Because of the interior shift I faced when I become a Christian and the lifelong process of sanctification, the ordinary world is no longer merely ordinary to me. The morning sunlight now carries a different weight. The trees and flowers, and the animals can speak of something beyond themselves. The same human faces of my friends have become windows rather than surfaces. The world I see has not been magically rewritten, but like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, I have become a new creature – and the music is still playing.

(No, this is not a dream and I’m not being cute!)

Reading the first couple chapters of Phantasies by George MacDonald I’m seeing why MacDonald and C.S. Lewis believed “Fairy Land” was never a separate country where you permanently leave the real world to enter. But it is a real world seen without cynicism, self-regard, and the desire for possessions. Indeed we see it with new and opened eyes. Once our eyes have been opened, we can never again look at the ordinary and find it only ordinary or think the possible impossible. This change is irreversible! The person who looks upon the world as “Fairy Land” is not being theatrical, hallucinating or experiencing the magicical effect of mushrooms: rather we are only saying we have been changed by God.