Here Lies Magic

From the pages of an old journal

(A photo of the Northern Lights from my front yard on October 10th. Magical!)

Hello Readers!

I began writing in a new journal this week. It’s an odd time of year to start a fresh journal, but I gave up on neat and tidy stops and starts a long time ago. When I finish one, I simply start another. The last edition now sits in foot high stack of old notebooks filled with the goodness and debris of an examined life.

One peacock-covered notebook jumped out at me when I was rearranging and labeling my stack with the appropriate dates. This one wasn’t a collection of my own entries, but a forgotten attempt at journaling my thoughts on a series of literary quotes.

In late 2019, I bought “A Year of Reflection” from author Erin Loechner in which she emailed weekly prompts (literary quotes) for reflection throughout the year. It’s a brilliant idea, and I wish I thought of it myself. I began journaling through the quotes in early 2020, and well, you know what happened after that. It took me ten months to finish Week 17’s prompt and by then we were seven months into the pandemic. My responses became darker and more clouded by the bewildering life pause we were experiencing until they simply stopped.

However, some of these entries hold value, so I thought I’d share some over the next few months with an update on how I would respond today. It might be a fun exercise for you to try too.

Consider this essay one big reflective practice!

The quote we’re considering is from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett:

“Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world,” he said wisely one day. “But people don’t know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment.”