Magic

Since I have started this new job as a group facilitator for seniors, I have been run off my feet. The work itself is not tiring. In fact, it’s when I’m able to do the work that I can slow down and be filled with life. It’s all the other things that get in the way of my work. Politics, lack of process and not having enough people paper-pushing is what is having me run off my feet. I have only been in the role for three months and haven’t worked out the balance of life and work yet. I suppose that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to start this site: I need to do art. I need to create, to play with words and dabble in story. And keeping to some sort of schedule has helped me switch mindsets and to come present to the pieces of my downtime that give me life. But the more I think about what activities actually give me life, the more I realize that the root of this life-givenness is in magic.

Last week my partner and I went to the theatrical performance of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. To say the least, it was phenomenal and the audience was consistently blown away by the theatrics, not just of the actors, but of the set. Without giving it away, there are things that happened on this stage I thought you could only see in a Hollywood movie. It was magical. And as I sat there over the course of the 6 hour production, I kept looking around at the audience and found myself in awe of why humans are so drawn to magic. And when I say magic, I don’t just mean whatever’s synonymous to the world of Harry Potter, but to the awe of the unknown which, to me, is synonymous to magic. And as I laid down on my yoga mat tonight with a candle lit, listening to a singing bowl, I felt the same oneness of awe and wonder as I did in that theatre. The beauty in the unexplained, in a story that is so tantalizing and unbelievable is what allows me to enter into the strangeness and audacity of deep-rooted truth.

But this magic doesn’t need to be induced by lining up a series of candles or dropping a few hundred dollars to go to the theatre, the opera or a warm, sandy beach. This magic starts first and foremost within ourselves. The very fact that you are able to read these words. The very mystery that you are able to take that breath in and breath out. And the wonder that your heart is able to beat without every willing it to fill your body with luminous oxygen. It is all magic. We are of magic. And, by God, it’s beautiful.

And I think some people know this better than others. Over half of our clients at work are Holocaust survivors. Some of which have witnessed the murder of their own families and somehow were able to escape. And now these very people are well into their 90’s. Whenever I hear one of their stories, it is, without exception, always followed by their love and adoration of Australia. Melbourne holds the largest population of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel and, besides the fact that it was probably the furthest possible place from Europe, the other reason why holocaust survivors found their way here is because it promised a new land with new opportunity. A place where their dreams could be lived and where they could experience dignity, life and beauty after being deprived of it for so long. So when I am able to create a 60 minute program that allows them to finally use their Hebrew or practice Kabbalistic prayer, I am able to enter into a glimmer of what it might mean for them to be in this country and to still be alive. I am able to enter into the magic and madness of a world that is so painfully brutal and unbelievably gorgeous. These people carry these two realities in them constantly and, for me, I don’t know how they do it. I don’t understand how they can keep going and how they have been able to keep going throughout their whole lives.

And perhaps this is the most breathtaking magic there is: holding the seemingly contrasting dualities of this world and choosing to be present to both, not letting one or the other determine the direction of our lives. But to simply hold and be present to both. To breathe in. To breathe out. To cry. To laugh. To be stricken with anger. To make love. To be endlessly heart-broken. To light candles. To pray. To break bread and drink wine. To breathe in and breathe out again and again. And to know that all of this, all of it moves us in the way towards the mystery and the magic of the One.