Lessons from a Fairy Tale
I want to tell you a story about a story. When I was an early childhood teacher, I read many fairy tales. I returned again and again to the Grimm’s tale of The Star Child. This very short tale tells the story of a poor, but good-hearted girl, whose parents are dead. (You can listen to it at the bottom of the page.) She ventures forth into the wide world with only the clothes on her back and a loaf of bread. One by one she meets others in great need, and little by little she gives away everything she has. “And as she so stood and had not one single thing left . . .” she stands in the forest, naked, having given everything away. In the end, stars fall from the sky as she catches them, clothed in a new garment, and she is rich all the days of her life.
I used to ponder how you could give away everything, without giving yourself away so thoroughly that you had nothing left. Such selfless giving appealed to me, yet how could it result in anything but self-annihilation? I kept giving and giving, feeling more and more depleted. I struggled to learn to give it away while remembering to fill my own cup. And then eventually I stopped thinking about the girl.
Some years later, I remembered the girl again with that line echoing in my head: “And as she so stood and had not one single thing left. . .” This time I had not given away my power and self, but many details of my life had fallen away. My marriage, my home, my life as a mother, as a teacher, my community -- all of it had fallen away. I found myself standing surprised and naked, “with not one single thing left.” This nakedness was the beginning of a chapter I could not yet see at the time. It was not self-annihilation, but the unraveling of life that happens before you become something new.
That girl has come to mind again lately. Today I see the girl as a metaphor for the process we all go through to return to our original light. I believe that we are born not in original sin, but as original light. Just think of holding those luminous newborns. As we travel through life, that light gets veiled through the ways we are socialized, and we adapt to conform or even survive. At some point, we are given opportunities to awaken, as is the girl when she ventures forth into the world. One by one, we can shed the veils that dim our light, that cover up our essence. We have not given away ourselves but rather given away what was never ours to carry. We have not annihilated ourselves but rather returned to ourselves.
I picture the little girl standing in the forest gazing up at the night sky, shining while clothed in new linen and watching the stars rain down around her. Our trip into the wide world where we meet the challenge of shedding our veils brings us home to stand in the richness of our original light as stars shine down upon us.