In great sacred stories, rituals are often the arms used by the story to draw us in. The ancient story of Jesus’ resurrection is not merely remembered but personally consumed in the Eucharist feast. The ancient story of the Exodus is personally consumed in the ritual of the Seder meal. In these ritual meals, the story enters us and we enter the other world where the story is born. Because fairy tales do not generate rituals, their world always remains at arm’s length away. There is no ritual that helps us enter Wonderland or Oz, but when the priest says that the wafer is the body of Christ; when the Passover story quoting Exodus 13:8 commands Jews of every age to believe that they personally were brought out of Egypt, these are not metaphors. They are sudden intrusions of the world of the holy into our world and our souls. The other limitation of fairy tales is that their other world is not inhabited by a just and loving and powerful God. Grimm’s world is often, well, grim.
We see the power and the limits of fairy tales in a masterful new movie, “Pan’s Labyrinth,” by the brilliant director and, in this case, writer, Guillermo del Toro. Set in the countryside during the Spanish Civil War, it tells the story of an 11-year-old girl named Ofelia (played by Ivana Banquero) who finds a stone labyrinth that takes her, in turns, underground to a fantasy realm inhabited by a faun and several monsters, and then back to the surface and the sadistic brutality of war. In the fairy-tale world, Ofelia is a princess trying to find her way home to her father and mother. In her earthly world, she is a child trapped by a brutal stepfather and an even more brutal war. The film is purposefully unclear as to which world is real. I think it is clear that the underground world of the labyrinth is just her delusional escape from a crushing reality. If her other world was Heaven and not the subterranean abode of monsters, she might have entered it upon her death with a more convincing coda. However, the film goes as far as any fairy tale can go in making the case that this world is not all there is and not all that awaits us. Until we have the decisive evidence that only comes after death, “Pan’s Labyrinth” reminds us with masterful power that in this life, we enter all great stories with one ear listening to our real world and one ear listening to the intimations of eternity.
Children are most receptive to great stories. Perhaps, the rationalists say, this is because they are not yet smart enough to think critically. Or perhaps this is because they are not yet cynical enough to give up believing that there is another world near to us where love endures, where the soul lives on, where good triumphs over evil and where every person is precious, protected and beloved. However, the power of sacred stories is not utterly lost on adults who live only in this world. The freedom fighters in the woods believed in a story that democracy would win over fascism. Even in the darkest days of their struggle, their belief in the story of freedom gave them courage and hope to persevere. Martin Luther King’s and Mahatma Gandhi’s stories of faith helped them change this world for the better.
In our struggle against terror today, we need to once again believe in a transcendent story that will save our world and us. Of course, my personal preference is the sacred story, but I love and trust others who have been transformed by stories that do not come from Holy Writ. What matters—all that matters—is that we find a way to believe that this world and its blood and suffering is not the only world. There must be something better and finer and more just and less terrifying to 11-year-old girls who love fairy tales. I deeply praise Guillermo del Toro for giving us such a story.
Is there a story that helps you to keep your hope alive so that evil will not win in our world nor despair win in our heart? If there is such a story in your life, please, I beg you to share your story with someone who is lost and afraid in the hills outside the labyrinth. After you share your story, go see the movie. The popcorn is on me. The story is on Guillermo del Toro, who absolutely knows that we are not alone.
