Fairy Tales and Romance

"Take my heart, take my heart..." The sweet words drift on the sweet sound of a child-princess's voice at the end of the movie, A Little Princess. From an early age, that movie spoke to my heart... and I had forgotten about the little treasure of a film years ago... until I just recently stumbled upon it in our movie cubbord at the home where I grew up. Of course, next chance I got, I had to pop the film in the old VCR. And, just as before, the film provoked a strong wave of emotions to swell up inside me. Yes, ALittle Princess actually makes me cry. What am I crying for?

For me, the film grasps at longings lodged deep in my heart, and, I believe, in all of our hearts. Longings for love... innocence... generosity without restraints... magic... a return to grandness. Longings that are ignored, or worse, forgotten.

John Eldredge's book The Sacred Romance elaborates on that longing for a return to grandness in particular:

"Yes, we are not what we were meant to be, and we know it... We sense that our real self is ruined, and we fear to be seen. But think for a moment [of]... ancient sites like the Parthenon, the Colosseum, and the Pyramids. Though ravaged by time, the elements, and vandals through the ages, mere shadows of their former glory, these ruins still awe and inspire. Though fallen, their glory cannot be fully extinguished. There is something at once sad and grand about them. And such we are... 'glorious ruins.'"

Eldredge also speaks of our forgetfullness of such glorious quality:

"The fact that we don't see our own glory is part of the tragedy of the Fall; a sort of spiritual amnesia has taken all of us."

An amnesia that Eldredge explains is further compounded by modern culture. He constrasts the Middle Ages with the current Post-Modern Era. Speaking first of living in anno domini, the year of our Lord:

"It wasn't football season, it was Advent. Your role models were the saints, whose feast days were regular reminders of a drama greater than yourself. The architecture of the cathedral, the music, literature, and sculpture all gave you a vision of transcendence, reminding you of the central elements of that great story. Even the everyday language reflected the Christian understanding of life's story, expressions like "God be with you," "upon my soul," and "by Christ's blood." Birht and death, love and loss - all of your personal experiences would be shaped by that larger story.

But you don't live in the Middle Ages, you live in the Post-modern Era. For hundreds of years our culture has been losing its story."

That essence, that ruined essence - ruined but not "fully extinguished" - is the precise essence that called to me when I first watched A Little Princess in my younger childhood. And Eldredge points out that sacred essence continually calls to us through a romance, a Sacred Romance. A romance that is evident "in the golden fall of the Rockies and in the windswept sea grasses and whitecaps of bay and ocean on the Atlantic; in a quiet moment of sunlight orchestrated into parallel rays of warmth on my shoulder as I read a good book; in the eyes of certain women and the strength of certain men; in the joy of my five-year-old son turning cartwheels during a soccer game, oblivious to the demands of winning; and in rare occurrences of kindness, courage, and sacrifice by men and women [known and unknown]... Someone or something has romanced us from the beginning with creek-side singers and pastel sunsets, with the austere majesty of snowcapped mountains and the poignant flames of autumn colors telling us of something - or someone- leaving, with a promise to return. These things can, in an ungaurded moment, bring us to our knees with longing for this something or someone who is lost."

Things like the scene in the A Little Princess where the girl, who went from riches to rags and is holed up in a cold, damp attic... dances in circles with arms thrown up in the gust of snow-frosted wind that abruptly throws open the doors to her musty room. A Little Princess brings me to my knees everytime. As I child, I didn't recognize why I was on my knees. I just simply knew that the film stirred something in me that hurt and felt glorious all at once. Eldredge eloquently explains the extent of my understanding then:

"We find ourselves in a story that is sometimes wonderful, sometimes awful, often a confusing mixture of both, and we haven't the slightest clue how to make sense of it all..."

And though in college I had long forgotten the film, I hadn't forgotten about that deep emotion that can bring you to your knees. Though I can't remember what affecting series of experiences preceded it, I once wrote: "Whether it is a shiver of sadness, horror, or excitement, I know I have found something remarkable when I feel it." What I didn't know was that something remarkable was the Sacred Romance. Those "shivers" of poignant emotion moments when I'm feeling the Sacred Romance.

And Eldredge writes, the Sacred Romance is a part of the grandest fairy tale of them all:

"Frederick Buechner reminds us in his wonderful book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale, the world of the gospel is the world of fairy tale, with one notable exception:

'It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world whree terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name... That is the fairy tale of the Gospel, with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept happening ever since and is happening still.'"

How logical it is then, that a fairy tale, A Little Princess, should speak to my heart. What's even more amusing is the fairy tale itself relies on fairy tales to bring its characters through terrible hardship, loss and longing. That very structure in A Little Princess, telling fairy tales to speak of a living fairy tale, is simply modeled after the a book I had grown up with, but have not given nearly enough attention to: the Bible.

Eldredge points out that Elie Wiesel recognized that quality of the Bible and about the role of humanity when he wrote: "God created man because he loves stories."

And as Buechner says, we are a living fary tale. The best news? We've met our prince charming... and it's just a matter of time before our reunion with him and our restoration to the glory we were meant for.