I Didn't See Fairies When I was Little

More on May Day

May Day 2009: May Day
May Day 2010: Glory Days
May Day 2011: The Brook in the King's Garden

P.S. My last post, The Brook in the King's Garden was my 100th post! That's a lot of writing on my part and a lot of reading on your part. Go us!

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I didn't see fairies when I was little, I had to learn to see them after I was grown. As a child I played in redwood groves and mudflats, feeling the pulsing life in the land. I pretended to be raccoons, pioneers and alligators in oak groves, meadows and creeks, as close to the grass and sky as snakes and gulls. I didn't need fairies to know the living presences of the earth.

There comes a time, though, when we separate from that wholeness. We fall, we wake up, we walk through a doorway we didn't even know was there. We become aware of our Self and our Self's desires, needs and fears. I still walked in dark forests and open fields but I was thinking about little sisters, algebra and boys. I saw the flowers and clouds, but I didn't SEE them any longer.

My path back to seeing fairies started with my intellect. Those early experiences in the woods and fields had laid a foundation for an interest in natural science that I pursued through high school and college. I remember coming home from 11th grade biology class, going to my favorite wooded canyon and experiencing deep awe over the xylem and phloem system in an fir tree - it was transporting gallons of water, dozens of feet with nothing more than water tension, evaporation and magic. I laid down on the forest floor and looked up at those trees, the wonderment of nature washing over me like a wave. I didn't see fairies that day, but I was beginning to feel them again.

These days I do see fairies, sprites, gnomes and even sometimes angels. They are a form of the divine spirit, personification of the subtle life force in all natural and living elements. Flower fairies, water sprites, pixies of the woods, these are to me projections of the divine spirit in the way our own human souls are. I have actually learned to perceive these elementals. My scientific mind was an early gateway to recognizing the Ultimate Mystery, but I have found other gateways show themselves when the intellect is suspended, or balanced with other forms of perceiving and thinking. A childlike, beginners mind and a rich diet of beautiful stories have opened my heart and my eyes to the dancing forms of the divine all around me.

When have you seen fairies? When have you been so in tune with the subtle forces of nature that you don't need to see them? How are you celebrating the blossoming of the year this spring?