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Email a FriendPosted by Gwen Grundman on Thursday, Oct 22, 2009 7:48 AM (EDT):
That is excellent!
I could give a whole educational philosophy based on the story of Sleeping Beauty!
Fairy Food and Forbidden Fruit
How folklore leads us to Christ
by Daria Sockey in Faith on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 6:00 AM
(Disclaimer: Lest anyone credit me with brilliant spiritual insight, I should share that the following is based on a sermon my pastor gave several weeks ago. I never would have thought of this myself.)
Mythology, folklore, fairy tales — stories that tell of man’s adventures in other worlds — have a common thread regarding food. Basically, if someone adventuring in another world eats the food of that world, a bond is formed with that foreign place. A bond which cannot be easily broken.
For example, the Greek goddess Persephone eats enchanted pomegranate seeds while in the underworld, and is thereby compelled to wed Hades, and live with him for half of each year. (Hence the four seasons—fall and winter occur when Persephone’s mother Demeter is mourning her daughter’s yearly departure.)
The folklore Britain and Ireland abounds with accounts of hapless people who become captives of leprechauns and fairies once they have partaken of fairy food.
Modern authors have made use of this theme as well. In C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Mr. Beaver explains, “The moment I set eyes on your brother, I siad to myself ‘Treacherous’ . He had the look of one who has been with the Witch and eaten her food. You can always tell…something about their eyes.”
Scholars of myth such as J.R.R. Tolkien tell us that one finds these common threads in diverse folklore traditions because they express half-forgotten Truths.
In this instance, it’s pretty easy to detect what is at the bottom of all these toxically-enchanted food stories ...
Jeopardy answer: What is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Our first parents ate the food that bound us all to the kingdom of this world.
Happily, there is a flip side to this coin:
“I am the bread that has come down from heaven. He who eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
—John 6:51
If we are eating the bread of heaven, we already belong there. And “there” is not an alien parallel universe, but rather our true home. The Place that will make us look back on earth as the land of our exile.
—Senior writer Daria Sockey, a mother of seven, writes from her home in Pennsylvania.
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