It's Magic!

“If I were to begin life again, I should want it as it was. I would only open my eyes a little more.” Jules Renard

There is a lot to life about seeing and not seeing, feeling and not feeling, being and not being.

It is my habit to turn my cell phone to vibrate when I am in church or meeting with someone, or when not disturbing others is the polite thing to do. When I’ve silenced my phone, I sometimes feel vibrations where there are none. They are called “phantom vibrations” and they are not caused by the phone. Rather, it is a trick of the mind, and a reflection of how compulsive I am – so attached to my phone (and my need to be “in touch”) that I can perceive the phone doing something it is actually not doing.

We are told to trust our senses, and yet I have learned over the years that we cannot always believe what we see and what we hear. When a magician performs a trick, we know we are facing an optical illusion or sensory deception. The hand truly is quicker than the eye.

I watched a gambler with five dice declare that he would shake the dice under a standard dice cup and the total of dots face up would be six or fewer. He then scooped the dice into the cup on the table, did a magic shake, and when he lifted the cup the dice were all stacked into a single column with a five- spot facing up.

I don’t know how he did it, but there is science behind what he did and a TON of practice.

Science is a good thing. I don’t think I would know a thing about spirituality or faith if I didn’t have the laws of nature and the rules of the universe holding things together in the world around me. Those things don’t supersede the spiritual life (or prove or disprove the existence of God), but they do allow me to remain grounded well enough that while gravity keeps my feet planted on the turf, my soul can soar with the One who gives us both turf and gravity. That’s a good thing, as far as I’m concerned.

In the normal work-a-day world, we don’t need to worry about magic or deception, but we do need to be aware of their presence – not so much in the world around us, but the world within. That’s where I find the phantom menace runs silent – runs deep.

In the external world, I KNOW there is magic and deception. I don’t watch television advertisements because I know the goal of the advertiser is to deceive and mislead. I know a pill won’t clear up my vision THAT much; I know a bucket of booze won’t make me THAT cool, attractive, or athletic; I know one candidate is NOT as evil as his opponent paints him, or as good as his election committee claims he is. So I ignore all such sensory input.

But it isn’t the external world with which I need to be concerned, but the internal world; that is where the real war is waged and the genuine battles are fought.

It’s seldom hard to know what the right thing to say and do is, but I often resist doing or saying the right things. I know kind words will put out a fire, yet my ego demands its pound of flesh and a retribution the other deserves. Experience teaches me that the law of tooth and nail simply leads to bloody nubs and toothless scowls, and yet I would rather continue the fight than to admit the wrong.

And so, in the end, I have to face the fact that I can’t, but God can; I won’t, but God will; and that has made all the difference. I turn my life and my will over to the One who holds title to my life, and whose will is far wiser, gentler, and more loving than mine ever would be, or ever could be.

So I call a truce; I slow down, open my eyes a little bit more and I pray: “God, I can’t; you can; help me let you bring peace in this, our valley.” Amen.