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Faith, Like Magic
________________________________________
Faith, Like Magic
A true story, by John Tudor
His eyes gleeful slits, he pointed it at my belly. A sudden flash of fire and pain, and I had been killed. But with faith, like magic, I lived again.
On November 17, 1989, I had just finished a performance; and as I reflected on the evening’s big, laughing crowd I was feeling good about my life. It was all so rewarding as I did some sleight of hand with small change for a little boy. A penny and a nickle changed places! His eyes filled with wonder, and I pocketed the coins.
That night, the coins had a higher purpose.
About 11:30 that evening, I returned home to the comfortably landscaped apartment complex I lived in; a safe place with no crime or problems. While unloading my car, two figures loomed from the shadows of the pine trees.
“Give me your wallet!” one threatened.
“No!” I shouted back. It was two young guys in caps and parkas. Having twice averted muggings in my native New York, I decided these kids might be high but posed little danger.
I was wrong.
They demanded my wallet twice more. Twice more I refused.
Suddenly, I saw what looked like fire coming from a pipe in one boy’s hand and heard an explosion. I hit the pavement hard. They ran away, forgetting to rob me! It was a sawed off shotgun, and I’d been shot from less than three feet away.
Incredible pain and fear wracked my body as I shouted for help to the apartments nearby, and yelled curses at my attackers, but no one came to help. Seconds before I’d been so confident; now I lay bleeding, afraid of dying, screaming to the cold stars overhead.
The words “Lamb of God” crossed my mind as I felt consciousness slipping away.
One thought aroused me: I didn’t want to die in a parking lot, alone. The will to survive cleared my mind somehow. With extreme effort I dragged myself across the parking lot and up a steep flight of stairs, trying not to scrape my wounds across the gravel. It seemed to take hours, my heart pounding, unsure of my condition, but very aware how defenseless I was if they returned. Help arrived just as I passed out…
…awakening in the hospital days later, I learned that my right leg had been torn apart by buckshot. After emergency surgery I was awarded my medals: a penny and a nickel, the coins I’d entertained the child with the previous night. The coins did save me: they’d been embedded in my leg by the buckshot pellets, protecting the artery which was right at the main impact of the blast. Thus, my wound was minor compared to what could have happened. The surgeon said if I’d been lying there with a punctured artery I would have surely bled to death. He gave me less than five minutes to live if the coins weren’t there.
It was a very bizarre awakening.
My hospital stay was intense, with a huge outpouring of love from everyone. Still, I got progressively more distressed as days went by, the pain set in, and awareness of my situation struck me. I’d just debuted a theatrical illusion show for touring, for instance, and the Christmas season… all quickly cancelled. I was told I’d eventually recover with no major disability, but there was no prospect of serious performing for a very long time. How was I going to live?
The shocking nature of the crime brought the media to me, repeatedly asking me to sum up my experience. I had to wonder myself, had the coins gained some magic from the child’s innocence? Was it Magic? Luck? Divine Intervention?
I had no answer. I was grateful to be alive, but that was it. Terrible waves of anguish came over me when I thought about it.
One night in the hospital a minister who’d heard the story stopped in unannounced. He was a large black man with a deep voice, empathetic but very serious; all I could see of him was this big silhoette in the dim light from the hallway. I was frightened as he towered over me, struggling to accept the message he was compelled to give. “Hard as it seems, you must forgive your attackers,” he said, “or you may drown in bitterness.” Tears rolling out of my eyes, I swore I’d try. Then we prayed, and I never learned his name or saw him again.
I found it easier to recover physically than emotionally. Struggling with crutches, bandages, and the supreme effort of getting up every day; I was full of fear and the question “WHY?” Upon returning home I felt many emotions: paranoia, depression, rage, and the bitterness the minister had warned me about.
Before the shooting, I was in recovery after eight years of treatment and medication for chronic depression. All the emotional difficulties I’d worked so hard to overcome arose again. Instead of being uplifted by the miraculous course of events, I developed the deluded notion that I was being punished by the Almighty. 1
I became distrustful of friends and family, afraid of the dark, and obsessed that “they” would return to finish me off. Constant reminders of the incident became recurring nightmares. Isolated, weak, broke, paranoid…deep down I knew I was facing a recurrence of the nervous breakdown I’d had six years before, and I was just too weak to go through that again. I caught myself one night calculating how many pain pills it would take to make myself die.
One friend fortunately broke through the wall I’d built around myself (someone who’d also been a victim). I lived on the second floor, with glass doors (always curtained shut) that overlooked the very spot where the shooting had happened. Nothing would ease my misery, so she convinced me step through those doors onto the balcony to talk.
I stood with her in the moonlight, trying not to look at that accursed parking lot and the memory it held – till finally she asked “Have you faced the fact that you really did survive?”
I had no answer.
“It’s not for you to know why this has happened,” she said, “but you were definitely meant to LIVE!”
Yes, of course I was.
So again I chose survival.
I was forced to assess my life, and make changes. But what? How? Where?
Recovery became a mission to me, and I pushed my physical therapy to the limit. My disability was minor but extremely painful, and I was so very weak.
Six weeks after the shooting I haltingly set down my cane to step back onstage, at a luncheon show for a small group of happy senior citizens. Feeling the panels of the little platform stage shift under my feet, I couldn’t conceal how shaky I was. Barely completing the brief show, I was driven home, exhausted, to sleep for twelve hours. Learning to perform again would be harder than I’d expected. It was not just difficulty standing and walking, but in regaining the connection with the audience that I’d always had.
Over the following months my emotions levelled off, but I became cold and hard inside. My unhappiness welled up into terrible dark states of mind and heart, as the minister in the hospital warned me might happen. It did help to hold to forgiveness of my attackers, those two young men who were never caught.
I sometimes held the coins while I prayed, and they took on a strong mythic significance in my life. But I knew it wasn’t the coins alone. I had some magician’s manipulative power over the coins, but look what Greater Power had to be at work here!
Slowly I realized I had to give in, to believe, to accept my own blessings. Miracles happened in ancient times, why not today? My life had been miraculously spared. Now what would I do with it?
A year after the shooting, I was asked to do a motivational program for a notorious local high school. I developed an upbeat show with a twist: near the end I produced a stage pistol and fired it in the air as all the lights went out! They all screamed, and I fought an irrational fear that my attacker might be in the audience. Then I told my story, letting loose all I had inside … taking them all the way down, then back up again. The atmosphere was like some wild revival meeting.
Exhorting them to chant “I believe in myself!” I finished with a Houdini escape illusion to the tune of the (then popular) song “Pray”; illustrating that no matter what bad circumstances you face, you can escape. It seems so corny now, but (no exaggeration) the students were literally dancing in the aisles, cheering, when the curtain closed. I collapsed backstage in the arms of the woman who’d helped me through the dark nights, bathed in sweat, with the screams of the kids in my ears.
My first school show!
That afternoon, I connected again, for the first time since the incident. I immediately recieved calls to do this same show in other places. I had never wanted to be a school show magician, but nothing else was working and I was deeply in debt, so maybe I could do this…?
A great moment occured the next day, at a meeting I’d set up with some teachers to research funding for these performances: when I asked whom I might ask for help, both women smiled at each other, and one said to me “You really don’t know?”
We all laughed when she revealed that the state coordinator for such programs was a Dr. John Tudor! (no relation)
It was bright and breezy that day as I left the meeting. I remember looking at the cloudless sky and saying “Ok. Yes, Lord.”
I committed myself to speaking to as many young people as possible. I hid the constant pain; and the rigorous schedule enabled me to strengthen my body, and regain some stability in my life. Almost obsessive about telling the story, it was like I was atoning for past. My personal testimony allowed me to work through the trauma.
At times I overdid it, or fell short, and some kids shut me out completely. Still, I had to do it. I spent over a decade performing this service to kids, many like the ones who shot me, with the hope of keeping those children from experiencing (or causing) the kind of pain I had known.
Over the next few years my wounds healed, the dark nights of the soul diminished, and I learned tremendous compassion that I never knew before. I kept the coins2, threw away the cane, and held fast to forgiveness. Love and creativity returned to my life. But I still felt wounded inside and anguished when reminded of the ordeal. I’d accepted and carried out my special purpose, and was grateful, but wondered if I’d ever find real peace again.3
Some years later I was booked in a small town in Elizabethtown, North Carolina, the site of our old family homestead.4 After the show I got very lost, driving around looking for the old plantation. I saw an old chapel, and instinctively pulled over.
Walking through the churchyard, it surprised me that most of the names on the tombstones were my own family names. As if they were magic words, I read out loud the old family motto on one of the stones, “Miseris Succere Disco” which translated means: “I learn to succour (help) the unfortunate.”5
I entered the chapel, realizing I had stumbled upon my own family church from two centuries before.6 In the pristine silence I knelt and prayed, feeling greater peace than I’d felt since long before the shooting. I realized that if the shooting had never occured I would never have had to overcome it, to accept the blessing given me. I would never have delivered that message to all those people, never travelled to all those places, never come to that town, that chapel, that moment of peace. It all seemed very right somehow.
I walked outside and looked at the sky filtered through the Spanish moss on the trees. It began to gently rain, and raindrops landed on my face and washed away my tears.
Footnotes:
1. At the time I was doing some things I’m not proud of.
2. One of my talks was at an Indian reservation in New Mexico. After hearing me speak, an Indian man took me out to the desert to an elders circle. With drums beatly softly he repeated my tale to the small group, and had me show them the coins…the oldest Indian, the spiritual leader, looked up at me and said “Strong Medicine.” He admonished me to carry the coins with me always, which I’ve done to this day.
3. I was able to release much of that emotional pain years later, for which I am forever grateful.
4. Interestingly, this where an ancestor of mine led a winning battle in the Revolutionary War, against overwhelming odds, through an act of military deception.
5. This has been the motto of the MacMillan clan (my mother’s family) from at least the mid 17th century. It reflects their scholarly spirituality: the phrase first appears in the epic Aenid, by the poet Virgil (about 19 B.C.). ”Non ignara mali, miseris succerrere disco,” meaning, “Not myself being unacquainted with difficulty, I learn to succour the distressed.” In modern language it might be stated “Having had hard times, I learn to help the unfortunate.”
6. The name of the church is Beth Car, which after writing this story I found means “House Of The Lamb.”
© 2009 John Tudor