The above title has is the result of a great struggle of mind. For minutes, literally minutes, I pondered, ‘Is it Effect, or Affect?’ I’ll go with ‘Effect.’
I’m not quite ready to put my thoughts on Orthodoxy down in writing, but I do want to record one particular line of thought. Chesterton, in his wondrous way with words, said something that helped me make sense of something I had been thinking for a while. I’ll write more of this later, but his ‘The Ethics of Elfland’ chapter is quite riveting.
In that chapter he makes a statement something to this effect (I’m sure it’s ‘Effect’ this time): In Fairy Land trees are purple (or whatever color) to remind us that trees are actually green. Likewise, in Fairy Land apples are gold to remind us that apples are really green or red. And again, rivers run with wine in Fairy Land to remind us that they actually consist of water. In other words, rather than causing us to escape reality, such stories, when we are reading them correctly, actually remind us of, or point us to, reality.
My own experience in reading has led me to the same conclusion, but I didn’t know how to say it until I read Chesterton (Tolkien’s Essay on Fairie Stories makes much the same point as well). Just yesterday, in my post on the Tale of One who Traveled to Learn what Shivering Meant, I remarked that seeing a boy who couldn’t shiver in a magical land filled with death and hauntings was precisely what I needed to remind me that I have plenty to shiver about here. And this sort of thing has happened many times.
It is because of this that the cumulative effect of reading fairy tales, at least for me, is to remind us subtly, over time, that we live in a magical world. I believe it was somewhere in C.S. Lewis’ writings that I read something to this effect (there’s that word again) that drives this point home: he said that a child who reads of magical forests doesn’t start to despise real forests, but begins to see the real ones as a bit enchanted. In other words, the stimulation of the imagination caused by such reading brings life and vitality to what we otherwise, in our scientific age might see simply as natural processes.
I recently listened to a sermon by Douglas Wilson on the story of the Witch at Endor in 1 Samuel 28. In his observations on this passage he very briefly made the point that this story reminds us we live in a magical world – if we believe what God says about the world. This is a world with witches and giants (have you watched any NBA games lately?). This is a world with voodoo and mumbojumbo. But it is also a world with pure, good, clean miracles.
Miracles are all around us. I believe the biblical accounts of miracles – those of Moses, of Elijah and Elisha, certainly of Jesus. I believe in the resurrection of the dead. Why shouldn’t I?
Fairy stories only serve to remind me that we witness miracles regularly, and often without noticing: Take a magic pill and be healed – that’s not a fairy tale, that’s the modern pharmaceutical industry. Remove his impure heart and give him a new one – that’s not only the Bible (and I do not, of course, think the Bible is a fairy tale or even remotely comparable to a fairy tale), that’s the modern heart transplant. A man detaches his heart from himself and entrusts its care to a creature for safe keeping with the end result being his ultimate destruction- that’s not only a fairy tale, that’s modern idolatry at its finest! How many men to do have given their heart completely to a woman or a job only to have it crushed in the end?
Caterpillars really turn into butterflies. You can explain it scientifically, but it’s the stuff of fairy tales. Plants turn green because of air. You can explain photosynthesis scientifically, but at bottom, when you ask what makes them green, it’s something invisible. This is also the stuff of fairy tales.
Scienticism (I’m not criticizing science, but Scientism)would rob us of all awe and wonder. Fairy Land would remind us that there is plenty to be in awe of in every back yard and plenty to wonder at in the sky above us at all times. Scientism would explain the galaxies. But Fairy Land reminds us that there is awe and wonder in a bunch of balls made of dirt and gas that float in mid air.
To me, the cumulative effect of spending time reading stories of enchanted lands is that it makes the enchantment of our own world come to life. It’s been said before by lovers of such stories, but I’m just now figuring it out. And so I write…
