I do believe in Magic, I do, I do...!
A tree house at the Landscape Arboretum in Minnesota - Photo by Lisa Munkeby - follow her on instagram “Lmunkeby”
Something inside of me hungers for magic. It is a part of me that was dead for so many years. As a child, I felt this magic. I had the belief that something completely surprising, completely unexplainable, might happen any moment. I loved movies and stories with magic in them. My grandmother’s house had an old brass bed with bed knobs on each corner. Like the movie “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” I thought that if I turned these knobs I might fly away on this bed. I believed that there were unseen forces in the world creating magic and that if I looked closely I might be lucky enough to see it!
But some where along the way of growing up, …I gave it up.
As I look back on my life, in the what I would call the “dark years” of my life, when I was trapped in patterns, head down, and trudging through life - there was absolutely NO magic. If you asked me in my 20’s and 30’s if I believed in God, a higher power, or angels I would have said emphatically “no.” I had reduced my view of the world to just the material… the tasks, the results, the goals, the plans… devoid of mystery and magic. I had grown up and become “an adult.” If something happened in my life that defied the odds, I would simply catalog it as bizarre and mark it up to coincidence.
What I’ve noticed about my life now is how full of magic it is again!
For example, my partner and I had a hand-fasting ceremony a couple weeks ago, just a simple commitment ceremony from Earth-based spiritual traditions. The only prop we needed was a hand-fasting braid or knot. A month before we planned to do this, I ordered a Celtic hand-fasting braided knot from Edinburgh, Scotland. According to the shipping information the Celtic knot was put in the mail about 3 weeks before the date we planned to use it. However, as you might guess… it did not arrive. I waited and waited. I figured it most likely got lost in the mail. So Mike and I sat together and asked our helpful spiritual forces (our angels) to make the Celtic knot to arrive before the time needed. (he may have been humoring me… chuckle)
The day of the event, a special package showed up. The Celtic knot arrived just one hour and a half before it was needed! Just on time!
So, if we look at this from the pragmatic non-magical mindset, it is just a coincidence. But if we were a child, and we had wished upon magic that this package would show up on time, we would clap our hands in wonder and exclaim “Look! We did it! We did it! We got our wish! The angels helped us and brought us what we needed at just the perfect time!” The adults around us might just nod and pat our heads patronizingly and say “sure, sure, honey.”
To my credit, I did just that (sort of) - the child version - I burst into tears. It wasn’t just magic to me, it was a special message of support, a special message of love sent from our “angels” to us. It was them saying “of course, we are here, of course we are listening to what you ask for, and yes we love you and support you two.” It was magic, … to me.
The point isn’t whether our angels did intervene, the point is that I let myself feel the wonder of the moment. It’s our birthright to live with wonder and awe. Wonder and awe are states of our Spirit. We don’t have to give them up when we grow up. In fact, it’s just the opposite. We need them to live fully. Just like Peter Pan, a part of us is “like a child” forever. The mistake is to think being in this way IS childish. Living with wonder and magic is how we are supposed to be living here on Earth, letting ourselves feel the wonder at the things that arrive in our life at the absolute perfect time!
In the tale of Peter Pan, the audience is able to bring Tinker Bell back to life by clapping their hands and saying “I do believe in Fairies! I do! I do!” This is no coincidence (lol). Belief in magic does bring us back to life. The ability to witness and notice and acknowledge magic is a sign of us coming back to life! It’s a sign that we are opening to seeing the world in it’s truth, in it’s magical flow, in it’s divine beauty. and, frankly, it’s a hell of a lot more fun!
