Fourth Whisper: Do you believe in magic?
I do! I believe in magic big and small, in the mystical and also the everyday magic.
This is the story of a seed fairy that wanted to dance through the day, and ended up introducing me to her magical fairy realm.
I found her one morning dancing with the breeze, her dress made of sparks of light. She was shy at first, and my fairy speak was rather rusty. Even with all that was lost in translation, I learned that she and her friends visited the garden every monsoon.
Their carriage was a pod originating from the adenium (the same adenium that blooms wildly every summer), and once they emerged, they loved to dance with the blooms and the leaves of the garden.
I was surprised and also saddened that I hadn’t noticed these magical creatures before. And asked her why?
She said that as children we always have spaces in our hearts where magic lived. As we grow older, the wild and free spaces get occupied by walls with no windows and doors, and if we are not careful into cages with no keys.
We need to be shaken up, usually by a crisis (or as in my case more than one) to start breaking down the walls within us that keep us locked up in our grown-up ideas of how our daily life is meant to be lived, full of tasks and routines.
Even then it takes love and courage to create a clearing in the dense forest of our lives. Sowing the seeds of love and presence in that clearing.
Once it’s done, all we need to do is to wait patiently and let the magic that is our life fall into our open hands. Then and only then we can also dance the wild dance of our life.
It took me six years to start noticing the everyday magic of not only the outer but also my inner garden. And, I haven’t stopped after that.
As the seed fairy was whisked away by the impatient breeze, I I heard her give her final piece of advice:
“Leave room in your garden for the fairies to dance”
Fifth Whisper: Where flowers bloom so does hope.
A few years back, I went through a prolonged period of chronic illness. It was debilitating both physically and mentally. I went through endless rounds of specialists, tests, and all kinds of alternate therapies. After knocking on all the doors that I could think of and with no diagnosis in sight, I had lost all hope!
I felt as if I was shrinking and all my life force had been sucked away from me. I was frustrated with myself and my condition, constantly in search for a cure than could fix whatever was broken inside of me.
My only solace was staring at the patch of sky and view of the terrace garden from my couch. On most days I was too dizzy to even step outside. There was so much life around me and yet I felt cut-off and lost in my own inner chatter.
I would see the sunbirds visiting to feed on the allamandas, the bougainvillea changing colours with the sun, and the branches of the adenium bonsai. As if reflecting my inner mood, the adenium also stood bare and dry.
I wasn’t worried though because I knew that come summer, the adenium would bloom once again and she was just resting through the winters. There was an invincible seed of summer within her that would burst forth once she emerged from the nourishing darkness of winter’s soil.
That summer, as if emerging from a deep, nourishing sleep, the adenium bloomed like never before.
It took me a little bit longer to regain my health. But, within a few months of her blooming, I was on my way to a solo trek in a land encircled by snow mountains.
The breeze rustling through the pine needles sent me a message from the garden:
“Be patient with yourself, nothing in nature blooms all year”
Is there a place in your life where you need to be patient with yourself?
Is there space in your inner garden for the fairies to dance?
To be continued…
This is the third post in the Whispers from the Garden series.
