Like Magic

Yesterday I talked about our friends who opened a folk art gallery called “Roots Up” in Savannah. As I talked to one of them about what seemed to me to be a sudden decision, she described how it all came together so quickly and seamlessly. She said, “It was almost magical.”

I smiled because she had just spent half an hour describing all they had done and all they had yet to do. My conclusion was that magic is hard work. Still, I understood what she meant. I have written 11 books, and people often ask how I found the time. I’m a bit embarrassed by how easy it was to write most of them. I just sat down, and they were born by the time I got up. Almost magical.

Of course, the truth is that it was the kind of magic my friend had experienced. She had spent many years learning about folk art and has an impressive collection herself. She made her own art, so she has an appreciation for what kind of love and passion and effort it takes to create it. She ran her own little shop and already had practiced doing much of what the gallery would require of her. Then, when they finally made the decision to do it, everything came together almost like magic.

Carl Jung called this phenomena synchronicity: “a collaboration between persons and events that seems to enlist the cooperation of fate.” I sometimes describe it as being in “the stream of the Spirit.” I’m not quite sure who taught me this image because it has been inside of me and guiding me for a long time. I just know that when I am in the stream of the Spirit things happen almost like magic.

People sometimes give me credit that I don’t feel I deserve. I can sit down to write, and, for better or worse, it simply flows out. There have been many times over the years when I have read something that I thought was insightful, only to learn that I was the one who had written it. I only wish that always was true.

There are times when I’ve read what I wrote years ago, and I want to die of embarrassment. There are also times—and I must admit it often happens when writing Liberating Word after all these years—that it doesn’t flow at all. You just have to do the work and get the job done.

Still, I arise every day full of hope that today I will manage to center myself in the middle of the stream of the Spirit and stay there. When I do it is almost like magic.

by Michael Piazza
Center for Progressive Renewal