovery to find this child advocate who came into the world as a baby and changed it that very night. What happened next is the story of my life.

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...may you become as little children and find the miracles they find around every corner and beyond the stars...