Issue 014: Remember Your Fairy Tales

We see through a glass darkly.

But the light shining through stirs our emotions.

What is that we feel? An ache: we ache inside.

No, not an ache: we are filled with longing, a faint sense of feeling what we do not yet feel, of knowing what we do not yet know, of seeing what we do not yet see.

All of the earth is not what it seems.

What is that? A light. A light breaks through the window pane, through the glass.

The beam is trapped, it’s trapped inside our eyes, and it spreads, it spreads to our lungs and we breathe it in, breathe it out, the light is in our blood, in our heartbeat, every beat is a whisper now, our heart whispers to our hands, our feet; they touch, they feel, they heal.

We see, not as we will but as we do now, we see through the glass.

A forest, a forest stands tall outside the glass, and there’s a fog. There’s fog among the trees.

Kingdoms and Empires lie asleep, asleep in the fog, lost in the forest. In their sleep they build castles but they crumble, they fall, they disappear in the fog.

What’s strong is not and what’s not is banned, banished from the Kingdom of Fog. All are asleep, no one stirs.

The trees stand tall.

It’s a mystery, an endless knowing.

When will they awake, when will we awake? They think they are awake, awake, awake—we think we are wide awake, as wide as the sea, but we sleep deep.

The fog is stirring, it’s swirling, it’s moving, it’s shifting; the trees stand tall.

The window pane: it’s filthy—the dirt on the outside—we can’t reach it, can’t clean it; can’t see it.

Light breaks through, breaks the window pane, it breaks our brokenness.

We see, we touch, we feel, we laugh, we heal, we live, we love.

“Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.”

-C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Liberatus is a weekly journal on how to bring Truth and Beauty to American politics, written by people on the inside. You can join us for our seven-week series on The Chronicles of Narnia, titled Remember Your Fairy Tales, by subscribing by email. You can read part one below.