Miracles are everywhere, really. You just have to notice them. Consider the people you love and all the circumstances that must have happened in just a particular way to bring you into each other’s life. Consider all the moments that have led you to right where you are today. All the twists and turns, and forks in the roads. Survival, alone, is a bit of a miracle when you think about it.

Consider this wedding dress:

It was handmade by the bride out of the parachute that saved her husband during WWII. As stated by the curators at the Smithsonian where the dress is now housed:

This wedding dress was made from a nylon parachute that saved Maj. Claude Hensinger during World War II.

In August 1944, Hensinger, a B-29 pilot, and his crew were returning from a bombing raid over Yowata, Japan, when their engine caught fire. The crew was forced to bail out. Suffering from only minor injuries, Hensinger used the parachute as a pillow and blanket as he waited to be rescued. He kept the parachute that had saved his life. He later proposed to his girlfriend Ruth in 1947, offering her the material for a gown.

Ruth wanted to create a dress similar to one in the movie Gone with the Wind. She hired a local seamstress, Hilda Buck, to make the bodice and veil. Ruth made the skirt herself; she pulled up the strings on the parachute so that the dress would be shorter in the front and have a train in the back. The couple married July 19, 1947. The dress was also worn by the their daughter and by their son’s bride before being gifted to the Smithsonian.

To Walt Whitman, everything was a miracle. You just needed the right eyes to see it that way. Consider his Poem of Perfect Miracles:

REALISM is mine, my miracles,

Take all of the rest—take freely—I keep
but my own—I give only of them,

I offer them without end—I offer them to you
wherever your feet can carry you, or your
eyes reach.

 

Why! who makes much of a miracle?

As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward
the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in
the edge of the water,

Or stand under trees in the woods,

Or talk by day with any one I love—or sleep in
the bed at night with any one I love,

Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother,

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of an
August forenoon,

Or animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds—or the wonderfulness of insects in the
air,

Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down—or of
stars shining so quiet and bright,

Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new-
moon in May,

Or whether I go among those I like best, and that
like me best—mechanics, boatmen, farmers,

Or among the savans—or to the soiree—or to
the opera,

Or stand a long while looking at the movements
of machinery,

Or behold children at their sports,

Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or
the perfect old woman,

Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to
burial,

Or my own eyes and figure in the glass,

These, with the rest, one and all, are to me
miracles,

The whole referring—yet each distinct and in its
place.

 

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a
miracle,

Every inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is
spread with the same,

Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the
same;

Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs,
of men and women, and all that concerns
them,

All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

 

To me the sea is a continual miracle,

The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion
of the waves—the ships, with men in them
—what stranger miracles are there?