Let me tell you about the Wood Between the Worlds

The Wood Between the Worlds is a place that is nowhere. It was created by CS Lewis and appears in his book The Magician's Nephew, part of the Chronicles of Narnia.

It resembles a wood, with soft, sweet-smelling grass and trees growing as far as you can see. Sunlight filters through leaves that are always green. Other than the grass and trees there are no living creatures in the Wood, except for a guinea pig that the Magician sent there while testing his methods. In between the trees are small pools of water, and each of these pools acts as a portal to another universe. When one travels between the worlds by passing through this Wood, one emerges from the pool from his own world and then moves on to another pool.

Children's literature offers many ways to travel between worlds. In Knock Three Times by Marion St John Webb, two children find the Possible World by following a sentient pumpkin through the trunk of a tree. It's quite simple. There are two sides to every tree, just like there are two sides to every question. But you can't get to the other side of a question by going around it - you must go through it. The same is true of trees.

The symbolism of trees in both stories did not escape my notice, nor did the mythical World Tree with its roots in the underworld and its branches in the heavens. I also do not think it's insignificant that Manannan Mac Lir, Son of the Sea, is a ferryman as well as a gatekeeper; a trip through the water is a trip to another world.

I once had a dream about walking through a city very like my own, except that when I looked up I saw a shimmering, rippling surface of water, far above me. I found that my movements were slowed as if I was walking on the bottom of a lake. Dreamworld is as much a reality to our minds as waking life, and the transformation that we undergo while falling asleep transports us to another world - metaphorically or metaphysically, whichever you prefer. Altered states of mind, both natural and induced, are expressed in literature and art as trips to other worlds, whether we think of them as external and extraterrestrial or buried in our own subconscious minds. The water that carries us to a far-off shore is the same as the wine that unveils our hidden emotions.

This is far from the end, but I never expected to finish. I think of each of these as a small part of a greater thing that will be my life's work: part fiction, part poetry, perhaps even part ministry. I have been trying for many years, with some success and a lot of dead ends. I'll likely be trying for my whole life. But that's okay.