Creator’s Magic

by Suzanne Core and Christine Jonas

Suzanne Core: What a beautiful gathering of angels. The French artist Francois Schlesser paints the universe or cosmos that he sees in his mind and heart. I find his work stunning. This week I was browsing on YouTube and I found a video of some of his work set to original music. We want to share a minute of it with you. The French text at the end basically says that “Everything surrounding us is a result of the miracle we call life; and that it all exists is the most extraordinary of stories.”  (watch the video)

We call it magic when something transports us or enchants us or when we don’t understand how it happens. It can also be in the mundane, the everyday, the ordinary. How does a flower grow and why? Why is a tulip not a rose? Sometimes we miss the magic because we’re too busy and not looking for it, but it’s everywhere. For instance, matter coalesces around a zygote and new life is formed. That has to be magic. Larry Krantz told us recently that the brain has about 100 billion neurons and the Milky Way has about 100 billion stars, so our brain carries a miniature replica of our galaxy in it. That’s magic!  Physicists talk about quantum entanglement. Now, I have absolutely NO idea what that is or how it works. I know the definition of entanglement but I know nothing about quantum physics. But quantum physicists were apparently a little surprised to find out that entanglement takes place throughout nature—among atoms and molecules in all living species; in metals, in other materials. And when hundreds of particles become entangled, they still act as one unified object. And they do that even when they’re separated, moved far away from each other. Like a flock of birds in flight, the particles become a whole entity unto itself, without being in direct contact. (Maybe that could define us too, when we’re together on Zoom like this, and also in between.) On the other hand, there’s dancing raisins. Put raisins in an empty glass, add carbonated water and the raisins start to dance up and down. It’s a fun little YouTube video. Now I get that carbonation makes bubbles and raisins respond. I still don’t know WHY, even though I know the explanation. The “why” is the magic. 

Every morning for a year or more I have been feeding a flock of Stellar jays in my front yard. I was trying to keep them away from the feeders on the back deck so the smaller birds could eat. At first one Stellar came. I would throw him a peanut and he would take it and fly off. Then I began to throw two peanuts and he would come and hop between them, take them in his mouth, weigh them, and settle on the bigger one and fly off. Only then would he alert the flock that breakfast was served. More birds came. During the winter I had up to 18 birds each morning. I went through a lot of peanuts, but it was the best part of the morning. I’d throw peanuts one by one and the birds would fly in one by one. The first bird had to stop weighing and measuring but it is fun to watch them watch where the peanuts land and swoop down one by one. How do they know breakfast is served? How do they know what time? Why do they trust it’s going to be there? Oh, and they let me know if I’m late! They’re all waiting up in the trees and they tell me I should have been there 15 minutes earlier! They are part of the magic of my days. 

 When I think for a minute I realize that just because I have an explanation for something doesn’t mean I know how it happens or why. There is so much magic in our lives, on our earth. From a book named “Greenwild,” are these words: “You wouldn’t call it magic when a sunflower turns its head to follow the sun through the sky, because there’s an explanation for it. In a way, everything is magic. The magic is in the sunflowers, in the trees and the grass, in the dandelions and the parakeets and earthworms. It’s in me and you, all of us.… Nature is wilder and stranger and more miraculous than you can imagine. The Earth is rich with magic. There’s magic everywhere. In every molecule of the natural world.”

What a special place we live in. Uranda once wrote, “When you are left with the feeling that there’s something beyond what can be seen with the eyes, something beyond description but very real, something exquisite, endless; when left with the sense that whatever one can see or perceive, there is more than that which is seen and perceived, THAT is magic.”

 Where do you see magic? Do you believe in magic? Christine has another magical musical interlude for us. (watch the video)

Christine Jonas: I hope you had that turned up as loud as I did. It is an absolute delight and pleasure to be with you all here today. Thank you so much for attending with all your heart, your mind, your soul and your spirit to see what we can form in this particular gathering. What can we create together? Magic. It’s such a small word for such a large subject. Suzanne and I will try to present it in such a way that it captures the largeness as well as the littleness of it. 

The song we just heard, “Because We Believe,” was co-written by David Foster, a fellow Canadian, and his daughter, Amy, with Andrea Bocelli. It was performed at the closing ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Italy, performed by Andrea Bocelli. I think you recall a month or so ago, Sanford played a similar piece from the LA Olympics, maybe an instrumental. The song says, “We were born to shine. All of us here because we believe.” I feel like we know, don’t we? 

My focus this morning on magic will be in two aspects as I see them. One is language. And the other is what I call a “slight change of plans,” which I’ll explain later. Reframing our words, recently in a breakout group Joyce Krantz talked about reframing our words in our world. This got me thinking. Here’s a little story: A blind man was sitting on the concrete in the park with an empty pail and a sign that said, “I am blind. Please help me.” No one was putting any money in the pail. Along came a young girl, maybe 12 or 13, and he put his hands on her sneakers. She picked up his sign, turned it over, wrote something on it, and left. All of a sudden there were coins going into his little bucket. He was becoming quite mesmerized by the fact that all this money started falling into his little pail. A short while later, the little girl came back. Once again he put his hands on her sneakers and realized it was the same girl. “What happened?” he asked. She said, “I just changed your sign.” He was astonished and asked her what she changed it to. She said, “It’s the same thing but in different words.” What she wrote was, “It’s a beautiful day and I can’t see it.”

That is to me a beautiful little story. It’s on Facebook if you want to look it up. 

A number of weeks ago, John Gray mentioned the word “abracadabra.” It’s actually quite a fun word to spell. One of the folk etymologies translates it as meaning “I will create as I speak.” How do I make myself understood in any situation? How do I do that? In this setting here, it’s easy. You’re the best audience a person could want to have. We’ve been educated into this. It’s a safe space and it’s easy to speak into. But what about other situations? How do we tell other people what we’re about? Should we use the same language we use with each other? Or should we try to reframe it? What would that look like? 

I have a very curious nature, as some of you know. I don’t mind asking the tough questions. I don’t mind listening to the tough answers. John Albright, in a comment during one of Jeffrey Goldstein’s Peace Vigils a month or two ago, talked about mental illness. The question and the belief that we came to in that little conversation was that people are speaking up, they’re talking about their gayness, their mental illness, their depression; it’s becoming more acceptable because we are speaking about it, at least from my perspective. I want to hear what they’re going through. They have refused to be silent. How has that happened? Openness, tolerance, and love are just a few of the ways we expand this. Some of you know who Marianne Williamson is. She puts her hat in the ring every once in a while in the American political field. She said something that resonates with me a lot: 

“Hate has talked so loudly for so long.
Greed has talked so loudly for so long.
Liars have talked so loudly for so long.
Love has got to stop whispering!”  

That’s our position too! 

The second part of the magic for me is a “slight change of plans” (see Dr. Maya Shankar’s podcast of that name). A memory of a trip I took some years ago was triggered recently by Larry Krantz speaking about driving a cab in New York City. (I love knowing that about you, Larry.)  Here’s the story:  I was driving back from a golf trip with four women. I was driving. We were in the Canadian Rockies and we were returning to Calgary after our golf tournament. I had an overwhelming desire – like Sanford asking us the other day if we listened to spirit – something kept telling me, “Fill up that tank of gas, fill up that tank of gas,” even though I had half a tank and it was more than enough to get us home for the three-hour ride back to Calgary. As we came out of one mountain park and into another the other, in Banff National Park, which is the main highway through the mountains, there had been smooth sailing all the way. We expected to be home in about an hour and a half. But shortly after passing the last turnoff we could take we were literally stopped on the highway, with nowhere to go. The main highway to Calgary was closed. There had been a major fatal collision east of where we were, a horrific accident which had shut down the highway completely in our direction. There was a turnoff to a secondary highway and all traffic was being redirected to it, and that’s where we had to go, crawling along with the rest. 

At one point, the girls were becoming agitated because we were just sitting in traffic and they had to go to work the next day. They had kids, grandkids, to attend to the next day, appointments and so on. I thought, “Oh my gosh, do I have to listen to this whining all the way home? This is going to be horrible.” So I went into my crossover point and said to my friends, “You know, ladies, we cannot be other than where we are. Let’s just enjoy the journey.” Spontaneously, they all started singing, “This Little Light of Mine”, you know that one. “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine, let it shine.” Four grown women singing our hearts out. We let it shine. It was magical. We laughed and laughed. Something changed in that instant. It was also noticeable the way the traffic pattern was. No one was getting out of their car. No one was honking, no one was blaring, no one was swearing. We were all just inching along. For about half an hour, people actually got out of their cars and walked along the shoulder of the road. Children were crying, stuck in the car, so people were walking strollers along the road, on the shoulder of the highway, as their spouse drove along inch by inch. That’s how slow we were going. 

I think perhaps everyone was aware that people had died ahead of us. We had our cell phones and people were relating information to us about this accident. I felt so blessed to be alive. Yes, it was a slight change of plans, in a big way. But we were alive and we were there to witness it. There was no police presence, nobody to make us stay in the line, nobody to boss us around, nobody to tell us what to do. We did it all on our own. That journey of three hours took eight hours. We watched the sun go down. I can tell you by the time I got home, all I could see before I fell asleep were red taillights in my eyes. Just thousands and thousands of them. I was kind of stunned. I don’t think I spoke much the rest of the way; if I did, I don’t remember. We were in the moment. 

So three morals to this little story: Listen to the instinct and fill that gas tank. Don’t be afraid to grow quiet and hear what needs to be said. And lastly, we can only be where we are.

Suzanne Core: Thanks Christine. So there’s more to magic than meets the eye. There is also the magic that is brought by us. You know the word magic comes from the word Magi. That makes sense, right? Magi is an ancient word which means wise men, and later priests, and later sorcerers. Well, there are Magi today too, and they are responsible for today’s magical needs. John Gray talked to us a while back about the family business: Being, Incorporated. In that family business there is a branch called the Bureau of Magic. It’s kind of like a Department of Education, or a Department of Science, or maybe the CIA—that would be the Cosmic Intelligence Agency—real intelligence is involved. We’re employees of the Bureau. Within its container, there are miracles, but they don’t happen automatically. The Bureau of Magic isn’t about illusions or sleight of hand. It’s the location of Earth’s vibrational professionals, the Home Office of Heavenly Magic, the business address of incarnate angels in the City in a Star. 

Today we are the Magi. When we gather magic happens, and its influence is extended wherever it needs to go. Another quote from Uranda on magic is, “Human beings begin to take their blessings for granted; they cease giving thanks to God; they lose the magic of life and it turns into a humdrum existence. Our business is to help people over the line [between illusion and reality] where they may know the wonder of God’s love, the beauty of His truth, the glory of life; this is the magic of the kingdom of heaven that is at hand.” 

There’s a delightful series on British television called, “Merlin.” It’s about Merlin as a teenager when he first goes to Camelot. He’s about 16. Prince Arthur’s probably 19 or so. In this Camelot, magic has been prohibited, on penalty of death, because King Uthor has never had any experience with magic that wasn’t harmful, that wasn’t a disaster or an attack of malice without forethought. Well, of course in each episode some sorcerer is trying to kill the king or prince or somehow destroy Camelot. Merlin always has to figure out a way to stop that, and he always uses magic, but he can’t let anybody know he’s using magic because there’s this death penalty thing.

Around Camelot there are lots of nation states, greedy politicians, magicians, wizards, trolls, sorcerers—even a dragon, with just one head, pretty self-centered but sometimes helpful. So, you know, not unlike today. We have scientists, doctors, engineers, politicians, trolls—today’s dragon has many heads. In Camelot, the sorcerers used their hands to carry out magic spells. Sometimes their eyes flash. Sometimes they use their breath to put someone in a trance. And they use incantations. Words that sound made up. 

Today’s Magi, incarnate angels, use incantations too. Our words are carefully chosen; they’re not made up. We also use our hands, our breath, our words—for instance, in attunement. Our incantations aren’t of the “abracadabra” variety (though “we create as we speak” is pretty powerful magic; thank you, John; I love knowing the meaning of that word). Our incantations include: Be still and know. Be thankful for all things in all settings under all circumstances at all times. Rise up and come away. Follow me. Hold steady. Share attunement, bless the world. Let Love command. What’s your favorite, most useful incantation? How do you use it in your world? What do you see? Your job is in the Bureau of Magic. Christine and I would now love to hear from you about how magic reveals itself through you in your life.

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Christine Jonas: Thank you all so much. What a wonderful conversation. I feel like we could go anywhere with it. That journey I had in that car influenced my life going forward, because I connected with the cosmos at a level that was completely visceral, that changed how I looked and saw people. Covid did that as well for me. That’s when I began to ask the deeper questions.

Suzanne Core: Many years ago Rose Meeker, then Nancy Cecil, wrote a book, “Magic At Our Hand.” From a chapter titled The Return of Magic is this quote: “Our responsibility is a large one. We are at a juncture when the world’s future is hanging in the balance. It is indeed a time for Magic, the enfolding light of love and penetrating tone of truth.” 

Truly, every day in every way—everything, everywhere, all at once—as we let Love command, together we set the dominion of the ordinances of heaven in the earth today, through heavenly magic. And the world returns to our King.

See you soon. At the office. 

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