I don’t believe. That is the truth. I understand faith, and I understand what it takes to have the spirit of (insert work, holiday, special experiential moment). I understand what it takes to make others believe. I understand what it takes to inspire belief.

I understand what it takes to believe.

I simply do not believe.

I want to believe.

I have tried every avenue of thought and experience, except listening to my mother and sister, my father when it comes to believing in myself…even when those moments come about they tell me not to believe, at risk of losing my fine self in the larger universe, the larger world, and the larger narrative that is the unfolding story of life.

This is what magic is to me. It is not an unsimple definition. It is a simple one. It is story. Story contains everything. It is a cup, a cauldron, a vessel which holds everything. Story may take any avenue, any turn, any ploy, and turn-turn-turn.

I have absorbed myself in stories for a sufficient time to understand that a polar opposite may emerge in response to divinity. If there is magic there will be good and evil. Or at least an opposite. Magic’s opposite is boredom, is mundane.

And here is the eternity: in this opposition, in this polarity I do believe.