In response to the post Thought for the Day: These Small Hours, a song by Matchbox 20's Rob Thomas, reader Mary H. shares the name of another beautiful song by artist Sarah McLachlan. The song, Ordinary Miracle, is from the Charlotte's Web movie soundtrack and for Mary -- and me too -- it evokes an inspiring live-for-the-moment type of message.

Think about this:

It's not that usual when everything is beautiful
It's just another ordinary miracle today

The sky knows when its time to snow
You don't need to teach a seed to grow
It's just another ordinary miracle today

Life is like a gift they say
Wrapped up for you everyday
Open up and find a way
To give some of your own

Isn't it remarkable?
Like every time a raindrop falls
It's just another ordinary miracle today

Birds in winter have their fling
And always make it home by spring
It's just another ordinary miracle today

When you wake up everyday
Please don't throw your dreams away
Hold them close to your heart
Cause we are all a part
Of the ordinary miracle

Ordinary miracle
Do you want to see a miracle?

Its seems so exceptional
Things just work out after all
It's just another ordinary miracle today

The sun comes up and shines so bright
It disappears again at night
It's just another ordinary miracle today

It's just another ordinary miracle today

Cancer goes on. So does life. Just ask Mary Ann O'Rourke, author of a beautiful essay about her two sons, a baseball game, a redecorating project, and a little thing called breast cancer.

The essay, titled My cancer, and me, go on, will warm your heart.

Think about this:

About boys:

On a misty June morning I tell the boys.

"Guys, I have some bad news," I say, as we walk down Valley Road.

They stop, wait for me to catch up.

"I have breast cancer," I say.

Jack flashes me a steely look. He's the mathematician, the calculating one who likes order. Things aren't adding up.

"It's OK, though." I say. "I have good doctors taking care of me. I'll have to get sick to get better, but I'll be fine after that."

With lowered heads, the boys hold a polite and deferential silence. We continue our walk.

"Jack, you wanna build a fort?" Joe asks.

"No, Joe," Jack replies. "We're playing baseball, remember?"

About baseball:

Sunny and 70 degrees, a gentle breeze is blowing in from Lake Michigan as we settle into our bleacher seats. My husband, Leo, passes down two Cokes, a beer and a Wrigley Field visor to protect me from the sun.

The Cubs lead in the ninth inning when Milwaukee's left fielder cranks one over our heads onto Sheffield Avenue to bring in the winning run for the Brewers. Jack and Joe lean over the railing and watch Sammy Sosa shake his head in disgust.

The beer tastes bitter. I had started chemotherapy a week earlier.

About redecorating:

I'm drawn to a loose seam of wallpaper in the corner of the room. I peel off a long, satisfying swath. I move from panel to panel, stripping all that comes easy. I feel the wall, scrape with my fingernails, yank hard and viscously, over and over.

I'm learning the sad truth about wallpaper. The battle is not so much with the paper, as it is with the glue underneath. Even with DIF, the paste comes off slowly, in tiny wads of goo. I scrape feverishly, angrily at one stubborn patch. As I gouge the wall, the razor pops out of my hand, flips upside down and slices my right wrist.

About breast cancer:

It's been 31⁄2 years since my diagnosis.

On a frigid February morning, with a cup of coffee in one hand, I climb the ladder to Joe's bunk bed.

"C'mon honey," I nudge. "We gotta work on those spelling words."

I place a soft pillow behind my moppy morning hair.

Joe slowly comes to life.

"PROCEED," he mumbles. "P-R-O-C-E-E-D."

As he rattles off words, I sip my coffee and bask in the warmth of his room.

Frost outside the window sparkles in the morning sun. A pirate ship poster wilts from the vapors of Joe's fish tank. My carefully planned navy-amber-white color scheme clashes with his Civil War map and his Kansas City Chiefs pennant.

The gouge in the wall warms my heart, and I reach under the blanket to squeeze Joe's toes.

An Arkansas woman claiming the hormone replacement drug Prempro caused her breast cancer just won her legal battle against Wyeth, the maker of the drug.

Mary Daniel was awarded $1 million in compensatory damages thanks to a Philadelphia jury decision stating Wyeth acted with malice or reckless disregard for selling Prempro -- the drug Daniels took for 16 months to relieve hot flashes. The next step for Daniels, whose husband will receive $500,000, is a hearing to consider punitive damages.

Wyeth's lawyer argues that Prempro -- a combination of estrogen and progestin -- is still prescribed to women and suggests Daniel's breast cancer was caused by other risk factors, such as family history of the disease.

Soap opera actress Darlene Conley, best known for playing Sally Spectra for the past 20 years on The Bold and the Beautiful, lost her battle with cancer over the weekend. She was 72.

Conley, who was diagnosed with stomach cancer just three months ago, also played characters on Days of our Lives and General Hospital -- and many knew her as black market baby broker Rose DeVille onThe Young and the Restless.

Before embarking on a daytime career, Conley made appearances in movies The Birds and Valley of the Dolls and on television shows such as Murder, She Wrote, Cagney & Lacey, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Photographs tell powerful stories. They depict people and objects and landscapes and emotions in deep, meaningful ways. They capture permanent visual representations of moments in life. They paint pictures that even the most well-crafted words could not reproduce.

When Mary Ann Nilan was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 at the age of 40, she knew her story must be told -- through pictures. So she asked a photographer to record it all, stating, "I hope the pictures make the road easier for other women." The rest is history.

She calls it a photo essay and titles it The Diary of Healing. For 17 frames -- with photographs dominating each space and text kept to a minimum -- Nilan shares her journey that began with the discovery of breast cancer in both breasts and several lymph nodes, the journey that took her through chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, and reconstruction with implants.

Her photographs document significant stops on her physical and emotional trek. They show her bald head, the wig she wore only once and then let hang on a hook, the scars that crossed her flat chest after surgery, an injection of saline that painfully pierced the skin of her new breasts, her children measuring her hair as it grows in after chemotherapy. The photographs are both hopeful and chilling. They are breast cancer. They are more than words could ever capture.

If you are a Tom Hanks fan -- and who isn't -- if you enjoyed reading the Da Vinci Code -- and who didn't -- if you plan on seeing the movie based on the book -- and many will be going to the theater to see this anticipated blockbuster movie -- and if you are into collecting memorabilia -- then I want to tell you about an eBay auction that went live today. Hanks donated a signed personal copy of the Da Vinci Code book he used while filming the movie to support the Macmillan Cancer Support cancer charity.

According to the folks at Macmillan Cancer Support, last September, IKEA Edinburgh store at Straiton invited Tom Hanks to their coffee morning, as part of Macmillan Cancer Support's World's Biggest Coffee Morning, as he was filming the Da Vinci Code at nearby Rosslyn Chapel. Unable to attend himself, he kindly sent his bodyguard with not only apologies but a signed personal copy of the book.

The highest bidder in the eBay auction will win this celebrity signed book that has sparked both interest and controversy around the Holy Grail mythology. The auction runs from May 19 - 29 with all proceeds going to Macmillan Cancer Support.

In March, we introduced you to Maddox Johnson, a little boy battling non-hodgkins T-Cell Lymphoblastic Lymphoma. To help his parents pay for his medical expenses, Maddox decided to create art and auction the work on eBay.

Goldenpalace.com, known for making unusual eBay purchases and launching unique and unusual advertising campaigns, placed the winning bid for Maddox's current eBay artwork auction, by paying more than $2,873 dollars for the watercolors.

Goldenpalace.com is not shy about admitting it becomes involved in eBay auctions guaranteed to make the news. Past  eBay purchases have included actor William Shatner's kidney stone and a grilled cheese sandwich with the image of the Virgin Mary. The Goldenpalace.com purchase of Maddox's artwork will surely raise public awareness for a seven-year-old boy fighting cancer and helping to pay for his chemotherapy treatments with his artwork.

Photo: Maddox arm-wrestling his physician. Maddox is winning!

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. -- Shakespeare.

For Sonia, Alicia, Gloria, Maria -- women of deep religious faith who made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Guadalupe in Mexico City -- the visit was miraculous. Blanca Crovetto-Avancena arranged the Pasos de Esperanza, or Steps of Hope ten-mile walk the women took to the basilica. She runs the weekly San Francisco East Bay Spanish-speaking women's emotional and social support group for Latina women living with cancer. Crovetto-Avancena said the visit has lifted the spirits of these women trying to survive cancer and given each of them a remarkable sense of renewed hope.

In the feature article, Latina women 'cured' on pilgrimage, Crovetto-Avancena said that "while Americans organize fundraisers with walk-a-thons and marathons, those types of events are not part of the Latin American culture. But praying to the Virgin Mary at the place where she is said to have appeared in Mexico holds great significance."

Knowing this, she came up with the idea of arranging the pilgrimage as a way for Latinas to raise money for the support group that would also provide personal spiritual benefit for the women. All four women have reported great improvement in the way they feel. Sonia said, "Right now, nothing hurts. I don't feel that aching anymore that I felt when I left." Alicia said, "I feel cured spiritually, mentally and physically." To read more about the trip, go here.