Heralding a summer's early sway, and other stories

June is shaping out to be a pretty fantastic month. So far it has involved M. Ward and some band whose lead singer sounds like Neil Young opening for Bright Eyes, a very entertaining Woody Allen movie, and one night when I decided it would be a great idea to order six books, a cheese board in the shape of Maryland, and a sparkly pair of socks, which should all be arriving soon. Good to know that my ideal weekend activities in 2011 are the exact same as they were in 2003. (Also I have the exact same haircut.) Add to June's List of Good Qualities: Kristina is visiting me this week and putting you all to shame since she also visited me in Chile. One million points for Kristina!

The only trash talking I have for June is that it was humid, and that I couldn't sleep very well most nights because I was too busy having pretend conversations in my head or listening to Ke$ha via my neighbor who has no concept of being quiet in the middle of the night.

You don't need me to convince you that transitions are difficult, and this one is no exception. But strange and wonderful surprises are everywhere to be found, and my heightened sensitivity as a newcomer to this coast have made them all the more delightful.

Like this chubby old train in the middle of a city forest:

Last week, I was trying to encourage one of my nearest and dearest by recounting to her a recent anecdote from the my own life. She replied yeah okay, but my story was a fairy tale, and therefore is unusual and too good to be true. Since then, I have been thinking about fairy tales and the fact of the matter is that most of them are in fact too good not to be true. But what gives fantastical stories power and meaning in our lives isn't their factuality, but the world they evoke--much truer than we habitually allow ourselves to believe.

Fairy tales have a reputation for being all dreams and fluff, created out of wishful thinking for an idyllic world so different from our harsher, darker one. But I am inclined not to agree with this, and the more I read of Buechner and Tolkein and Lewis, the more firmly I take my stance.

Fairy tales begin in ordinary places: a farmhouse in Kansas, the maid's quarters in a dank cellar, a toy shop. Like anyone in the world, the protagonist wants something: the girl, a heart, the way back home. It is no easy journey to attain these prizes, but it is never unclear how badly our hero wants them. Characters always have to enter a world where evil is caricatured so that mythical creatures seem every bit as real and frightening as the dangers of our own world. Characters long for familiarity because their ordinary starting places seem simple and luxurious--wonderful even--in contrast to these ambiguous dark fantasy lands where good and evil are not easily recognizable.

Even the darkest worlds portrayed in stories cast light on the beauty we know must exist. The witch about to be burned at the stake in The Seventh Seal asks the knight why he wants to meet the devil. The knight replies, "I want to ask him about God. He, if anyone, must know." It would seem that the mysterious, frightening woods in all their murky terror know much more about the power of light than fields of daisies who bask in it all day.

Our obsession with darkness hints at our longing for the light, and makes our stories that much more compelling to read.

I think fairy tales get the reputation for being light and sweet and perfect because they nearly always conclude and they lived happily ever after. But what did it take to get to that happiness? A great deal of sorrow, fear, insecurity, and bravery. The endings are only powerful and poignant because of the tears and ache which brought them to a final place of joy.

And this joy rarely comes because the hero got what he wanted, but because he found out who he was and what he meant. After what seems like years of searching for the Wizard who will make him whole, the lion finds out that he had shown more bravery than any of his friends along the Yellow Brick Road. The Ugly Duckling is revealed to be a beautiful swan, the beautiful queen is revealed to be a wicked witch. Rather than a transformation where creatures change into what they hope to be, the happy ending simply reveals what they truly are.

"You know that what you believe is a fairy tale," said a pseudo-poet to me while drinking espresso-dark beer. I took reactionary offense to his claim, but upon further reflection, he had a good point. The fairy tale which has had the largest impact on my life starts in the most ordinary of all places--a Palestinian stable on a not-so-silent night. Not too far away, danger lurks. Thousands of babies are being murdered as their mothers weep together in desperate unity. The teenagers who escaped with their own baby keep him in a feeding trough and struggle to entertain the surprise guests from out-of-town.

The world of this fairy tale is as mysterious and strange as any other. Evil doesn't always look so bad, and Good looks like a man who yells at his mom, gets irritated with friends, and gets tipsy at dinner parties. This man doesn't tell you a doctrine; he tells you stories. He delivers un-funny punchlines but doesn't bother clarifying them because he has the social skills not to explain his own jokes. He knows betrayal, heartache, and loneliness. He fails to save the life of one of his best friends. He is Love Incarnate, but you'd never know it from the way townsfolk react to this news. "That's our Messiah? I mean, look at him." Tall tan Swedish body-builder he ain't. People don't expect a savior to look and act like a total weirdo.

In one of my favorite fantasy stories, Evil looks like a sexy queen, and Good looks like he's about to rip you to shreds. Lucy asks, "Is he safe?"
"Of course he isn't safe," answers Mr. Beaver. "But he is good."

Our fairy tale continues. We the protagonists want to know the worth of our soul, we want to know who we are, and we want to know we are loved. Like other characters who become their true selves as soon as they know they are loved (Cinderella, The Beast, The Frog, Phil Connors in Groundhog Day), we can only know these things through a relationship. Our relationship happens to be with the Creator of the Universe.

At the end of The Wizard of Oz, our four characters are disappointed to find that the powerful sorcerer they thought had all the answers was nothing but a wrinkly old man from Nebraska. Like the Palestinian townsfolk, they are dismayed by the looks of their savior. Upset that he has let them down, the Wizard gives the Scarecrow a brain-shaped sack of pins, the Tinman a sawdust heart, and the Lion a placebo potion of courage. The characters don't realize they possess these qualities until they are told that they have them. These tokens, in all their obvious powerlessness, reveal to the characters their true and nascent identities.

There is tragedy in these tokens, but only because we know the story that came before--the heartache, longing, insecurity, and fear.

Tragedy soaks our own communion bread, because we know the sacrifice it symbolizes and the grief that imbues our thankfulness. This bread is a poignant token of what we already know to be true--that we are loved. When one offers one's full self for the sake of love, this is when transformation happens.

The Lion was always brave, the Tinman always sincere, the Scarecrow always strategic and wise. But until they entered into community, until they formed relationships, until they were told who they were and that they were loved, they had no idea of what they, in fact, already possessed.

Christians who treat God like their fairy godmother are just asking for trouble. Communion won't get you the girl, a heart, the way back home. Seeking the Savior and expecting to find a hunky genie who will make you rich and Brad Pitt's girlfriend will get you nowhere. But seeking communion, our own token, will remind you of who you are and that you are loved. It is a reminder of what we have always had--the love of our Creator.

Mumford and Sons (back to them) sing Love: it will not betray, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free, be more like the man you were made to be. There is a design, an alignment, a cry of my heart to see the beauty of love as it was made to be.

I am not an expert on Love, as Marcus Mumford is, but fairy tales, Pixar movies, and the good-evil meta-narrative that permeates the world, teach me that love will not change me into what I wish I could be, nor will it grant me a wish I believe will make me happy. The beauty of love as it was made to be is the beauty of knowing who you are created to be, who you already are.

The more I give and receive love, the more I reveal my true self and the true self of others. It is a difficult thing to do, and would be much easier to eat snacks all day. This world with its murky forests and confusing creatures is magical and horrible and glorious and tragic, but I can guarantee you the ending of our story: love wins.

Frederick Buechner (back to him) writes, For all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name.

"Oh na na, what's my name?" asks Rihanna in the song What's my Name? I think we all want to know the answer to this question. I think we all want to know who we are, what we're meant for, why we're here, and what we mean. God never gives us this answer; instead he gives us a story. It's a story that sounds a lot like a fairy tale. And if a fairy tale is what I believe in, so be it, because the story is exciting enough to keep me reading on.

In other news, Baltimore is a secretly beautiful place, you guys.