How there are so many shades of expressions in English that I don't even think about. Then you ask a question, and I realize it isn't such a simple thing at all.

There was a play called The Miracle Worker. It was about Helen Keller. She was blind and deaf and simply wild in her behavior. Her teacher, Anne Keller, was the Miracle Worker. She took Ellen from a wild girl to a happy calm girl who began to understand language. Actually, at least according to the play, she first began to understand language when water was running over her hand as the teacher signaled the Braille word for language.

A Miracle Worker would refer to someone who has done a spectacular job. I could say that you are a miracle worker, Normand, because even when you are traveling all over the place, you somehow keep up with your translations.

A miracle worker of sorts isn't quite the same as a sort of miracle worker. A miracle worker of sorts would mean, to my understanding, a varied kind of miracle worker, or another. A sort of miracle worker would be not quite a full-fledged miracle worker.

About God, again to the way I see it, God creates miracles. I don't think we would say that He is a miracle worker, although He is. It's just not good enough expression to apply to God. Miracle worker is a kind of pedestrian expression.

Is it clear, dear one?

Once again I thank you for posting your question.

Dear Normand,

I translated that sentence in Dutch :

Ben je niet zelf ook een soort wonderdoener? , which means Are you not a kind of miracle worker yourself?

But reading your question and the answers, could it not be that is meant that we are a miracle of species, due to all the things our body can do?

I don't whether this helps, and will wait for the answer.....

from heart to heart, namasté, Anneke

Isn't it strange how words that seem self-evident in meaning, aren't. Taking Gloria's example of Helen Keller, if someone had walked up to her and laid their hands on her, and all of a sudden she could see and hear and speak fluently, most people would regard that as a miracle, and the person thru whom this happened would be regarded as a miracle worker.

But for someone to cause an unruly child, or a class full of unruly children, to sit quietly and listen, this might be referred to as working a miracle when it obviously wasn't, a tongue-in-cheek comment giving everyone a smile or a chuckle. I think that is what God is doing here, making a playful, tongue-in-cheek comment about turning water into solid pieces, and then turning those solid pieces back into water.

Obviously this is not what we would call an actual miracle, and so God refers to it as a miracle worker OF SORTS. You could also say SORT OF a miracle worker, or as Gloria and Anneke point out, KIND OF a miracle worker. It's a little joke, not one to fall down on the floor pounding your fists, but just a little smile because you have called something ordinary as if it was extraordinary. A bit of an exaggeration for effect. And yet, water in itself, if studied enough, is quite miraculous, and so there is an element of reality that makes the joke a bit more sophisticated.

The word SORT implies that you have taken a collection of something and divided it out into different categories. This is called SORTING it out. Sometimes the categories overlap and it is not clear where something goes. You could sort out the words in a paragraph and end up with nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on. You might have a verb that is acting as a noun. Is it a verb or a noun? Well, it's sort of a noun. Or kind of a noun. Or a noun of sorts. The different word order takes a slightly different form for sort/sorts for no logical reason. That's just how we say it.

SORT OF or OF SORTS implies that something doesn't exactly fit into a particular category. Teaching Helen Keller to read is sort of a miracle. Teaching ordinary kids to read might require a certain skill but wouldn't be regarded as sort of a miracle. It happens all the time. It might help to regard SORT OF as an idiom, an expression that means more than it's parts taken separately. Essentially meaning KIND OF or A TYPE OF. No idea of mediocre involved but possibly the idea of lesser. A subcategory.

Too many words, Normand, but if you are still confused, please say so. It seems like expressions that most people think of as self-evident are often the hardest ones to pin down.

Gloria, unless you have the final word in this enterprise it doesn't make sense, altho I'm sure you would say that God has the ultimate final word.

Normand, yes, those distinctions occur in English too. I imagine that most people who have actual miracles occur thru them would be quick to say that they cannot "do" anything, it is God who does the miracle. And most people who would refer to themselves as miracle workers would be suspect of either trickery or using forces not coming from God.

It isn't important that "worker" be translated literally, just as "miracle" isn't being used literally here. Whatever would work in French to give the idea of someone who is able to accomplish something extraordinarily difficult, like teaching a blind and deaf person to communicate, without any implication of magic.

You say that in French you would say that Jesus accomplished miracles. Maybe that is your solution. Is there a way you could say that Jesus was a miracle accomplisher in French? If so, then maybe changing slightly the sentence you offer you could say in French "Are you not a little miracle accomplisher in your own way?"

We have - in our common language - peace workers, in so-called spiritual circles, light workers, we have aid workers, we have workers in the vineyard of the Lord. Why not miracle workers?

God says, when we are absorbed with water, that is, when we are absorbed with the miracle of water, we have an occasion for joy then, we have an occasion to work with the miracle of water, we have an occasion to translate or to convert or to reset or to transplant the miracle of the energy of water. When we drink water, the miracle of the energy of water translates into a miracle in our body, into a miracle of refreshed energy in our body. So, drinking is one way of working with the miracle of water.

Another way of working with the miracle of water is melting ice cubes. Which is, as God says and as we are invited to see it with His eyes, producing miracles.

Creating miracles is - pronounced in the terms of the world - a common, a daily matter among humans, we are not used to pay particular attention to it.

Being translators of languages or not, we are engendering miracles, while being occupied with water, while being absorbed with words, with breathing, with stretching and so on.

Are we not a miracle worker of sorts on our own?

Theophil