Living in a fantasy world?

We're reading through 'That Hideous Strength,' the final installment of C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, purported to be a modern fairy tale for adults, one of those impossible books that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.  Why am I fascinated by fantasy and fairy tales?  Why can I write nothing but?  Why is my soul not satisfied with modern, realistic fiction?  Why do my favorite books, if not fairy tales per say, smack of that genre even so?  Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien all delved into the genre, trying to discover why it so enamored themselves and people in general, and the only conclusion that can be reached is that they are true.  No, I do not believe there are evil stepmothers lurking in the woods with magic apples, do not be ridiculous, rather there is Something beyond the thin veil of what we call normal and reality and everyday, something bigger, bolder, and more startling than we can imagine.  It is at this very Thing that the stories hint and tease, they skirt the corners, lift the flap, nibble around the edges, but can never get to the very heart of the thing but they excite in us an eagerness, a hope, a joy, an anticipation hardly to be believed in such 'worldly' and 'mature' people as we consider ourselves to be.  Like Christmas or a starry winter night, it is 'deep calling out to deep.'  The closest we muggles will ever come to true magic this side of reality.

That's why we love sunsets and the ocean depths and butterflies and never tire of new life, why music in a minor key haunts our oldest and dearest memories.  We are a haunted race, we are living the dream but longing to awaken to real life, we know there is something more to existence and reality than this thin layer of biological, physical, and temporal real estate we occupy.  That's why the most radical man and greatest teacher in history always spoke in parables, his stories could seep into places cold, hard facts and reality could in nowise touch, that childish, yearning soul at the heart of even the most intelligent and coldest man.  Indeed, 'eternity has been set in the heart of man,' we've yearned for it unutterably since Eden fell, even our origins are spoken of in fairytale language, as is the end of mortal days, read The Revelation and tell me it isn't a fairy tale too!  Anything that whispers of it or hints at bigger things beyond our myopic vision, inexplicably fascinates us.

But we need not live like materialists, thinking 'this crude matter' is all there is, shutting our hearts and minds to the greater mysteries of the world and beyond it.  For that greatest fairytale of all is True, and it tells us how to live now, so when the Prince comes back, He'll find his bride ready and waiting, but we won't ride off into the sunset at the end of the tale, nay, it will be but the beginning of a greater tale that will never, ever end.