If you are the mother or grandmother of a little girl, you have probably read the classic fairytales over and over again. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Pocahantas, Beauty and the Beast, and many others occupy space on our bookshelves.What little girl doesn't love the dresses, the tiaras, and the prince's kiss? Even the "grown up" girls still cherish these stories, and watch the movies. Many of these fairytales have sparked a lot of conversation around the idea of "happily ever after" and body image, and whether or not they do more "damage" than good when it comes to the roles women play and the sterotypes of women and girls in these stories.
One aspect to these stories that you don't often hear talked about is the spiritual nature of these stories and the remarkable similarities to some of our favorite bible stories that our children learn about. Snow White has some remarkable similarities to the Story of Creation in the book of Genesis. Most fairytales start with those famous words, Once Upon a Time... The book of Genesis begins with In the Beginning... Both of these take us as far back in physical time as our imaginations can go, but they also connect us to eternal time. Both of these phrases suggest the transcendence of time, and it doesn't matter what generation reads the story, the element of time for all of us is relevant to the "present" or the eternal "now". Both the story of creation and the fairytale of Snow White have something for all of us to learn and apply to our spiritual selves that is worth examining.
In both the Story of Creation and Snow White, the setting is "garden like". Of course the creation story takes place in the Garden of Eden and Snow White takes place in the woods. Spiritually speaking, both of these settings symbolically suggest growth and new life. Of course the Garden of Eden was considered to be a paradise, a place of happiness, a mystical place reflective of our true nature. The woods in Snow White are less than paradise in the beginning, even dark and fearful, but soon turn to a kind of paradise where the bunnies, deer, chimpmunks, and birds befriend Snow White. Of course we all are aware of the characters in each story. There is the Queen in Snow White. She could be compared to the snake in the Story of Creation. She was always looking in the magic mirror and asking it, "Who is the fairest one of all?" She is the part of us that many call our Ego. There is a part of us that always wants to be "the queen". The part of us that looks out for "number one". The part of us that is wanting to "kill" the light that threatens to dispel the darkness. The Queen orders the Huntsman to kill Snow White when the magic mirror reveals the "truth" to her. The 'truth" is that Snow White is the most beautiful, and the Queen wants her dead. Snow White is the True Light in the Darkness of that forest. As the Story of Creation goes, Then God said, "Let there be Light!" and there was light! In the story of Creation and the story of Snow White, Darkness isn't dark at all until there was light. The beauty and light of Snow White was far more pleasing than the darkness, ugliness, and fear of the Queen.
It is the animals in the story of Snow White that shelter her and give her a safe place called "home". With the help of the animals, she has finds her paradise, her shelter from the fear of the dark forest. As the Creation Story goes, Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth all kinds of living creatures...and so it happened." Snow White is taken to a cottage, where she decides that seven untidy children must be living. It is no coincidence that there are seven dwarfs in the story. How long did it God take to create the world? Yep, seven days. After cleaning the messy cottage, and creating a clean and orderly world for her and the seven dwarfs, Snow White decides to rest. Just as God decides to rest on the seventh day. The dwarfs arrive and find Snow White sleeping. Bashful thinks she is an angel, but it is Grumpy who declares that "All females are poison!" Hmmm..... sound familiar?
The dwarfs and Snow White enjoy their clean, pristine paradise. They sang. They danced. They clapped, and then Sleepy asks Snow White to tell them a story before they would go to sleep for the night. Snow White tells them about a princess who had fallen in love with a prince she'd met at a wishing well. She confided in them that her dearest wish was to see him again someday? (A little hint of the woman at the well with the one who loves her unconditionally, Jesus). In the morning, the dwarfs go off to work and warn Snow White not to let anyone into the house, their paradise. Just as God warned Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree in the center of the garden. But Snow White allows a poor old woman into the house. The woman offers Snow White an apple, perfectly red and shiny. (Sound familiar?) And the serpent offers Eve a delicious red apple. Snow White reaches out and takes a bite of the apple. She falls to the floor. And so we have the "fall of man" with Eve accepting the apple and then offering it to Adam.
Now it would take Love's First Kiss ( The Prince of Peace) to awaken Snow White from her "sleeping death". Because of what happened in the story of Creation in the garden, we all have been under a spell of sorts. Just like Snow White, we have been in a spiritual "sleeping death" that only Jesus and the "kiss" of his unconditional, redemptive love could bring us out of our spiritual slumber. As the story goes, "One day, a prince came by - the same prince that Snow White had met by the Wishing Well. He lifts the lid on the glass coffin, bends down and kisses her. Slowly, Snow White Awakens. Real love has found her. And slowly, we are awakening to the real love of God. The woman at the well, having met Jesus there, feels loved. The Creation Story is one of the absence of love and the separation of God, our fall from our truest selves. Snow White is that same story. She only desires to be loved. She only desires happiness. She desires paradise.
There is a "queen' in all of us, especially in how we think and feel about ourselves. She is our own inner critic, and as women, and mothers, she is the one who tells us that there are things about us that aren't so beautiful. We are constantly looking to the "magic mirror" of our lives and seeking affirmation and acceptance in everything else but God. Everything in our world is our mirror, and is continuously reflecting back to us something about ourselves, both the beautiful things about us, and the parts of ourselves that the light hasn't found yet. The seven dwarfs in the story are really just symbolic extensions of our own selves that we have created through our thoughts, words, and actions. If I am feeling lousy about myself or my circumstances, I get grumpy. I can make myself sick if I am out of balance in any part of my life, and hence, I am sneezy. Or when things are going my way, and I am feeling strong, powerful, invincible, and beautiful, I am happy. I am Doc when I seek those things that need healing in my life, and give them over to the Divine Physician, and I am Sleepy when I haven't yet awakened that part in me that is unaware of God's call of transformation. Bashful is my name when I am humbled by what God has done in my life, and a little timid about sharing what God has blessed me with, and continues to bless me with.
Fairytales are just manifestations of humanity's quest in seeking out love, happiness, and living "happily ever after". Eventually our stories as women and mothers will become our children's stories with that same beginning, "Once Upon a Time, there was a beautiful woman named _______________. Put your name in that blank space. Tell your story of creation, your quest for finding your true self, your real love. How has God "kissed" you and awakened you to your beauty, your gifts, your happily ever after? What "well" do you go to and wait upon the felt experience of God's activity in your life? The fairytales we share with our own children aren't just for them. They are for everyone. They are to be enjoyed and read over and over again by moms, dads, grandparents, children, and friends of all ages. Their message is timeless and our lives are God's evidence of living "happily ever after".
Friday, June 10, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
In the Beginning Was the Word
Think about all the conversations you have in a day and the people you have them with everyday. We have conversations about the weather and our plans for the day. We give someone a compliment and we use our cell phones to share our news or to "check in" with our loved ones. Our conversations can help improve a difficult situation for the better. We use words to help us to express our needs, or our sympathy and our care for someone. A few sentences can start a war or move a whole country toward peace. Hallmark has built an entire industry using and arranging words to uplift, console, celebrate, and inspire people. Facebook couldn't exist without using words and sentences. Twitter is pointless without words. Think of how excited a mother is, when she first hears the word "mama" and then she hears a few more words, and finally the thrill of hearing her child able to express herself in sentences.
Our ability to communicate, and our ability to choose the words we use to communicate, is our divine inheritance. All of our power lies in "the word", both spoken, written, heard, and expressed through sign language, braille, heiroglyphics, and so many other ways. Think about the person who receives word that a loved one has passed away. With a spoken sentence, their life is changed forever. Think about the woman who is waiting to tell her husband that she is pregnant for the first time. Now there is a life-changing sentence!
And she probably thought, planned, and dreamed of how she would communicate that to her husband and the rest of her family and friends. And then there is the weatherman who uses words to tell us of how beautiful or stormy the weather is going to be that day. A doctor who speaks the words, "It's not cancer" has just changed how that person is going to view his life and what he does with it from this point on. The power of the spoken word has its origin in God's desire to love and create out of love. The spoken word takes center stage in the story of creation, from Genesis all the way through the New Testament.
The angel Gabriel used words to announce to Mary that she would be the mother of the Christ child, and those words resulted in a baby boy named Jesus. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us!" Jesus was a thought in God's mind, then a word, then a real live human being whose words have changed millions of people. It was the words, "Crucify Him!" that put him on the cross and it was the words "He is risen!" that changed our view of death forever. Samuel woke up one night to hear his name, a simple word, "Samuel!" And he responded with the words, "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening!" Responses follow the words we speak, just as Samuel finally responded to his name being called with the heart of a servant. The book of Genesis is really the book that lays the whole foundation for the power of the spoken word. It is the story of creation, and creation started with the thoughts of God. Those thoughts were put out into the world through the use of the spoken word, and that word was followed by a physical manifestation of what God spoke: Then God said, "Let there be Light!" and there was light! Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth every kind of plant that bears seed and every kind of fruit tree that bears fruit. And so it happened.
And so it continues to happen with us, in this moment. Our thoughts, which eventually take the form of words, have the ability to create. We were made in the image of God, and our image was first a thought in God's mind, that eventually was spoken, and well, here we all are. Our lives are God's Word. Because we were made in God's image, our thoughts are God's divine guidance thinking through us, and it only stands to reason that what we speak has to originate from our minds, where we are inspired either by fear or love. Depending on whether we are coming from a place of love or fear, will determine what words we will choose, and those are the words we will speak, which in turn either create more love or fear. Let's look at an example from an ordinary event from our own lives.
In my role as a mother, my words hold a lot of power, or so I'd like to think! Let's say you tell your little boy that he needs to stay away from the watering hose in back of the house. It is your thought that wants to keep him safe, dry, and out of trouble, so you use your words to tell him what you would like him to do. Of course you warn him sternly, and yet... yep, you guessed it, he decides to defy your warning and plays with the garden hose anyway. Now, you're going to have to choose words to let him know that he has made a bad choice. Some parents will scold him and put him in timeout. Some might actually yell and then spank him. Some will simply tell him he's made a bad choice and then use words to let him know what the consequence is going to be. The way we use our words, and how we say them, are going to have an impact. The parent who comes from a place of fear might literally tell him how stupid he is and asks what was he thinking and then sends him to his room. The parent that comes from love, asks him to go to timeout and asks him to think about what he has done, and then is asked to apologize and loses his privilege to run through the sprinkler since he decided to mess with the garden hose. The boy approaches the mother with an explanation of what he did wrong, apologizes, and then the mother forgives him and tells him she loves him, but she doesn't always like the choices he makes. Words can make all the difference. They either create more love and expand the power of love or they create and expand fear. The boy that was told, with words, he was stupid isn't going to forget that, and if he hears that word enough, he is going to start to believe he is stupid, and then what happens, he continues to do "stupid" things. He feels he will never make the right choices because of a choice of words that were spoken about him. In the other scenario, the words the mother chooses still makes him feel loved and accepted, and even more important, valued, even though he made a mistake.
Think about famous speeches that you remember. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech made a huge impact on the world and the creation of the civil right's movement. They were simply thoughts that formed words written down on paper, but what they caused people to feel and do reflects God's activity in the world and the creation of a society where all people would be treated as equal. Some sentences written down on paper and spoken with desire, passion, conviction, and most importantly love, changed our world.
Now let's go in the opposite direction. Adolph Hitler. He used words to convince people that a whole segment of the human race should be destroyed and removed from existence. He had thoughts that he put into words, and sent the energy of prejudice, hatred, and fear out into the world. His creation, and other people's loyalty and compliance with his words was the Holocaust.
It is important to remember that our words are always creating. In order to speak words, we have to think them first. Sometimes we're aware of the thoughts we have before we say something, and other times we are very unaware that what we felt and thought preceded the words we were about to speak, and what follows is the creation of the thought and word, good or bad. And this is why we pray. Praying, especially, in the morning, aligns our thinking and feeling with God. Time spent in Silence is really where our thinking is cleansed and refined. It is Silence where our minds are opened and prepared to receive the thoughts and dreams of God. It is Silence where the real transformation of our thinking releases a light upon our world. When our thinking and feeling is aligned with God, the conversations we have throughout our day are filled with Spirit and light. God's activity is made visible, both by what we say and what we don't say. Have you ever been in a situation where you weren't sure what you were going to say, but you trusted that the right words would come, and the right creation would result? That is why affirmations are so powerful. They are words that affirm the creation you want to see. If you tell yourself you're going to fail the math exam, you probably will. But if you tell yourself you are going to do your very best on your math exam and that you will pass with flying colors, you will. If you convince yourself you are going to get sick the minute the flu season hits, you'll probably get sick. If you think thoughts of health and say them in an affirmation, you probably won't get sick. It is so easy to take the creation of our words for granted. The words we form into sentences and speak send forth a burst of divine energy out into the world. Every syllable of every word vibrates with the force of the miraculous. Miracles of every size, shape, and color are born from the higher realms of our thinking and take shape and form in the space of our lives.
The power I hold as a mother, when I think about all I say in a day to my children, is quite humbling. The answers I give to their questions, the encouragement I give them when they are trying something new for the first time, or my impatience is all creating an experience for them. The hesitancy in my voice or the confidence in my voice can impact how they see the world. Think about the child who tries to say a swear word for the first time. Do you respond intently and lend power to that word, or do you ignore it and deflate its power and hope you never hear it again? Kids are constantly trying out the power of words and their vocabularies are constantly expanding. They are always trying to figure out the power words hold and the responses they get when they try them out. We too, need to become like children, and become more curious, attentive, and alert to what we say and how we are saying it. Our thoughts are unspoken words, but even the thoughts we think about ourselves are powerful and are always creating. Our thoughts and our words are prayers of creation. It is our thoughts and our words that separate us from the rest of creation, and give us dominion over all of creation. Our thoughts and our words make us co-creators in the sense that it is God who thinks through us and speaks through us, and therefore creates through us.
Take some time at the end of a day, and go over the conversations you had. Think about why you said what you said. Identify the feelings behind the words you chose. Reflect on what you created that day because of the words you chose, or didn't choose to say. It is our conversations where God loves, uplifts, forgives, encourages, inspires, and expresses Himself to the rest of the world. Because we believe in a loving, merciful, and compassionate God, our thoughts, that eventually become words, spoken and unspoken, must also be loving, merciful, and compassionate. Listening to God in prayer is infinitely more valuable than any other prayer we could make. Listening to God invites the illumination of our minds, connects every feeling with a thought, connects every thought with a word, and ultimately causes heaven to embrace earth, causes mountains to move, and changes water to wine.
Our ability to communicate, and our ability to choose the words we use to communicate, is our divine inheritance. All of our power lies in "the word", both spoken, written, heard, and expressed through sign language, braille, heiroglyphics, and so many other ways. Think about the person who receives word that a loved one has passed away. With a spoken sentence, their life is changed forever. Think about the woman who is waiting to tell her husband that she is pregnant for the first time. Now there is a life-changing sentence!
And she probably thought, planned, and dreamed of how she would communicate that to her husband and the rest of her family and friends. And then there is the weatherman who uses words to tell us of how beautiful or stormy the weather is going to be that day. A doctor who speaks the words, "It's not cancer" has just changed how that person is going to view his life and what he does with it from this point on. The power of the spoken word has its origin in God's desire to love and create out of love. The spoken word takes center stage in the story of creation, from Genesis all the way through the New Testament.
The angel Gabriel used words to announce to Mary that she would be the mother of the Christ child, and those words resulted in a baby boy named Jesus. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us!" Jesus was a thought in God's mind, then a word, then a real live human being whose words have changed millions of people. It was the words, "Crucify Him!" that put him on the cross and it was the words "He is risen!" that changed our view of death forever. Samuel woke up one night to hear his name, a simple word, "Samuel!" And he responded with the words, "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening!" Responses follow the words we speak, just as Samuel finally responded to his name being called with the heart of a servant. The book of Genesis is really the book that lays the whole foundation for the power of the spoken word. It is the story of creation, and creation started with the thoughts of God. Those thoughts were put out into the world through the use of the spoken word, and that word was followed by a physical manifestation of what God spoke: Then God said, "Let there be Light!" and there was light! Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth every kind of plant that bears seed and every kind of fruit tree that bears fruit. And so it happened.
And so it continues to happen with us, in this moment. Our thoughts, which eventually take the form of words, have the ability to create. We were made in the image of God, and our image was first a thought in God's mind, that eventually was spoken, and well, here we all are. Our lives are God's Word. Because we were made in God's image, our thoughts are God's divine guidance thinking through us, and it only stands to reason that what we speak has to originate from our minds, where we are inspired either by fear or love. Depending on whether we are coming from a place of love or fear, will determine what words we will choose, and those are the words we will speak, which in turn either create more love or fear. Let's look at an example from an ordinary event from our own lives.
In my role as a mother, my words hold a lot of power, or so I'd like to think! Let's say you tell your little boy that he needs to stay away from the watering hose in back of the house. It is your thought that wants to keep him safe, dry, and out of trouble, so you use your words to tell him what you would like him to do. Of course you warn him sternly, and yet... yep, you guessed it, he decides to defy your warning and plays with the garden hose anyway. Now, you're going to have to choose words to let him know that he has made a bad choice. Some parents will scold him and put him in timeout. Some might actually yell and then spank him. Some will simply tell him he's made a bad choice and then use words to let him know what the consequence is going to be. The way we use our words, and how we say them, are going to have an impact. The parent who comes from a place of fear might literally tell him how stupid he is and asks what was he thinking and then sends him to his room. The parent that comes from love, asks him to go to timeout and asks him to think about what he has done, and then is asked to apologize and loses his privilege to run through the sprinkler since he decided to mess with the garden hose. The boy approaches the mother with an explanation of what he did wrong, apologizes, and then the mother forgives him and tells him she loves him, but she doesn't always like the choices he makes. Words can make all the difference. They either create more love and expand the power of love or they create and expand fear. The boy that was told, with words, he was stupid isn't going to forget that, and if he hears that word enough, he is going to start to believe he is stupid, and then what happens, he continues to do "stupid" things. He feels he will never make the right choices because of a choice of words that were spoken about him. In the other scenario, the words the mother chooses still makes him feel loved and accepted, and even more important, valued, even though he made a mistake.
Think about famous speeches that you remember. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech made a huge impact on the world and the creation of the civil right's movement. They were simply thoughts that formed words written down on paper, but what they caused people to feel and do reflects God's activity in the world and the creation of a society where all people would be treated as equal. Some sentences written down on paper and spoken with desire, passion, conviction, and most importantly love, changed our world.
Now let's go in the opposite direction. Adolph Hitler. He used words to convince people that a whole segment of the human race should be destroyed and removed from existence. He had thoughts that he put into words, and sent the energy of prejudice, hatred, and fear out into the world. His creation, and other people's loyalty and compliance with his words was the Holocaust.
It is important to remember that our words are always creating. In order to speak words, we have to think them first. Sometimes we're aware of the thoughts we have before we say something, and other times we are very unaware that what we felt and thought preceded the words we were about to speak, and what follows is the creation of the thought and word, good or bad. And this is why we pray. Praying, especially, in the morning, aligns our thinking and feeling with God. Time spent in Silence is really where our thinking is cleansed and refined. It is Silence where our minds are opened and prepared to receive the thoughts and dreams of God. It is Silence where the real transformation of our thinking releases a light upon our world. When our thinking and feeling is aligned with God, the conversations we have throughout our day are filled with Spirit and light. God's activity is made visible, both by what we say and what we don't say. Have you ever been in a situation where you weren't sure what you were going to say, but you trusted that the right words would come, and the right creation would result? That is why affirmations are so powerful. They are words that affirm the creation you want to see. If you tell yourself you're going to fail the math exam, you probably will. But if you tell yourself you are going to do your very best on your math exam and that you will pass with flying colors, you will. If you convince yourself you are going to get sick the minute the flu season hits, you'll probably get sick. If you think thoughts of health and say them in an affirmation, you probably won't get sick. It is so easy to take the creation of our words for granted. The words we form into sentences and speak send forth a burst of divine energy out into the world. Every syllable of every word vibrates with the force of the miraculous. Miracles of every size, shape, and color are born from the higher realms of our thinking and take shape and form in the space of our lives.
The power I hold as a mother, when I think about all I say in a day to my children, is quite humbling. The answers I give to their questions, the encouragement I give them when they are trying something new for the first time, or my impatience is all creating an experience for them. The hesitancy in my voice or the confidence in my voice can impact how they see the world. Think about the child who tries to say a swear word for the first time. Do you respond intently and lend power to that word, or do you ignore it and deflate its power and hope you never hear it again? Kids are constantly trying out the power of words and their vocabularies are constantly expanding. They are always trying to figure out the power words hold and the responses they get when they try them out. We too, need to become like children, and become more curious, attentive, and alert to what we say and how we are saying it. Our thoughts are unspoken words, but even the thoughts we think about ourselves are powerful and are always creating. Our thoughts and our words are prayers of creation. It is our thoughts and our words that separate us from the rest of creation, and give us dominion over all of creation. Our thoughts and our words make us co-creators in the sense that it is God who thinks through us and speaks through us, and therefore creates through us.
Take some time at the end of a day, and go over the conversations you had. Think about why you said what you said. Identify the feelings behind the words you chose. Reflect on what you created that day because of the words you chose, or didn't choose to say. It is our conversations where God loves, uplifts, forgives, encourages, inspires, and expresses Himself to the rest of the world. Because we believe in a loving, merciful, and compassionate God, our thoughts, that eventually become words, spoken and unspoken, must also be loving, merciful, and compassionate. Listening to God in prayer is infinitely more valuable than any other prayer we could make. Listening to God invites the illumination of our minds, connects every feeling with a thought, connects every thought with a word, and ultimately causes heaven to embrace earth, causes mountains to move, and changes water to wine.
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