Fairy Tales.

Earlier today I read the first few sections of "The Light Princess" by George MacDonald, which I hadn't done in a little while. It's such a strange little story about a princess who gets cursed on her christening to have no gravity -- both physically and spiritually. She's completely light -- she floats up to the ceiling and she views everything as a joke.

I love my little collection of George MacDonald's fairy tales. Each of these little stories [except "The Giant's Heart"; I didn't like that one] are wondrous, and floaty, and beautiful, but also deep. For instance, there's this glorious moment, which C.S. Lewis alludes to in his writings, in "The Golden Key," at which Mossy and Tangle see shadows from a land that they cannot see, and they long to go to "the land from whence the shadows fall." Or there's a moment in "The History of Photogen and Nycteris" in which the two future lovers see each other for the first time and do not understand the other's fear of the day or the night.

There's something about a fairy tale that can, in a simple way, express the deep realities of our souls. Last night I was with a group of friends, and we discussed the Disney movies and how some of those early movies (like Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty) rang with deep truth. This is the same way that I felt about The Last Unicorn -- something about that novel rung a deep chord with me, and I still can't quite get over it yet.

MacDonald knew this when he wrote his fairy tales. In his essay, "The Fantastic Imagination," he said:

"If a writer's aim be logical conviction, he must spare no logical pains, not merely to understood, but to escape being misunderstood; where his object is to move by suggestion, to cause to imagine, then let him assail the soul of his reader as the wind assails an Aeolian harp. If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it. ... 

... The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear upon it, but to be still and let it work on that part of us for whose sake it exists. ..." 

          (George MacDonald, from The Complete Fairy Tales, 10)

I love that. "If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it." And wake that music he does, with such phrases and tunes like:

"He [Mossy] had not gone far before the sun set. But the rainbow only glowed the brighter. For the rainbow of Fairyland is not dependent upon the sun as ours is. The trees welcomed him. The bushes made way for him. The rainbow grew larger and brighter; and at length he found himself within two trees of it. 

It was a grand sight, burning away there in silence, with its gorgeous, its lovely, its delicate colours, each distinct, all combining. He could now see a great deal more of it. It rose high into the blue heavens, but bent so little that he could not tell how high the crown of the arch must reach. It was still only a small portion of a huge bow. ..." 

                        (George MacDonald, "The Golden Key," from Ibid., 121)

It's amazing what a few lines of text can do. You can almost see that heavenly rainbow which hides the Golden Key at its feet. Or, later on in the story, the flying fish that goes to find Mossy; or the shadows which fall from an ethereal land that is better and more joyous than ours.

I find it interesting that I have mentioned fairy tales only very briefly on this blog. In truth, I believe that there is no better vehicle of True Mythology than the fairy tale -- it almost does not need interpretation. (MacDonald himself says the following: "A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that... you... should know what it means?" (Ibid., 7)) The Fairy Tale is glorious because it is a Meta-Mythology. It is a Myth about the Myth. It is an Allegory beyond Allegory.

Bah. It's hard to talk about it, or to express exactly what I mean by that. Hopefully, reader, you get the idea.

And maybe that's why I've only briefly mentioned fairy tales thusfar on this blog. Just like how I only briefly touched on the interpretation of The Last Unicorn. It's deep the way that the Parable of the Soils [some people call it the Parable of the Sower; but in InterVarsity, we call it the Parable of the Soils] is deep -- because it's self-referential. Fairy tales are sublime. They're hard to catch.

Like a Unicorn. You might see them [briefly], and you might recognize them [if your heart is pure], and you might even get to touch them [if they let you]. But you will never ever catch them.

A Poem. "Surprise."

I wrote this one this morning thinking about many different things that the Lord has been doing in my life lately. I had received a prophetic word two or three weeks ago that said that the Lord would be shifting my paradigms and shifting my life -- and He had been whispering to me about "Rain comes down from Heaven // Flowers spring up from the Earth" [ie. seasonal changes] for some time now...

As I thought about that, I remembered something that C.S. Lewis wrote in a letter to Mary Willis Shelburne (see Yours, Jack, 309) about how his wife had sensed Jesus on her shoulder, and how she was worried that she might have some unrepentant sin in her life... but when she turned around to see Him, He had a blessing in His hand and a smile on His face.

Jesus keeps looking at me with this mischievous (but good) smile on His face, and I know that He has, as He told the Lady Julian, a "great goodness" in store. This poem is an expression of that reality -- that we serve a God who loves to bless us and surprise us, both in little and in big ways!

Every morning is a new sunrise
Every day is a new surprise
Whether it is seen by amber skies
or captured within amber eyes

Sometimes I can sense Him behind me
      waiting for me to turn around
and when I do – flinchingly, hesitatingly –
      I see Him there with a smile not a frown
and eyes
which say: “Surprise!” 

I wake up and see the Sun
or when I go to walk or jog or run
Everywhere glorious hiddenness is being revealed
Everywhere beautiful surprises are being unconcealed
 
Sometimes His Spirit comes to me
      and says “I have something to share”
and when I listen – wrestling, afraid –
      I hear Him speak things good, beautiful, and fair
and sighs
which say: “Surprise!”

(10/16/13)

Refuting the Corn-King Jesus. A Thought on Context and Composition.

[Man, I haven't posted here for a long while! That needs to change!]

I was reading the Bible earlier today, and as I read it I couldn't help but think about the strangeness of a certain postmodern theory that, effectively, claims that Jesus is a mythological figure taken from other religions.

I think one of the major flaws with this belief -- that is, the belief that Jesus is a fictional character created to represent a Jewish version of the "Corn King" myth -- lies in how we deal with the context and the composition of the New Testament. (And, by extension, the Old Testament as well.)

The advocates of the "Corn-King Jesus" belief make the following claim: that Jesus, as He is portrayed in the Gospels, is a fictional character, based on a real man, who represents a Jewish interpretation of the Corn-King myth from other religious systems of the day (notably, the Greek Dionysus and the Egyptian Osiris). This belief is not a new belief, either, as it has been noted in comparative mythology [most notably, The Hero with a Thousand Faces].

Before I refute the concept using, as the title suggests, the context and composition of the New Testament, I would like to say [shockingly!] that the adherents of "Corn-King Jesus" actually make a good observation. Like most scientists, philosophers, and theologians, they make great observations but come to poor conclusions from those observations. The similarities between Jesus and other "dying-and-returning-god" myths are uncanny. I would like to note, in particular, the story of Balder the Beautiful from Norse mythology -- how the most beautiful of the gods is killed and slain by the scheming of Loki. Or, for instance, Queztalcoutl, the dying god of the Aztecs who returns with the sun...

(As I've intimated in previous posts, though, I don't believe that Mythology plops up from out of nowhere -- it is developed through the psychology and spiritual encounters of mortal men. Should we be so surprised that man, who was created in the Image of God, has so many images that reflect, albeit impurely, the Nature of God? Or, for instance, should we be so surprised when we believe in spiritual beings and spiritual encounters [both good and evil] that people outside of the Middle East also had spiritual encounters? -- This should be enough to refute the Corn-King Jesus concept... but I have another purpose for this post.)

The thing that bothers me so much, though, about this theory is its core misunderstanding of the context and composition of the New Testament. When we look at the Gospels [Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John], we do not see mythological writing or storytelling. Whether you believe the writers trustworthy or not, or whether they were in the right mind or not, it is evidently clear that the authors of the Gospels wrote those Gospels not as mythological texts, but as historical recordings.

This is generally clear no matter what work of literature we look at. When I read a novel, I know, at the very least, that the author intended it to be read as a novel. Maybe it does have some nonfiction events in there -- or even semi-autobiographical events [for example, Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer stories] -- but the author wrote it in such a genre that I, as the reader, can recognize how I read it.

This is vitally important if we want to understand the proper interpretation of any literary text. You might not believe Luke the Physician when he says: "it seemed good to me to write an orderly account for you... so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught" (Luke 1:3-4). But, at the very least, we can be 100% certain that Luke believed that his readers would receive his text in that way.

There's an apologetic concept used by Josh McDowell that notes, vitally, how most of the early evangelists of the Gospel died for the sake of that Gospel. Mark gets dragged around Alexandria by a rope around his neck; John gets boiled in oil multiple times until the Emperor gives up and places him on Patmos until he dies; Matthew gets slain in Ethiopia. Why would men die for a lie? Why would men die for a fantasy? A false mythology?

My purpose in saying all this is to underscore the following things: the writers of the Gospels at the very least, contextually, wrote their writings in a manner that would be received not as mythology but as history (particularly Luke). These same men faced persecution for writing such a history, which would have been considerably less offensive were it a mythology. Rome had plenty of gods, so the addition of another mythological tradition, even one that claimed supremacy, would have been considerably preferable to a historical account that claimed supremacy.

When we read the Gospels, we read them as History. They don't sound like a mythological story.

That's the Beauty of it.

I might have mentioned this concept in my previous post about The Last Unicorn, but the amazing thing about the Incarnation is this: "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us." (John 1:14) The Myth, the thing that we've heard whispered about for centuries and millennia, the Promise of God, the very Word of God -- He "becomes flesh." He becomes real. What we have in the Gospels is the strange and miraculous concept: the Corn-King, which we've heard about before, is actually a real, flesh-and-blood Man, and He has power to change us.

That's the Beauty of the Gospels. They are History. They are read as History. Whether or not you believe that what they say is true, you have to admit that they make the claim that they are true. This is not something that you seen in other mythological literature. Those tales say "So they say," or "Thus says the ancients," or "Some believe,"... They never say: "Dionysus was a real man, here, in history." Now, there were people who believed that; but none of the mythological literature tries to claim historicity. Only the Gospels do. Only the Gospels claim [with, I might mention, third-party sources that back them up] that Jesus was a real man, that He made real claims about God and about Life and about Salvation, and, most importantly, that He really did raise from the dead.

And I say all that to point us at something important about textual context -- that is, that the genre and type of literature of any text can point us to, in part, the author's meaning and the proper interpretation of that text. You might not believe that the Gospels are Historical. I do. You might not believe that Jesus was a real Man. I do. You might believe that Luke was making it all up. I don't. But unhesitatingly we must agree that, at the very least, Luke believed that his hearers would believe that his writing was Historical. And that very fact tells us something very important: that Luke was trustworthy [he's a doctor! -- and he's attested of some manner of honor in Paul's epistles as well], that Luke's audience already believed something about Jesus, that Luke's audience would receive what he was saying without having to see what he was talking about. ...

And to me, this refutes the Corn-King Jesus belief. If the Gospel was just a mythological cloak which the Gospel-Writers wrapped around a historical man, then why are the Gospel-Writers' writings so well-received? If, as the Corn-King Jesus folk say, the Resurrection was just a mythological after-addition, why is it written so uncannily... amythological? There's one angel, maybe two. An earthquake. Some dead people come back to life. And yet, the Gospel-Writers just toss those details off on the side. There's no trumpet. There's no explosion. There's no retribution against those who slayed the Savior. In fact (it's so undramatic it's hilarious), the apostles actually don't believe it initially. (And two of them are going to write the Gospels...)

Context matters. The method of composition matters. And you can learn a lot about a text just by looking into such little things!

An Autumn Poem.

'Cause it's getting all autumn-y outside.

Fallen motes of silver crust the open space beyond the grave

flakes of past Septembers
      and flurries of lost Octobers
dancing upon the mouth of sheol
      and swimming over the fountain of life.
Microcosmic celebrations of ages past
combat the macrocosmic mournings of futures gone
      and, in it all, there are leaves –
 
            those sorts of leaves which
            inspiring yet die
            dying yet glow
            glowing yet live again
 
      – a silent memorial of Resurrection,
      an avid watchman of Restoration,
      an eternal keeper of Redemption.
Early snows speak to leaves yet unfallen,
late winter to leaves yet to be
Early autumn speaks to death yet to come,
late fall speaks to life yet unknown.
 
(09/06/13)

A Poem. "Two Dreams." A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This is a response to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, 50 years later.

Dreams come in two varieties:

            Weak-Wispy dreams,
            and Prophetic-Powerful dreams
Dreams that we reach towards and do not attain
and Dreams that reach toward us,
            that grip us
            and that do not let go.
      Dreams that arrest us
      Dreams that give us Hope
            and Hope does not disappoint
            for God has poured out His Love
            for God is the One
                        who gave us Dreams in the first place
            for God is the One
                        who fulfills the Dreams He has given.

There are Dreams that, like the flower,
            fade and blow away,
and then there are Dreams that
            become more substantial, not ghostly,
            as the Light shines, as the Day dawns,
                        as the Real usurps the false reality
                        of the Unreal,
                        as the kingdoms of the world
                        become the Kingdom of our God and King,
                        as the City coming down from Heaven
                        becomes the shining City on a Hill
                        which was prophetically declared by
                                    the King Himself.

There are Dreams that pass us by
            like cars on the interstate,
            like houses down the road,
and then there are Dreams that
            bring Revelation
            that open our eyes
            that transform our thinking
            that renew our understanding
            that change our world.


There are Dreams that die
and then there are Dreams
            worth dying for.

(Ian Edward Caveny, 08/07/13)

The Myth of the Myth.

Recently I read perhaps one of the most profound works of literature that I have ever laid eyes upon. Considered a classic of the fantasy genre, The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle is, in my thoughts, the perfect fairy tale. It is far more than its title or plot might reveal. The simple of the story is that of a unicorn who journeys to go and find the rest of her kind. Along the way she meets Schmendrick, a failed magician with a great destiny, and Molly Grue, a brusque bandit woman, and they journey together to find the unicorns.

But the brilliance of this novel lies not in its plot, but in its amazing moments of revelation. Throughout the story, there seems to be this idea that the Unicorn (and other Immortal beings) are "more real" than the world around them. For example, when the Unicorn is captured by Madame Fortuna, Schmendrick notes the witch's mistake in capturing two Immortals: "She should have never done it, never meddled with a real harpy, a real unicorn. The truth melts her magic, always..." (The Last Unicorn, 26)

This idea is epitomized in a brilliant discussion between Schmendrick and Molly Grue. Schmendrick, as wizards often do in fantasy novels (see Fizban, &c.), breaks the fourth wall and says:

"...'Haven't you ever been in a fairy tale before? ... The hero has to make a prophecy come true, and the villain is the one who has to stop him -- though in another kind of story, it's more often the other way around. And a hero has to be in trouble from the moment of his birth, or he's not a real hero. It's a great relief to find out about Prince Lír. I've been waiting for this tale to turn out a leading man.'  

The unicorn was there as a star is suddenly there, moving a little way ahead of them, a sail in the dark. Molly said, 'If Lír is the hero, what is she?' 

'That's different. Haggard and Lír and Drinn and you and I -- we are in a fairy tale, and must go where it goes. But she is real. She is real.'" 

                                                               (The Last Unicorn, 108-109)

And Schmendrick's statement vastly reinterprets the entire tale. As a reader, we thought we were reading a tale about a unicorn searching for others of her kind. But Schmendrick tells us that the Unicorn isn't a part of the story at all -- she's just gliding through. She's real, and the rest are all just parts and pieces of the story that she's floating into. (And more about her interaction with the real world in a later post.)

 As I read this incredible book, a profound thought came to my mind. What if "the last unicorn" (in the book) is truly The Last Unicorn (the book itself)? What if the entire story is self-referential, and that the very same Unicorn who wanders out of the woods in search of the others is that same story in which she is contained? (Making this tale similar, in one sense, to House of Leaves' self-reference -- for the book, as well as the house, is a labyrinth, holding a monster that might be a Minotaur and might not be a Minotaur within...)

Just like the Unicorn, the book is hidden in plain sight. When she first leaves her woods, the people do not see her, but see a beautiful white mare. Beautiful, but not Immortal. Not "Other." (I would almost use the word "Holy," but only for its sense of "Otherness," not for its sense of "Goodness.") In fact, the people have such a problem in seeing the Unicorn for what she is that the witch actually has to enchant her so people believe that she is a unicorn! Likewise, The Last Unicorn sits on shelves as a beautiful white mare -- -- but I am convinced that should a Schmendrick or Molly Grue pick it up, they will recognize they true Myth of this work.

And that is why this book is fantastic. The plot is good, the setting general fantasy, the characters caricatured, the writing is poetic, but the Myth is profound. In fact, it is likely the most profoundly Mythological (in my sense, see the introduction to this blog) novel that I have ever read. C.S. Lewis praised George MacDonald for being a Myth-Maker, but this novel is perhaps an even truer Myth than Phantases or Lilith, because it is a Myth about Myth. It is the Myth of the Myth as she searches for Myth in the midst of a Fairy Tale, which is a different kind of Myth.

Again, like the Unicorn, this novel is hard to catch and hard to see. It is hard to pin down. I finished reading it two or three weeks ago, and I am just now finding words to write a little bit about it. The Last Unicorn, itself a unicorn, hides in the thicket, runs quite quickly, and is very difficult to hold, tie up, or wrangle.

And... that is okay, actually. That is, perhaps, one of the morals of the story. Haggard appreciates the Myth so much that he locks them all away by brute force in the ocean. In a sense, Haggard is much like the Judge from Blood Meridian, discontent with anything existing outside of his permission. He despises Mystery. But for Myth to be beautiful, it must have Mystery. (C.S. Lewis, again, posits this in his autobiographical work, Surprised by Joy - as does G.K. Chesterton in his chapter about Romance in Heretics.)

If I were to bring a hard exposition down on The Last Unicorn, I would rob the Unicorn of its freedom, capture it with the harsh logic of my Red Bull, and lock it away in the sea where it is not free, it is not beautiful, and, most importantly, it has no power to renew the world. So, I'm alright with this novel being difficult to explain. It is more subtle and more mysterious than that.

My intention here, then, is to open your eyes, should you read it. To allow you, like Schmendrick or Molly Grue, to recognize the Unicorn for what she is, and to accept the Mystery.

A Poem: "Refreshed by Beauty."

I am refreshed through Beauty –
whether the sublime tones of music,
            that liquid art, that flowing creativity!
or through the concrete traces of art,
            though solid, flows
            though firm, moves
            though unchangeable, changes
or, perhaps, the ethereal reaches of the sky
            with its empyreal heights
            and the Sun on its throne,
                        directing all beneath it. 

I am revitalized – brought to life –
as I see my pen form letters
            and letters, words
            and words, phrases
            and phrases, poetry,
                        literature, story, myth

What is the role of the Artist, I wonder?
To capture Beauty, or to set it free?
            To create Beauty, or to organize it?
And how is it that such a thing
can restore my bleeding life
            which drains as I live
            and seeps away – –

Until, again, I am refreshed by Beauty.

 

(Ian Edward Caveny, 08/06/2013)