Author: apollard7

Zechariah’s Prophecy, A Festal Season, and Romanticizing Your Stories

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“The flat moorland at the fell top was a white immensity rolling away to the horizon with the sky pressing down like a dark blanket. I could see the farm down there in its hollow and it, too, looked different; small, remote, like a charcoal drawing against the hills bulking smooth and white beyond.” James Herriot, All Things Great and Small

After enjoying the PBS adaptation immensely, I dove into James Herriot’s book this past week and his adventures as a country vet in Yorkshire. How are British writers so, so good at describing their landscapes, both the grandeur and the hominess? And how can I do that in my writing? 

New England shares plenty of features with Old England. We could give Yorkshire a run for its money in winter cold and snow right now. But instead of great fells and hilltops, we have the ocean, which turns gray-blue in the cold, swallows up the falling snow, and chills bone and flesh. As I read Herriot’s book, I’m struck by the role of light and fire in both places. Warm hearthfires, blazing lighthouses, and lit Christmas trees bring coziness and delight out of winter’s chill.

Zechariah: The LORD Remembers

Last year, I spent some of December studying one of my favorite moments of the Christmas story: Zechariah’s prophecy over John the Baptist in Luke 1:67-80. Like all of Luke, every word and phrase of this passage thunders with meaning. I return to it this year with fresh wonder. Here are a few of the insights that delighted me: 

  • Fulfillment of prophecy — I did some research into the 400 “years of silence” between the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, and the birth of Jesus. When Gabriel appears to Zechariah in Luke 1:13-17, he’s quoting Malachi, the last prophet. It’s as if Gabriel is breaking the silence and saying half time is over; salvation is on its way, as promised, heralded by one who comes “in the spirit and power of Elijah.” 
  • Silence — The four centuries of silence between Malachi and the Incarnation are echoed in Zechariah’s muteness when he asks Gabriel for a sign. The Lord was silent for about 400 years; Zechariah was silent for nine months before he spoke at the birth of his son, praising God for remembering His promises.
  • Names — Every name in Luke 1 means something important, but Zechariah’s surprised me the most: “the LORD remembers.” Zechariah, Mary, and Elizabeth are all awestruck by the Lord’s remembrance of His promises to Israel. 
  • Spiritual enemies — Zechariah mentions three times that God will save the Jews from their enemies or “those who hate us.” This confused me slightly because the Lord Jesus did not deliver the Jews from their enemies, the Romans, during His lifetime; in fact, the temple was destroyed and Jerusalem decimated in 70 AD. After more study, I concluded that Zechariah is speaking, in the Spirit, about spiritual enemies: sin and death. Physical enemies like horsemen and chariots, vast armies and plagues were never the real issue in the Old Testament. The all-powerful God overcomes those easily. It was spiritual enemies that were the real problem: the rebellious hearts of the Israelities, the sins they fell into again and again. By dying for our sins and calling us to become children of God, Jesus defeated those spiritual enemies and raised up a horn of salvation. 

Hildebrand and the Forms of Beauty and Ugliness

This Christmas season, I’m also reminded of one of the first seminars I attended in grad school that focused on the work of Dietrich von Hildebrand. Hildebrand was an aesthetic philosopher and theologian whose work was only recently translated into English (2016). He studied in Germany, had to flee in 1933 because he was on the Nazis’ hit list, and ended up at Fordham University in the United States. His work on theological aesthetics, or the study of beauty as it relates to God and His work, is rich and deep and clear, like a river overflowing with melted snow.

Digging through my five-year-old-notes, I remember that Hildebrand argued that beauty has a profound role in shaping the human heart, guiding people towards other people and the divine. He argued that beauty possesses a spiritual plenitude, an abundance that works on us without our knowledge. I especially loved the part of the seminar reading where categorized some of the forms of beauty and ugliness and their spiritual implications: 

  • The prosaic — Hildebrand says that a “dull, gray, depressing atmosphere is the uttermost antithesis of all that is brilliant and festive, of all that is abundant.” The prosaic is a form of ugliness like that of an office building or a factory.
  • The sensational and the exciting — He calls this the “false antithesis to the prosaic” and gives Roman circuses, horse races, and boxing matches as examples. The sensational and exciting are a “false antithesis” because they try to relieve the boredom of the prosaic, but they don’t work in the long-term.
    • I remember talking about nightclubs with a friend years ago. “Why on earth do people want to go to them?” I asked her. “I think that if you work in an office all day,” she said, “you’re just trying to do something that makes you feel alive.”
  • Festive — One antithesis to the prosaic is the festive, or beauty that is free from work, free for enjoyment, splendid and luminous; think of Sabbath, holidays, and festivals. 
  • Fantastic — Hildebrand calls this “the unreal world in which the classic structure of the cosmos is abolished.” This is the world of fairy tales, jack-o-lanterns, brownies, and dwarves. 
  • Poetic — The poetic is the true antithesis to the prosaic, the “primordial element” in all arts, “a profound source of joy.” The poetic, according to Hildebrand, is the beauty of a rose, hyacinth, lily, or the area around Florence.

He discusses more categories — the flat, cheap, shallow, philistine, bourgeois, mediocre, and sentimental — but those ones especially stuck with me. 

The Christmas season overflows with poetic and festive beauty: moonlight on fresh snow; trees decorated in gold and scarlet, silver and blue; red holly berries; abundant wreaths; candles in windows. But the mediocre and sentimental show up as well in tawdry blow-up Santas, bright plastic Yankee swap gifts, glaring multicloud lights, and certain movies that try too hard to be heartwarming and feel-good.

At best, Christmas is festal (I love that word). It reflects the kingly joy, joviality, wonder, merriment, and mystery of the Incarnation, the God who came in the flesh to bring light to our darkness.

Psalm 89:15-16 (ESV)
Blessed are the people who know the festal shout, 
who walk, O LORD, in the light of your face,
 who exult in your name all the day
and in your righteousness are exalted.

Everyone knows how easy it is to lose the purpose of this season in all the wrapping paper, jingling bells, colored lights, scented candles, iced sugar cookies, and overwhelm. Real beauty, the quiet and exultant splendor of Jesus’s birth, doesn’t exhaust or oversaturate us the way that the more tacky aspects of Christmas decor or media can. As Hildegard pointed out, true beauty glorifies God and points back to him. 

How Do You Write About Your Life Without Romanticizing It? 

Ponderings on Christmas and beauty led me to another big question. A few months ago, I pondered how vulnerable you should be on the internet. Now I wonder: how do writers like me who love concrete details, vivid descriptions, and good stories write about our lives without romanticizing them?

Ugliness is oppressive. We all have to spend some time in the prosaic world of the DMV, waiting rooms, and underground parking garages or the mediocre, flat, cheap, or shallow artwork of poorly-designed offices or lobbies. I’m tempted to pretend things like dull fluorescent lights, shades of gray, cracked cement, the smell of cigarettes, and the blare of car horns dont exist, screen them from my writing, and just focus on the beauty that is everywhere. 

I have a friend who visited Venice last year. When I asked what it was like, she described the canals and houses in their beauty. But there was another detail: the bells. “They were ringing all the time,” she said wearily. “Day and night.”

I couldn’t help laughing. Put a writer like me in Venice, and we’d be tempted to wax poetic about how the air of Venice rang with church bells to remind people of the mysteries of time and immortality, connecting heaven and earth, calling people to joy and repentance . . . we could make quite a romantic picture. But my friend pointed out the plain fact: bells ringing all the time are very annoying. Both are true.

So how do you reconcile the romantic and unromantic parts of your life in the kind of essay and story writing I love? How do you balance honesty about the prosaic, flat, cheap, shallow, bourgeois, and philistine (to use some of Hildebrand’s categories) while recognizing the poetic, festive, and fantastic wonders in the world God made? 

James Herriot’s All Things Great and Small is a great example of one approach. Herriot profiles the ugly and the beautiful, the mundane and the charming, the disgusting and the lovely alongside each other to create a deeply honest and loving picture of the town of Darrowby. Farms may be perched on lush, grassy hillsides under clear skies, but they also contain animals, and all the unhygienic and unsanitary things animals do, especially when they’re sick. If he left out the unpleasant parts of being a country vet, his book would ring hollow. The real story is more fascinating and ultimately more beautiful than the cleaned-up version. 

This question doesn’t have one easy answer, but here are some thoughts I came away with: 

  • The full picture — Every personal anecdote inevitably has ugly, boring, or sad details in it. While drafting a piece, I can list those alongside the beautiful ones to ponder what the experience was really like. The mundane and the magical will likely combine into a much more interesting and honest story than the cleaned-up version.
  • The point — Each piece of creative nonfiction will have some kind of metanarrative, emphasis, or pattern; every writer selects and arranges details to make a point. What details serve your point? And as my writing teacher Johnathan Rogers often says, how can you love your reader in deciding what to include? Herriot includes some details of surgeries, births, and sicknesses in his book (fair warning), but they never feel gratuitous or unnecessary to me. 
  • The temptation — I have to ask myself: why do I want to romanticize my stories? Why do I want to focus on the beautiful? Part of it is simple: I love beauty. But I’m also tempted to leave out parts of the story that don’t fit the identity I want for myself: an adventurous person who lives a glamorous intellectual life and doesn’t make mistakes. Again, Herriot’s book is a good contrast there; his stories showcase many mistakes and mishaps that made him look foolish, and his self-deprecating humor about them is delightful. It’s a gift to his reader. 

The birth of Jesus had mundane and ugly aspects as well as beautiful ones. Christ was born to impoverished parents in a stable and hunted by a ruthless king who murdered boys of his age in Bethlehem. It is, after all, part of glory of the Incarnation that it happened during the darkness of a ruthless Roman empire, a cruel king like Herod, in a world of dust, dirt, straw, and blood. The real story is far more glorious than any romanticized version could be.

Beatrix Potter, “The Idea of Autumn,” and Rituals of Remembrance

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It has been so long since I actually read any Beatrix Potter that I barely remembered the stories at all. I have only a vague recollection of moles, hedgehogs, rabbits, mice, and sparrows wearing bonnets, aprons, and slippers; living in cottages, burrows, and villages; and having adventures. I remember watching the animated version of “Peter Rabbit” and feeling terrified when the farmer nearly shot him. When my dad recently started reading some Beatrix Potter stories to one of the youngest members of the family, I felt like the character General Woundwort in a climactic scene of Watership Down: 

“For a moment some old, flickering, here-and-gone feeling stirred in the General’s memory — the smell of wet cabbage leaves in a cottage garden, the sense of some easy-going, kindly place, long forgotten and lost.” (Watership Down, pg. 452)

I love how that line captures the elusiveness and concreteness of memory.  

One of the stories my dad read aloud was “Squirrel Nutkin.” Potter writes with a delightful particularity about the miniature, earthy world of little creatures: the “little rafts of twigs” that the squirrels use to cross a lake, with their tails serving as sails; the “little thread of blue smoke from a wood fire,” a present of “six fat beetles” which were “wrapped up carefully in a dock-leaf, fastened with a pine-needle pin,” and my favorite, Squirrel Nutkin playing ninepins with “a crab apple and green fir-cones.” The story is something between folktale, cautionary tale, and comedy: mischievous Squirrel Nutkin flirts with disaster by mocking, teasing, riddling, and pestering Old Mr. Brown, the owl, until the owl snaps. 

On one level, it reads as a classic Victorian morality tale about the danger of disrespecting authority and the importance of hard work. On another level, I wonder if it echoes older stories of archetypes like the Trickster and the Miraculous Escape. The pattern of the story is rhythmic, like a fairy tale: there are seven days, seven gifts, disaster, and then deliverance. 

Beatrix Potter, Richard Adams, Kenneth Grahame, and A.A. Milne are directly responsible for my love for the English countryside. Creatures and landscape features like badgers and hedges, moles and stone cottages sometimes feel more real to me than the features of my own region. Their work makes me want to run out and do the same for New England’s landscape: capture details like the glorious reds of of autumn, the sapphire glow of lakes and rivers in the twilight, and the sweet, haunting smell of fallen leaves. 

Beatrix Potter left her mark on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien, too. I love Tolkien’s mention of “Peter Rabbit” in his essay, “On Fairy-Stories.” He points out that even in a simple children’s story is a hint of the Fall: Peter Rabbit breaks a prohibition by trespassing in a garden, is forced to leave his coat behind, and falls ill (symbolic echoes of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden). 

C.S. Lewis had a fascinating response to Squirrel Nutkin. In his book Surprised by Joy, he describes it as the second glimpse of that feeling he calls Joy, “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction”:

The second glimpse came through Squirrel Nutkin; through it only, though I loved all the Beatrix Potter books. But the rest of them were merely entertaining; it administered the shock, it was a trouble. It troubled me with what I can only describe as the Idea of Autumn. It sounds fantastic to say that one can be enamored of a season, but that is something like what happened; and, as before, the experience was one of intense desire.  (Surprised by Joy, pg. 16-18).1 

Lewis captures inexpressible feelings so beautifully. “The Idea of Autumn” is a simple, profound way of articulating that longing stirred up by copper, scarlet, and amber canopy; the blaze of early sunsets; and the chilly nights under the lantern-like Hunter’s Moon and Beaver Moon. 

Daniel and Esther: The People of God in the Halls of Power

For the past few months, my church’s sermon series has focused on the book of Daniel, and our women’s Bible study is going through Esther. None of the church leaders planned this, so the way these books complement each other has been a wonderful surprise. Daniel and Esther are both exiles in Babylon; both end up in kings’ palaces and positions of power; both are threatened by forces that hate God’s people; both have to stand up before thrones and speak the truth. Both books showcase the incredible opulence, luxury, and decadence of the empires that swallowed up the rebellious remnant of Israel. Daniel sees King Nebuchadnezzar make a gold state 60 cubits high; the entire first chapter of Esther describes a magnificent banquet in detail, right down to the white cotton curtains, mother-of-pearl floors, and gold and silver vessels. 

Against the backdrop of pagan power and pagan wealth, Daniel and Esther had to stand firm and make courageous choices. Daniel’s three friends were thrown into a fiery furnace for refusing to worship the gold statue. Esther had to go before the king unsummoned, risking her life, to eventually plead for her people. One thing that’s become clear in our study is the role of faith: “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1b). Faith guided these two characters and others to act based on the invisible reality of God’s greater kingdom amid the drama of powerful earthly kingdoms. 

Another grand theme of both books is remembrance. They are both very careful and detailed records in themselves, as well as records of record-keeping: edicts from kings that cannot be revoked, important letters sent to every province of a vast empire, and books of chronicles that are read aloud at key moments. Esther ends with repeated admonitions to remember the Jews’ deliverance from Haman’s edict with the festival of Purim. Rituals of remembrance like holidays, feasting, and gifts keep God’s goodness and His promises fresh in our minds, pointing us towards hope. 

Rituals of Remembrance

October and early November are one of my favorite times of year, both because of their beauty — red berries, cinnamon-colored leaves, and swirling fog — and because they mean that we are on the threshold of the cozy festivities of Thanksgiving and Christmas. I love the family gatherings, the magic of the first snow, and the breathless wonder of children and children-at-heart that takes center stage at the end of each year. 

Reading about Purim in Esther, the fourteen and fifteenth days of the month of Adar during which the Jews were to feast, celebrate, and give gifts, makes me realize that we do the same with our holidays. We are a forgetful people, but setting aside times to remember timeless truths refreshes our gratitude and praise. Stories and songs, too, imprint the goodness of God on our hearts: the concrete, particular, and specific ways He reveals His mercy, from miraculous deliverances to the splendors of autumn. 

Two Sides of Yearning: Adventures and Koselig in Norway

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The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — 

C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

It was exactly the kind of place my childhood self dreamed about: gigantic mountains thick and green with pines, firs, and birches; waterfalls tracing the steep slopes like silver ribbons; glimmering fjords that reflected the bright blue sky and dark blue mountains; white-tailed eagles wheeling through the clouds; cottages and farmhouses clustered in emerald valleys; wandering sheep with bells around their necks; purple heather with leaves burned crimson with autumn. 

Norway embodied many of my old fantasies. There were cottages tucked high in the hills, lonely and quiet, that my introverted self would have loved to hide in. (My older, more practical self stops to consider things like steep, icy roads in winter, the difficulty of running errands, and the risk of loneliness). We hiked down a path that led behind a roaring waterfall — no treasure-caves hidden behind there, sadly, but it still felt magical.

There were sailboats like a flock of white birds on the shimmering fjord at dusk; green islands connected by long bridges and long tunnels; a lighthouse stained blazing red-gold with sunset. The souvenir shops are designed for tourists who love adventure and at least the vague concept of Norse mythology: they all had Viking-themed magnets and mugs, Fair Isle sweaters, and stuffed reindeer, moose, and wolves. On sunny summer days, with the wildflowers in full bloom and winter a thousand miles away, it felt like the perfect place for adventures, quiet, and dreaming. 

But Norway is cozy as well as grand. The untranslatable word “koselig” captures the cozy, safe, familiar, warm, intimate, homey feeling of home gatherings during the long Arctic winters. From the sound of it, koselig means fleece blankets, crackling hearthfires, storytelling, hot drinks, and deep talks that go long past midnight on nights that last longer than days. 

World War II and the Torches in the Night

In Oslo, we visited Norway’s Resistance Museum, which chronicles the dark years of occupation by the Nazis in World War II. While much of the material was in Norwegian, italicized English told the stories of the desperate, doomed struggle in the spring of 1940 to stop the German invasion; the betrayal of Vidkun Quisling, the head of the Norwegian fascist political party who collaborated with the Nazis and received the lasting hatred of his own people; arrests, imprisonment, suppression of free speech, rations, fear, and the horrific seizure of Norway’s small Jewish population; the courage of many who smuggled people to Sweden, hid fugitives in their cellars, printed illegal newspapers to spread truth and hope, and planned dangerous acts of sabotage; and finally, the joy of deliverance. 

So many plans failed. A few succeeded, most famously the sabotage at the heavy water plant that delayed the Nazis’ development of the atomic bomb and changed the course of the war, but many brave, ordinary people were caught. Some were executed. 

The hope of Great Britain stood out like a flame in the night. After so many countries capitulated to fascism, were conquered by overwhelming force, or went neutral, Winston Churchill’s “we will never surrender!” held back the tide for a year and a half alone, until the U.S. joined the war after Pearl Harbor. It was a refuge and training ground for the resistance. Many Norwegians fled to the UK, received training, and returned to try to free their country. 

World War II still feels so close, though not too long from now, it will be a hundred years past. The candle flames that people held up against that great dark, and the mighty faith of people like Corrie ten Boom and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, are startling in their beauty. 

A Yearning for Adventure vs. Koselig

When I started writing on this blog, I named it “stories of yearning” because the word “yearning” best captured that wild, mysterious, wonderful feeling that good books gave me. It’s akin to the feeling that C.S. Lewis called sehnsucht or Joy in his book Surprised by Joy: “an inconsolable longing” that he eventually identified as a sign of our longing for heaven. It’s also similar to the experience that L.M. Montgomery called “the Flash” in her Emily of New Moon series: 

It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside—but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond—only a glimpse—and heard a note of unearthly music. — L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

My sense of yearning isn’t exactly sehnsucht. The sweetness stirred up in me by books like The Castle of Llyr and A Wind in the Door was less painful than what Lewis describes, more excitement than grief. I loved it. It fed my desire to travel and see the world: the castles and cottages of Scotland, the emerald hills of Ireland, and the rainbow of tulips in Amsterdam. 

In the past few years, my yearning for adventure has waned. The turmoil of the pandemic, a few moves, a lot of change, and the practical drudgeries of travel like red-eye flights threatened to swallow up that longing. I tried to summon it back, but as Lewis found when he tried to manufacture sehnsucht, you can’t recall feelings at will.

Now, I’m wondering if that sense of yearning has just become inverted. Part of me still longs for faraway, glamorous places, but now I dream even more about near, safe, cozy, and sheltered spaces: hearthfires, deep friendships, and the stability you only get when you live in a good place for a long time. Instead of adventures like those in Treasure Island or The Silver Chair that take me to wild moors or deserted islands, I’m yearning for koselig. 

Yearning can be an idol, if I let it; something that keeps me discontented and restless. At its best, it’s a hope for the joys beyond this world and the God who made all good things. 

The wondrous thing is that the fulfillment of all longings, to be with the Lord in heaven forever, completes both sides of yearning, the splendid and the snug: 

Psalm 36:5-9 (ESV)
Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds.
6  Your righteousness is like the mountains of God;
your judgments are like the great deep;
man and beast you save, O Lord.
7  How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
8  They feast on the abundance of your house,
and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
9  For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light do we see light.

I love how this psalm captures it all: the vastness of God’s goodness, higher than mountains and deeper than the sea; the sweetness of His hospitality, inviting us into His home, becoming our true home; the closeness we can have with him, feasting from His abundance, drinking from the river of delights, and seeing light in His light. 

Adventure; quiet; glory; rest; faraway; home; mighty mountains; safe harbors; spectacular sunsets; fragile wildflowers; the Lord God, Father and Maker, fulfills all these desires more beautifully than we can imagine. 

Summer: Adventures in Faerie, Restoration in the Book of Joel, and Some Reflections on AI

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Roses in a field


Where is the summer, the eternal, zero summer? 
“Little Gidding,” Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot

One morning a few weeks ago, the eastern light cast leaf-shadows on the floor of my room, sharp and clear as a shadow puppet play. The wind was so strong that day that it churned up the leaves and their shadows into a wild dance, graceful and mesmerizing. When I went outside, the rushing wind rustling the leaves sounded like a roaring river: silvery, whispering, rushing, trembling. 

This is my favorite time of year, in close competition with the twinkling merriment of Christmas. Soft green leaves, blossoming peonies, golden buttercups, pert bluets, serene roses, and fiercely purple salvia fill the air with sweetness; picnics, beach days, water sports, and barbecues feel like a proclamation of the goodness of life; humming crickets and cicadas, along with cooing mourning doves in the mourning, make everything feel hazy and lazy, sweet and mysterious. It always feels like a happy ending, or a suspenseful beginning. It’s a time for feasting, playing, resting, adventure, and quiet. 

I’m trying to use these dreamy days to rest, resisting the urge to fill up my days with more and more and more – more books, more writing projects, more research investigations, more activities. But I have enjoyed a few projects lately: 

The Faerie Queene: Allegory and Adventure

This summer, Dr. Junius Johnson is offering online courses on “Forgotten Epics”: great, influential works that no one reads any more. I took his May-June offering on Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590). Before this course, I’d felt guilty for a long time for not reading this book, after hearing about how it influenced C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, George MacDonald, and countless other writers. 

After reading all 30,000 lines of poetry, I don’t feel guilty about how long I waited. It is a hefty tome, and very difficult. Spenser, a contemporary of Shakespeare, wrote this in the 1590s and intentionally used archaic language and inconsistent spellings. He swaps his u’s and v’s, uses forgotten words like “eftsoones” (“soon after or immediately”), occasionally switches speakers without using quotation marks or he said/she said tags, and will deviate from the main storyline to a subplot for a while before returning.

I struggled through the text with help from the footnotes, but for all that, The Faerie Queene is a fascinating, wondrous, wild, fantastic adventure. Books 1-3 and the unfinished fragment of Book 7 were my favorites, full of questing knights, dragons, giants, perilous woods, and mysterious castles and mansions with inhabitants who could be grand and good or wicked and deceptive. Some reflections along the way: 

  • Allusions — A big part of the fun of the Faerie Queene is spotting characters, settings, and symbols that later authors borrowed. C.S. Lewis drew heavily on this work in The Chronicles of Narnia: for example, Spenser’s Redcross Knight grabs a snake/woman monster by the throat in a fight in Book 1, just as Prince Rilian grabs the serpent in The Silver Chair to slay it. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, George MacDonald’s Princess books and Phantastes, and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series all draw on Spenser’s symbolism and action in their worlds.
  • Allegory — As Junius Johnson discussed in class, people assume they can read any story allegorically, but “pure” allegory — a story in which every character, setting, or object directly represents an abstract idea — is actually very hard to write. Spenser does better with places and monsters than people; his people are just a little too well-developed to represent just one idea. For example, Britomart, the female knight who represents Chastity, is both fierce and tender, an unmatched warrior, and sometimes reckless. She has too many layers to represent just one virtue. 
  • Mythical houses — As I told some friends along the way, I’m finding that my favorite literary setting are houses full of mythical, fantastic creatures and objects. Some of my favorites in this book were the House of Pride, where the Seven Deadly Sins gather under a sinister queen named Lucifera; the House of Temperance, where three sages of past, present, and future dwell in a tower; the House of Proteus, the shape-shifter of the sea, where all the personified rivers of the world gather for a feast; and the silver palace of Cynthia, in the sphere of the moon. I think these exotic settings satisfy my desire to escape the ordinary details of life that can feel so mundane, like getting gas or paying bills, and remind me that the real world is full of wonders. 
  • Pageants — Apparently, pageants were very popular in Renaissance/medieval times. There are plenty of pageants in the FQ: a pageant of the Seven Deadly Sins in the House of Pride in Book 1, and a pageant of the consequences of unchaste love in Book 3. The color, splendor, and symbolism of these scenes caught my imagination.

The Faerie Queene is a book best tackled one piece at a time, with a group — I don’t think I would have had the persistence to finish it alone! It deserves an even deeper study than I gave it this time, but this was a good introduction to the foundations of fantasy. 

The Book of Joel: Repentance Brings Restoration

This summer, I’m doing a study of the Biblical book of Joel. I chose it because I’ve never studied it before, I like how shorter books of Scripture allow you to see the author’s structure more easily, and I want to keep practicing Bible teaching. I knew about the Pentecost prophecy in chapter 2 (“I will pour out my Spirit on all people,” fulfilled in Acts 2) and Bible Study Fellowship touched on it briefly in their overview of the Old Testament, but other than that, I knew very little about it.

If Dante had not already used the title for his masterwork, Joel could be called “a divine comedy” – it feels like a short play that goes from dread and doom, to hope, to a happy ending. In some ways, the book is a microcosm of the whole Old Testament and the Bible — a disaster invited by disobedience, warnings of dread and doom and darkness, a call to repentance, a vision of judgment, and a beautiful promise of restoration. It’s full of rich images like a plague of locusts, the vine and the fig tree in the Promised Land, the day of the LORD, a resurrection of land and hearts, and Mount Zion, the city of God. Like Isaiah and Jeremiah, it includes fearsome warnings and compassionate invitation, images of destruction and recreation.

The heart of the book, structurally and interpretively, is Return to me: return to the LORD in repentance to receive restoration, revival, and resurrection. Reading it reminds me that the LORD desires my heart, and not just my habits and actions. Also, He calls for obedience so that He can bless us. 

Artificial Intelligence: Reckoning with the Next Tech Revolution

While my free time is full of adventure stories and prophecy, I’ve also been contemplating a third topic from my work life: AI. Generative AI and agentic AI are nothing new; not for decades, and not since the release of ChatGPT in 2022. But they didn’t become real to me until about a month ago, when I began encountering them more frequently. 

As a believer, English major, storyteller, and wordsmith, GenAI and agentic AI have me worried. Like many people, I fear for my job – machines that can create messaging and content could replace me. But they also make me fear for our culture.

Here are some reasons why I want to be cautious with AI: 

1. Critical thinking is a gift

Critical thinking tasks like writing are good for you, just as much as running, swimming, and dancing are good for your mind and body. Staring at a blank page, trying to frame a sentence, spark an idea, structure an article, or select the right word is a mental labor that we shouldn’t try to skip. I listened to Nicholas Carr’s The Glass Cage recently (a book on automation published in 2015, so not about GenAI, but definitely applicable). Carr discusses how automation encourages the human supervisor to “tune out,” disengage, and lose their ability to react quickly when needed. He calls it “automation complacency.” Removing effort and concentration from a task take the pleasure away from the human operator — and can introduce new risks if something goes wrong that automation is not programmed to handle. I recommend Carr’s book as a great resource for thinking about a human-centered approach to technology.

Advocates of GenAI keep repeating the benefits: it will save time and energy, so that you can do more and work faster. But if using GenAI costs you mental agility, energy, and the sheer pleasure of good work, is that exchange worthwhile? How can you make sure it doesn’t leave you sluggish, permanently tuned-out, unable to focus, and powerless to decide on your own? 

I know and work with some brilliant people who are using GenAI as a tool, not as a replacement for thought. These people use sophisticated prompt engineering to train their chosen AI platforms to write more clearly, avoid repetition, research thoughtfully, and use trusted sources. They review the AI output and have the expertise to measure its accuracy; they hone and refine word choice and analogy to remove the robotic tone and make it their own. What worries me are people who seem to think that AI removes their need to think at all. I’ve received clumsy, inaccurate GenAI outputs from people who didn’t read what they sent before they sent it. Agentic AI can prioritize your tasks, write your emails, gather your research, answer your questions, and even look at a photo of your fridge and tell you what to make for dinner (someone actually told me that’s how they use it). But how can you be sure the decisions an AI agent made for you are good ones, especially if you’re not keeping your own decision-making skills sharp through practice? 

2. Words are relational

    GenAI can multiply your content output exponentially. It could allow you to produce dozens, hundreds, or thousands more articles, essays, books, and other content than you could with pen and paper. I could have produced hundreds of blog posts in the time it’s taken to write this one on my own. But more is not necessarily better, especially when it comes to content. 

    Content is relational. In business, content conveys a company’s brand voice to its customers, prospects, and partners. You’re persuading, communicating, teaching, and asking. Assigning that relational work to a machine means that you have less control over voice and tone – or, on the other side, less ability to be original, since AI can create anything new. Choosing the right word for the audience, situation, and task at hand is taxing work, but worth the time and energy it takes. Saying that something is “ancient” vs. “old,” “innovative” vs. “creative,” “disastrous” vs. “troubling” is a choice that requires the author to understand the cultural meanings, historical layers, nuanced definitions, metaphors, and assumptions at play between herself and her reader. 

    3. Research is a gift

    Research is another area I worry about. In business, research is utilitarian; you only look up as many sources as you have to before using it to create content or make a decision. But in general, research is “inefficient” because it’s shaping the heart and mind of the researcher as well as getting them to their stated goal. 

    In academia, the long, hard slog of research is what makes a PhD student into a well-rounded scholar in their subject area. Their dissertation is only one facet of that degree; the real work is reading books that you may not even use, listening to all the voices of the past and present, and responding to them with your unique perspective. When I wrote a paper on L.M. Montgomery, I read many journal articles, books, and dissertations I never cited — but they gave me a wealth of knowledge about topics like Scottish Presbyterianism, life-writing, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, the imagination, and Prince Edward Island. 

    Using GenAI to shortcut the journey of the research process robs you of the person you could become if you read books, articles, essays, or studies in full and stored up that knowledge, making your mind into a living library that can grow new insights and connections. (I recommend another book by Nicholas Carr, The Shallows, on this topic – he examines how organic memory is superior to digital memory because knowledge grows in your mind instead of staying static.)

    4. Words shape reality

    When I was in grad school, we had a seminar series on “Metaphysics and Poetics” with the Cambridge Dean Society. Most of it was sky-high over my head, starting with the title, which can be translated as “The Relationship Between Language and Reality.” How do the words we use shape our perception? When we name or describe something, are we recognizing its qualities or defining them? 

    Words reflect and shape reality because reality came from words: the Word, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In my book of John class in undergrad, we spent a whole week on the glorious opening to the book: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:1-3)

    I don’t have the time here to explore all the Scripture passages about words: the book of Proverbs has some clear guidance (Proverbs 10:20, 12:19, and 15:4, for instance); James warnings about the power of the tongue (James 2); names, stories, laws, blessings, curses, lies, wisdom, folly, and direct revelation are constructed with language. Words shape perception and opinion; they can give life or cause death. Using GenAI to generate text gives it authority to shape our thoughts, and thus our behavior and decisions. Is this worth it? How can we make sure that our GenAI models, or the people who built them, are not subtly manipulating our thoughts? And do you want to put your name on words that a machine generated?

    Final Thoughts

    I can’t change how other people use AI, and I do need to explore ways to use it ethically, creatively, and thoughtfully. That means investigating which problems AI can solve, training myself to build AI agents, and learning which models are good for which types of work. But I don’t want to become numb to the ways it can shape my thoughts and decisions. I also think there will be a backlash at some point: culturally, legally, or even logistically (AI violates the spirit of copyright laws, if not the letter, and it takes a lot of compute power).

    In a digital world, it’s easy to fall into the trap of faster-faster-faster, more-more-more. Human beings were not meant to live and consume at an increasingly accelerated rate. I’m recognizing my need to slow down, rest, and savor one good thing at a time instead of multi-tasking. I guess that’s part of the feast of summer: enjoying things with an abundance mindset, trusting the Lord that there will be enough. 

    New Books, Beowulf, Habakkuk, Narnia, and a Question: How Vulnerable Should You Be on the Internet?

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    Sunset through trees in winter


    This winter was full of wonders: long, dark nights lit by Orion and the rest of the heavenly host around a silver moon; days of cold so bitter it felt like my finger bones were freezing; deep snow that froze into crunchy drifts; cancelled church services; drives in the snow; a vigil that ended in a beloved family member sailing to heaven. The days have rushed by like pine trees seen through the window of a moving train, a blur of living, changing detail.

    I’ve wanted to update this blog for a while, but I promised myself when I started blog-writing in 2017 that I would only post if I had something worthwhile to offer to readers. Here’s an attempt at an offering: a look at some new books I’ve found, workshops and courses I’ve enjoyed, and a question that’s been burning in me for months.

    New Books to Treasure

    For the last 12 months, I’ve struggled to find good new books, but a few treasures stand out:

    • Christina Baehr’s Secrets of Ormdale series — A brand-new, five-book series set in late Victorian England — with an actually likable Christian heroine and dragons? I was so afraid to have hope for this series, but it was marvelous. Christian Bhaer knows her stuff: Scripture, lore, historical and cultural detail history, Anglo-Saxon poetry, literature, and the best slow-burn romance I’ve read in a while are shining threads in this series’s fantastic tapestry.
    • J.A. Myrhe’s Rwendigo Tales — Set in central Africa, these books tell the story of four physical and spiritual quests with beautiful prose, exciting drama, and deeply relatable characters. The thoughtful, image-rich, matter-of-fact style reminds me of Alan Patton’s Cry the Beloved Country; the mythical and spiritual elements remind me of C.S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy.
    • Diana Glyer’s The Company They Keep — I’ve been meaning to read this one for ages. In beautiful language and lots of deep research, Glyer studies that group of rare imaginations that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. She argues that, contrary to what most scholars have argued over the decades, the Inklings did influence each other by resonating, opposing, editing, collaborating, and referring to each other in their creative works. Highly recommended for Inklings fans and artists who long for community.
    • James M. Hamilton Jr.’s Typology-Understanding the Bible’s Promise-Shaped Patterns: How Old Testament Expectations are Fulfilled in Christ — I picked this book up on Audible after searching for books on typology, a topic I’ve been curious about for a while. I loved it. It offers a clear and careful examination of the images and structures that Biblical authors use to point to Christ as the king, suffering servant, redeemer of captives, and divine bridegroom. It’s accessible for both scholars and laypeople; joyfully and reverently written; full of brilliant insights about the patterns of Scripture. My favorite takeaway is Hamilton’s argument that the types of Scripture are 1) definitely intended by each Biblical author (not an accident or readers’ construction); and 2) historically grounded (more than just artistic collaboration by the authors).

    Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxons, and Learning to Love Something

    I began this year with something appropriately wintry and mysterious: a “How to Read Beowulf” course from the House of Humane letters. I’m more of a fairy tale, roses-and-summer reader than a fan of the grim, otherworldy, silvery beauty of Anglo-Saxon literature, but I know C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien loved those tales, so I wanted to see what they saw.

    The course was profound and thought-provoking in ways I didn’t expect. Angelina Stanford dived into:

    • The ruinous, twilight atmosphere of the Anglo-Saxon period
    • The violence of a culture that knew only revenge-killings and ransoms as means of justice
    • The nature of the monsters depicted
    • The very meaning and value of words

    While I’m not sure I agree with every point made, the course left me with much to ponder and an ache to know more. I found myself going back to the very foundations of what a story is, how to read, and how to interpret literature – digging up my Literary Criticism and Theory notes from college, listening to more lectures on the Anglo-Saxon period, and wishing I had Tolkien’s gift for language. I’m newly convinced how much words matter, how every word and name is a story, and how Christ is the sun of righteousness who ends our dark night.

    Habakkuk: The Word from the Watchtower

    In February, I had the honor of going to a Charles Simeon Trust women’s workshop in Cambridge, MA. The Charles Simeon Trust Society trains Bible preachers and teachers in deep, thoughtful exegesis, theological reflection, and application. This workshop for women was as academically rigorous as any graduate seminar I experienced while also warmly encouraging. This workshop focused on practicing teaching prophetic literature with the book of Habakkuk.

    Habakkuk is hard. The Charles Simeon Trust method begins with establishing the context and structure of a particular passage, and Habakkuk’s flow of thought is initially confusing. But it’s beautiful. Habakkuk’s earnest cry to the Lord, and the Lord’s sovereign and gracious response, are deeply comforting. The hymn of praise at the end is one I chose as an anthem for the past years, a song for troubled times.

    This workshop showed me how clear, simple, and clean good Bible teaching should be. In my few attempts at teaching, I’ve often tried to dump all my insights, observations, musings, meditations, questions, and research on my poor helpless audience. Instead, the workshop taught me to distill my work into a simple main point that people will remember. For example, my original main point for a practice session on Habakkuk 3:1-19 was Christ is coming to administer justice and rescue His people, no matter how barren circumstances become. After workshopping this part of my presentation with my small group, I managed to streamline it down to Rejoice in Christ’s coming rescue even in barren times — turning an overflowing sentence into a comforting exhortation.

    “Writing with The Horse and His Boy”: Rediscovering Old Loves

    Yes, my life is merely a progression from one online literary course to another. This one was particularly fun because it was run by Jonathan Rogers, my writing teacher and the proprietor of the Habit writing community, which has been a source of delight, fellowship, encouragement, thought-provoking discussion, and community.
    My creative inspiration, which has been fairly dry since January 2023, started to run again in a few of the writing exercises we did together. I remembered how much I love The Horse and His Boy: the beautiful, crisp, clear settings, Shasta’s intensely relatable awkwardness, self-pity, and courage; Bree’s pompous dignity; Aravis’s pride and honor; and the hilarious addresses to the reader. I was newly encouraged to follow tried-and-true writing wisdom like:

    • Look through your characters’ eyes and develop them from the inside, by what they notice and how they react
    • Stick with concrete details
    • Remember that each conversation has layers of dialogue: informational, atmospheric, relational, and more

    If you are a creative writer curious about the intersection of theology and writing, longing for some practical tips for craftsmanship, or looking for community, please look out for the next Habit course.

    A Question of Authenticity: How Vulnerable Should You Be on the Internet?

    This question has been brewing in me for years: how vulnerable should you be on the internet?

    I think this question started when I began blog-writing after college. I was inspired by the beautifully-crafted blogs and creative fiction of writers from places like the Rabbit Room or podcasts by artists, entrepreneurs, and other content creators: storytellers who captured the music of their lives in relatable but profound prose. Following their example, I translated my own life into words. I wrote vivid descriptions of scenery and seasonal changes, books I read, conferences I went to, meditations from Scripture, weaving them all into a few themes that culminated at the end of each blog post. My year in Scotland yielded a lot of fruitful experiences I could glamorize: gorgeous hikes in the countryside, fascinating lectures and reading assignments, and plenty of academic research to give credibility and substance to my musings on life, literature, and faith.

    The years since returning to America, however, have not been as easy to write about. I’ve gone through a lot of change, including a few moves. Many of the mini-seasons in this long season have not been easy to write about — not for particularly interesting reasons, but because they included plenty of isolation, boredom, and loneliness, which don’t make for great writing material.

    For the past few months, reflecting on my original goals and life since graduate school, I’ve been wondering: how much is it healthy, good, or noble to be vulnerable on the internet? This question multiplies into more:

    • How do you know when to share a personal story and when to keep it for your inner circle?
    • How long should you wait to write about an experience?
    • How do you respect others’ privacy when you share stories in which they’ve participated?
    • How many details should you share about a painful or difficult experience?
    • Should you write about unresolved conflict or past hurts? If so, how?
    • How hard should you try to end your personal story, especially a difficult one, on a certain emotional note – especially if you’re not sure that chapter of your life is finished?

    Recently, I began pondering the question of Internet/public vulnerability in general after attending a conference in which a successful author, blogger, and podcast guest gave the keynote talk. He shared some deeply personal stories as part of his message: horrifying family tragedies, personal doubt, career struggles, unexpected triumphs, and new directions he’s taken. I’ve heard enough speakers by now to recognize some of the techniques he used, such as careful repetition, including concrete detail, and framing the whole talk with a quest structure. I’ve sat in lectures and talks with speakers who moved the audience to murmurs of awe, even to tears. Unfortunately, this one did not. Something about the speaker’s attitude, the personal details he revealed and concealed, the vaguely spiritual but self-centered ethic he preached, and the crescendo of his talk left me feeling emotionally manipulated — and awkwardly sitting during the applause as many of those around me rose to a standing ovation. I felt that the speaker was using grief and pain from his past to paint himself as both a victim and a victor and tell me how to run my life.

    While this speaker was talking to a live audience, not on the Internet, his talk pushed me to a preliminary conclusion. How vulnerable should you be? is a wisdom issue, not a yes/no or fill-in-the-blank question. I walked away convinced that yes, there are good reasons and good ways to do so as well as bad ones. But how do you discern the right reasons and the right ways to share your story?

    It’s as difficult a question as the one that haunted me in the post-college years: how do you live a good life? How should an artist use the raw material of her life, especially intimate things like family memories and struggles, in her art? Or should she do so at all?

    Vulnerability and Influencer culture

    On the internet, on social media, vulnerability is powerful. Someone who can share intimate, specific details of their days, families, work, hobbies, emotions, struggles, trauma, and celebrations can draw a following. I know of influencers who I deeply respect and have taught me wonderful things, but I’m becoming uncomfortable with how vulnerability equals money in the transaction of paid platforms, book deals, and commission sales.

    Of course, people who work hard to create beautiful and useful things should be paid for their work. But I am getting concerned about a particular pattern: someone shares intimate details about their life consistently enough that their followers feel like they are personal friends – and, also, students and disciples. An influencer can become a personality who coaches followers on any topic: faith, mental health, life goals, relationship difficulties. One influencer I used to follow on Instagram went from giving life-advice and career coaching to selling a product by commission. She introduced a major world problem and talked extensively about it, then encouraged her followers that that product was a solution.

    I know a few influencers who do a great job of cultivating real relationships in the online communities they’ve set up, and encouraging those followers to build real relationships with each other. My concern is when the relationship remains one-sided, digital, and transactional: the influencer offers vulnerable life details, and the follower reciprocates with likes, shares, attention, promotion, and money. Vulnerability sells.

    Vulnerability, authenticity, truth: entering other territories

    That keynote speech at the conference was just one thing that triggered this question in my mind. Another catalyst was the brief glance I took of a book of publishing advice for nonfiction writers. The book advised writers to be wholly “vulnerable” with their stories: write in blunt detail about humiliations, failures, scars, traumatic experiences, and deepest secrets. The book is a bestseller, and the author is right. Readers love intimate details, especially when they can get them without sharing their own secrets. But that advice makes my introverted self want to head for the hills.

    I’m a hypocrite in this area. I love it when other writers share their intimate stories so I can read them from the comfort of anonymity. I crave the juicy details of their romances, either breakups and happy endings; parenting anecdotes; college tales; childhood memories; vacation stories; secrets; and I love not having to share any of mine in return. But vulnerability creates the illusion of friendship and intimacy without the full reality, and I’m afraid it just feeds the loneliness of our culture.

    How vulnerable should you be on the internet? After all this thought, I finally looked up the definition. According to Merriam Webster, to be “vulnerable” is to be “capable of being physically or emotionally wounded,” or “open to attack or damage : assailable.” Ouch. But it is true. Sharing childhood memories, family stories, thoughts, and dreams on the Internet does leave you open to attack: mockery, scorn, criticism, and getting cancelled.

    So why share your story at all?

    I think back to some of the personal essays that have touched me deeply:

    • E.B. White’s “Ring of Time” and “Once More to the Lake” from his essay collection — achingly beautiful reflections of memory, time, and immortality, grounded in rich detail
    • Lanier Ivester’s “Seeds of Love” — an exquisite mingling of personal loss and eternal hope
    • Jennifer Trafton’s “This is For All the Lonely Writers” — a very relatable, exquisitely crafted meditation on loneliness, creativity, and community
    • Lancia Smith’s “Yes, Virginia, I Still Believe in Jolly Old Santa Claus” — a thought-provoking, joyfully reverent study of how the Christmas icon figures the tender love of God

    In A Discovery of Poetry, Frances Mayes begins by exploring the purpose and meaning of poetry. “All these images [from poems] form a quick glimpse of how those mysterious others behind the glass live their lives. Poems give you the lives of others and then circle in on your own inner world . . . Like play, poetry lets us enter other territories” (xiii-xv, emphasis mine).

    Well-written creative nonfiction and personal storytelling does the same, as do fictional stories. They give us a glimpse of another’s life, let us enter their territory. Done well, it’s invitational, relational, encouraging, challenging, comforting, and thought-provoking.

    How vulnerable should you be on the internet? How vulnerable should you be in any form of writing? I think now of David, Asaph, Moses, and others pouring out their hearts in the Psalms; Nehemiah penning his cry to the Lord when he heard Jerusalem was in ruins; Paul writing of his past sins and current persecutions to the beloved members of the early church. Yes, for the right reasons and in the right way, opening yourself up to be wounded is a gift to your audience. Not to build a following of people who feed on your life and your advice, but to welcome them into following the Lord, the One of all creation who has the right and the goodness to influence us ultimately.

    Some tentative personal resolutions

    Public vulnerability is a wisdom issue, something that requires individual reflection and discernment. Done well, it’s a beautiful gift to readers; done poorly, and you really have opened yourself up to be wounded or to wound your readers. As I ponder this, here are a couple of principles I’m forming for my own writing:

    • Let Scripture guide you into making God the center. Use my writing to recognize the work of the Lord – not by slapping a Bible verse or pious-sounding conclusion onto every piece, but trusting that if I pay attention to detail, take the time to ponder an experience, and pray over it, I will find its intersection with eternal truth. I’ve seen this modeled brilliantly by the writers at The Cultivating Project, who weave Biblical insights, hymns, and other art into personal stories. A good artist can turn the telos or purpose of a piece into hope-through-lament, courage-through-darkness, joy-through-sorrow, and faith-through suffering without minimizing how hard life is.
    • Tell family and friends first. This is an old rule I made for myself, and I think I’ve managed to follow it. If I have exciting news in particular, I try to let my closest circles know first, and they get the real scoop on the most interesting details.
    • If it’s a hard subject, pray and wait before sharing. I don’t think I need a waiting period to share a fun hiking story or list of good books I’ve read recently, but if I choose to share something painful or complicated, I want to make sure I have a good reason for doing so.
    • Err on the side of others’ privacy. I never want to burn a relationship by turning a painful or private subject into a piece of content. Any money I might get from a commissioned piece, any number of likes, follows, or shares, is not worth hurting someone I love.

    What do you think about vulnerability on the Internet? Where have you seen it modeled well or poorly? And what are some of your favorite examples of personal stories told well?

    Scarlet, Sleigh, and Gift: How the Story of Santa Claus Reflects the Gospel

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    Christmas lights in the snow

    I love this time of year: twinkling lights and glittering stars against the early dark; crimson and gold entwined in the rich green of wreaths and trees; the world-silencing wonder of the first snow; frost-flowers on window panes; the merriment that feels age-old and ever-new. This time of year, the story of the Myth-Become-Fact of Jesus Christ, the child of prophecy, reimposes its majesty, mystery, and closeness to our waking lives.

    As I said in my last blog post, I really miss putting together “Leaf by Lantern” podcast episodes. I still don’t have the time to record, edit, and publish the audio, but I’ll keep writing out prose episodes as long as I have fairy tales and folktales to talk about.

    For this episode/essay, I looked through a few fairy tales that could fit into a Christmas theme until I realized that there is a fascinating folk tale right at my fingertips to explore: Santa Claus. It is deeply sad that many have tried to replace the wondrous Incarnation, in all its holiness and mercy, with the story of a jolly, plump man who delivers presents — like replacing the sun with a cheap flashlight. But as I think about the tradition of Santa Claus, specifically the American version of the story I grew up hearing, I realize that it’s one of the better-known folktales of our age. Though it does have aspects of legend (history + fiction) going back to St. Nicholas of Myrna, who was a historical figure, elements like the North Pole, the reindeer, and the toyshop with elf employees have been added in and retold dozens of times. The “folk,” the common people, have made it our own. And like all good folktales, it points to the gospel.

    Literary and film retellings of the folktale range from mythic and enchanting, like The Legend of Holly Claus and The Polar Express, to goofy, like Elf, Klaus, and The Santa Clause, to sweet, like the Prancer movies and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, to tongue-in-cheek, like Red One of this year. Storytellers draw out the threads they like and reweave and reinterpret them: giving Santa various elaborate backstories, explaining the origins of the reindeer and North Pole workshop with greater detail, and incorporating other characters that the audience can relate to. I wrote a Santa retelling myself a few years ago, one of my favorite of my own stories, “Flight of the Gift-Giver.”

    So I’ll look at the legend/folktale of Santa Claus in the same way I’ve looked at various fairy tales and ask:

    • How do the images in this story reflect the gospel?
    • How would a Christian artist who crafts a retelling of the Santa folktale do so in the light of Scripture, using the Bible as the reference for truth and beauty?

    I’ll look at the images of Santa himself, the sleigh, and the naught vs. nice list.

    Santa: Man and Myth

    Most of the Santa figures I’ve seen in retellings portray him as jolly and silly, a good-hearted buffoon. He’s grandfatherly and more regal in Miracle on Thirty-Fourth Street and something more of a warrior in Rise of the Guardians. Michael Ward’s book Planet Narnia, which traces medieval planetary symbolism in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, helped me to understand the Father Christmas who appears to the four children as a jovial figure, embodying the kingliness, magnanimity, wisdom, benevolent sovereignty, and peaceful prosperity of the medieval idea of Jove.

    I see several Biblical images to work with in any retelling’s version of Santa:

    • The color red as luxury — The tabernacle and temple were full of “fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet yarns” (see Exodus 26:1 and many other verses in Exodus) and the wife of noble character of Proverbs 31 is “not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet.” Scarlet or purple is a royal color, luxurious and lovely. Whether your Santa is stately and majestic, a kindly grandfather, a holy fool, or a more complex character with secrets and struggles of his own, I would not be afraid to lean into that regal aspect. He’s kingly, with authority over some sphere.
    • The color red as a representation of sin — “Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18, ESV). Red is the color of blood; the blood of bulls and goats atoning for Israel’s sin over and over, never enough, and the blood of the Lord Jesus shed once and for all as the Lamb of God. The paradox of a color that represents sin and the deliverance from sin is fascinating. How might your Santa represent the paradox of sin and redemption? How could he reflect the Messiah who was made to “be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21)?
    • Santa’s entry through the chimney — I don’t want to overanalyze this image (it may partly be functional — just a way of explaining to children why Santa doesn’t need a housekey) but I find it intriguing that Santa enters from above through an avenue normally reserved for fire. It reminds me of the Lord sending down fire in judgement on Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19; in proof of His sovereignty in 1 Kings 18; in an outpouring of the Spirit with wind and tongues of fire at Pentecost in Acts 2. The fact that Santa comes with gifts instead of judgment reminds me of Christ who came to offer sinners a hope undeserved. How might the chimney/fire from above/hearthfire factor into your Santa’s abilities and character?
    • Santa as undying — Santa is an old man but immortal. He represents an age-old hope that never dies. While his joviality is, well, Jovial (again, the medieval idea of Jove is of a kingly, generous, serene figure), I also see a possible link to Saturn or Father Time. He serves as a foil for Christ, who came as a child and will never age or die. How would ageless age affect the character of your Santa?

    Whether you’re drawn to the goofy or the phantasmagorical in developing your Santa, I would argue one last thing: the imagery of the Santa tale is good. I don’t see a good case for making him a villain. I might also suggest exploring Santa’s role as a guide between the ordinary and magical, like Mary Poppins or Peter Pan: someone who knows the deep secrets of the world and helps others on their quests, their journeys towards happy endings.

    The Sleigh and Divine Intervention

    The image of Santa’s sleigh pulled by flying reindeer past a gigantic moon is iconic. The sleigh’s passage from sky to individual homes links it with many passages about heaven meeting earth, the divine intervening in human history, the Most High reaching down to our humble estate to rescue us. The image of the flying sleigh coming at night reflects the image of Christ coming to us as light in our darkness, life to our shadow-lives of spiritual death.

    But Santa’s flying sleigh intersects beautifully with another of my favorite Biblical images: the “chariots of fire and horses of fire” that come for Elijah the prophet when he “went up by a whirlwind into heaven”at the end of his life (2 Kings 2:9-12). Since reading this story in nightly Bible story time when I was little, I have a fierce, aching jealousy of Elijah’s flight from earth.

    Thus the Bible has two glorious images you could use to beautify a Santa Claus retelling:

    • Divine intervention — Light in darkness; a redeemer who “descended”; a healer who comes to a land of terrible sickness; the Gospel of John, Paul’s letters, and many other passages of Scripture give soul-stirring metaphors to teach us what Christ did by coming to us. The more you can emphasize the sleigh as representing heaven’s reaching down to earth — joy in the midst of despair, the healing of a sickness, the lifting of a curse, the fall of an evil dominion, delight that overcomes despair — the closer you can bring your retelling to the mystery of the gospel.
    • Wind and fire — If you really want to dress up Santa’s sleigh, the fiery chariot and whirlwind of 2 Kings 2 could set your story ablaze. The image of fire in the cold of winter (apologies to anyone in the southern hemisphere who celebrates a warm Christmas) is also a beautiful one. The image of Elijah’s fiery chariot also connects with Santa’s entrance through the chimney . . . it’s intriguing how much fire lies hidden in this story’s images.

    The Naughty vs. Nice Lists: The Law and Grace

    At first glance, the naughty vs. nice list of the Santa folktale is nothing but the old, cheap trick of scaring children into good behavior. At second glance, it’s even worse: pharisaical works-righteousness and legalism, the lie that you can save yourself by Following the Rules. Spiritually, we are all much worse than naughty and deserve much worse than lumps of coal; that’s why we need grace.

    And yet . . . as I look at it, the naughty vs. nice list and threat of coal vs. gifts could actually match up to the gospel in a different way. I’m reminded of Paul’s words about the Old Testament law: the law was like a guardian for the people of Israel (see Galatians 3). It was good in that it taught them the difference between sin and righteousness, holiness and defilement. The problem was that they could not keep the law on their own. They failed again and again by worshipping idols, intermarrying with other nations, or even with disobedient hearts as they keep the outward tenets of the law (see the entire Old Testament, or for a good picture of the situation, Isaiah 1). So the naughty vs. nice list may actually have that truth in it, the difference between right and wrong. And apart from Christ, we are all in the wrong.

    The threat of getting a lump of coal instead of a gift has some interesting implications as well. In Isaiah 6, the prophet Isaiah is dismayed to find that he, a sinful man, has seen the Lord in his temple, attended by seraphs. In response, one of the seraphs brings him a flaming coal and touches it to his lips. “And he touched my mouth and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for’” (Isaiah 6:7, ESV). In a Santa retelling, an artist could take the disappointing gift of coal and turn it into something ironically wonderful and mysterious: something that purifies, restores, and redeems.

    What about good gifts that are alternatives to coal? I don’t feel that plastic toys and mindless entertainment make the best symbol for the awesome gift of eternal oneness with the Living God. But as I thought about it, the idea of a child’s toy as something meant simply for joy and wonder, not a tool for labor or education, reflects the gratuitous, abundant richness of God’s goodness. If coal could be something glorious, what would a more direct symbol of divine grace be? I had a couple of ideas:

    • A gold ring — Gold as a nod to the golden streets of heaven; a ring as a sign of the covenant between Christ and His Bride, the Church
    • A key — Something that would open doors to adventure and mystery in your story, and also reflect Christ’s possession of the key of David (Revelation 3:7)
    • A dove — A living creature who acts as a guide, counselor, comforter, or helper, as a nod to the Holy Spirit
    • A music box or musical instrument — Something of delicate workmanship that makes music, an outlet of praise and awe

    Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas! May good stories, feasting, and fellowship renew our wonder in the love of the Mighty King who clothes us in righteousness, washes us white as snow, descended into our darkness, and gives us the gift of Himself.

    “The Seal-Catcher and the Merman”: The Sea, A Healing, and Gold

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    A few weeks ago, I looked up at the slender crescent of gold moon, exquisitely curved, and realized I could see the dark orb of the moon it outlined. These days of November have been a rush of warm, radiant days; leaves drifting slowly down to a crunchy, fragrant carpet; raindrops glittering on red crabapples; heart-shaped Japanese maple leaves on stone steps; thousands of acorns littering the grass; plump squirrels racing up and down trees, shaking the branches; dark evenings where the stars come out long before bedtime.

    I love this time of year. The rush of busyness has felt somewhere between an overwhelming tsunami and a welcome high tide after the stillness of summer. Some of my favorite holidays are ahead; I get to wear cozy socks and sweaters, put up twinkle lights, sip ginger tea, and shiver happily in the chilliness that is not yet brutal cold.

    In this cozy, glittering season, I miss preparing Leaf by Lantern podcast episodes. Researching, drafting, editing scripts, recording, editing audio, and producing for this podcast turned out to be too many hours of work for me with a full-time job and other commitments, but I loved studying fairy tales in the light of Scripture and dreaming about how Christian artists could approach retelling them.

    I decided to indulge that literary/scholarly/artistic part of myself again and discuss one of the tales I had on my podcast episode to-do list, “The Seal-Catcher and the Merman,” in written form in this post.

    “The Seal-Catcher and the Merman” is a Scottish folktale, very Scottish depending on what words you use in the telling. It’s a close kin of the “Selkie Wife” tale I talked about on the podcast.

    “The Seal-Catcher and the Merman”: A Podcast in Written Form

    The purpose of the Leaf by Lantern podcast was to explore “retelling fairy tales in the light of Scripture”: discussing how a Biblical perspective could guide an artist who is adapting a fairy tale into a novel, play, musical, short story, poem, or other written art form. See episode 1 for the full explanation of the project.

    I began each episode by reading aloud my own “iteration” of the fairy tale to a) familiarize everyone with the story, and b) avoid the copyright issues of reading aloud someone else’s version. Here’s my iteration of “The Seal-Catcher and the Merman” from here, here, and here. Then, I usually discuss 2-4 images in each tale, how they relate to Scriptural images, and how Scripture could inform a retelling that includes that image. For this folktale, I’ll talk about the images of the sea, the healing, and the gold.

    Once upon a time, on the cold north coast of Scotland, there lived a fisherman who was especially famous for catching seals. Some in the village whispered that the larger seals he caught, called “Roane,” were not seals at all, but merfolk who felt and spoke as humans do, but he laughed at their tales.

    “The bigger ones catch me a better profit!” he said.

    One morning, the Seal-Catcher snuck up on a large seal sunning itself on a rock and stabbed it in the side with his knife. The seal fell into the sea with a cry of pain, taking the knife with it. The Seal-Catcher went home in bitter frustration, as he had lost his catch and his favorite knife as well.

    At twilight, he answered a knock at his door. A handsome stranger with a black horse stood there. There was something strange about the stranger’s face and appearance the Seal-Catcher could not name, but he thought it must be his fine coat and air of wealth and authority.

    “I need a number of seal skins right away,” said the stranger. “I’m told you are the best seal-catcher in the north.”

    “That may be,” said the Seal-Catcher, “but I can only get you a few seal skins so soon.”

    “I know a place where a number of seals gather,” said the stranger. “Come with me, and I’ll make you rich.”

    Eager for such a catch, the Seal-Catcher mounted on the black horse behind the stranger and rode off with him. They rode far up the coast to a lonely spot along a rugged cliff.

    “We’ve reached the place,” said the stranger, dismounting and telling the Seal-Catcher to do the same.

    “I don’t see seals here,” said the Seal-Catcher, surprised and beginning to be afraid to be with a mysterious stranger in this lonely place.

    “Then come and see!” said the stranger, and he seized the Seal-Catcher and dragged him off the cliff into the blue sea.

    The Seal-Catcher was terrified, but he could not resist the stranger as they hurtled into the waves and down, down, down, far below the sunlight. He gave up all hope until he found that deep as they were, he could breathe.

    They descended into a rocky cavern full of shells in shimmering rainbow colors. Dozens of seal swam about there, and to the Seal-Catcher’s astonishment, they seemed to be crying and lamenting. He received another shock when he realized that he had brown fur and flippers just like they did. He had taken the form of a seal.

    The stranger, who had also taken a seal shape, turned to him. “My father, the king of the merfolk, was wounded this morning by a knife,” he said. “Do you recognize it?” and he produced in his flipper the Seal-Catcher’s own knife.

    The Seal-Catcher fell to the ground, begging for his life, believing that he had been brought there to be killed. The seals in the cavern crowded around him, gently rubbing him with their noses and assuring him that no one would harm him.

    “I didn’t bring you here for revenge,” said the stranger. “I brought you for healing. Come.”

    He led the Seal-Catcher into a glimmering chamber in which the seal he had wounded lay, desperately sick, with a great wound in his side. “Lay your flippers on his wound, and he will heal,” said the Seal-Prince.

    “I have no power to heal,” said the Seal-Catcher in fear and surprise, but he obeyed, laying his seal flippers on the king’s wound. Immediately, the wound closed up and the bleeding stopped.

    The seals turned from lamenting to rejoicing, crowding around the king and the Seal-Catcher. “I will take you back to your wife and children now,” said the Seal-Prince, “on one condition: that you will never harm a seal again.”

    The Seal-Catcher made this promise. The Seal-Prince carried him back to the surface, where they regained human shape, and rode him back to his house on the black horse.

    When they arrived, the Seal-Prince let the Seal-Catcher down and took something out of his pocket. “Never let it be said that we took a man’s livelihood and gave him nothing in return,” he said, putting a bag into the Seal-Catcher’s hands. Then he rode away.

    The Seal-Catcher opened the bag and found it full of shining gold. The seals had made him rich for the rest of his days.

    The End

    The Sea of Chaos

    As I talked about in the podcast episodes on “Aspittle and the Stoorworm” and “The Selkie Wife,” the Biblical image of the sea is the realm of chaos. In the Lexham Bible Dictionary, D. Sarlo puts it this way:

    In some Old Testament passages, the term “sea” (יָם, yam) is used to refer to the chaotic abyss that was the original state of the world prior to creation. This primordial sea was believed to have covered the whole earth (Gen 1:1–2:4a; Pss 18; 29; 89; Job 9:8; 26:12–13). . . . Walton notes that ancients imagined the primordial sea as encircling the earth like a serpent (Walton 2006: 166–167).

    Sarlo, D. (2016). “Sea.” In J. D. Barry, D. Bomar, D. R. Brown, R. Klippenstein, D. Mangum, C. Sinclair
    Wolcott, L. Wentz, E. Ritzema, & W. Widder (Eds.), The Lexham Bible Dictionary. Lexham Press.
    Walton, John H. Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the
    Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2006.

    For more on the Biblical imagery of the sea, I recommend the Bible Project’ recent episode, “A Mountain Rising from Chaos Waters.” Andy Patton also has some beautiful articles on water/sea/river imagery in Scripture on his Substack, “Pattern Bible.”

    Interestingly, the sea in this Celtic folktale is not exactly the same as the Biblical sea of chaos, but it’s not a complete counter-image, either. Like “The Selkie Wife,” “The Seal-Catcher and the Merman” portrays the sea as the home of seals, merpeople, or selkies: gentle folk who, in those particular stories, are the targets of human violence and greed. But Scottish fisherfolk who got their living from the cold Atlantic and knew the brutality of winter storms wouldn’t view the sea as the realm of happy and innocent fun, either.

    But in one particular aspect, the folktale rings true with a Biblical image: the sea as a place of reckoning. Lost in the waters of chaos, the rebel realizes the weight of his sin and cries out for rescue.

    The parallels between “The Seal-Catcher and the Merman” and the book of Jonah are unmistakable. Like Jonah, the Seal-Catcher is going determinedly his own way, when he is dragged into the sea by force (Jonah 1-2). It is after they’re dragged under the waves that each character realizes his wrongdoing and repents. In that repentance, they receive a new life. Jonah’s prayer in Jonah 2 is a stirring depiction of death and rebirth:

    From Jonah 2:2 (ESV)
    . . . I called out to the Lord, out of my distress,
    and he answered me;
    out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
    and you heard my voice.

    Death (in Sheol, the grave) and rebirth; purification and repentance. There’s also an echo of baptism (see 1 Peter 3:18-20) — with the important distinction that baptism is a willing declaration of belief, and being dragged into the sea is involuntary (fairy tales and folk tales are never exact allegories of Scripture).

    For anyone retelling “The Seal-Catcher and the Merman,” I have a couple of suggestions when it comes to handling the image of the sea:

    • Take your audience there — Just as Jonah’s prayer captures the sea in vivid poetic images, give your readers as concrete and vivid an image of the ocean as you can. (“All your waves and billows passed over me”; “The roots of the mountains” — in his prayer, Jonah brings us down with him). This suggestion is something of an obvious one since concrete, detail-rich prose is an ingredient of all good writing, but I think it’s crucial here, where the physical experience of near-drowning is so closely tied to spiritual death.
    • Explore oceanic myths, legends, and tales — As rich as this folktale’s images here, if a writer wanted to expand it into a novel or a full musical, they would need to expand the plot. The world is full of fascinating and beautiful oceanic myths and legends: Poseidon and his trident, merfolk, krakens, the Land Under Waves, Tír na nÓg, Atlantis, the Fata Morgana, the lost paradise in the Arctic. I would try to keep hold of the rich images of this folktale, but broadening the character list and worldbuilding of a longer story could add new richness. The paradoxes of oceanic chaos and wonder, wealth and destruction, secrets and adventure resonate across all traditions.

    The Laying on of Hands

    The Seal-Catcher’s ability to heal the Seal-King’s wound is an inbreak of grace in the story; he is no healer, and putting your hand on a wound does not ordinarily heal it. In fact, there’s an old superstition that if a murderer touches the dead body of one of his victims, the body will bleed. The Seal-Catcher’s touch here does the opposite, healing what he harmed. What fascinates me is that it’s an act of grace, but not grace for the Seal-King; grace for the Seal-Catcher, who is given, undeservedly and unexpectedly, the power to restore what he marred.

    In Scripture, the “laying on of hands” is a sacred act. In Matthew 19:13-15, the disciples rebuke people who bring children to the Lord Jesus “that he might lay his hands on them and pray.” The Lord Jesus then says one of His most remembered and beloved sayings: ““Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (ESV). Then He lays His hands on them and goes away. The Lord Jesus heals others by layings His hands on them, including a woman who was bent over with a disabling spirit for 18 years (Luke 13:10-13).

    In Mark 16, the Lord Jesus gives the power of healing by the laying on of hands to believers: “And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (“Mark 16:17-18, ESV, my emphasis). This promise blossoms into glorious fruition in the book of Acts, when the apostles lay their hands on people and pray for them so they receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-19, Acts 19:6) or receive healing (Acts 9, including the day when Ananias laid his hands on blinded Saul the persecutor and prayed so that God restored Saul’s sight).

    Physical healing, and receiving the Holy Spirit — two blessings that link heaven and earth, the material and the spiritual, the temporal and the eternal. In “The Seal-Catcher and the Merman,” the image of a Seal-Catcher laying his hands (well, flippers, since he’s in seal form) on the wounded side of a king and watched the wound seal itself and disappear beautifully illustrates divine grace, redemption, restoration, and the gift of Christ-followers becoming like Christ. The Seal-Catcher’s very identity changes here: he goes from killer to healer, ravager to repentant and forgiven sinner. It reminds me of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, how Aslan, the King of the Wood, extends his royalty to the children by crowning them as kings and queens under him.

    For any Christ-follower who creates a retelling of “The Seal-Catcher and the Merman,” I would recommend a couple of things when it comes to this part of the story:

    • Make the identity change clear — A storyteller has a whole treasure chest of resources when it comes to depicting an identity change. Names; clothing; occupation; house and home; relationships; habits; speech patterns; a significant change to any of these can signify an identity change. Because of the change in his spiritual identity, the Seal-Catcher at the beginning of any retelling should act, feel, and even look dramatically different than the main character at the end.
    • Honor the concrete details — Touch is powerful. A Biblical laying-on-of-hands articulates something beyond words. In any retelling, I would do my best to hallow this moment with a vivid description: long or short, metaphorical or literal, memory-laden or present-focused, this would be a moment where eternal realities make themselves known in our time.

    The Grace of Gold

    I love the ending of this folktale. The Seal-Catcher has gone through a total heart-change and identity-shift from careless laughter to repentance, killing to healing, and death to life. The Seal-Prince’s gift of gold encapsulates the inheritance that believers have through the Lord Jesus. We are not only delivered from sin and death, but gifted oneness with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (John 17) and eternal communion with God in the glorious New Jerusalem (Revelation 21). In the goodness of God, our cup overflows (Psalm 23:5).

    It’s a delicate thing to try to portray the joy of forgiveness without risking melodrama or overemotionalism. Staying in the realm of sensory details, in a retelling of this folktale, I would think through how the physical world would look and feel to a man who has been forgiven and made rich, like this: the colors of the sky, the familiar things of home, and thoughts of the future. My writing teacher, Jonathan Rogers, has talked about how good prose helps you see out of a character’s eyes and not your own (see his online course on writing lessons from The Hobbit), so that you teach readers what this person is like by displaying what they notice, how they see. What would a redeemed Seal-Catcher feel and notice? How would a new man treat the world he knew?

    How do we believers see and walk in this world of stars and seas, knowing how fully we’re forgiven, and how deeply we’re loved?

    Lazy Late Summer

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    Summer days were just a magazine, a magazine, a magazine . . . 
    Cutting grass for gasoline
    For gasoline, so I can see ya soon . . .
    “Dandelion Wine” by Gregory Alan Isakov

    Gregory Alan Isakov is one of the best living poets I know of. His metaphors are rich, sweet delights that summon moods and moments, dreams and memories like spells. In “Dandelion Wine,” he captures the lazy, wistful, sultry days of late summer in that lovely image of dandelion wine – the golden flower-weeds that dot the green grass, the sleepy pleasure of drinking in the sun and the quiet of long days. 

    It’s getting towards late summer now. Air that was heavy with humidity is now soft with cool breezes; the oaks bear little clusters of acorns turning from green to brown; dainty Queen Anne’s lace and radiant goldenrod are flowering in the ditches; the whir of cicadas and cooing of mourning doves sounds dreamy and content. After a tumultuous year, I’ve found that returning to things I love like Isakov’s music, T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, and the Nancy Drew books is deeply comforting. It has been harder lately to feel that “yearning” that I made the theme of this blog — that deep, sweet longing for the presence of God — but good old stories, songs, and poems stir up the memory of it. Best of all are Psalms like Psalm 34 in its tenderness and Psalm 36 in its joyful wonder; I find the thirsty roots of my soul stretching into those passages.

    Psalm 36:7-9 — 
    7  How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
    The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
    8  They feast on the abundance of your house,
    and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
    9  For with you is the fountain of life;
    in your light do we see light.

    After spending last summer pouring over fairy tales for the Leaf by Lantern podcast, I decided to mix things up this summer and try to write a historical fiction/mystery set in New England in the 1950s. It’s definitely challenged my research skills. I want to summon the music of the past in minute detail: the use of suntan lotion vs. sunscreen, for example, the swish of circle skirts, the necessity of starching and ironing everything, the shadow of the Korean War, and the use of telegrams/radio/letters for communicating and spreading news. Great historical fiction authors like Eloise Jarvis McGraw and Rosemary Sutcliff managed to capture the smells, tastes, sounds, and textures of long ago in gorgeous detail, and I want to imitate them, but it takes a lot of digging to get there.

    Wanderings in Faerie

    But I still want some fantasy in my life. I finished Junius Johnson’s “Summer of Fairies” course with a rereading of George MacDonald’s Phantastes – a weird, wonderful song of Romanticism and fairy tale beautified with a Scriptural vision of redemption. We’ve explored the nature and characteristics of Faerie, Fairy Land, Elfland, or whatever others call the fairy world and what makes it fascinating and dangerous. 

    One thing that’s surprised me in this course is realizing that the land of Faerie is perilous for the reader as well as the character. In a world where normal rules don’t apply and new, terrifying ones spring up, like “don’t tell anyone your true name” or “don’t eat any of the food or you’ll get stuck here,” you want a loving, wise guide like Tolkien, MacDonald, or Lewis with you. Tolkien, MacDonald, Lewis, and storytellers like them witness to the Lord who is Good Shepherd. He sees every lonely wanderer, every lost soul who gets caught in a trap of their own making, and offers a safe haven of forgiveness. I read the ebook version of Tolkien’s short story “Smith of Wooten Major” with Pauline Baynes’s bewitching illustrations, and that sense of sovereign mercy even in a perilous realm is so beautiful:

    But he [the main character, Smith] had business of its own kind in Faery, and he was welcome there; for the star shone bright on his brow, and he was as safe as a mortal can be in that perilous country. The Lesser Evils avoided the star, and from the Greater Evils he was guarded.

    “Smith of Wooten Major” by J.R.R. Tolkien

    Authors who don’t have that Scriptural view of reality and shepherdly love for their readers can lead you down some dark roads. Faerie is, by nature, inexplicable and unmappable, but heaven’s love and justice are just as sovereign there as everywhere else.  

    Saturnine Stories in the Light of Scripture

    I’ve thought more about stories that lead their audiences down dark roads from a recent conversation with my dad. He asked me if the newish Marvel show, “Secret Invasion,” featuring an older Nick Fury battling a new threat, was any good. I had tried it out a few months before and didn’t like it. 

    “It’s kind of sad,” I explained. “Nick Fury is older and keeps making mistakes, and everyone keeps reminding him that he’s not as strong and smart as when he was young, and some really lovable characters die, and it just feels like all the good times are gone and there’s nothing left. I don’t like those kinds of stories.” 

    My dad thought for a moment. “Was it saturnine?” he asked. 

    I gaped at him. We’d both read Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia years before; my dad was referencing Ward’s argument that the seven books of Lewis’s series are written in the spirit of the seven medieval planets. Each Narnia book has the tone, atmosphere, and resonance of each planet. It’s too long a thesis to describe here, but Ward argues that The Last Battle is written in the spirit of the planet Saturn: a spirit of decay, loss, old age, and death, good times past. Google “saturnine” and you’ll find various definitions of a person or mood that is cold, gloomy, forbidding, bitter, and sardonic. Ward explains how Lewis’s Christian vision reveals good, redemptive aspects of Saturn (read the book to find out more about that) but a saturnine story without that Scriptural hope is unreasonably depressing. My dad was dead center: “Secret Invasion,” or at least, the first few episodes, is saturnine.1

    Remembering Michael Ward’s book reminded me of how much hidden meaning lies in stories. Stories are visions of the world; every word and sound, character portrait, image and plot point has a spiritual dimension. Many of the classics I read in school like John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in Sieve, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, or John Knowles’s A Separate Peace are exquisitely crafted, but they leave the reader with a tiny fragment of hope at the very most.2 As I reflect on that part of my education, I feel more and more how wrong it was to give students a picture of victimhood without justice and suffering without hope. It would be easy to go to the opposite extreme and celebrate happy stories that have no darkness at all — but that wouldn’t be true to reality, either. The best stories look forward through pain to the God who will right every wrong and “wipe every tear from our eyes” in the New Creation. 

    This will be my struggle as a writer: crafting stories that reckon with darkness while witnessing the victory of light, that reflect the redemptive shape of the gospel without “skipping over” the sad parts (as I wish I could skip over the sad parts of life). Scripture will help me in that, reminding me that Jeremiah’s lament is just as real as Nehemiah’s rebuilding of Jerusalem; that David’s sorrow over Absalom was as much a part of his life as his victory over Goliath; that Good Friday was necessary for Easter Sunday; that the New Jerusalem promises healing. In this “magazine” of golden late summer days and earthly peace, I look forward to the peace of the final victory, of drinking from the river of God’s delights forever.


    Notes
    1  “Secret Invasion” is a Marvel show, and Marvel stories usually work out to a happy ending, so I’m guessing that there is a turning point where things get better. I just didn’t want to sit through all the sad parts.
    2 These books are classics for a reason, and I know I’m oversimplifying them by talking about them so briefly. They are extremely well-written and testify to important truths about the world. But all four of these books culminate in a significant death, and I don’t think they echo the gospel’s forgiveness and promise of resurrection. To be fair, my high school also assigned us Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and even Shakespeare’s tragic “Romeo and Juliet,” which do have redemptive hope.

    Hope-Kindling in Springtime

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    Winter passed like melting snow. I stood on Stanage Edge in the Peak District of England, trying to think suitably noble thoughts*;  glimpsed the half-moon through snowy cherry blossoms; watched new leaves fill the woods with that soft, bright green; hunted for the tiny, gem-like wildflowers of bright blue, starry white, and deep purple that dot the grass; watched the bonfire dance as we celebrated the Resurrection at sunrise.

    * In the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, Stanage Edge is the rocky outlook where Kiera Knightly stands and looks out at the horizon. It’s a good place to take pictures of yourself looking out at the horizon with a thoughtful expression.

    As winter slipped away, I explored Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” with two different guests, examining the cold, perfect, deathliness of evil and the warm, healing vitality of goodness. I delved into the deep sorrow and even deeper hope of Job in connecting the Leviathan image with the sea dragon in the Scottish folk tale, “Aspittle and the Stoorworm.” I listened to C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce and some of P.G. Wodehouse’s Joy in the Morning, reminding myself of the eternal beauty and wonder that sings outside of the computer screens, tax seasons, traffic lights, and other mundane pieces of everyday life. 

    The creative dry spell I’ve been in for a while still continues, but I’ve started to have colorful dreams and daydreams of the stories I want to tell. Studying psalms like Psalm 36, with images like the Lord’s “river of delights,” as well as the sacred metaphors of the Gospel of John, make me yearn to write tales of wonder and hope: stories full of the goodness of the river of life, the garden of paradise, and the mountains of God. 

    I’ve had a string of disappointments in trying out new books recently, but I’ve cheered myself up with some rereads. I can recommend these as hope-kindling as springtime: 

    Nancy Guthrie’s Even Better than Eden – I read this last year after an exhausting work trip, and it brought me so much joy. Nancy Guthrie traces nine images from Genesis to Revelation, including the Wilderness and the Tree, and how the Lord Jesus’s atonement brings us a life that is even better than the Eden we lost. 

    R.J. Anderson’s No Ordinary Fairy Tale and Flight and Flame trilogies (six books total) – I first encountered R.J. Anderson’s work through her beautiful science-fiction/fantasy Ultraviolet, and was thrilled to see she’d written more fantasy. Anderson’s vivid prose, stunningly vibrant characters, and exciting storylines explore what it means to be human, what good and evil look like, and what it means to love in fascinating ways. As a Bible teacher herself and an excellent storyteller, Anderson weaves British faerie lore and Cornish piskey-lore into gripping narratives that honor the great story of Scripture. If you start these books, set aside some extra time; they are almost impossible to put down.

    Snowbound and Rainsodden: Books and Winter Weather

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    Snowy hillside with withered red berries

    It was so familiar: watching flakes fall from darkness to pale earth, spinning, a sight that will make you dizzy if you stare too long; the lightness of fresh, powdery snow underfoot; silver glitters in the new snowdrifts; paths trodden with iced-preserved footprints and pawprints; week-old snow frozen hard with subzero temperatures, too slick to walk on. I watched the snow highlight every branch and twig of the woods, like a white pencil outlining the sketch of dancers mid-motion, before the snow dropped off and left them gray and bare again. I felt the cold of negative temperatures, burning on the face and pulsing painfully in the fingertips, so fierce that returning to the 20s Fahrenheit felt balmy by comparison.

    Nashville winters, someone told me, are usually “doom and gloom” – temperatures in the 30s and 40s with dark rainclouds. This past week, which shut down every major activity, would have been respectable in many northern states (except maybe Montana). I have dug deep snow tunnels in New Hampshire, driven on the ice rink of freezing rain in Maine, and watched ice turn trees into wonders of blown glass in Massachusetts, but I was not prepared for such weather here.

    This part of winter is usually hard for me between the twinkling merriment of Christmas and the green of spring is so far away. Every year, I try to find ways to enjoy this season as cozy and romantic. It is, after all, a gift to be able to curl up in a soft blanket with a good book in hand and a candle burning, as the world sleeps outside.

    Here are a few books I’m enjoying as warmer temperatures melt the snow:

    All the Lost Places, by Amanda Dykes – I heard Amanda Dykes on several podcasts I follow and appreciated her thoughtful, gentle insights on writing and publishing. This book is a wonder. It has the eloquence and depth of the genre known as “literary fiction,” but instead of the despair I’ve encountered in other literary fiction books, it radiates hope and goodness. From the foggy streets of San Francisco to the glimmering canals and labyrinthine alleys of Venice, the book traces two lovable main characters whose stories are stitched together across time. Daniel of 1904 is bent under a load of guilt and shame; Sebastian of 1807 struggles to solve the riddle of his past and a stranger swept to his doorstep out of a storm. Discovering a new author who has published a stack of books is a rare delight, and I am excited to explore Amanda’s other stories.

    A History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, by Henry Fielding – I read about this book in Karen Swallow Prior’s book, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books, in which she examines how works of fiction can teach us to understand and and practice virtue. She uses Tom Jones as an example of understanding prudence. I loved tracing the main character’s path from foolishness to prudence, recklessness to wisdom, and exile to home in this book. It’s very long, bawdier than I expected (think the cruder aspects of Shakespeare, and then step up a level), full of mock-epic moments and exaggerated references to classical myth, and does feature some significant wrongdoings by the hero. I caught myself saying out loud, “Tom, no, you dummy!” at various intervals. There are, however, realistic consequences for bad behavior, and a tone of love and understanding that makes me glad to have finished it.

    Summer Lightning, by P.G. Wodehouse – I picked up this book to follow along with the “Close Reads” podcast. Wodehouse is new to me, and the ridiculous, overly complicated, earnest, and chaotic exploits of his characters are an absolute joy. Watching various people at a country house try to outdo each other in stealing things, impersonating other people, falling in love, making and breaking engagements, and sometimes outright blackmail, where no one really gets hurt and all good desires are fulfilled in the end, feels very safe in this uncertain world. 

    The Silver Chair, by C.S. Lewis – For a few years now, I have stayed away from some of my most beloved series – the Chronicles of Narnia, the Harry Potter series, and The Lord of the Rings – because I wanted to forget them enough to come back and find them fresh and new. I decided to reread this book, my favorite Narnia book, because it’s a text for two online courses I’m taking: a medieval cosmology course by Kelly Cumbee and a creative writing course by Jonathan Rogers. I’m very familiar with the excellent radio drama version by Focus on the Family, but this time, I listened to this audiobook version by Jeremy Northam, which was wonderful. Each book in the series has a different reader, including Kenneth Branagh for The Magician’s Nephew and Patrick Stewart for The Last Battle. 

    I love The Silver Chair so much. I deeply identify with Jill’s struggle to obey Aslan; I love the perilous wanderings across the wild north; I burst out laughing multiple times at Puddleglum’s cheerfully dour sayings. Best of all, Jeremy Northam’s voice for the audiobook emphasized the kindly humor of C.S. Lewis’s prose asides in the text – those thoughtful, sympathetic comments about how you feel in certain situations, like sitting by the fire late at night, too tired to do the hard work of going to bed.


    Now that Nashville’s dark rainclouds have returned and melted the snow, I can go on walks again, slipping in the mud and letting raindrops slip through my hair. I don’t think I’ll ever fully enjoy this time of year, but I can appreciate the grim, quiet, atmospheric beauty of wild winds, stormy skies, and steady rain.