The Realm of Fairie

Sometimes as I wend my way down the paths of faerie I wonder, are all the warnings I've gotten about fantasy true? Am I being ungodly and a bad witness by reading faerie tales? Hopefully this post will shed some light on what I've discovered!

I've always loved faerie tales and gotten flack from different people during my life. Fantasy is bad, you're to young, you're to old, it's evil, it will corrupt you. When the magic of the gospel was still hard for me to grasp, faerie tales lead the way. Morals and faith were all learned in part by reading those ridiculous and evil stories!

I often wondered when others had problems and struggled with some of the more mysterious parts of the bible the reason why I seemed to have no problem accepting them. It's not because I'm smarter or some sort of super Christan, I just have faith. Reading the tales of old has given me a firm foundation in the art of accepting things be faith. I know that my Prince and King will always be there with me and watching over me.

I am content in the fact that when I need to know something to forge ahead in the quest, He will give me the tools and knowledge need to conquer whatever dragon I may be facing! In the words of Geordi La Forge (AKA, Levar Burton) you don't have to take my word for it!

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The gospel does have many of the earmarks of a faerie tale. In faerie tales you have the poor boy who becomes rich, the leaden cabinet which turns out to have the treasure in it, the ugly duckling who turns out to be a swan, the frog who becomes a prince. Then we come to the gospel, where it's the Pharisees, the good ones, who turn out to be the villains. It's the whores and the tax collectors who turn out to be the good ones. Just as in faerie tales, there is the impossible happy ending when Cinderella does marry the prince, and the ugly duckling is transformed into a swan, so Jesus is not, in the end, defeated. He rises again. In all these ways there is a kind of faerie tale quality to the gospel, with the extra ordinary difference, of course, that this is the faerie tale that claims to be true. The difference is that this time it's not just a story being told-it's an event. It did happen! Here's a faerie tale come true.

~Frederich Buechner, interview in The Door

If you want your children to be intelligent, read them faerie tales. If you want the to be more intelligent, read them more faerie tales.

~Albert Einstein

I think what profess to be realistic stories for children are far more likely to deceive them(then fantasy stories). I never expected the real world to like the faerie tales. I Think that I did expect school to be like the school stories. The fantasies did not deceive me: the schools stories did.

~C.S. Lewis

By confining your child to blameless stories of child life in which nothing at all alarming ever happens, you would fail to banish the terrors, and would succeed in banishing all that can ennoble them or make them endurable. For in the faerie tales, side by side with the terrible figures, we find the immemorial comforters and protectors, the radiant ones; and the terrible figures are not merely terrible, but sublime. It would be nice if no little boy in bed, hearing or thinking he hears, a sound, were ever frightened, I think it better he should think of giants and dragons then merely burglars. And I think St George, or any bright champion in armor, is a better comfort then the idea of police.

~C.S. Lewis