the truth about fairy tales

Why are reason and facts often argued as better than or superior to imagination? Is it because imagination is open to lies or fanciful fabrications like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny? Or is it because we'd make fools of ourselves or end up dying from stupidity if we tried to live by the laws that govern imagination? If, for instance, we imagined we could fly, would we kill ourselves because we couldn't resist leaping off a tall building? For the sake of survival and sanity, we reason, the hard fact of physics and logic must win out every time.

Or must they?

With imagination, we experience wide-eyed wonder and we connect with deeper joys that defy our limited understanding of what's logical and rational. With imagination, we see with faith-eyes all the virtues that make us inexplicably human, like love, kindness, altruism, hope, trust and beauty. With imagination, we ride in the clouds with angels and wrestle in hell with demons. With imagination, we believe that good must ultimately triumph over evil and that Fairy Tales eventually will come true.

Yes, with imagination, we risk clinging to childhood delusions about a red-suited jolly old elf and an oversized bunny that delivers pastel eggs. But with imagination, we are free to consider heart-felt realities and deeper truths that exist even within our most ridiculous fantasies.

So, let's open our faith-eyes and gaze into a sunset or look with wonder into the eyes of newborn baby. In doing so, we just may discover that our longing for what we cannot see is not a mere glitch in our DNA, or some sort of evolutionary fool's gold that causes us to keep on keeping on for the sake of preserving the species.

We are, indeed, more than the eye beholds and so much more than what's revealed by the laws of logic and physics. We are also heart; we are also soul; we are also living in a world of intangibles that offer glimpses of eternity, whispers from heaven, the sweet aroma of the grace, and an occasional touch from the very hand of God.

For further discussion about faith and the imagination, see chapter four, "The Ethics of Elfland," in Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton.

merry mockery

stomp on a glass decoration and let the shattered shards fly;
drop a match on a lifeless pine and let o tannenbaum burst into flames;
pull the plug on sparkly bright lights and let the holiday world go black;
flip the off-switch on candy-coated muzak and let the mall go silent;
drop the biggest present in a back-alley dumpster;
punch a whole in all those atrocious air-filled santas and snowmen;
kick a glossy gaudy crèche across a snow-covered lawn ...
and what remains is nothing but a blood-smudged babe
in a cave-barn, lying in a feeding trough
on a chilly night in a small middle-eastern town,
waiting for mother’s milk and a horrible death
(followed by a miracle grave robbing)
that makes a mockery of all we call Christmas.