Rooted in the Real I remember sitting in the musky stillness of the upstairs room at my grandmothers, on a pinewood floor, digging through the books in the cedar closet. I found an old copy of the Hobbit one day, and the brilliant trilogy set put out by Ballantine. The art on the covers drew me in. It was weathered and worn down by my aunts Ellen and Eileen, voracious readers of J.R.R. Tolkien in their own teen years. Sunlight slipped through white linen curtains, splashed on the floor, and spilled over the yellowed pages. And the world of Middle-Earth, with its maps of mystical lands, mountains, valleys, rivers and ancient cities, came alive. I felt somehow, from the beginning, that this would not be a journey away from reality, but a path leading right to the very heart of it. Are our stories merely fantasy, or are they rooted in the Real? Does God speak through our subcreations? Is the eternal plan, the battle of good and evil, the ring of truth, the power of Beauty bound to any one region, or can it shimmer through every leaf and page of imagination? "Humanity in every age, and even today, looks to works of art to shed light upon it's path and it's destiny." - Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists + Bill Donaghy http://www.missionmoment.org/