December 12th, 2009
What of magic and fairy tales and folk lore?
Is it truly so absurd to teach them to chastise fairies for misplaced items when we have already ingrained within them the lies of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny? Is it wrong to create our own private mythology when their daily lives are already encumbered with One Master much more vengeful, more damning? Is it wrong to read them stories about the Goddess and the priestesses while we live within a patriarchal society that has yet to value the time of women as equally as it values the time of men?
What is absurd, you must agree, is that we accept only portions of the folk lore. We accept only the bits and pieces which suit the needs of those who teach it.
When I first entered college, I encountered a short, stocky, Druidic History teacher who reminded his students that it was only the winners whose stories ended up in the books. He was right. Mostly. The most common fairy tales of history are those of the conquerors, not those of the conquered. But that did not prevent the conquered from whispering their own truth into the ears of their children. For they could not write it down using a facade of keeping it real for posterity; for fear of destruction.
It’s all lies.
Lies and truth.
And no one can tell the difference.
We all walk around with what we’ve been told is the “Truth,” written in thin lines on little note cards kept safely inside our pockets. We spend entire lifetimes with our arms outstretched before us, to protect such “truths” from hearing otherwise. We laugh and we cry and we spend every moment filling in the gaps, coloring in between the lines of the outline we’re supposed to see in ourselves with hopes that what we know to be true– and what we know to be reality– might one day be the same.
Do not consider the possibility that our Truths may be different.
Because how could that be? “It’s impossible,” you shriek!
Truth is only truth if it is the Only Truth. If it is God’s Given Truth. If it is The Word of God.
The Word of the Universe.
But you see, where you say that the Universe is NOT God, and that God is NOT the Universe, God created the Universe, and so therefore it simply cannot BE the same… I say it IS the same.
And for me, this is Truth.
And this is the dialogue over which we wage wars. We kill each other for the sake of eradicating the liars. The spreaders of lies. Yet, can’t you see that if the Truth is exactly that to me, that no matter what you believe, if it is not what I believe, then it simply can NOT also be the Truth? And if that’s what Truth is to me, can it not ALSO be exactly that for you, even if the content of your Truth varies from my own?
…
That is the problem with our fairy tales. We find things that titillate our spiritual nature, and we let ourselves ride along the roller coaster of accompanying emotions indefinitely; and then we justify our irrationality by calling it Truth, by hanging a tiny name tag with the word “Faith” upon its shoulder, and emphatically asserting that Ours is the only possibility. Why? Because we believe it.
And belief is a powerful thing.