James 24:7

I picked up Ms. Wicker's book for the same reason (as I gather from her web site) that she wrote it: to try and make some sense out of all the magical thinking and magical talking I hear everyday...sometimes proceeding from my own self!

For example, I was talking to my wife a couple of weeks ago, and happily noted that I had not endured one stomach virus since the one that almost sent me on to glory almost 5 years ago.  I caught myself just before I said, "Maybe I shouldn't say that for fear that speaking of it will bring another one on."

I caught myself because I was reading the first few chapters of Not in Kansas Anymore as we spoke.

As I sat down to review this book, I imagined a family sitting in a living room.  The sitting members of the family included Harold, a plumber and therefore a man who knows what fits where, his wife Maud, a clinical social worker who spends her days helping the stranded and stuck, and Buffy their thoroughly post-modern daughter.

As they sit, their son, Biff, slinks through the room.  Biff has tri-colored hair...pink, purple and jet black.  His fingernails are black.  A silver crucifix dangles from his pierced nose and covers his lips.  He wears the crucifix there because as it puts it, "Jesus sanctifies everything that goes into my mouth and everything that comes out."

Harold is not sure that Jesus is up to it.

When Biff walks through the room Harold mutters to himself and everyone else: "Why does my son have to be such a freak?  He is making an utter fool of himself."

Maud, always quick to defend her boy says, "Harold, don't be so hard on him.  He's just trying to find himself.  Give him space to be himself and he will get through this."

Buffy says, "You know like you people just don't like get it, do you?  He is not a freak and he is not just 'going through a phase' mommmmm....He's a Winkydink and deserves to be heard just as much as your George Bush or Billy Graham.  This is not just something he's doing; this is who he is."

In reading Ms. Wicker's book, I found myself constantly asking, "Who am I?  Harold, Maud, or Buffy?  (I'm far too conventional to be Biff...at least in public.)

If you read this book as Harold you will find yourself muttering, "Why would this otherwise intelligent woman waste her time on this caberet of freaks and losers?"  At times you will be tempted to toss the book in the garbage as that question echoes back to you..."and why would I waste my time reading it?"

If you read it as Maud, you may see some of your own relatives (re: sons and daughters) and pray, "God please tell me that I am right...that these folks are just playing or just going through a phase or just trying to find themselves."

If you read it any either of these ways, you will be displaying your fundamental belief that there is a normative way of life, that you occupy it, and that the characters in this book don't.

However, if you read it as Buffy, you can pat yourself on the back for being very much a hip member of  21st century Western culture who gives a lot of space to alternative forms of being and becoming, applauds the rich texture of diversity, recognizes the foundations of power and greed that underlie the normative view, accepts the ever-changing-image as about all the reality you can depend upon and respectfully attends to every utterance of most everyone including witches, dragons, vampires and hoodooers.

I wasn't too sure I wanted to buy this book.  I opened it in the bookstore and read the first few chapters.  I almost passed on it as I read about Ms. Wicker's journalistic excursion into the world of the "energy sharers" at the Vampire and Victims Ball.  (My inner Harold was rolling his eyes and saying things like, "Jim you've only got so long to live...Is this the way you want to spend your time?"

I read on because I did believe that there was something to Ms. Wicker's subtitle..."A Curious Tale of How Magic is Transforming America."  

I decided to go ahead and buy the book after reading through chapters 2 and 3.  In those chapters she lays bare the practices of everyday magic that are all around us...even the incantations that proceed from our own mouths. 

For example, have you ever bowled and done the bowler's dance after you have let the ball go toward the pins?  Do you watch Deal or No Deal and think that it's perfectly logical that someone would select their case numbers based on the date of their birth? Do you ever make a wish before you blow out the candles?

Oh, sure...you might say that that's "just for fun" but have you ever decided not to make a wish when you blow out your candles?  How did you feel afterward?  Like you had blown your chance at fame and fortune or the possibility that your kids would really clean up their rooms or that your husband would become more than an belching couch? Or, even though you are only having fun at your party, did you insist on not telling what you wished for for fear it wouldn't come true? 

Hmmm?

Ms. Wicker starts with that kind of "everyday, taken-for-granted, it's-only-just-for-fun magic" we all practice and then well...as my inner Harold would say, "Goes off the deep end."

She visits with hoodoo practitioners, Wicca witches, vampires, a family of elves, werewolves and let's them have their say.  She is wide-eyed with wonder as she watches a  hoodooer dig up dirt from the side of Zora Neale Hurston's grave and place a dime in the hole for payment and then follows him around as Zora directs him from the grave.

Now...you need to know that Ms. Wicker is prize-winning journalist and a former religion reporter for the Dallas Morning News.  She is also a child of the South and an escapee of the Southern Baptist fundamentalism.  In other words, Ms. Wicker is not some valley girl wandering around squealing with delight at every horse feather that floats her way.

She presents herself as a skeptic but a skeptic who is willing to be convinced...maybe even a bit hungry to be convinced. 

I felt conflicted reading this book.  I had moments when I thought how much some of the "magical people" sounded like full-blown schizophrenics I have met.  (That made me wonder not only about the "magical people" but also about where one draws a meaningful disctinction between "weirdness" and "madness.")

I also had moments when I thought that Ms. Wicker's project fit nicely with some things I have been reading in the theological literature about how our culture is moving into something that is called post-modernism, which may be nothing more than a euphemism for "whatever-the-heck-this-is-that-is-going-on-as-our-Enlightenment-commitment-to-reason-and-science-wanes."

I also had moments when I wanted to cheer Ms. Wicker's attempts to listen to those at the fringe, those on the outside, those who are overlooked and rejected in our society.  As avowed back-sliding Baptists go, Ms. Wicker proves herself to be quasi-missional by giving voice to the voiceless.

But then, I also had moments when I wondered why Ms. Wicker was not more critical in her assessments.  For example (and this is so "post"), when a vampire tells her that a wizard will be attending the Vampire and Victims Ball, Ms. Wicker says something to the effect of "Oh, I didn't know wizards exist."  The Vampire replied, "They must because he is one." 

As I continued in my reading (sometimes pushing old Harold to complete the assignment), I found myself having more questions about Ms. Wicker than I did about her subject matter.  (Most of the reviews focus on this collection of people she discovered in her research and note with amusement the vampire who only drank the blood of those who have been tested, etc.).

My Wicker-wonderings were piqued even more as I read the following lines in her book.  Writing about some of her experiences (key word...that one) with the magical people she writes,

"I didn't count these things as big magic, and maybe not as magic at all, but they had been experiences deep within myself.  I often tell myself that I don't feel what I feel.  I say that I'm not hungry when I am, that my feelings aren't hurt when they are, that I'm not jealous when I am.  Anytime I experience anything not on my list of acceptable behaviors, I deny that I feel it.  What would it be like to simply believe that if I felt something that made it true?  I wouldn't have to put together a committee to back me up or do an experiment to prove it.  I wouldn't have to justify it.  I would just have to stand on my own perceptions.  Could I do that?  Probably not.  How many people can?" (p. 231; emphasis mine)

To her credit, that every honest statement could be made by any number of us who live our lives as pleasers and who think that they need a stack of signed approvals to even exist.

However, that statement also named my frustration with this book.  Ms. Wicker seems to believe (or is at least struggling to believe) that the ultimate determiner of truth is experience, that if  someone "experiences" something then that is sufficient to demonstrate the truth of it.

I believe that is why she can be so open to what strikes Harold as ridiculous.  There must be wizards because that guy is one.

In my view, Ms. Wicker's statement neglects the fact that we all are parts of communities that work to shape who we are, that there is no way to escape that.  (For example, whenever I hear someone touting individualism I want to ask, "Which community taught you to think of yourself as an individual?")   As Duke theologian, Stanley Hauerwas reminds us all, we are all a part of the cult called democratic liberalism that teaches us that each of us is perfectly free to pursue any project of our choosing as long as we do not hinder others from pursuing the projects of their choosing.

Ms. Wicker is a part of a community who teaches her that one is free to experience whatever she experiences and to also name that experience as the truth simply because one has experienced it.

I guess what I'm saying is that Ms. Wicker seems to be caught in the tug of war between her cult-like, authoritarian, experience-quashing roots and the cult-like, authoritarian, experience-affirming community of democratic liberalism where everything is tolerated except the hint of intolerance.

I can relate...

Should you read this book?  Sure.

But just know...your response will depend upon whether your name is Harold, Maud, or Buffy.