Fairies

When my sister and I were little, I coerced her into mimicking my interest in fairies.  (I refuse to use the other spellings that glorify them further than they should be, like "faerie" or "feyry," you know. Just too much).  I was very convincing, I guess, when I was REALLY interested in something.

Sister, sister, let's make a list of all of the fairies we can find.  One of my fairy books said they would be difficult to actually see, living on the borders between dark and light, ocean and sand, sidewalk and road, and that if we want to find them we will have to use our senses and know they are there without seeing them.

I guessed that there was a fairy inside the vents in our house whenever they started creaking and blowing air.

I also suggested that there was a stomach fairy that was responsible for the strange "stomach beat" I could feel whenever I would lie on my belly.

I learned a few years later that the stomach contracts rhythmically in order to help digest food.  So much for the stomach fairy.

But I wanted so badly for them to exist.

I wanted so badly to find one, to become one, and really, to join their world and leave my own behind.  Based on the books, fairies were more graceful, lucky, beautiful, talented, carefree, powerful, perfect, and energetic than I would ever be.

This makes me think of societies from the past and present where there is a god or goddess for everything.  Or perhaps even a saint for everything.  Or, people with faiths that cause them to look for angels behind every mailbox, so to speak.

Just like my sister and I were trying to find a fairy for everything, people in a childlike way want to find a reason for everything or a way to put each individual thing outside of their own control.

This is a form of escapism that I defended against reality and that people of faith defend against naysayers with different doctrine because it is just so nice to imagine that there is a different world out there, one with some external, all-powerful individual to take care of each little thing (my mailbox, my moldy bread, my stomach).

I think it is harder to believe that there is one all-powerful God who is just as capable of controlling each minute thing just as well as a team of deities might be because the only image we have of an "individual" is man: confused, bad at multitasking, imbalanced talents.  The idea that an individual could surpass this enough to control each electron's placement and rotation speed, and remember each of the stars' names, is not really irresistible.  It's pretty uncomfortable.

We like delegating tasks.

Anyhow, it is in the Bible that there is a God like I talked about above.  I'm pretty sure he understands our desire to delegate tasks, but he doesn't need the help of anyone to accomplish his goals.

And I don't subscribe to any fairy magazines.
But I've flipped through a couple at B&N and the art is really cool.