The Kingdom of Heaven and of Faerie

Oh ye of little faith, why did you doubt?

Life has been so busy, I haven’t gotten to write yet about what my mind was all a-whir with a few weeks ago—one of my favorite feast days—St. Michael and All Angels. I’ve always felt my heart drawn to love the idea of angels, and I think it’s because I savor the overlapping, sharp sweetness of mystery. What a grand, marvelous gift this mystery is—heaven is around us, the angels are moving.

I did not grow up inhabiting fairy worlds, with the exception of Narnia, but I discovered many of the best as a teenager. I fell in love with those places, and over time, realized I was falling in love with the kingdom of God. Was it only simultaneous? Or, did I somehow find glimpses of the kingdom of heaven in Faerie? I do not claim to know—the question leaves that precious sharp-sweet taste to linger on my tongue.

Like fairytales, belief in angels requires us to halt our meddling intellects, those hands that grab, grab, grab at knowledge and categories, at organization and surety. If we are to believe in angels, indeed even in heaven, our minds cannot truly see unless the hands of our intellects are tied. I know what it is like to pick a story apart into pieces and lose the magic, to grab hold of a fairytale with my hands, desperate for an allegory, only to find the story so clouded and dimmed by my grimy fingers that it dulls to my eyes. Heaven is the same. The moment I try to force an explanation for mysteries, to think I have understood the miracle, my vision of heaven becomes my own creation, and what a shadowy, elusive place that can be. Faith is what is needed. The moment I start doubting or questioning a Faerie world, I fall from it. But do we fall from the kingdom of heaven when we doubt? I know we do not. The kingdom of heaven can withstand all of our doubts and uncertainties; it grows only more solidified and strong in our perceptions when we forge through those questionings. Only Lord, in all of my wonderings, let me never imagine I have grasped your mysteries.

And so, I try to be wary of anyone who is overly scholarly about fairytales, or about angels.

I laugh at myself now—I used to want to go to grad school to study fairytales… and now I see just how God was protecting me when I was denied. That path may be for some, but God knew I needed to be reading fairytales to eight year olds instead of analyzing them with adults. When I told Ethan this recently, he paused, looked at me for a moment, and said “I think the proper reading of fairytales really only happens in a family’s living room.” Bingo! Or in a classroom family, I add :).

I still remember, last year, the pure awe on some of my students’ faces when I declared to them that “I believe in fairytales.” It was as though some of them had never heard an adult say such a thing. I remember noting something like relief on some of their faces, as though the fact that an adult can think such a thing was a wonderful, new idea. I hope it brought them freedom.

I believe in angels too. The only reason I believe in fairytales, indeed in any story, is because I believe in angels, in the movements of heaven. Fairytales train our vision to see the heavenly hosts accompanying us in our daily life. And the special thing about these stories¹ is that we can encounter them as adults and still be as transformed by them as children are. The same is true of stories in the Bible—the wonder is not lost to us with age. If we return to or discover Bible stories or fairytales as adults, delighting over and savoring them, gradually, these stories will clear the dust of the world from our souls’ windows; these stories will enchant our intellects to wonder—are there angels in this very room? Who put that feeling in my heart? Who brought that truth to my lips? We will find ourselves freed to look for angels again with all the awe and breathlessness of a little child. And without us trying, our hearts will grow more humble. Our hands will more readily open for heavenly mysteries, and our lips more readily pour forth praise.

“And a little child shall lead them.” Let us follow them, follow them into the kingdom.

I read a story in 1st Kings recently that I don’t think I have ever read—of Elisha and the legion of angels—do you know it? Elisha was surrounded by an enemy, hundreds of them, and his servant asks him “what shall we do?” And Elisha says “Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them,” and he prays that his servant’s eyes would be opened. “And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” –2nd Kings 16-17.

I have felt the way fairytales, the way these chariots of fire round about Elisha, the way parables and miracles all release the world’s exacting, reason-obsessed hold on me. When I see this legion of angels, when I see Jesus walking on water, my heart dances for joy and I am flooded with relief. I live in a kingdom where such things happen—this kingdom has been joined to my world! All of it is true! All shall really be well—all manner of things, just as the mystics say. There will be a turn in this dark world, a “catch of the breath,” “a beat and lifting of the heart,²” where the “whole world [will revolve] from night to day.”³

“Oh ye of little faith, why did you doubt?”

1. (Some of my favorites that are true fairytales: Ethel Cook Eliot’s “The House Above the Trees,” and “The Wind Boy,” George MacDonald’s “The Princess and the Goblin,” “The Light Princess,” “Little Daylight”-- literally anything by MacDonald :), also Friedrich de la Motte Fouque’s story “Undine.”)

2. From JRR Tolkien’s “On Fairy-stories”

3. “Christmas Bells” by Longfellow