Faerie

I am happy right now. Not with a buoyant, flippant happiness, but more like what Lewis called Joy: I feel like one on the borders of Faerie--in the midst of an adventure, with the whole world under an enchantment. Every tree and leaf, the clouds in the sky, the fire in the fireplace, they all border on that realm. "Faerie...holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted." The feeling--Joy--is not "satisfying," but it is deep and piercing. No one who had once entered faeryland would ever want to leave.

I think I can understand to a point the Romantic or the Pagan. This enchantment of the natural world instills all things with a little bit of the reality of their Creator; and if the Creator is not recognized, why not worship His sacredness revealed in nature?

This enchantment is not a bad thing. We live in what we call the "real" world, by which we mean stock-markets, football games, public relations departments, laundromats, and all the surpassing reality of the material world. But these things are not real. They sit like a film on the deeps of reality, and will pass away in a moment. The truly real is something far higher and deeper.

The realm of Faerie is in the Real World. We glimpse it sometimes from far off upon its borders. Its beauty haunts our greatest tales. But its reality is too great for most of us. There are tales of those who have entered that realm, but you notice that it is the widow's son or the poor young fool--never a stockbroker. He is too engrossed in the "real world" to be taken in by anything so Real as the enchantment of Faerie. We, too, are usually too engrossed with the "real world". If we stood face to face with an elf, we would be overwhelmed by his solid reality. It would break us like the sea breaks a wooden pier.

Let us by all means live in the real world, but let us choose our reality wisely. This world is ephemeral--let us live for the Real World beyond this. Because, in the end, what will there be but that?


Suggested reading: G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Beowulf, King Arthur, Fairy Tales (especially the Celtic ones--not Hans Christian Anderson)