True Magic

            All children believe in magic, at least until their parents or the world tell them to stop being silly and to ‘grow-up.’  Never were more dread words spoken!  For there is magic in the world if only we remember to look for it.  It is not the sort of magic one immediately assumes: it is not hocus pocus or strange incantations, the changing of princes into frogs and so forth.  It is something akin to joy or perhaps joy in its original state.  It is that unspeakable feeling that hums in the background of the most wondrous occasions; that unsung music that sets the soul to dancing.  You have felt it.  That overwhelming happiness when long sundered friends are reunited.  The merriment of family gatherings upon a snowy Christmas that is mistakenly blamed on too much eggnog when hearts are warm with the wonder and forgotten innocence of childhood.  It is a cool summer evening when the sky glows deepest blue after the sun has fled while the stars begin to peep out and the moon is a sliver on the horizon as the mist creeps into the low places, there a cricket sings, and the fireflies play amongst the roses; perhaps even a fairy watches from her hiding place while a wrinkled gnome peeps from his hole.  It is there in the laughter of children at play, in the entire being of a newborn child, and anywhere that men forget themselves for a moment.  That is the magic of Heaven, though only subtle glimpses into what eternal bliss must be like.  Children know it, long for it, until the world steals their innocence and their natal wisdom and it is utterly forgotten in the pursuit of things temporal which mortal man thinks is true happiness.  That is why we must become children again to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  To forget ourselves and live in the absolute wonder of the moment.  Only in such fear and awe can we truly find God.  This world is fraught with sorrow, pain, and death but behind this thin veil lurks that for which we truly long, that for which we were made, that which we catch only in fleeting glimpses while we tread this mortal earth.