What if?

Well, folks, you’ll have to forgive me. I had been planning something heartfelt and meaningful, but I’ve just spent the past 30 minutes chatting live with what must have been a particularly dull witted robot about the bizarre sounds emanating from my modem. And believe me, when I say bizarre, I mean bizarre. It sounds like a mix between a southern truck driver on his CB radio and the weird ghostly voices from the original “The Haunting.” In short, freaky.

Whoever or whatever I was chatting with had a real knack for not understanding the problem I was having and that actually got me thinking. Knacks. Some people really do have knacks for things. Haven’t you ever watched someone do something neat and tell them they have a knack for it?

Then I remembered that this has been written about before, and by a far better writer. Orson Scott Card wrote a series of novels called The Tales of Alvin Maker, about an early America that had a little bit of magic left in it. There are people in the story who use magic, but Card calls it “a knack.” Some of them can start fires, others can heal wounds, and still others can read people like open books.

Any of this sounding familiar? Haven’t we all heard of stories like this in the real world? There are people out there who can do some mighty out of the ordinary things. Haven’t you ever wondered, what if?

What if these people really do have some kind of magic in them? What if magic isn’t something mystical and shrouded in superstition and legends? What if magic, in some form, is real?

Is it possible that these people are the wizards, mages, witches, and enchanters of our dreams and fantasies? Doesn’t it give you a wonderful feeling to think back to all those fairy tales and myths and wonder if there is a grain of truth in them? Morgan le Fay could have been a real woman who simply had a knack for seduction.

I wrote last week that music had the power to move the soul. What if those composers who are considered the greatest had a knack for music? What if the artists we treasure had a knack for painting?

Interesting, isn't it? If there is any modicum of truth in what I've written, think of all the magic out in the world.

Now doesn't that just make you happy?