Ballet lessons about good and evil

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Always I love fairy tales (Like this one here.)

In Sleeping Beauty, in case you forgot, the Bad Fairy is angry she didn't get invited to Aurora's name day, and curses her to die. At the Boston Ballet last spring, this is all done with wildly contentious music and frenetic ballet dancing. After the Bad Fairy leaves the scene, everyone is terribly upset. No really, I wanted to cry too even though no one had said a word.

Here's where the Lilac fairy says "No. She will not die. She will only be sleeping" but she says it in her movements as her arms dance the contradiction to the Bad Fairy's curse and then gracefully mimic a pleasant sleep.

The fairy does not stop the harm from happening, but lessens the impact.

In addition, she puts the castle and kingdom on her own timeline, calmly watching to find the right prince who seems like a dreamy good fit and strongly desires to have a queen. (No, really. He is dreamy in the sense that instead of playing in fighting/hunting games, he likes to wander off and dream about things.) The Lilac Fairy introduces them, or prepares them for each other through the enchanted dance scene. 

"I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream.
I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam.
Yes, I know it's true, that visions are seldom all they seem. 
But if I know you, 
I know what you'll do, 
you'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream"

It was lovely. (Those words are additions compliments of Disney, I think.)

And, so, the story plays on. The Lilac Fairy leads the prince through a very long journey, obviously to the enchanted kingdom. At this point, I was worried about how they were going to re-create the dragon and kill it. But instead, the kingdom doors are blocked by the Bad Fairy and I was thinking to myself, okay, here comes the showdown. 
But, instead, the Lilac Fairy moves her arms in just the same way she calmly contradicts and lessens the curse and uses those motions to move the Bad Fairy along. 

And the Bad Fairy just leaves. 

And I tell this story, why?

I was expecting some serious battle between good and evil. I was expecting a huge contention at the gate. It was striking to me that the Lilac fairy could just banish the Bad Fairy so easily. I wondered if she had that power the whole time, why did she allow the  curse to happen in the first place? 

In that moment, I was taught about fairies and good will. Because here's the thing, some things can't be stopped because there is agency and choice. There are consequences to those choices. I believed this fairy to be all powerful, and it was clear from one of the numbers that she was much higher up in the rankings than all the other fairies. But, she didn't stop the curse. The impact of the curse was lessened and time and watchfulness were definitely in place when evil befell the kingdom that she loved. It was extremely clear that the power of good was way stronger than the power of evil, but the journey, and the right prince, and the right time (multi-time even) was necessary in this story because of the curse that had been placed.

And because I tend to draw out patterns from one-data-point sets, I realized that I needed to think about how to trust God when things didn't seem to be working out just right. It may not make sense, but in the end, good is just stronger than all the bad. And the God who loves me and is watchful and caring and all powerful, knows how to lessen all the impact and knows what the journey will be. I mean, it would be a lot easier if I could simply sleep a hundred years in the waiting time between getting things, but, you know, this is life and not a fairy tale.

Also, after watching the ballet I momentarily regretted giving up being a ballerina as a kid. I could totally see the allure in the costumes and dancing and storytelling...