Friday, August 24, 2012

I Choose Fairies

Sad Fairy by KatMary
Licensed under Creative Commons
In the documentary Raw Faith, the Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell said, "No one can prove or disprove the presence of God.  One chooses to believe or not, to take Kierkegarrd's ‘leap of faith’ or not.  I choose to believe."  I had a similar sentiment toward God growing up, only I chose not to believe.  Instead I ignored spirituality altogether, because it was too complicated.  Growing up Unitarian Universalist has many benefits.  One of them is being taught a lot about other religions, beliefs, spiritual practices, and science.  The big questions in life have billions of answers to them.  I felt unable to come to conclusions for myself.  I was a spiritual person, I think, I just didn't have a spirituality.  That probably makes no sense, but I don't know how to better explain it.

When the pains in life got to be too much I was unable to really go to anything spiritual to somewhat relieve the pain.  That is one of the main reasons for spirituality, to help relieve life's pains.  Eventually, I realized that what did help was thinking of the fairies of my childhood.  Hence, why I have now based my spirituality on fairies.  In a way, I re-embraced the fairy theology I had at the age of seven and modified it to fit my needs as an adult.

In the film, Sewell also said, "God is the most common name for that which we cannot name.  Many other names are used including Beloved Holy One, the Sacred, the Great Mystery.  We should understand that all naming is merely metaphor because we are dealing in mystery."  UUs have collected a number of many other names for that metaphor.  I decided to name that mystery "fairies" for myself, and chosen to believe.  I choose fairies because thinking of fairies relieves the pains in my life better than any other name for the mystery.  It is simply what seems to work at this time in my life.

2 comments:

  1. UnknownAugust 25, 2012 at 10:02 AM

    Two thoughts:

    Number one, the spiritual practice and belief that I most identify with (for most of my life, even as I jumped from one religion to another like a frog from pond to pond) is animism. Animism is very well defined by a line from the Disney movie Pocahontas, in the song Colors of the Wind: "every rock and tree and creature / has a life, has a spirit, has a name."

    Almost every culture in the world was animist at some point, and many still are now. In certain parts of the world, such as the British Isles and Scandinavia, animism evolved into belief in fairies, which are the very spirits that enliven every rock and tree and creature. So we have that in common.

    Second thing:

    I don't know if you've read the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, but I think you'd enjoy how the ideas of sentience and religion are dealt with in the series. Dark matter, these mysterious particles that fill the cosmos, are the source of conscious thought. They're not just the source of it, they're conscious themselves, and some people in the books call them "angels". All conscious beings are imbued with dark matter, especially once they come of age and are "wise".

    It's really more complicated than that, so if you're interested in learning more, you should read the trilogy.

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  2. UnknownAugust 25, 2012 at 11:45 AM

    Hey Serena,

    Thanks for commenting on my blog and for sharing some of your spiritual practice too! I have read His Dark Materials. I thought it was an awesome trilogy, and have admittedly based some of my spiritual beliefs off the way Pullman described the universe in the books. I'm planning a post related to that to be posted soon.

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