An excerpt

I was recently given an essay by J.R.R. Tolkien ("On Fairy-Stories") by a friend who knows I'm attempting to write a story of my own (no promises about how good or terrible it might be), but within it was a letter he had written to someone who disagreed very much with the genre of fantasy.  Here's that letter:

"Dear Sir," I said - Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons -'twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we're made.

I've run into people in my Christian walk (who are also in theirs) who would say something very different.  That there is no real value in the worlds created by men by I agree with Tolkien and appreciate the truths that can be represented through other worlds.  C.S. Lewis did very much the same thing in his writings.  To follow in their giant footprints with my measly ones is an honor that I don't take lightly.  I just pray my plight is not in vain.