"i am able..."

"take,
these broken wings;
and learn to fly again,
and learn to live
so free..."

Mr. Mister's 1986 hit, "Broken Wings," will always remind me of that summer.

It had been playing on the radio for over a year, so by the summer fo 1987 it was ubiquitous in our circle. We'd moved to Boston to work for our church, and had made wonderful new friends. Our home was about an hour and a half outside of the city on a large estuary "pond" about two blocks from the ocean.

We loved having Boston friends come down to escape the city heat and water ski, brunch, watch the sunset from our back terrace or during a group walk along the beach. These were magical times in our young marriage. At least they should have been.

I was distracted through it all by a aching desire to become a mother. I could barely think - or pray - about much else. Yes, I did my job, I hosted weekend parties, I prayed for those who called for help, but the longing to be a mother never left the periphery of my heart's lens.

It became a practice for me during these times to stop and readjust the aperture of my thoughts. It wasn't possible to set this longing aside. It was as deep as my every breath or heartbeat, but I had to find a way to put it outside the focal distance of my every thought.

I am a person who needs metaphors and analogies to "get" something. And the act of focusing a camera's lens has always been helpful to me. I had to pause, often, and readjust what was central to the image in my heart.

At first it was circumstantial. I would tell myself that at work I needed to put work at the center of the lens. Then on a call with someone asking for metaphysical support, I would remind myself to adjust the aperture of my prayers to put them in the center of the image.

But this wasn't really working -- that is, until I realized that everything would be in perfect alignment, when I put God -- and His presence - at the center of every moment. Then, it always felt as if my trust was clear, my vision was clear, my heart was clear.

One thing that helped, was to remember that God's name is "I AM" -- so whatever my "I am" was at any given moment - was filled with God's presence. Wondering if I would ever become a mother, or if a project would come in on time, or if I was available "enough" to those who needed support - was not focusing on God -- I am. The same with allowing past mistakes, decisions, choices to pull me into I was, instead of "I am."

Mary Baker Eddy's statement from The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany was an ever-helpful reminder:

“Goodness never fails to receive its reward, for goodness makes life a blessing. As an active portion of one stupendous whole, goodness identifies man with universal good. Thus may each member of this church rise above the oft-repeated inquiry, What am I? to the scientific response: I am able to impart truth, health, and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason for existing."
 

Not I was able - once upon a time, or I will be able -- once I become a mother, but I am able. Right here, right now.

Did this happen easily? No. It was work, work, work -- but with watchfulness and prayer, I became more aware of when my focus had shifted from the fuzziness of "I will be," or "I once was," to the clarity of "I am." With God's I AM-ness right at its center.

Whatever seems to be pulling us out of our focus on the presence -- the present tense-ness of God as "I am..." is depriving us of a clear sense of God's abundant gifts for us in this moment.

I spent most of what I call "my year of longing" in the peripheral field of "when will I become a mother?" -- or "will I ever become a mother?" When, right in front of me were friends to play with, colleagues to listen to - with a mother's attentiveness, patients to pray for, and a budding family to nurture in our young marriage.

The wings of my motherhood were not broken -- they were learning to stretch in new ways, finding strength in patience, and discovering that to trust the unseen thermals of divine wisdom was essential to flight.

I would become a mother to three beautiful daughters, and it was everything I ever dreamed. But it was learning to "mother" right where I was - in the I AM of each moment  that helped me discover who I really was.  Not someone dependent on the fulfillment of a far-off longing dream come true, but empowered by an overwhelming love within.

In these days of "waiting" -- I hope we can all adjust the apertures of our expectations to focus on the presence of God -- the great I AM, who is here, now, giving us -- each moment -- this gift of grace.

offered with Love,

Kate

"beyond the veil...."

"I look to You,
I look to You..."

I know that I have used Amy Kelly's version of  "I Look to You" recently, but it is the song that was singing itself to me today.

As a bride, I never wore a veil. But I have designed and created veils. As a little girl I was fascinated with all things bridal. I dreamed in shades of white and the palest blushing pink. Helping other girls plan their weddings, design their wedding dresses, making veils -- helped to vicariously fulfil many of those little girl dreams.

One afternoon, as I carefully sewed the last seed pearl on the gossamer edge of a custom fingertip veil --one that I was gifting to a dear friend for her wedding -- I decided to try it on to see if it fell evenly on both sides. I stood in front of the mirror and for the first few moments I couldn't see anything but the layers of soft illusion tulle. As I stood there, my preschool-age daughter came in the room with a hurt finger. Immediately my focus shifted from the pattern in the fabric -- just inches from my eyes -- to her sweet face. Suddenly, I was no longer aware of the fabric - just her need.

I remember in that moment having two insights. The first one was that when someone with a need was before me, I wasn't at all aware of the veil. The second was that when I actually loved what was beyond the veil -- more than wearing the veil and being a bride -- my sense of things shifted drastically.  It was one of those epiphanies I have never forgotten.

A few weeks later a friend and I were driving back from a meeting in another city when rain started falling. At first I couldn't see anything but raindrops on the windshield, and I reached to turn on my windshield wipers. My friends suggested that I wait just a moment. She explained that her husband had shared with her that "looking beyond the veil" was like driving in the rain. At first you can only see the raindrops, but within a few moments your eyes adjust and you look beyond them and can see the cars on the road, the taillights in front of you, and the signs on the highway. She was right -- I could.

When I am focused on what I truly love -- and what I truly need to see -- the veil, the raindrops, the "in your face" sense of things - dissolves from focus.

Recently this was made very clear to me. After a stop-me-in-my-tracks realization about my relationship to God as  "my first Love..." last Fall, one alarming situation after another seemed to present itself. I felt bombarded by personal demands and responsibilities. But I wasn't fooled this time -- at least not for the most part. This analogy of the veil was with me every day.

I saw myself as a bride, looking for her groom at the end of the aisle. As long as I was focused on what was "in my face" -- the details of each of the challenges I was facing -- I felt trapped by a quandary of decisions and obstacles. But when I was looking beyond my immediate circumstances, for the face of my first Love -- God, I was at peace. I wasn't distracted from my one true "goal," -- to know Him, to love Him, to trust Him.

Everything else was like the train behind a wedding dress -- it would come along.  And it did.  The more I focused on God, the less the "veil of matter" was even perceptible to me.

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy has this to say in a paragraph with the marginal heading, "within the veil:"

"The nature of Christianity is peaceful and blessed, but in order to enter into the kingdom, the anchor of hope must be cast beyond the veil of matter into the Shekinah into which Jesus has passed before us; and this advance beyond matter must come through the joys and triumphs of the righteous as well as through their sorrows and afflictions. Like our Master, we must depart from material sense into the spiritual sense of being..."

As long as I was focused on myself as a bride -- all of my attention placed on how things were going to effect me and mine -- I wasn't going to see the real beauty of being wedded to my first Love. But the minute I sought His face -- continually -- the veil disappeared from my focal distance.

Elsewhere Eddy speaks of this shift in focus when she writes:

"Mortals must look beyond fading, finite forms if they would gain the true sense of things. Where shall the gaze rest but in the unsearchable realm of Mind?"

Just as a bride looks beyond the veil to find the face of her beloved, so I am looking beyond the veil to rest my gaze on the "face" of my first love. Not as a means to an end. Not to rend the veil. But to feel at one with my greatest love.

And the great Love of my life is - well, Love -- pure and simple. Later in Science and Health Eddy writes:

"The very circumstance, which your suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel entertained unawares. Then thought gently whispers: “Come hither! Arise from your false consciousness into the true sense of Love, and behold the Lamb’s wife, — Love wedded to its own spiritual idea.”

This is the wedding feast that never ends. This is the "place" where the Christ turns water into wine. This is the never-ending moment where we are robed in white and held in bliss.


offered with Love,

Kate

"falling in love with You..."

"take my hand,

take my whole life too.
for I can't help
falling in love with You..."

I want to tell the great love story of my life tonight. Pentatonix touching version of, "I Can't Help Falling in Love" is the perfect musical backdrop.

I love falling in love. But I also love staying in love. I have never wanted anything but the deep and lasting kind of love. The love that never wanes, but only grows fuller with time.

I have been blessed with just a few great loves in my life - my list is short, but none have been casual or insignificant.

One of the things that I have learned, is that love changes you. Love is a power. It refuses to be contained or localized. You cannot love, without having the boundaries of your heart enlarged. Love dissolves all of the rigid outlines that we impose upon ourselves. "I can love this, but not that." "I am this kind of person." "I could never do that."

But losing in love has also changed me. Each time I have felt my heart break, I have turned to God for wisdom, guidance, strength, courage -- and for comfort.

Then one morning, when my heart felt shattered - again, I opened my Bible to this passage from Revelation -- and yes, it was a revelation:

"Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write;
I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience,
and how thou canst not bear them which are evil:
And hast borne, and hast patience,
and for my name’s sake hast laboured,
and hast not fainted.

Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee,
because thou hast left thy first love..." 

I had been using God, to help me through each of my relationship struggles. But in that moment, I realized that I'd had it all upside down and backwards. I could suddenly see that the love I was seeking most -- the infinite, eternal, enduring kind -- would only be found by using each and every relationship, as an opportunity to deepen my relationship with my first love -- not to get, keep, or fix my relationship with others.

Love is a funny thing. When we are in love with someone, we think of them all the time. We long for any amount of time - that we might steal away with them. What they love, becomes our own love. Because the object of our affection enjoys skiing, we try to ski -- even though we really, really don't like hanging out in the cold.

When we love someone, we find ourselves wanting to do what made no human sense - only moments before. We actually find ourselves wanting to give up the right to self-indulgence, for shared responsibility. We long to do something as self-sacrificing as having children -- the ultimate exercise in self-denial. Then, through our love for those sweet children, we open our hearts to their friends, interests, school community -- the worlds they live, work, and play in.

When I fell back in love with my first love -- God, I was naturally more in love with His children, His world of ideas, His glorious creation.  The good that He delights in, became my great delight.  The Truth that occupies His Mind, filled me.

And when I trusted that this "first love" was the core influence in the heart of every one of his children, my relationships with others ceased to be my obsession, but became the opportunity that I was always looking for, in order to spend time more with my first love. I stopped using God to improve or repair my relationships, but used those relationships to deepen my love for Him/Her.  My time with my first love, became the most wonderful part of my days and nights.

Just a glimpse into my greatest love story.

offered with Love,

Kate

"Magic - it's all about distraction..."

A friend reminded me about this post from 2007 tonight...just when I needed a reminder that I always have the right to refuse to be distracted, and reclaim my focus...transfixing it on God, good. It's always there.

Here's the backstory:

Thanks, S.

"Talkin' about magic..."

“Do you believe in magic in a young girl's heart
How the music can free her, whenever it starts
And it's magic, if the music is groovy
It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie
I'll tell you about the magic, and it'll free your soul
But it's like trying to tell a stranger 'bout rock and roll”
- John Sebastian

This question surfaces constantly: “If God is good, and is all, how is it that we experience illness, depression, sorrow, evil?”

I too have asked this question of myself, and of others…teachers, pastors, sages, professors…but especially of God.

At one point in my study of Christian Science, this question seemed to be all I could think about.  I took Mary Baker Eddy’s route towards discovery.  I “searched the Scriptures and read little else”…well, except her best-selling book on spirituality, Science and Health. 

One day during a particularly intense search for answers, it was in this book that I found a clue that seemed to stand out in relief as if highlighted in yellow neon.  My research had led me to focus my inquiry on a chapter titled “Animal Magnetism Unmasked” in which she explores with her reader this topic that she defines in these six brief pages, in part, as “mesmerism,” that which “leads to moral and physical death,” “a mere negation,” “a specific term for error,” “mortal mind,” a “suppositional lie,”…etc.  Not a light topic.  But one that seemed to have me stopped in my tracks like a deer in the headlights. 

Through the course of my daily spiritual practice, I would study, ponder and pray out from other spiritual facts, but this question seemed to loom just at the back of every question I brought to the closet in prayer.    One day I was sitting in my office, once again reading through those six pages, and I came across this sentence:

“Any seeming benefit derived from it  [animal magnetism]
is proportional to one’s faith in esoteric magic.”

Hmm….what could be the connection between this topic of animal magnetism and magic?  I spent the next year investigating that question. 

And I got nowhere…slowly.  Granted, I was busy. I had a full-time public practice in spiritual healing, as well as the parenting three children, and a consulting project with an international speakers’ bureau, to navigate each day.  My plate was full, but there always seemed to be space for that question about Eddy's use of the term "magic," in connection with "animal magnetism," to surface.

After a year of scouring library, bookstore, and “strange little out of the way magic shop” shelves for some clue as to the connection between spiritual healing and esoteric magic, I was frustrated and ready to give up.  I had read lots, but felt no closer to something I could make my own, feel the strength of, and find practical as a healer. 

I decided to give it another try one Saturday in early April.  It was one of those perfect crocus-popping spring days.  Temperatures in the 60s, a deep blue cloudless sky, and robins singing from the trees like that deranged bird in Mary Poppins during the “Spoonful of Sugar” sequence… all assertive and cheery.  But I digress…

The girls were playing happily with their dad, so I slipped away for an hour after the breakfast dishes were done for a cup of tea and some study at my favorite coffeehouse in our village center, just outside of Boston, while our older daughter was in a ballet workshop.  I arrived early enough to garner one of the few tables outside on the wide sidewalk, and settled in.  Before long, I was more frustrated than ever.  I just didn’t get it. 

I was ready to resign to the possibility that I would never get the connection between magic and the practice of spiritual healing, when a man approached my table balancing his coffee mug on a book, and carrying his brioche on the plate in his other hand, while a copy of the Boston Globe seemed to be ready to spill out from under his arm.  He asked if he could share my table...glancing about, as if to encourage me to notice that there were no vacant seats, except the chair on which I had placed my small traveling library.  As I reached to move the books and papers, I looked right into his face and allowed all of the frustration I was feeling about my search, to pour out in seven words that surprised us both. 

“Yes, but it’s going to cost you!” 

Normally I would never have said such a thing. I’d have met his request with a cheerful nod, and then within a few moments excused myself and left for home, or the car, to wait for our daughter to finish her ballet workshop.  But this time I was so absorbed in my question that I had blurted out the conditions of my demand, before thinking.

I don‘t believe he could have ever imagined it coming from the benignly studious person he had approached.  There I was in jeans, a white men’s dress shirt ten sizes too large and rolled up at the sleeves, a pair of old scuffed pick ballet slippers, the arms of a nubby grey sweater tied around my shoulders, my reading glasses clinging precariously to the tip of my nose, and my white hair bursting wildly from the pencils that anchored it up into a bun.  I was anything but the image of a coquette-ish schoolgirl flirting with a stranger.  Thank goodness for his ability to process that visual information quickly enough to respond with patient good humor.

“What’s it going to cost me?” he asked with a curious, and hesitant, smile. 

I was relieved that he hadn’t given me a “what a weirdo” look, and just turned his back.  I smiled and said, “You have to tell me everything you know about magic!” 

I could see relief seep through the wariness in his face.  As he placed his coffee and brioche, book and morning paper on the table, he replied, “Piece of cake, I’m a professional magician.” 

I was stunned, but didn’t waste precious time.

“Good," I said, "tell me about magic in layman's terms, in three or four sentences, so that I understand the fundamental principles behind how it works.”

“I can tell you in one word: distraction.” 

He then explained it to me. 

When a magician is performing a trick he diverts your focus from watching what his hands are doing so that you aren’t aware of the "trick" that is going on right in front of your eyes.  He then lets go of your focus, allowing it to return to where you think it has been all along.  And voila…a rabbit pops out of a hat.  While he had distracted you, or pulled your focus off of what he is doing...by suggesting that you look at his sequined, flashy assistant...he has retrieved the rabbit from a box under the table, and placed it in the hat in full view right in front of you.  When he released your focus and then pulled the rabbit out of the hat, you thought it was magic. 

For me it was just the key I needed for unlocking an important door in my practice of spiritual healing...one that I've alluded to, in a previous post titled, "And immediately the fever left her..." 

Sickness, sin, disease, war, violence are just, at their roots, the suggestion that God is absent. They, like the magician, would like to be able to pull my focus from the allness of God, good, that is always right in front of me. To pull my eyes off center to where it is jumping up and down, screaming “God is absent…God is absent.”   But at any given moment I can say “No…I have the right to see what is right in front of me."  I have the right to reclaim my focus and see that God is present. And that any instance of good, however faint, points to the allness of good. .  That when Love is at all present, in some expression of kindness or affection…even if it is just the very moment of loving that you are bringing to bear on the situation by doing something kind for another...it is all-present -- since there is only one measure, or portion of Love, God, and that is infinite, all..  To realize that it is enough to realize that Mind is present in the very questioning you are doing, as you search for answers. 

By reclaiming your focus, holding it on the presence of God, appreciating any indication of God’s presence, you are refusing to consent to the absence of God in any measure, degree or form.  This focus, the appreciation...awareness of, and gratitude for...good, results in the appreciat-ing...ensuent growth in value, of goodness in all its manifestations. And acting out from this presence of God, good, is to begin living with spiritual (God-based) authority without condition or measure.

Mary Baker Eddy further supports this way of living and seeing when she asserts:

“No evidence before the material senses
can close my eyes to the scientific proof
that God, good, is supreme.”

There is never a moment when we cannot be the love “the magician” is trying to convince us is absent, or to ask the question that affirms the presence of Mind, Love, Truth, Life that this same trickster would try to assert has left the room.

Eddy goes on to say,

“Love is especially near in times of hate,
and never so near as when one can be just
amid lawlessness, and render good for evil.”

I left the café that day with a new friend…a magician…and a fresh, vital way of thinking about my work, my world, and my right to stay focused on the presence of God--the presence of good--throughout every day.

“I'll tell you about the magic, and it'll free your soul
But it's like trying to tell a stranger 'bout rock and roll”
- John Sebastian

Here's a link to John Sebastian, and the Lovin' Spoonful singing ""Do you believe in magic..."

with Love,

Kate

"You had one eye in the mirror...."

"You had one eye in the mirror
as you watched yourself gavotte*...."
- Carly Simon

It was December 31, 1972...38 years ago - wow...and I was on my way to a party.  I'd offered to work the lunch shift at the Country Club's ninth hole so that I could celebrate New Year's Eve with friends.  I'd spent too much time primping and fussing in front of the mirror and now I was running late. 

With one hand on the steering wheel, and one eye on the winding country road, I tried to apply a little Yardley lip gloss while driving in the freezing rain.  I'd only just begun driving, and I was already certain I could fly.   But that's another post. 

Carly's "You're So Vain" was pumping through the car's speakers, and throbbing in my veins like a musical drug.  Life was hard, but I was going to have fun this night by golly. 

I remember thinking, "I wonder if I am vain?" as I smoothed a smidge of shimmery Pot o' Gloss pink gloss along my lower lip.  And by the way, I thought...thought I..."how cool that a man would be bold enough to wear an apricot scarf?" Aw heck, I loved Carly, even when her lyrics made no sense.  And believe you me, those lyrics made no sense to me that late December night in 1972.  If anything they made me think, but not for long.  Maybe I was vain.  Hmmm. 

And that was when my car started sliding sideways towards a snow-covered, tree and brush-lined, ditch that ran along the side of that dark country road.  I have no idea where that little white Pot o' Gloss, I'd been so carelessly holding in my hand while I drove, ended up...and I didn't much care...perhaps it rolled itself all the way back to Barnaby Street.  But, I do know, that within a millisecond both hands, and eyes, were focused right where they needed to be, and I no longer wanted to feel like I was a racecar driver who wore an apricot scarf on a yacht, I wanted to be me.  I wanted to just be me....a girl who worked hard, had a night off, and was going to a party (and back home again) safely that night.

Every distraction was driven into the periphery, and in that instant, all I could think was, "God, please help me."  The car fishtailed to a stop, just inches from the embankment.  I was shaken, but safe.  I placed my hands at 10 and 2, just the way Mr. VanArsdale had taught us in Driver's Ed, and never let my eyes stray from the road as I inched my way towards my girlfriend's parents' house where the party was in full swing.

The rest of the night was uneventful.  We played cards, danced, watched the sparkly ball drop in Times Square, and I ended up spending the night to avoid the icy roads.

But, I do think of that night, everytime I hear "You're So Vain."  I still want to meet the guy who'd have been bold and interesting enough to wear an apricot scarf in 1972...can you imagine how cool and creative he is today...but more importantly, I want to not be the person who always has one eye in the mirror as she watches herself go by. 

I do want to be the person who has her eyes on the road...the road that leads to a deeper and more meaningful relationship with God, and with humanity.  I want to be the girl who is more concerned with how she makes people feel about themselves...their promise, their gifts, their purpose in the world...than her own.  I want to spend more time praying than primping. I want to walk into a party clothed in dress of metaphorical mirrors...imagine some Twiggy or Mary Quant inspired mini-dress made of perfectly clear little mirrors connected with tiny silk threads.  And when someone looks in my direction, all they can see is how beautiful they are.   I want my presence to be like the sun which doesn't invite you to look at or notice itself, but is content to shed light unconditionally, impartially, irrespectively on "earth and tree and flower" revealing their "beauty, grandeur, order." 

The word "vain" means both "futile, empty" and "self-focused."  Boy, are those definitions properly paired under that one lexiconic umbrella.  Perfect soulmates.  When our thoughts are self-centered, they are futile, without any energy, purpose, or promise.  The ego would always try to keep us in this space of futility and emptiness where we are at the center of our own universe, and the mirrors are distorted and only lead us deeper and deeper into self-concern, self-absorption, self-indulgence, and self-promotion. It a lonely place.

And as Mary Baker Eddy says, in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, real blessing comes from: 

"seeking one's own, in another's good..."

I am discovering, finally...not such a quick study I guess...that the only way to discover what is good about ourselves, is to focus on seeking the good in others, and calling attention to that goodness so that all creation can celebrate it as the presence of God...on earth.

So...Happy New Year...I am looking forward to celebrating it...moment-by-moment...focused on how amazing you are.

can't wait to see you at the party!!

Hopefully, I will be easy to miss...I'll be the girl in the mirrored dress...and, I hope this year you find your best you whenever we're together.

always with love,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[*Gavotte: a dance of French peasant origin marked by the raising rather than sliding of the feet]

"Talkin' about magic..."

“Do you believe in magic in a young girl's heart
How the music can free her, whenever it starts
And it's magic, if the music is groovy
It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie
I'll tell you about the magic, and it'll free your soul
But it's like trying to tell a stranger 'bout rock and roll”
- John Sebastian

This question surfaces constantly: “If God is good, and is all, how is it that we experience illness, depression, sorrow, evil?”

I too have asked this question of myself, of others…teachers, pastors, sages, professors…and especially of God.

At one point in my study of Christian Science, this question seemed to be all I could think about.  I took Mary Baker Eddy’s route towards discovery.  I “searched the Scriptures and read little else”…well, except her best-selling book on spirituality, Science and Health. 

One day during a particularly intense search for answers, it was in this book that I found a clue that seemed to stand out in relief as if highlighted in yellow neon.  My research had led me to focus my inquiry on a chapter titled “Animal Magnetism Unmasked” in which she explores with her reader this topic that she defines in these six brief pages, in part, as “mesmerism”, as that which “leads to moral and physical death”, “a mere negation”, “a specific term for error”, “mortal mind”, a “suppositional lie”…etc.  Not a light topic.  But one that seemed to have me stopped in my tracks like a deer in the headlights. 

I would study, ponder and pray out from other spiritual facts, but this question seemed to loom just at the back of every question I brought to the closet of prayer.    One day I was sitting in my office, once again reading through those six pages and I came across this sentence:

“Any seeming benefit derived from it  [animal magnetism]
is proportional to one’s faith in esoteric magic.”

Hmm….what could be the connection between this topic of animal magnetism and magic?  I spent the next year investigating that question. 

And I got nowhere…slowly.  I had a full-time public practice in spiritual healing as well as my parenting three children and consulting/training for an international speakers’ bureau on a broad range of  topics.  My plate was full, but there always seemed to be a space for that question about magic to surface.

After a year of scouring library, bookstore and “strange little out of the way magic shop” shelves for some clue as to the connection between spiritual healing and esoteric magic, I was frustrated and ready to give up.  I had read LOTS, but felt no closer to something I could make my own, feel the strength of, and make practical as a healer. 

I decided to give it another try one Saturday in early April.  It was one of those perfect early spring days.  Temperatures in the 60s, a deep blue cloudless sky, and robins singing from the trees like that deranged bird in Mary Poppins during the “Spoonful of Sugar” sequence… all assertive and cheery.  But I digress…

The girls were playing happily with their dad nearby and I slipped away for an hour after the breakfast dishes were done for a cup of tea and some study at my favorite coffeehouse in downtown Newtonville, just outside of Boston.  I arrived early enough to garner one of the few tables outside on the wide sidewalk, and I settled in.  Soon I was more frustrated than ever.  I just didn’t get it. 

I was ready to resign to never getting it, this connection between magic and the practice of spiritual healing, when a man approached my table balancing his coffee mug on a book and carrying his brioche on the plate in his other hand while a copy of the Boston Globe seemed to spill from under his arm.  He asked if he could share my table, glancing about as if to lead me to see that there were no vacant seats except the chair on which I had placed my small traveling library.  As I reached to move the books and papers, I looked right into his face and allowed all of the frustration I was feeling about my search pour out in seven words that surprised us both. 

“Yes, but it’s going to cost you!” 

Normally I would never have said such a thing. I’d have met his request with a nod and then within a few moments excused myself and left for home.  But this time I was so absorbed with my question that I had blurted out this demand before thinking.

I don‘t believe he could have ever imagined it coming from the benignly studious person he had approached.  There I was in jeans, a white men’s dress shirt ten sizes too large and rolled up at the sleeves, a pair of old scuffed pick ballet slippers, the arms of a nubby grey sweater tied around my shoulders, my reading glasses clinging precariously to the tip of my nose, and my white hair bursting wildly from the pencils that anchored it up into a bun.  I was anything but the image of a coquetteish schoolgirl flirting with a stranger.  Thank goodness for his ability to process that visual information quickly enough to respond with patient good humor.

“What’s it going to cost me?” he asked with a curious and hesitant smile. 

I was relieved that he hadn’t given me a “what a weirdo” look and just turned his back.  I smiled and said, “You have to tell me everything you know about magic!” 

I could see relief seep through the wariness in his face.  As he placed his coffee and brioche, book and morning paper onto the table, he replied, “Piece of cake, I’m a professional magician.” 

I was stunned, but didn’t waste precious time.

“Good, tell me about magic in three or four sentences so I understand the principles behind how it works.”

“I can tell you in one word: distraction.” 

He then explained it to me. 

When a magician is performing a trick he diverts your focus from watching what his hands are doing so that you aren’t aware of what is going on right in front of your eyes.  He then lets go of your focus, allowing it to return to where you think it has been all along.  And voila…a rabbit pops out of a hat.  While he had distracted you, or pulled your focus, he had retrieved the rabbit from a box under the table, and placed it in the hat in full view right in front of you.  When he released your focus and then pulled the rabbit out of the hat, you thought it was magic. 

For me it was just the key I needed for unlocking an important door in my practice of spiritual healing…one that I alluded to in the previous post.  Sickness, sin, disease, war, violence are just, at their roots, the suggestion that God is absent. They, like the magician, would like to be able to pull your eyes from the allness of God that is always right in front of you, off to the side where it jumps up and down and screams “God is absent…God is absent”.  But at any given moment you can say “No…I have the right to see what is right in front of me.  That God is present as an instance, however faint, of goodness and grace.  That Love is present in some expression of kindness or affection…even if it is just the moment of loving that you bring to bear on the situation by doing something generous for another.  That Mind is present in the very questioning you are doing as you search for your answers. 

By reclaiming your focus, holding it on the presence of God, appreciating this indication of God’s presence, you are refusing to consent to the absence of God in any measure, degree or form.  The focus, appreciation (awareness of and gratitude for), appreciat-ing (its ensuent growth in value) and acting out from this presence of God…this is living with spiritual (God-based) authority without condition or measure.

Mary Baker Eddy further supports this way of living and seeing when she asserts:

“No evidence before the material senses
can close my eyes to the scientific proof
that God, good, is supreme.”

There is never a moment when we cannot be the love “the magician” is trying to convince us is absent, or to ask the question that affirms the presence of Mind that this same trickster would try to assert has left the room.

Eddy goes on to say,

“Love is especially near in times of hate,
and never so near as when one can be just
amid lawlessness, and render good for evil.”

I left the café that day with a new friend…a magician…and a way of thinking about my work, my world, and my right to stay focused on the presence of God--the presence of good--throughout every day.

“I'll tell you about the magic, and it'll free your soul
But it's like trying to tell a stranger 'bout rock and roll”
- John Sebastian

Here's a link to John Sebastian, and the Lovin' Spoonful singing ""Do you believe in magic..."

with Love,

Kate