I was heading home after a wonderful magic show in Colon, a little village in southwestern Michigan which earned the title “The Magic Capital of the World” after Harry Blackstone, a resident of Colon, invited magicians from around the world to stage shows there.
Some of the world’s best magicians performed. I had gone with three other adults, plus my two oldest kids, Alex (7) and Abbie (5). It was an excellent show; the kids sat there for two hours — silent, smiling, staring.
In the car on the way home, my adult guests started discussing the performances, in particular explaining to each other how tricks were performed. After a few minutes of this, my daughter, excited but distressed, broke in, “But if they’re doing that, they’re cheating the magic!”
“Cheating the magic.” The wonder burst. My son didn’t say a word; no doubt he had been in wonderment too, but was jerked back to “reality” by the adults who saw through the magicians’ sleight of hand. I thought for a minute my daughter might cry. I wanted to.
In the introduction to Christian Mythmakers, Clyde Kilby wrote that trying to convey all of reality using rational statements of fact is like trying “to translate a language of one hundred thousand words into a language of one thousand words.” In order to live in reality, we must be aware that those other ninety-nine thousand words exist, even though we cannot explain them. Those who aren’t aware of those other words are like the scientific researcher who Walker Percy described in The Moviegoer as a man “no more aware of the mystery which surrounds him than a fish is aware of the water it swims in.”
The magic show my children saw is a sign of reality because it points to the mystery that surrounds us. There are things that can’t be explained and accordingly are properly steeped in wonderment. The “reality” that the adults in my car explored tended to convey a false sense of reality to my children, one that pushes them to an existence like Percy’s researcher. It gives the impression that all things can be explained away, which in turn gives rise to the corollary impression that anything that can’t be explained — like my children couldn’t even begin to explain the magic they saw — should be doubted.
Doubt, in the words of literary critic Russell Kirk, “is a surly, envious, egotistic emotion, a bitter denial of everything but the sullen self.” I don’t want my children to doubt. I want them to wonder. There are only three attitudes toward the realities we confront in life: comprehension, doubt, and wonderment. My children will never, no matter how intelligent or well-educated they become, comprehend everything, and I don’t want them doubting everything they can’t comprehend. So wonder is the only alternative.
And it’s the appropriate alternative because it’s the alternative that is steeped in humility, the first of the virtues and our proper disposition given our limited capacities. Comprehension is the quest of the ambitious man; doubt, the attitude of the arrogant man. Wonder is the disposition of the humble man. The humble person is willing to admit there are things he can’t comprehend, and refuses to doubt anything on the flimsy ground that he can’t comprehend them.
Things are shrouded in mystery, like my children’s impression of the magic they saw in Colon, Michigan, that night. Magic is reality, except when it’s explained away, then it becomes the stuff of a stilted existence. But ultimate reality can’t be fully explained, no matter how many adults are in the car. Anyone who operates under the rule that reality can be comprehended and that anything that can’t be comprehended should be doubted, lives in the worst type of fantasy world.
The magic my children saw gave a glimpse of reality. The children couldn’t explain what they saw. They hadn’t even heard of fish wire, false backs, and other tricks of the magician’s trade. They didn’t know how the magicians did those amazing things, and they didn’t care. They were wrapped in wonder. Just taking in, just experiencing, a flood of experiences that they couldn’t comprehend or even hope to explain that had washed over them.
I wish they could’ve gone to sleep that night with the wonder-filled magic in their minds. What fertile ground it may have made for the ultimate realities — those of God — that no one can explain, fertile ground for planting seeds of humility and of wisdom. But, alas, the magic wasn’t the only thing that got cheated that night.
© Copyright 2006 Catholic Exchange
Eric Scheske is an attorney, the Editor of The Daily Eudemon, a Contributing Editor of Godspy, and the former editor of Gilbert Magazine.
