My grandmother kept a wardrobe in her basement (which was actually more like a child’s-dream-playland than it was a regular ol’ basement).  As I type this I inhale deeply catching the faint aroma of cedar lingering in my mind’s olfactory memory.  Gram’s wardrobe was complete with wool coats, fur coats, and other creatures formed into hats, stoles and wraps.  Growing up listening to the Chronicles of Narnia read to me at bedtime, I believed with my whole heart that if I just kept at it, one day I would push through those cedar and perfume scented coats out into a Narnian wonderland of my very own.

At some point down the road, my mother acquired the wardrobe and it served as additional storage in a Spare Oom down the hall.  Even throughout my highschool years I beheld the thing with a twinkle in my eye and a quickened pulse…and there may have been more than a few occasions on which I peeked inside just to check. 

No Narnia here, only a flat-screen TV...

My imagination has always been vast; I’ve never wonted for amusement with this wild and creative mind to keep me adventuring through time, across galaxies, and into magical worlds.  To this day, there is a part of me that holds fast to that childlike awe and wonder and yes, even to the magic the world has to offer.  Its there in the sparkling diamond-studed white-out of a Christmas Eve snowfall; its what makes me get up and run outside to seach for the rainbow as the sun breaks during a rainfall; its in the deep orange moon rising over the city skyline that just takes my breath away; its in wind that whispers sweet peace as it dances tendrils of hair ’round my face.

Recently my friend posted this quote from the book, Good Omens:

“You grow up readin’ about pirates and cowboys and spacemen and stuff, and jus’ when you think the world’s all full of amazin’ things, they tell you it’s really all dead whales and chopped-down forests and nucular waste…hangin’ about for millions of years. ‘Snot worth growin’ up for, if you ask my opinion.”

–Adam, Good Omens

To which I replied,

“…And you learn that through the coats all you find is the back of the wardrobe; and that the only wrinkles in time you will find are the ones worn on your skin; and that fireflies are just bugs with glowing bums, not tiny fairies dancing…That is, unless you refuse to relinquish that childlike wonder, that carefree abandon, that disregard for logic and instead, choose to embrace the hope that the world really does possess some kind of incandescent ethereal enchantment!” –Mav, Live Experience

Email/Comments Assignment: So what about you? Do you still believe in the magical? Are you still able to be awed by moments of wonder and splendor? Tell us about it!