On Fairy-story, Tolkien, and magic in real life

'The land of fairy-story... while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gates be shut and the keys lost.'- JRR Tolkien

There is magic in the world.  Not magic that defies science, but the deep kind of magic.  Womderful things.  If only you know how to look for them.

I write of such things in our own world.  Ming China, Vijayanagar.  The age before the dinosaurs.

But I learned to look for these things from fantasy.  From Tolkien and Steven Spielberg's E.T.

If you ask too many of the wrong questions you will talk yourself into being a materialistic skeptic.

You will look at a photo of the Grand Canyon and say, it's just a bunch of rocks.

You will look out at the night sky in the mountains away from the city and say, it's just balls of gas.

You will miss what is important.

Which is its artistic value.

Which is the amazing way things like the Grand Canyon make us feel.

This is as real as anything.

The most real thing in the world is how we perceive it in our own mind.

And if we look for things to be special and beautiful, when we come across birdsong or a rainbow, let alone something like the Grand Canyon, that's what we will find.

Something special, and beautiful.

But we need to be looking for it.

We need to be looking for it, for it is its effect on our mind that is special.

If our mind is not looking for something special, we will miss the special part.

Which is how it makes us feel inside.

There is magic out there.

Artistic magic.

But you have to look for it.

Tolkien and the side of Steven Spielberg that made E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind will show you how!

God loves you!  Look to the light, and look for the beauty!

Sincerely,

David S. Annderson