faith in fairies

When I was a child my best friend, Bee, believed in fairies. Her faith was simple yet elegant, creative, eccentric, true. We would run together through the garden behind her house, dancing with the wind. My linen skirt twirling around my waist, hair long and loose, tangled in the breeze. She danced next to me, arms and legs growing and gangly, her skin soft and white. Our bare feet leaving faint prints in the soft dirt. The fragrance of ivy and lavender remain with me today, beckoning me home, a place I sometimes only faintly remember. We built secret forts within the bushes, in the chicken coop, under the arbor. Packing cheese and crackers, a blanket and a bottle of tea from the kitchen into a small wooden basket, these preparations were everything we would ever need. Our adventures were grand and long carrying us a million miles from home to another land in the back yard among the tomatoes and lady bugs- among the fairies that lived all around. We were enchanted in a land where reality was a mystery we did not know. The pain of the world escaping us as abundant imagination enraptured me. I believed only in the simplicity of the natural love I experienced in the world around me.

The two of us would lay in the shade, our tiny fingers weaving together twigs and weeds to make beds, stools, homes for the fairies of the garden. Taking breaks only to sip the sweet tea or pick juicy blackberries from the nearby bush. Bee all the while quietly whispering stories of flower petals and fairy wings. I always admired her faith, her peaceful, unwavering belief in something we could not see. Inside I wanted desperately to have faith like her. I couldn't help but reach deeper underneath the flowers, in-between the vines, seeking to uncover the meaning behind believing in a world I could not see.

As I got older my friends believed in Buddah, sex, freedom, perfection, Jesus, peace, superiority, power, servanthood, love. Each different in their own beautiful way, and sure of the truths they had come to know. I found myself again with tea in my basket, dancing in the gardens among the lilacs, the breeze in my hair, desperately searching for the faith they had in a world, a reality, an abstraction that was altogether mysterious and foreign to me. The vines of persuasion entangling me, I tasted the fruits of each. Some bitter and painful, others sweet like wine. Wearing freedom and sex like a torn pair of trousers, slipping into Jesus like a comfortable pair of shoes and trying on love like a worn out glove soon to be discarded. I often felt like the faith I had was being whored around, by the will of my own hands, for all to see- naked and manipulated, unsure and broken.

Then one day, when I was least expecting,  I realized I was arriving, not at a place but to a journey. A journey where I will arrive everyday to pain and sweetness, to beauty in the mess. Faith that transcends others boundaries, that stirs in me life, gratitude and giving. Where the simplicity, elegance, creativity, eccentrics, and truth of my heart guide me.  My faith is born of adventures grand and long that carry me a million miles from home to another land in my own back yard among the tomatoes and fairies. An enchanted land that I discover anew everyday; embracing humanity, the mystery of reality, the predisposition to pain, the liberty in healing, the depth of independence, the coventry of community and the infinite possibilities of love.

It is full of this faith that I move into the next moment where I will arrive again on a journey that transcends and transforms the present and ushers me into the adventure of believing and the discovery of life. I am forever grateful for the simple faith in fairies I learned so many years ago in the gardens of Petaluma.