The glass of juice I was drinking from was extremely wet from condensation. I had drawn a track of this moisture on the kitchen table and had placed the glass on the surface. With a slight touch of the glass, I marveled at the fact that the glass rode the slick surface for a distance of about five inches. A simple scientific stunt. But a stunner to a young child.
I wished to explain this to my teacher at the time, so when I had gotten to school I went to my teacher and remarked in the best wording I could muster: "Teacher, I made a wet 'r' and the glass moved!"
I remember the puzzled look on my kindergarten teacher's face and probably figured (even for a five-year old) that my teacher didn't understand the phenomenon that I had witnessed at my breakfast. I could only say, "I made a wet 'r' and the glass moved." As a kindergartener, I didn't have the vocabulary to explain; I knew nothing of the words "condensation," "moisture," or even "phenomenon." All I knew was that there was this slightly curved track of moisture that allowed my drinking glass to move a slight distance. But it was something remarkable to my young mind, and I wished to explain it all with a childish "I made a wet 'r' and the glass moved." But I grew up, gained the right words, and can easily explain what I had observed decades ago. Now, where is that teacher today?
In dealing with the miraculous, we often feel we lack a command of the situation to explain. Perhaps it is because in our intellectual vocabulary, we lack the adequacy of words, and not because we lose grip of the real. It is definitely a response to the Humian challenge of the miracle. Science cannot support it, but in time the right mode for understanding becomes available. Perhaps science becomes the impediment to a raised sense of awareness.
A mere thought, easily dismissed. But if we wed ourselves too much to the faith of scientism, we may lose too much.
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