The Land of Faerie

Recently my friend, Kirby Atkins, who is working on an animated movie in New Zealand, wrote saying:

I'm here in New Zealand, going on a month now here without family. Very, very hard but work and prayer help. This is as monk-like as I'm likely to get. I have a Kindle and do the (prayer) office with it. Also reading George MacDonald "The Princess and the Goblin." Good stuff. At one point the princess is walking home in the dark. The goblins come out only at night. They try to scare you with noises and shadows but will only attack if you run. You must walk calmly and only then will you get home. Much like the demons I think. I'm trying to walk calmly and not panic. Walk and pray in the dark until I get home.

Amazing how being brave isn't the same as feeling brave. The prayer of St. Patrick is good for times like these.

I sent the following response:

Just discovered two books of George MacDonald that I wasn't aware of; one a collection of his sermons, the other the Diary of an Old Soul.

As for the goblins...Diana and I were talking of that other realm a few days ago and came to an odd conclusion. The other realm exists, but to us merely lies dormant. Tolkien would have us believe that the age of elves has passed away and that we have now entered into the age of men. A sad and misguided opinion! The reality is different.

In one of Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently Holistic Detective books, Adams puts forth the theory that Thor and the rest of the Norse gods still exist but have fallen on hard times and have become greatly weakened because humankind has lost faith in them. Thor is actually a resident in a posh home for the elderly where he obsesses over the luxury of clean sheets, and the nursing staff waits on him hand and foot. Just Thor’s kind of thing!

The matter of the other people of this Middle Earth, where we dwell is, another thing. The realm of Faerie still exist simultaneously and side by side with this realm. We already know that because we acknowledge the presence of angels and demons which actually come to us from that other realm. You probably know that in the Silmarillion the Valar and Maiar are pure spirits, or angels, of Iluvatar the most high God, and that they can assume form in order to appear on Middle Earth. Gabriel and Gandalf are both Maiar.

In Spenser's Images C.S. Lewis says that "elemental spirits may really exist, and he cautions us, "who knows, perhaps in this as in so many things the ancients knew more than we."

In composing your most valuable work it is not so much that you created all those wonderful characters for your animated movie, no, not at all. The reality is that you discovered them emerging from your imagination; but I have a theory about imagination. Imagination is the faculty through which we discover that other world around us. Some peoples imaginations are filled with sick and demonic figures. Does that mean that these things do not exist? Hardly! As for those of us sensitive to the bright realm of Faerie, we do not create it, nor did our forbearers create it, we have discovered it, and through the gift of the faculty of imagination we have stepped into an ever flowing river where the realm of Faerie touches Middle Earth.