The Magician's Prayer
The spirituality of my youth haunts me sometimes.
That’s a bit overdone, yes. I remember the cantor’s voice in my old temple singing of faith and god, of rejoicing and of community. I felt connected to something back then. I would sing out with Dan and Brian, with all of my Hebrew school chums. We would sing because we were taught to and we had a great deal of camaraderie. Watching the rain hit the glass windows at the front of the temple during some Friday night services, I remember feeling even more protected from the outside…not just from watery forces of nature, but from some emptiness that I knew existed, but was repelled from that room during services.
The room wasn’t particularly special— many classes and events were held there, and it was usually just a big echoing cavern. It was at certain times, when the Rabbi and the Cantor would cast a shield over us, and bind the congregation in song and prayer for an hour or so. A community was created in that short time, through simple ancient words, pleasant tunes, and basic moral messages. I hated going to it, I loved being there, and I regretted my initial resistance afterward.
I have felt twinges of this community at Hillel, but it is not the same—well, maybe it is, but I am not. Something has changed, and the magic is harder to grasp. It feels less like people creating a new community as it does people sharing a nostalgic echo of an old one. And maybe I’m part of that. It could be that knowledge killed my spiritual community. Perhaps I’ve rejected, debated, questioned, and mangled my religion past a rescue point, and have killed with mental manhandling. Or maybe it waits for me somewhere else. Just recently, I felt a bit of it going back home for Passover.
It is similar to the death of magic. The knowing of a magic trick, as I learned when I was ten, destroys the magic for you. But then, I used to think with excitement, you can do it! Then you have the power to make others see the magic! So in fifth grade, when Josh, Matt, and I put on an elaborate magic show for the 3rd and 4th graders at Timber Trace elementary school, we knew all the secrets, the “sleights of hand,” the deception involved…but we gave an illusion to others. An odd relationship, which certainly does not hold up under conservation constraints: you start out with no magic—just gimmicks and distractions—produce something mysterious to others, creating a sensation of wonder that is practically universal to all who see it… all except for you, who actually created it! It is truly something from nothing.
So does one have to disassemble God and destroy all of the magic experienced in his presence during youth to be his practitioner, to spread that same sensation? I wonder. Maybe that is what makes God so holy…perhaps the true magic is that, if it is done right, both sides—the teacher and the student—will feel the same sense of mystery and reverence.
Sort of like a Theorem on the Wonder of God: And all who encounter god in either youth or old age, in either naivety or scepticism, on either the pulpit or in the congregation, shall find Him with wonder and curiosity, shall have no way to understand Him, and shall come back to Him without reason or explanation. And, for the matter, maybe the best magicians can still believe in the very magic they know is an illusion.
If this does turn out to be true, perhaps there’s one prayer I should say every day: Blessed art thou, Lord our God, king of the universe, who commanded us to see you even when we were blind, who commanded us to hear you when we were deaf, and commanded to know you even when we reasoned you out of existence.
