I would like to start by asking you to consider an incorrect image. Imagine God, before he creates anything. He is not in Heaven, for He has not made it; He is not in space, for it does not yet exist. He is not anywhere, for the idea of place has yet to be created. So you cannot imagine anything outside of Him: you must simply imagine Him, and you are bathed in Him, swimming in the ocean of his being, an ocean with no shores and no surface, for all is submerged.

Medieval Christians had the habit of referring to our life in this world as in via, “on a journey,” as opposed to Heaven, where we would be in patria, “in the homeland.” Accordingly, they thought of themselves as viatores, “travelers” or “people of the way.” The Lord’s Supper, which to them was the pinnacle of the grace of God, was called viaticum, “waybread,” “that which sustains the journeyer.”

An old name for Fairyland is the Realm Perilous. The poetry of that name alone makes it a suitable descriptor for Fairyland, but its suitability is not exhausted in the poetry. It is also suitable because the fairy realm is a land of dangers. It is inherently a land of dangers: you could no more have a Fairyland without danger than you could have a universe without energy. But why it should be so is instructive.

“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:9-10)