The generation of Bing Crosby told my generation – where Elvis and the Beatles reigned – that the music of big bands and crooners would never go out of style. It was a grimace prophecy that we Baby Boomers could ne’er imagine. Even now the grimace reappears as rock ‘n roll posits hip hop as just another passing fad. To my now-antique pop music sense, current pop artists’ names are even more unfamiliar than the names on any page of the only surviving telephone directory from Lima, Peru.

I was clueless also when my first granddaughter reached preschool age and carved out a refined appreciation for celebrities like Dora the Explorer, Diego, newer Sesame Street residents, Spiderman and other super heroes, and a phalanx of Disney princesses. A dirty dish towel, a sneaker cast-off, and an amputated Barbie leg could serve as a tiara, wand, or flowing togs for the most recent royal ball, with preschool eyes all the focused firmly on a distant fantasy land. Unprepared grandparents risk encounter with mice, witches, carriage steeds, and dragons suddenly appearing via transformation of stuffed animals. Nor should they mistake Snow White for Sleeping Beauty or confusing their respective gowns, for that would insult the sorority!

These things now bring smiles to my face, but are probably little different from my own elementary school fantasies of riding to victory the Black Stallion in the Walter Farley children’s novels of the ‘50s, of standing in for Mouseketeer Bobby who held the hand of Mouseketeer Annette on the Mickey Mouse Club, and conquering the North American wilderness with Davy Crocket bedecked in the obligatory coon skin cap.

If we can think of ourselves as more than just mammals driven by urges like hunger, pleasure, and fear, we might allow that myth and fairy tale give us clues to the movements of our human minds and hearts, the values and dreams that drive us. In my iconoclastic youth, myth was the dragon to my Lancelot bravery. I was bent on clearing the dross so that reality and truth, unfettered by encroachments from the crabgrass and chickweed of myth and fantasy, had room to take root, grow, and bear fruit. How else could I leave the world a better place?

Some things take generations to learn and for me one of them was that myth and fantasy are also reality. As a specimen under scrutiny by the scientific method they may likely always be found wanting, but there is more to reality than just that which can be observed by sense and measured in test tubes, electronic telescopes, and particle accelerators.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” as Shakespeare’s Hamlet tells us.

The myths and fantasies of the religions may be more fiction than fact in logic’s opinion. But discounting the sacred sources for that reason is as irresponsible as burning an almost-a-big-girl’s Disney princess collection because it is product of fairy tale rather than fact. Fact is not only that which logic can prove, but also the truth about the human mind and heart, good and bad, found in the traditional myths and legends that help us know who we are and how we are connected. To deny everything that falls outside the umbrella of human reasoning is a classic case of “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

To persist in a literal Cinderella too long will likely lead a little girl to an obsession with appearance or an expectation of indulgence. To persist in a literal Spiderman comic world will likely lead to an overestimate of power and prowess, and possibly even physical injury from attempts to vault distances between lofty structures with the aid of “Spidey’s” web. But extremists who discount myths and legends because they are not fact, also discard the teaching moment that forges a sense of right and wrong, that develops a desire for justice to replace injustice. Living in a fantasy land beyond childhood will do little youngsters no good; nor us who share time and space with them here. But denying children these age-appropriate tools to develop healthy values and self-awareness does even more harm. Cinderella and Turbo-Man give forums for children to explore desires and values, just as Pecos Bill and Johnny Appleseed, even Daniel Boone and Wyatt Earp, reveal to us the American sense and psyche. So also Adam, Eve, Noah, and the other characters in the faith dramas, teach children and adults who we are, why we’re here, and where we’re going. Without them I think we would be much less than we are.