Faerie: About Our Theme

Play a lively tune and watch the children dance.

Wonder comes naturally. Imagination is born unbridled.

Inhibitions are learned.

Can you imagine? Can you still imagine?

Thoughts like these spread out from the centre of our theme, Faerie, and it is not so much a concept as a place.

The Land of Faerie

In the collective imagination of children and dreamers alike lives the land of Faerie. It is the land where houses soar on helium balloons and animals walk upright. Disbelief is suspended, and belief comes standard. Faerie is a funhouse mirror, held up to our own landscape of reality. It is the land beyond the real. It is where Faerie Tales are born.

Inhabiting the landscape are creatures of wonder as well as terror. A dragon lives under the moutain. Santa Claus himself dwells northward, with some, but not all, elves. Others are in the woods. You may find the fairies fluttering there, too. There is much life to be found among the trees, and some say even in them.

The topography of Faerie varies wildly, from those enchanted forests, to hot gurgling volcanoes and chilled underwater kingdoms. Palaces are built into, and upon the clouds. Entire worlds lurk just beneath the surface of the earth. There are no borders and kingdoms roll into one another like azure waves.

You may travel Faerie by ship. Most likely a manned by pirates or a sea captain on a great quest. You may fly. Not by plane, but on the back of a magnificent creature, dragon or eagle or other. You may leap, ten feet at a time, across flowing plains, or precarious lily pads. You can swim from island to island across and under oceans, never rising for breath. You may climb the vines of a jungle in, or even transport through a pool or looking glass. In Faerie, you will likely seldom simply walk. The distances are always so far, far away.

Exiled

Can you remember Faerie? You’ve visited the place many times, but perhaps the memory has faded with each passing year. Perhaps the word possible has been traded in too often for impossible, and the borderless kingdom of Faerie has been clearcut and sold.

But all through life she calls to us. In stories. In songs. Projected large on silver screens. Tim Burton and Maurice Sendak and Gulliermo Del Toro and Michel Gondry and Pixar take us on frequent excursions. CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien and JK Rowling and Lemony Snicket spin stories from that great loom of imagination.

Faerie Faith

Why do we love these stories? What is the common thread of wonder and joy and simple faith that weaves them all together into the tapestry of Faerie?

And what does that thread have to do with the faith that is still asked of us as adults?

Is there not some magical wonder in a resurrection or a virgin birth? Are there not as many miracles in the Sacred Scriptures are there are in The Brothers Grimm?

Did Jesus tell Faerie stories, too? After all, did He not call us to have the faith of a child?

Journeys Backward

This year’s Bridge Songs art project explores this wonder-full land of Faerie. We’ll try to return there together, and share what we discover. We’ll reflect, write and create about how easy, or difficult, those journeys have become. We’ll test the limits of our imagination. We’ll believe, together.

What could all of this look like? What could all of this sound like?

I wonder.

Do you?