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She danced.
Her and her sisters, danced around the ambassadors and the senators. Never saying anything serious, yet looking like everything that was said was being seriously considered.
She danced as she put on her clothes, dancing to the mirrors, periodically checking her front for stains, floating her hands ever so gently to her head surreptitiously checking every hair was in place.
Then she danced through the family, the eldest, she made sure the youngest were behaving, that the middles were saying their please and thankyous. She danced back and forth because it was her job to make sure everyone was doing as her parents needed.
Then she fell asleep on the couch, feet sore, hat askew, glasses barely blearily taken off and sort of clipped her collar.
Dreaming of the dance, dancing into dreams.
Not sure when she learned the steps.
Doomed to do them tomorrow, and the next day. Invisible steps to the invisible burden that her and all her sisters were doomed to do.
Unnoticed except for the traces of tattered slippers that appeared in the trash. 
“The great lesson of ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ – a thing must be loved before it is lovable.” ― G.K. Chesterton | #Valentine
This is why Beauty and the Beast is my theological fairy tale of choice
Cupid & Psyche–the basis for Beauty and the Beast– is simulataneously the last myth and the first fairy tale ever written…why? Because the transformational power of love and the possibility of “happily ever after” only come into being with the advent of Christianity and a new understanding of what theological hope is, telling a whole different story of good news
Anyone want to join a writing class? So far its not making, but its a GRAD level creative writing class for fairy tales (any kind of class in speculative fiction for creative writing is hard to find) the professor is bona find and has great reviews…
Reblog/share around please
🙂
http://www.transmography.net/brainery/syllabus-schedule/science-fiction-fairy-tales-spring-2015/
Job 42:10-17
10 And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. 11Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money* and a gold ring. 12The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. 13He also had seven sons and three daughters. 14He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. 15In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. 16After this Job lived for one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children’s children, four generations. 17And Job died, old and full of days.
So here we are Job (at least one of, if not the) first written fairy tale and it ends happily ever after…so this means that tempted as we are to write this off as a “happily ever after” if this is one of the first AND we make note that there is no such thing
He has more children than before (more boys always important)…is more wealthy and is even able to give his daughters an inheritance….(yay!)
But what makes this a happily ever after is not the kids and the money..its God’s presence...its the knowledge that (remember this is pre-Jesus) bad things can happen to anyone, and it isn’t about judgement.
Happily Ever After is experiencing the love of God!
Its knowing God is present in your life.
Job was GUARENTEED a happily ever after. He has experienced God, and because of that his life will be happy.
No matter what.
Those other details are mere illustrations of the truth of God’s love!
And it makes all the difference…….
That is why after experiencing Jesus Christ, “Happily Ever After” became viable…because we are living into God’s presence…before Jesus Christ there was NO SUCH THING. Now we know death isn’t the end.
We use this theology in fantasy/fairy tales today!
“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, p. 328.
“It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry,” said Hermione, her voice gentle. “It means… you know… living beyond death. Living after death.” p. 329 which of course is what Jesus Christ made possible……changing the world and the way we experience it as we know it
Here’s to living happily ever after
The process of growing up is to be valued for what we gain, not for what we lose. — #CSLewis
YES!
By giving us a window into the folk wisdom of an earlier age and revealing the wishes, hopes, fears, disappoinmtents, and frustrations of that time, these stories help us to understand just what is at stake in our own cultural stories. The tales we tell each other and our children not only reflect our own lived experience and our psychic realities, they also shape our lives, enabling us to construct our desires, to cope with our anxieties, and to separate fantasy from reality.” Maria Tartar Cambridge, 1997
Grimm’s Grimmest p. 15 copyright 1997 Chronicle Books, San Francisco
We tell stories to find truth. Tolkien called this the eternal truth in his Mythpoeia essay/poem.
Myths, Lewis told Tolkien, were “lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver.”
“No,” Tolkien replied. “They are not lies.” Far from being lies they were the best way — sometimes the only way — of conveying truths that would otherwise remain inexpressible. We have come from God, Tolkien argued, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God.
Katy’s thoughts Stories help us to understand the human condition in light of the eternal truth, God….our charge is to tell the Gospel wherever and whenever possible, and since Christ’s story is our story, and our story is Christ’s story….the t
wo help us to find where God is…
What we are doing now, our job, is to speak our knowledge/prophecy/stories of God in love. Because that is our window to truth!
And ultimately Fairy Tales are stories about love! 1st Corinthians 8-12 “8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” In essence the next verse is the Mythopoeia thesis “12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Hopefully she slept, I peeked in at her and it seems like she was asleep…but the light startled me, so I only caught a glimpse.
I hope she was asleep.
Otherwise why would her eyes be closed?
I did see that she had brownish/blackish hair, it looked a lot neater than mine. Could I even brush myself if I wanted to? It might feel good to use a brush.
If her hair is dark then her eyes would be….I realize I’m growling
The candle had burned down to the nub…I should have replaced it, but it was too scary.
I couldn’t go into her room.
Focus, focus.
Name, I need a name, maybe if I have a name I can start to define thing.
Maybe then I can look at her again.
Maybe then I won’t be afraid to change the candle.
I tried to leave quietly. And as I left, I lit a candle and left it in the hallway…out of sight, but giving shadows.
I don’t think she cried.
At least, not while I was nearby.
What does crying sound like anyway….
What would it feel like to cry? I think back on my howls, on my stompings, on my running, running, running through the yard. Even angry and lost, even when I was sad, I still was trying to break out, to bust out of this cage. To become free. I am not just my body…
But if I’m not my body? Who am I?
I left her in the shadows, alone.
So alone, like me.
At least I didn’t leave her in the dark.
I take a deep breath, then another, and another, and another.
I can’t remember when I started taking deep breaths.
Ok, concentrate on something else–how about dark, it could be a friendly dark. Maybe if I can imagine the dark as friendly, then I can imagine the…..big watchmacallit….in it as friendly too.
or maybe I should concentrate on breathing….
there’s a kind of snort. Its not really angry sounding, its more like a sigh.
A really breathy sigh.
OK breathing.
There’s a theme here.
one breath, two breath, three breath, four breath…..when did I start counting?
katyandtheword 