Finding Magic

by Sally Quinn

  And every joy it brings.

  Here’s to life

  To dreamers and their dreams.

  May all your storms be weathered

  And all that’s good get better

  Here’s to life, here’s to love, and here’s to you . . .

  Epilogue

  I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing.

  —Rabbi Hillel

  Some years ago, soon after I had started On Faith, Ben and I attended a Washington Post Company board dinner hosted by Don Graham, the company’s chairman. I was delighted to be seated next to Barry Diller, head of IAC/InterActiveCorp. Although he was not particularly religious, I had been told he was positive about the website. He asked me a number of questions about it and about me, then leaned toward me and asked quite simply: “Do you have faith?” I was frozen and couldn’t answer. He repeated the question. Stricken, I simply looked at him. Nobody had ever asked me that. I realized that despite the website, which I had named myself, I had little idea what the word meant and little idea whether I had it. I certainly had no idea how to respond. Finally, I said to him, “Barry, do you think you could catch the waiter’s eye? I’d love another glass of wine.”

  Surprisingly, I’m not sure I could do justice to trying to answer the question any better today. People often ask how I would define myself religiously, what I believe, what label fits me. I’ve tried on a lot of positions, beliefs, denominations, and faiths over the years. At one point I even wrote that dancing was my religion. Somewhat embarrassing now, but then it didn’t seem far from the truth. In the end, none of these identifiers I’ve taken on felt like a perfect fit, and I’ve discarded most of them.

  The labels “seeker” and “searcher” don’t work for me. I think we’re all seeking meaning in life so it doesn’t tell anyone much. I used to like the idea of being a “somethingist.” At one time, I adopted the label when I thought people were using it to acknowledge that they believed in something, but couldn’t make a definitive statement about what that something (or Something) might be. I fell into that grouping in certain respects. Later I saw a definition of somethingist in the Urban Dictionary as “a person who defines their beliefs in a somewhat annoying manner,” and I began to think that this label was a little too cute and way too simplistic.

  Religious humanist or secular humanist doesn’t really describe who I am either, and neither atheist nor agnostic works for me. Agnostic never has, in part because if an agnostic is a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known about the existence of God, then that covers most of us to begin with. An atheist is someone who denies the existence of God. From a very young age, I clung to the idea that I was a confirmed atheist. As I’ve written, though, I came to understand that even if I was uncertain about the existence of God, I was never someone who didn’t believe. I believed in many things, certainly in magic and mystery and meaning. I was not a doubter about the importance of gratitude. I was not skeptical about the beauty of all living things. I was not doubtful about the power of love, grace, and passion. We cannot live without grace, and we should never live without passion—in love, in work, and in our beliefs.

  I believe that life inherently has great meaning, potentially for everyone. I am not negative, not a pessimist, not a cynic. I am definitely not a nihilist. If I had to choose one word for where I am spiritually and philosophically at this moment in my life, it would be transcendentalist. “The Transcendentalist” according to Ralph Waldo Emerson, “adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy.” When I first read that quote, I felt I could not have described myself better in terms of spiritual doctrine. I believe that there are miracles.

  Most dictionaries don’t recognize the word Christian with a small c, but I like to think that I am also just that, a christian, by which I mean a good and compassionate person, ethical and moral, embedded in core values, someone who cares about others. These are qualities I admire in people and with which I was brought up. Not that I always measure up to them—I’m no angel—but I try, especially as I get older.

  I also believe that being a christian (unlike a Christian) doesn’t mean one has to believe Jesus is the son of God. My view is that a christian believes in something supremely good (which of course Jesus was), and I do believe that that good comes from a creator, although I don’t know what form it takes. My human mind cannot imagine that first there was nothing and then there was the universe. We can’t create the divine ourselves. We can only contribute to it in certain ways and we can certainly experience it. It’s that beauty and that great and ultimate good I’m seeking.

  The reality is that in the end I have my own religion. I made it up, helped along by a close reading of Thomas Moore’s lovely book A Religion of One’s Own. Nobody has the same religion. At one point, Moore writes, “The more traditions I study and borrow from, the deeper my spiritual life becomes.” And so it is with me.

  Emerson is often quoted as having said, “Every church has a membership of one.” Even with three thousand people in a cathedral or mosque or synagogue, each one has his or her own faith, own beliefs, own relationship with whatever she or he calls God. It’s simply how you worship, what you believe, how you breathe. Nobody can get inside another person’s mind and heart. Nobody can decide for you how to reinforce your goodness, or tell you with whom you’re going to find love, or what’s going to assuage your pain. For everyone faith is different.

  A moment of epiphany for me was when I realized I am not an atheist (and likely wasn’t ever) and that believing in magic is as legitimate as any religion or faith. It was an awakening, an illumination. I still had a long way to go. It was the idea of not being afraid to get closer to wonder and magic. The risk and the daring were worth it. I had been afraid to discuss my occultism for fear people would think I was crazy, and then I was reluctant to discuss my blossoming faith for fear my friends would think I had gone over the edge. Some of them did and do.

  Looking back at these stories and the memories they brought to the surface has helped me more clearly articulate why I felt I needed the armor of being an atheist. I wanted to examine what would happen if I took off the armor and revisited those years and allowed myself to be vulnerable and open to a new way of thinking. I needed to take away that layer of defense and expose myself to greater understanding of my real beliefs. What I discovered writing this book was that I don’t feel heavy anymore. I no longer feel confined and contained (imprisoned even) by that atheist label. I could finally see how unsuitable it really was. I could begin to move beyond this shackling that I had created for myself. That moment was enlightening and lightening at the same time.

  * * *

  Magic is an old concept. It comes from the word magus or magi, its plural. Most of us (certainly Christians) know the story of the three wise men or magi who came to visit Jesus in the manger. Magi were priests, practitioners of magic, astrology, and alchemy, with a depth of esoteric knowledge.

  I’m willing to look anywhere for answers, clues, understanding, meaning. Openness is the key to any ideas that contribute to a meaningful life and cause no harm. Wicca is a relatively new religion that is ritualistic and can encompass all beliefs, some, or none. The basic tenet is the code or what is called the Wiccan Rede: “An it harm none, do what you will.” Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

  When I use the word magic, I know what I mean, but I believe it’s hard to define concretely. I’ve concluded that it can’t be defined but rather has to be felt, seen in a way, experienced and comprehended. I believe magic is based on faith and hope. It’s like prayer. It can be found among the effects of prayer. It’s powerful and supernatural and otherworldly. It’s transcendent, transformative, and transporting. It’s a gift, making us feel good, and can be used for the greater good as well. It’s spiritual and uplifting at the same time. Magic is in the eye of the beh
older, and everyone’s a potential beholder. Magic is available to everyone and can be found everywhere—in the stars and on Earth. Magic is miraculous and sacred. (Thomas Moore proclaims that “nothing is not sacred,” with which I heartily agree.) Anyone is free to define magic and translate it for themselves. You can call it religion or spirituality or God, Yahweh, Buddha, Allah, Zeus, or the Tooth Fairy.

  Writing the stories in this book and discovering moments of enlightenment and enchantment have been magical. I feel as if I’m going forward in the right direction, as if a sense of peace has floated down on me, a greater connectedness to myself, to others, maybe even to the universe. Leon Wieseltier, author and religion scholar, prefers the word enchantment to magic. He suggests that if illusion brings you an enchantment, which it does for me, “you are perfectly justified in holding it because an enchanted life is a deeper and richer life than an unenchanted or disenchanted life.” Max Weber, the founder of sociology, famously wrote that secularization renders a disenchantment or demagification (entzauberung in German) of the world. Finally I had come to understand the power of magic and enchantment.

  I had contemplated magic—a touchstone from my childhood—and atheism, which grew naturally out of my shock at seeing those photos from Dachau so many decades ago. Faith was another matter. From the minute I froze in the face of Barry Diller’s question to me about whether I had faith, I started asking questions of myself and many others. What I might have said to Barry at the time was that my religion was the First Amendment. Ben and I always had faith in the Washington Post. It took me years to find more answers to his question—and of course I’m still finding them.

  Although this quote has been misattributed to Kierkegaard, it represents my thinking about faith: “Faith is walking as far as you can in the light and then taking one step more.”

  From a more religious stance, Jesus said to Thomas, as written in John 20:29 of the King James version of the Bible, “because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” In other words, not that you have to see it to believe it, but that you have to believe it to see it.

  * * *

  When Ben’s decline began, On Faith was a thing to do. After his death, I was looking for a thing to be, including a better person. Long ago, someone who was writing a book about people’s epitaphs called and asked me what I would like my epitaph to read. He said he’d call back in a few weeks for my response. I told him there was no need to call back, I knew at that moment what I’d like etched in stone: “Good Wife, Good Mother, Good Daughter, Good Friend.” I wouldn’t change a word.

  * * *

  Music, in the best and worst of times, has been exhilarating and consoling. On a daily basis it has been spiritually nourishing. The French word chantepleure (another word I love) means to sing and cry at the same time. I did a lot of that during the days before and after Ben’s death. In fact I wrote about crying or breaking into sobs so many times in this book that I had to go back and seriously excise them with a red pen. Nonetheless, I take heart from these words of Washington Irving, which speak to me and seem another way of defining chantepleure:

  There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.

  * * *

  Psychiatrist George Vaillant directed what is known as the Grant Study, a study undertaken at Harvard as part of a larger Study of Adult Development at Harvard Medical School. A number of men from the classes of 1939 through 1944, including Ben and Jack Kennedy, were followed throughout their lives since college. After writing several books on the subject, Vaillant concluded recently that the study showed one thing: “Happiness equals love. Full stop.”

  Which brings me to love.

  Most of us are looking for the divine in our lives, searching for meaning and magic. Most important, almost all of us are looking for love, in its many manifestations.

  What did Ben’s death mean to me? I got religion or some sense of spirituality from the idea of love, self-sacrifice, mystery, and magic. It happened to me in a much clearer way at that moment. It illuminated for me the story of my life.

  Being in love with a man on his deathbed is not romantic in the traditional sense, but I was more in love with Ben then than at any other time. I was in love with him every minute of every day, until the day he died. And I was more in love with him the day he died than I had ever been before.

  I have faith in the power of love. That’s the significance of the stories in this book. Ultimately loving is the most important thing a person can do. Giving and receiving love is encapsulated in another of my favorite words, albeit a rarely used one, redamancy, which means “the act of loving in return.” George Sand was right when she wrote, “There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.”

  * * *

  One of the many things I have learned is that you can’t seek happiness to find meaning. You have to seek meaning to find happiness. To find meaning is not simply transcending the self; it’s transcending the moment.

  Thoreau wrote, “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”

  Living in the present is important, but equally essential is cherishing the memories and anticipating the future. I’m passionate about living life to its fullest—my life at this present moment, my life with all the people I care about, and my life in the larger world, in all the adventures to come.

  I find in the end that I can’t and will never stop asking questions. There is no way to know the unknowable, of course. My nascent quest for meaning and my understanding that there is no universal answer mostly came to me when Quinn was born. The same with God and faith. Everyone has his or her own idea of what gives their life meaning. Yet there are so many more questions to be asked. The more I know, the more I see what I don’t know and the more aware I am of the richness that lies ahead in reading, learning, seeing, listening. When I look back on a life of questions, there are no right ones or wrong ones. It’s only what feels right to me. This is only my story. I can’t tell anyone how to be happy or how to be in touch with the divine or how to find meaning in life. I never had a plan for living. I just knew I wanted to love and be loved. We each have to find our own path.

  Emerson, when he met friends he hadn’t seen for a long while, had the habit of asking, “What has become clear to you since last we met?” I find that an important question to ask oneself from time to time.

  What has become clear to me is that there is one question I will never stop asking: What do I plan to do with the rest of my “one wild and precious life”?

  Photos Section

  McDougald plantation house in Statesboro, Georgia

  Mother, me, and Blitzie in Pineville, Louisiana, 1942

  Mother, Daddy, Donna, and me by the Japanese fishpond at the Imperial Palace Hotel in Kyoto

  Army brats: me, Bill, Donna, Daddy, and Mother

  My debutante year. The Quinn girls: me, Mother, and Donna, Fort Myer, Virginia, 1959

  Daddy and King Paul of Greece at Greek Easter, breaking eggs

  Daddy being promoted to chief public information officer—my first brush with journalists—August 1, 1959

  Credit: Carl Schneider, U.S. Army Photographic Agency

  Heidi? Boarding school in Château d’Oex, Switzerland

  Smith College freshman handbook photo, 1959

  The ultimate Southern party girl, Mother

  Credit: Barry Goldwater

  The modeling-studying-working-acting-partying-traveling years; me in Germany

  In India with Warren Hoge, a stopover on our way to Vietnam, 1971

  Covering the shah of Iran’s 2,500th anniversary celebration of the Persian Empire, 1971

 
; Ben’s favorite picture of me—early years at the Post

  Credit: The Washington Post

  My favorite photo of the two of us, flirting, 1975

  Credit: Nancy Crampton

  My early days as a Washington Post Style reporter

  Caught swooning by the photographer on our wedding day, October 20, 1978

  Credit: Harry Naltchayan/The Washington Post

  Proud and loving parents at Quinn’s christening, October 1982

  Credit: Harry Naltchayan/The Washington Post

  Celebrating Ben’s eightieth birthday in Turkey—sprinkled with fairy dust

  Sacred table, Thanksgiving, 1989

  Renewing our wedding vows. Twentieth anniversary with a very reverent Tom Brokaw and our wedding party: Quinn Bradlee, Art Buchwald, and Katharine Graham, 1998

  Credit: Vivian Ronay

  Partying at Grey Gardens, August 2013

  Great Faiths travels, Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, 2007

  Three months before Ben died, on the party boat at Porto Bello, holding hands as always

  Placing a white rose on Ben’s casket, October 29, 2014

  Credit: John McDonnell/The Washington Post

  Speaking at Ben’s yahrzeit in front of the chapel at Oak Hill Cemetery, trying not to cry, October 2015

  Credit: James R. Brantley

  Ben’s mausoleum, amid the cherry trees, Oak Hill Cemetery

  Acknowledgments

  About a week before Ben died, he and I were both exhausted. Everyone had wanted to come and say good-bye, and he just wasn’t up to it anymore, even though he didn’t know that’s why they were there. I was emotionally drained. Then I got a call from Ev Small, who had worked at the Post and for Kay Graham for twenty-five years and had been deeply involved in helping Kay with her Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Personal History. She had a picture of Ben she wanted to drop by. Ben knew Ev quite well, but I hardly knew her at all. I started to say that we weren’t having any more visitors but something made me tell her to come by. She did, and Ben remembered her and was delighted. We talked for a while and I was immediately drawn to her. It had been a couple of years since I had signed my book contract and I hadn’t written a word. Taking care of Ben had depleted me. Suddenly I blurted out, “Would you be willing to help me with my book?” It surprised me as much as it did her. I hadn’t even thought about the book in months. She said she really didn’t think so, that she had been working for other people and was anxious to do something on her own. I forgot about it. A week or so after Ben’s funeral, Ev called. She thought she could at least talk with me about shaping the book. We met the next Tuesday and again every Tuesday for a few hours for over two years. Talk about synchronicity! As the book neared completion, we were meeting longer and longer hours and more days until the final month when we were practically living together. By the end, both of us, under enormous time constraints, were stretched to the limit, sometimes working until midnight. We began having a glass of wine at seven thirty, then seven, then six thirty, then six. I knew it was time to finish the book when I started eyeing the clock desperately at four thirty.