What does love look like? What does love say?

We could all use a trick up our sleeve, and this is a good one

“The Farewell.” Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash

Magic is about solving problems. You might think otherwise: that magicians are all about fooling people, sparking a sense of childlike wonder, making you question your sanity, or (unfortunately, thanks to the less artful practitioners) simply bugging you because they know something you don’t. It is all of those things, certainly. But at its core, the art of illusion involves imagining something that simply cannot be, and then doing whatever it takes to get people to feel the tingle the creator felt when they first imagined the impossibility. The illusionist doesn’t start with the method, the how to get there. She starts with the there.

I remember inventing a trick on the spot one afternoon at Boston Medical Center, where I served as a chaplain during the pandemic. As our six-month rotation was drawing to a close, my fellow chaplains and I gathered in a conference room for a ceremony to remember the patients who had meant the most to us. We were to take turns standing up before a dish brimming with decorative stones and an empty bowl in its center. The ritual involved holding a stone as we remembered one special patient and then placing that stone in the bowl.

I wanted to remember Alfred.* Alfred had been hospitalized twice during my time at BMC, seriously ill both times. We spent hours together, an African American man from Boston sharing with a man from a mostly white Syracuse suburb how racism had affected his health and his job prospects. But Alfred also shared his hopes and determination, which is what we focused on.

When I first visited Alfred during his second stay, he was in an intensive care unit, intubated and unable to speak. I panicked. How would we communicate? Alfred looked up at me with wide eyes, probably wondering the same.

“How are you?” I asked, then handed him the clipboard. “I’m so stuck right now,” Alfred wrote. “I just want to come back strong.” Then he handed the clipboard back. My turn.

Our eyes met. Alfred’s glance must have matched mine — this way of talking wasn’t cutting it. Our conversations had been more give-and-take; it was as if we both felt there must be a deeper way to communicate.

That’s when love entered the room. Suddenly I found myself drawing circles next to Alfred’s words and filling each circle with an affirming word: strong. Beautiful. GOD. And more. I told Alfred that the circles were buttons, and asked him to touch the ones he wanted most. He touched them all, then grabbed my pen and the clipboard and drew more circles and more words, which he then touched. Alfred’s eyes smiled. Mine smiled back. We both knew we’d hit on something.

I drew arrows to show how many of these gifts and attributes were interconnected. I signed it all “Amazing” — Alfred’s initials were A.M.

Affirmations for Alfred. Illustration by Rob Kinslow

I loved Alfred. He recovered from that intensive care stay, miraculously, and was discharged. Then, one morning about a month later, I was in the student chaplain workroom before going on rounds, scrolling through the hospital census system that tracks former patients, and I spotted Alfred’s name. But he wasn’t back in the hospital this time. Just days before, Alfred had died at home. I buried my head and cried.

Months later, at that afternoon ritual with my chaplain colleagues, I wanted Alfred to be my “stone.” As I stood up to pay him tribute, my thoughts were racing. What should I do? What should I say?

In my mind I suddenly heard the two questions I often ask myself when confronted with a thorny situation, such as someone slipping a few MAGA talking points into a conversation or confronting a tangled family drama. Or standing up to speak in an emotionally charged situation, as I was in this particular moment. Those questions are: What does love look like, and what does love say? In this moment, love told me to offer some magic. (Spoiler alert: Secret revealed ahead.)

What love told me in that moment was that I should make the stone vanish as a way to express that Alfred was now all around us, freed from his infirm body. I wanted him to be remembered. And magic is the big hammer in my spiritual toolbox for creating memorable moments.

As I spoke of Alfred now belonging to the cosmos, I dipped my hand into the stones, rustled them about, singled one out, made to grab it, and raised up my closed fist. I then slowly squeezed my fist to crush the stone, and opened it to show an empty hand. The stone was gone. My fellow chaplains and supervisor were stunned, and moved, and some even laughed and shook their heads in joyful disbelief.

The secret? I had never actually picked up the stone. I mimed the whole thing. I had invented a trick in the moment, starting with the there. When the going gets tough, it is helpful to have a trick up one’s sleeve. I have found that viewing love as a presence rather than an emotion, as an advisor rather than a goal, can make for strong magic. It starts with asking those two questions.

You’ll know when love has whispered in your ear and told you what to do or say. It’s when you blurt out something or do something that comes straight from the heart so fast that it hasn’t had time to check in with your brain on its way out. Had the brain gotten hold of it, it might have reasoned your thought or action away. Had I thought overmuch whether to offer magic in that moment, I might have demurred (as, I confess, I often have), and all of us in that room that day would have missed out on something special.

The oh-so-rational brain can only play catch-up to what is driven solely by the heart. What love looks like and what love says are often something reason would never have brought you to. The arrow of truth that shoots straight from the heart does not pass go as it sails to the target. In effect, you become a spiritual transcriptionist, simply picking up on the subtle urgings of love and translating those vibrations into word and deed.

It’s an abracadabra of the highest order, and glory be: You already know how to do it. Today or tomorrow, try bringing a little magic into someone else’s life. (Lord knows, the world needs it.) A moment will surely come to you at some point over the next 24 hours that asks of you, what does love look like, and what does love say? Reach for your stone, the stone that isn’t really there, and hold it up for all to see, including you. What you are really reaching for is your invisible heart and putting it on full display. Alfred brought mine to the surface. Who knows who might do it for you?

*I’ve changed the name to honor my patient’s confidentiality and memory.