Spirituality without morality is simple fantasy; spirituality with morality is incarnation.
(Norvene Vest, Desiring Life, p. 116)
I spent Christmas afternoon on Lincoln Road, South Beach. All the stores were open, it was the very image of one atheist's dream when he said that someday Christmas will be "just another day." One pathetic Christmas tree, lost in all the lights and activity. The Jews do slightly better: a large and beautiful menorah of sea shells and some very serious young men in yarmulkes standing in front ready to give you information about the religion. Still, I'm not sure the best answer isn't just to move a block over. I won't be going back next Christmas.
Lincoln Road has a peculiar magic, and community. This rooster, well known, generally is seen settled half-asleep on the handle-bars while the bike owner goes about his appointed rounds. I had never met the rooster before he breezed past my lobster ravioli at my sidewalk table. Later, my South Beach friend & cultural interpretor commented about a passer-by: "I can't tell if that's a girl or a guy." Me: "That seems to be a standard problem around here." Though only a problem of interpretation; far more serious problems exist in the social structure.
Every time I go to South Beach, I learn something new about the vile and soul-destroying culture. A Pat Robinson or Jerry Falwell criticizing it from afar has no idea what he is talking about: it is really so much worse than that. As my local friend pointed out and I could already gather for myself, homosexuality has very little to do with it. I always find myself disturbed that more whole/holy cultural alternative isn't easily accessible by my gay friends. However, as my Miami friend once again points out, the community is so small that subdivisions are difficult to create. Even if my local congregation were to welcome a young gay boy with open arms (which they actually would), the fact would remain that he would be the only gay boy around. I don't know the solution, I just know that the more the vileness is seen the more difficult it is to be the clueless tourist enjoyed a colorful subculture that was there the day before I showed up and will still be there the day after I leave. Education and wealth leave you the opportunity to drop in culturally and geographically, but others have no real options for dropping out.
Maturity, responsibility, wholeness: all these things are more likely to make magic dead. An unhappy paradox is that the person seeking these things is more likely to end up dour, humorless, and lacking the joy of humanity. One step forward, two steps back.

For my Christmas gift, my friend got us tickets to Corteo by Cirque du Soliel. In the show, the Clowness, played by Valentyna Paylevanyan, is made neutrally buoyant by a set of balloons. Going beyond bringing a midget into a show in a non-exploitive way, this show makes you want to be Ms. Paylevanyan.
We sat behind a group of about five young girls, perhaps nine years old, and one young boy. I commented to my friend that these things are best seen with children, who still have such a great sense of magicalism. I was perhaps thrown astray by my sister's reporting of my three-year-old nephew's excitement over Christmas morning the day before. These children were tri-lingual, multi-urban between South American and Miami, nasty to their male relative, and quite beyond magic. They were resolutely ignored by the clown they set about teasing, and were not even impressed by Ms. Paylevanyan floating over their heads at the point where she jumped from palm to palm, held aloft by her wonderful balloons.
These girls made me think of a movie from several years ago. At the climax of the movie, a virgin must read the magic script to save the world from evil. She completes the reading and the evil continues to advance. The heroes of the movie look at her, questioning her virtue, and she wails: "Well, it was just once!" They finally have to coach an eight-year-old child through the text in order to obtain the required virginal reading. Maybe magic only exists in the heart of a three-year-old on the other side of the country.
Our last stop before I returned to Raleigh was brunch at the Biltmore. We had been once before and had been, well, stunned. Brunch is served in a beautiful interior courtyard. The food is the best of everything, as well as being everything. The very best preserved meats in three varieties, the very best breads in some far greater number of varieties. Breathtaking desserts. And everything else you could imagine. It is an adult version of the Willie Wonka fantasy.
After everything I've seen in the last few days, it is no wonder that I hesitate to say that it is the magic I can believe in. As far as I can think, it is a magic that is clean of the vileness just outside the courtyard. On the previous trip my friend attempted to inject some cynicism into the experience by joking with the dessert attendant, "What, no cheesecake?" The answer: "Just one moment, sir." And the gentleman returned with a cheesecake.
It is a mercantile experience; this is magic that is paid for. But it is paid for fairly, at the value of that which is received, with an experiential value that exceeds the simple things being purchased. The magic doesn't tread across the surface of something crass, but aims squarely at an ideal of abundance that every person hopes for. An ideal which, at the Christmas season, many people hope may be reality for those they love and care about. Certainly there is magic that is free, but for now I'll accept magic that is merely clean.
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Grace: I wrote most of this post at the airport waiting for my plane. When I moved from my desk out to the terminal, I ended up sitting next to a young man calling his mother. Age 25 to 30, black, perhaps gay. He had apparently gone on a cruise at one point and decided it was the thing for him and was returning from another trip. Explaining to mother that of course there wasn't anyone on the cruise like him, certainly no one his age, but you "just have to get past that" and meet people and have a good time.
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(I find myself unable to attribute the rooster picture; it came from that jumbled mess that is myspace where you can never figure who came from what, and the flickr source link refused to reveal itself.)