On Being Different

Once again, a friend's tweet has set  my mind spinning.  This time, not with verse, but with memories, and with reasons I'd forgotten.  About childhood, and knowing one is different, SO very different, in ways that are unexplainable.

I was a VERY imaginative child.  I had imaginary friends, yes, and I could DESCRIBE them to you, consistently, completely, what they looked like, what they wore, what they said, their names.  (Though my versions of their names were not exactly what they told me, I know that now.).  My parents and my siblings more than once were scolded for rudely closing a car door or the house door on one of my "friends".  They rolled their eyes, exasperated, but for awhile anyway, willing to play along with an imaginative child.
 My peers, it seems, had no such patience with me.  They refused my imaginative games, my castle ramparts, my spaceships, my haunted woods complete with fairies both friendly and not.  They couldn't SEE, and I, to my great frustration could not SHOW them, couldn't MAKE them see.  Then, the voice of one friend said, "They cannot see who WILL not see.  You cannot force it."  This voice, I think, may have belonged to an aunt who died long before I was born.  Mom always said I was so very like her, like Lorene, who wrote poems, had dramatic moods, SAW things.  When I was little, I claimed to have a "pet ghost" who came to watch over me in the dark I was so frightened of.  My family would leave the light on, until I fell asleep, but if I woke in the night, frightened by what I alone saw in the dark, "Georgie" would be there. Georgie would watch over me, keep me safe.  The voice I later attributed to my late aunt telling me so.  Georgie would remind me of the verse on my wall that "He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways."  He'll not leave you alone.  He sent me, and others, to keep watch.  I knew I could never tell my so very practically minded family these truths, for they would send me off to be analyzed, afraid for my sanity, my stability in their oh, so practical black and white world.  So, I kept the magic to myself, hoarded, guarded, shared with NO ONE.
  Except Grandpa.  Only when he visited, could I speak of these things.  Grandpa was a real seanachie , a storyteller, with a true gift.  HE would hear my tales, and not disbelieve me.  And he would tell no one.  He visited only a couple of times, but it was enough.  He helped me keep the magic, even if I could find no good way to share it yet. 
He didn't know the old names, but he did believe in the sidhe, the fairies, the hobgoblins, the spirits that do populate the thin places in this world. Our family does have Irish, Welsh, and Scottish roots.  There had been too many generations of hardshell Baptists and practical Presbyterians in my family for anyone to remember ALL they should, but Grandpa remembered enough, and I suspect he learned from his mother, who could tell quite a tale herself, I've been told, for all her practicality.
I did have Nelda, too, who lived next door, and was Irish and playful and old, a surrogate for the grandmother who died before I was born.  She knew old songs, and old stories and shared these with her small rapt audience of one.  Me.  I do not recall if I told her about my protectors, but perhaps I did.  Nelda would have understood, and she wouldn't have told anyone.
For years, I gave in, I took the PRACTICAL courses, no Gaelic, no Irish literature, no poetry classes, no MUSIC, other than the piano lessons they provided "because you have such long, thin fingers, surely good for playing."  NOT.  I lacked the will to practice, though I DID learn to read music and enough theory to be useful.  I wanted to SING, not play.  Playing required too much concentration, too much MIND.  Singing let me float, weightless, between the worlds. It fed my spirit.  It still does.  I go some other place when I truly let myself SING.  Matters not if the music isn't of the 'Old Country', it still speaks true to my spirit.  It soars, and takes me along for the ride.
 My ever practical father, who quashed my "far fetched" dreams of music, who told me I MUST toe the line and take steps toward a PRACTICAL degree at college (or find a man who would 'go places') if he was paying for my time there.  Oh, not in so many words, but it could be read between the lines plainly enough.  I was too scatter-brained, not focused enough, didn't have the DRIVE to succeed at music as a career.  ) (Or writing, for that matter.) I don't see being a commercial success to be the overarching goal of life.  Being of service to people, healing their spirit in some way, THAT is success, I now know.  Riches beyond any of my security seeking family's dreams.   Mom never truly understood.  She doesn't have the gift of sight.  I think that may have been a rift between her and her older sister, that inability to SEE.  Grandpa could SEE, Grandpa shared the vision, in his own way.
As I grew older, and I found old stories and legends and books and pictures of Ireland and Scotland, the familiarity, the sense of HOME was overwhelming.  The stories opened locked doors in my soul, let me dream again, let me hope that somehow, someway, I could get around the practical and let the magic out.
So, for my Pop's sake, and to keep Mom from worrying, I pursued a teaching credential.  A tidy compromise that let me keep the magic of Children's Literature in my coursework, and more music theory, and also all kinds of history and science, as well as give me a "practical" degree in the end.  I both loved and hated my chosen vocation.  I loved the children, the chances to help set THEIR imaginations free, to validate THEIR dreams as much as I could, I loathed the slog through paperwork and requirements that left so precious little time for the NECESSARY dreaming.  Yes, dreaming is NECESSARY.  Especially for children.  I like to think I helped a few kindred spirits find a way to keep their particular magic alive.  The library has been a Godsend.  This job lets me breathe, surrounds me with the thoughts, dreams, wishes, poetry and legends of ages, lets me share them, lets me help others when things press upon them too much.  Gives me a chance to help change a worried frown to a smile.  I LOVE that place, and I love its ghosts, friendly, playful spirits, that have yet to show themselves to me, but I know they're there.  They don't scare me, or vex me, so they don't quite know what to make of me, I'm sure.
Now, I know many of my oh, so practical and steeped in the very conservative Christian faith of our childhood will say I risk too much, saying I see spirits, saying I speak with them.  They forget.  "TEST a spirit, to know if it is good."  The spirits that have surrounded me have been, in large part good.  Sent from God, I believe, because He knew I would hear them.  They PROTECTED me from the evil ones, drove them AWAY.  Scared them off with fierce, invincible love from God Himself.  I know that invincible love more on my own now, know that it is ALWAYS there, don't necessarily need the friendly spirits to tell me.  He sent them when I was too young to understand otherwise.  They always pointed me back to Him, to His Love, His very essence.  Love.
Still I have doubts, I doubt my ability to ever communicate what I KNOW in a way ANYONE will understand, but I try.  For the sake of the gift I've been given, for Love of the One who gives it, I sing, I write, I try and fail to explain.  But I keep trying.
At times, even my oh, so practical Pop, who would NEVER believe in such things, has come to me.  Has laid a reassuring hand on my shoulder, told me to keep going, has visited in joyful times, too, to help me decorate the Christmas tree again, as we used to do when I was younger. The year that Matt was deployed for Desert Shield when it was time to set up the Christmas tree, and I alone, in a tiny apartment in a German farmhouse, was decorating the tree, Pop was there.  Making suggestions, telling me it would be all right, making me believe it.  And it WAS all right, because by some miracle of happenstance, Matt got to come HOME to Rhein-Main for a few days, including Christmas, and my hope in my existence was restored.  I could see Pop smiling over Peter's shoulder when we got home to the farm. Peter, our landlord, was a German version of Pop, right down to his love for bologna and cheese, and cigarettes and beer.  Limped on the same leg, had startling blue eyes like Pop, and even groused about the same things, even if in a different language.  Always made me feel I was truly being looked after, especially when Matt was gone.
I thought once my sister, too, could SEE, but over the years, she has hardened toward that imaginative world, clings to the conservative faith, that says such as I risk consorting with demons and losing our souls.  She doesn't understand, though I think for awhile, once, she did, for she took me to the old bookstores where I first met some of the books that have kindled my imagination back to life, to hope.
One reason I love the Episcopal Church so much is that the mystical, the impossible to understand is IMPORTANT.  It is part of how we worship, how we relate to God.  Our God is greater than all the mysteries in this or any other world, not afraid of them, welcoming to them; vigilant for His children against those who would do us harm.  A truly Good and Wise Shepherd.  Here I can be the person God created me to be, here I CANNOT deny my gift, here I USE it.  Here I sing, and share what I write, and know that it will not be cast up for ridicule. Here I also struggle with my own intolerance, my own lack of love, the many ways I fall short, and here I am comforted with the knowledge that I am forgiven, and I can forgive others.
I found some of this acceptance first among the members of Fandom.  Fans are by nature imaginative, people who can see the truths of fictional characters, people for whom the old stories resonate, and live.  Among fans I first learned that I was not crazy, just different.  I found Matthew among such fans.  Through him, I found the Episcopal Church, and an understanding of my faith, and a way to relate to God that has truly been my salvation.
Being different is NOT a sin. God made us all different, so show the many different aspects of life, to teach us the importance of acceptance, of LOVE.  Those who discount Love, who crowd it out with intolerance and too many rules, miss the point, and miss God.  After all, in IJohn, the Christian Scripture says "...he that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is Love."  It seems to me far too many who spread hate in the name of Christ forget that verse exists. I pity them what awaits if they continue in the way of intolerance and hate. I pray for them.
I pray for all who cannot see, all who WILL not see.  There IS magic in the world, there IS.  God made it, God uses it, it is NOT necessarily evil.
And those of us who are different are not always crazy.  Most of us are pretty good at conforming.  We have to be.  But do, please, cut us some slack when we seem to "space out" for a moment, or when we don't WANT to enter a certain building or room.  Believe us, trust our instincts, please. Just because YOU can't (or won't) see it, doesn't mean it isn't REAL.  (Insert winking smiley face here!)