Christmas Eve Magic
Karl, Maximus, Tiffany, Sage, Sarah and I took a moon and starlight walk earlier this evening. It was weird to have the luxury to engage in such an indulgence and enjoy the brilliant night sky. It brought back vivid memories of riding home in the back seat of my parents’ car after midnight mass on Christmas Eve, with my head leaning against the car window, staring up at the stars, yearning to see something magical streak across the sky.
I’ve always believed in magic. I might not see it very often, but I know it exists.
And not the magic that comes with top hats and card tricks. Real magic. The magic of magi, of wisdom, of the power of love.
Christmas Eve always reminds me of my mother. I miss her exquisitely on Christmas Eve, probably because, as a mother myself, I’ve realized through the years how much work it takes to coordinate ‘life’ to make magic real for our children.
And not in the manner that you might think. Not in making sure wished-for toys found their way under the tree or in the stockings.
Rather, in cultivating an attitude of wonder and possibility.
No one in my family ever definitively told me I was ridiculous to feel the magic of Christmas. And yet no one ever made a big show of pretending in order to foster the magic, either. I grew up with an attitude of possibility cultivated by my mother; an unspoken acknowledgement that if you rule out any hope of encountering the unexpected, you very well may make yourself blind to it.
I never want to be so sure of anything that I make myself blind to the possibility of magic.
And I have my mother to thank for that, as well as a dad and siblings who never felt compelled to douse the light in my eyes; the light that will always believe in and search for evidence of enchantment and hope, love and kindness.
May all of you keep searching for evidence of what you know is true in your hearts.
(T-1068)
Amen! Wonder and magic are ALWAYS OK!
Indeed.
😉
Merry Christmas, Lisa. Your post made me think of the last line of the following quotation by Ken Kesey and I wanted to state it here. But in looking up the exact wording I discovered the expanded version from an interview. It is even greater than I thought. So thank you for the prompt that made me look it up and here is my gift to you:
“I’m for mystery, not interpretive answers. … The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.” (from “The Art of Fiction” – interview of Ken Kesey by Robert Faggen, The Paris Review No. 130 (Spring 1994))
Ooooh, yes, Mary! This is lovely – and what a wonderful gift.
THANK YOU!
“…But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom…” I love this!
I’m reading your quote at 12:48 a.m. Everyone is asleep. The lights on our tree are twinkling. Silence surrounds me, broken only by the gentle snores of my 15 year old Boston Terrier, Sheila. And I am contemplating the role of mystery in my life.
I.Am.So.Lucky. And you’re a part of it.