Of angels and fairies…

I saw the tooth fairy when I was six, almost seven. Sort of a more grown-up version of Tinker Bell, she was sitting with her legs stretched out on the end of my bed one night as I awoke from a dream. I had lost a tooth earlier in the day, so I knew she MIGHT be visiting that night. I was not disappointed. She was an ethereal, angelic creature - very quiet and still - and just smiled at me.

I stayed quiet and closed my eyes really fast so that she wouldn’t leave. I’d peep them open just a hair from time to time to ensure she was still keeping her vigil.  At some point, she traded my tooth for a quarter (remember, this was 1962…) and slipped away into the night. That was my first remembered experience with angel-fairies.

Since then, I’ve always believed - and in my mind’s eye, I still see her sitting there watching over me as if it just happened yesterday. As an adult, when I first spoke The Song of Simeon (from Compline in the Book of Common Prayer) ‘Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may Rest In Peace,’ I felt that same spirit of comfort that the angel-fairy had brought me all those years ago.

Over the years, my garden became the most likely place I’d sense that same mystical, angel-fairy presence.  I often think of the beautiful teaching in the Talmud that ‘Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, 'Grow, grow.'

I believe we have angels saying grace over each of us daily urging, “grow, dear one, grow,” - whether we hear and abide their call depends, in part, if we have an open and listening heart.

These days I have an angel-fairy who sits vigil on my art table and reminds me of the first one I experienced - she watches over my creative life in process and says, Grow, dear one, grow!!  Then, she winks 😘 at me, too…

The Book of Common Prayer: Compline - The Song of Simeon

‘Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.’

Lord, you now have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised;

For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see:

A Light to enlighten the nations, and the glory of your people Israel.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.