Photo by Walter Chavez
There is a mystery that is revealed in numbers that brings us understanding of what moves and shapes us. I first learned of the magic number 3 when studying psychology for my work in counseling. Groups are put together for the purpose of learning in configurations of three people. It is referred to as chunking and I taught my students how to study in a chunking way which led to their success. The most common example is the configuration of telephone numbers. Presented as 10 numbers all said or written together, the phone number is difficult to remember. When the numbers are chunked together as in 484 424 1400, we are much more able to remember them.
George Miller introduced the Magic Number 7. His article is the most widely read article in psychology and relates to cognition. He discovered that seven units plus or minus two are what the brain can retain.
There is the Magnificent Seven in the world of the stock market where seven stocks literally control the rise and fall of the market. This number is concrete and easy to remember.
I found a new understanding in the recent book by Malcolm Gladwell, a thought leader, who wrote The Revenge of the Tipping Point. The tipping point is when watching a game of football, you feel that one team will win over another. It is expressed as momentum has changed that one team had over the other. It occurs as well in the world of fashion when a critical mass of a certain style of shoes, for example, becomes popular in the culture. I remember chaperoning a dance for Upper School students where virtually every girl arrived in a black dress. That was a trend formed by a tipping point in the culture.
But Gladwell went back to his own research on the tipping point to see what has changed and he updated his thinking in his recent book. He learned something called the Magic Third. One example that he cites is what happens when a woman joins a board of trustees. He noticed that it takes three women on the board to feel comfortable. Two is a friendship but three is a team.
A magic number that helps us to see things very differently can elicit that phrase, “I never knew where our mystery of life and experience is revealed to us when it has been there for a long time waiting to be discovered.” It contains wonder!
I will attend the Christmas Pageant at my church today. I will see three kings, three human beings, a mother and father and a baby lying in a manger, the magic number three. We will experience the miracle and mystery of God with us born in the ranks of the lowly,
It is important that the pageants are performed by children who see mystery more so than the rest of us and are open to sacred dimensions. “Unless you become as a little child, you shall not inherit the Kingdom of God. Glory to God in the highest and peace and goodwill on earth.”
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