I think spirituality is observed in the inexpressable, so I don't think I could adeqately explain what it means to me. I always loved this story, I think it points the way:
"That night in 1931, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis were strolling over the grounds of Magdalene College after dinner, listening to the water in the river, to wind rustling in the leaves. They were talking about myth, and Lewis said-rationalist that he still was at that time, before his conversion to Christianity-that "myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver." "No, they're not," argued Tolkien, just as a rush of wind sent leaves scattering all around them with a hush of mystery. Tolkien was a Catholic and a firm believer in the power of myth. "Look at those trees," he cried as they walked down the path, "We say the word tree and think only of some vegetable organism. We look at stars and have in mind a ball of inanimate matter moving on a mathematical course.
But the first people to use those words, he said, saw things differently. Imagine the early Celts who passed here before us. "To them, the world was alive with mythological beings. They saw the stars as living silver, bursting into flame in answer to the eternal music. They saw the sky as a jewelled tent, and the earth as the womb whence all living things come. To them, the whole of creation was 'myth-woven and elf-patterned.' " 1 And they weren't far wrong, he added.
Tolkien went on to suggest that Lewis was stumbling over Christianity because he wanted to accept it only as an abstract system of thought. "Receive it as story!" he said. They went on to talk about the mystery of myth and metaphor and faith until three o'clock in the morning."
Fantasy and Geography of Faith By Belden C. Lane, October 1993
