fantasy

“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?

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.

2023: The Close of the Year

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Glittering ice storms and whimsical thaws and freezes; tiny white and purple wildflowers that sang like stars in the grass; a sweltering green summer full of dreams of dragons; a humming haze of an autumn, goldenrod and woodsmoke in the air. Playing the how-many-ebooks-can-I-check-out-per-month game on library apps; slipping into chiffon and satin for weddings; watching my dog roll around on his back like a deliriously happy bug; zipping up suitcases and carefully storing away parking tickets; sifting the pages of my Bible as if I climbed a stone staircase, trusting it to hold me. 2023 is finished – a translucent, winding, treacherous, wondrous year that taught me a lot of good things.

I wanted this to be a fruitful, abundant year, especially for my writing career. I resolved to edit the rough draft of a manuscript I’d just finished, submit at least one article for publication per month, release a fairy-tale-retelling podcast, and perhaps craft a few short stories for good measure – along with at least one blog post per month, of course. I accomplished a couple of those things, especially releasing the podcast, but for most of the time I found my heart and imagination blank and empty, unable to give birth to new ideas. 

At a writing retreat in February, my writing teacher reminded us that we writers are not machines with a set, predetermined production output. We’re more like trees, with seasons of fruitfulness and fallowness. I decided to fill myself up with good things in this fallow season, so when inspiration comes, it has plenty to work with: good books, good plays, good movies, and good teaching.

This blog post is a wrapup of some of the good things I filled up with in 2023, books and plays, as well as a few aftershow notes from recent “Leaf by Lantern” podcast episodes. 

Books of 2023

Researching the podcast this year kept me steeped in fairy tales, but I fed my soul with all the other books I could find. Here are some of my favorites:

Transformed: The Perils of the Frog Prince, by Megan Morrison – I wanted to read more fairy tale retellings so I could talk about them on the podcast, but I had trouble finding ones that weren’t dark, “steamy” YA fiction. Reading this story gave me a lot of pleasure during a long flight from the west coast. It’s actually the third in the Land of Tyme series (I have not read the first two) and features a brilliantly-developed, selfish and demanding main character who goes on a quest, solves a complex mystery, and undergoes a deep transformation.

This Rough Magic and Nine Coaches Waiting, by Mary Stewart – Despite the announcement on the covers of these paperbacks that these titles graced the New York Times Bestseller List (in the 1950s) and that Mary Stewart is famous as a master of “romantic suspense,” I had never heard of this author before. I could die of happiness. These books feature beautiful, daring heroines reminiscent of Grace Livingstone Hill girls or Nancy Drew; exotic locations described with lush, vivid prose (I adore detailed descriptions like these); thrilling adventures and wildly melodramatic romances. These books are definitely dated in certain ways, but they whisked me away to enchanted worlds for many happy hours. I would love to write books like these, set in places I know and love.

The Goldfish Boy by Lisa Thompson – I crave new, well-written mysteries, but it’s hard to find good ones outside of the Golden Age classics I have already reread many times (mainly Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers) that don’t feature grisly murders and questionable ethics. This middle-grade novel uses some of the classic tropes, including a housebound main character (suffering from crippling germophobia) who may have been the last person to see a toddler who goes missing. It’s a very sweet story, with a lot of self-discovery and friendship.

Ancora: The Fog Banshee’s Curse, Miriam Pittman – I met Miriam at a writer’s retreat and loved the sound of her Irish-lore-inspired story. This book overflows with sweet humor, beauty, adventure, and mystery, from a sinister spellcaster to magical horses and terrifying, murderous fog banshees. The personalities and relationships of the sisters are as clear, bright, and sweet as those in Little Women or The Penderwicks. Miriam did a fantastic job of playing chords of truth, self-discovery, repentance, courage, justice, and forgiveness in ways that ring true, without making the reader feel lectured.

Daughter of Arden series by Loren Warnemuende – After twenty-five years of writing and drafting and a few years of editing and review, my friend Loren’s book series is finally out! Watching Loren brainstorm and draft and piece the final parts together has been a delight. Loren is a master of character development and growth – I was astonished at the transformations she put together. Reading the final book, Promise, was also a lesson in revelation and exposition; many of the characters, events, and seemingly-extraneous details of the first two books suddenly rise up as essential plot points that lead to a thrilling conclusion.

The Carver and the Queen by Emma C. Fox – Before reading this book, I thought Siberia was a perfectly flat, frigid, depressing place with a constant snowstorm over grim gulags. Emma’s box opens up the dazzling world of Siberian folklore, from peasant festivals to fireflowers to a formidable Malachite Queen under the mountain. The prose of this book was so exquisite, I had to read and reread pages to soak it in. Deep, fascinating characters – some very lovable good guys, some very hateable bad guys – take part in a dance of duty and desire, frustrated longings and difficult sacrifices. I am a fast reader because I’m impatient, but this is a rare treasure, a story to savor slowly.

Son of the Deep and Orion and the Starborn by K.B. Hoyle – Emma’s The Carver and the Queen led me to Owl’s Nest Publishers, a great place to find middle-grade and teen literature that is actually written for readers in those age groups. This fairytale retelling and astronomical fantasy gave me a wholehearted pleasure – gorgeous settings in the deep sea or Orion’s belt, characters with zeal and longing, and, best of all, plots driven by romantic or familial love. I ached for the main characters in these books to find the wealth of community and keys to the mysteries in their lives. Both of these titles have sequels coming out in the next year, which makes me very, very happy.

Tales of Hibaria: The Awakening by Jamin Still – I wanted this book as soon as I heard its premise – a world where constellations or “Sky Lords” walk the earth and guide children on important quests – but I waited until I could ask for it as an early Christmas present. It’s marvelous: gorgeously illustrated, with intricate and colorful maps and breathtaking images of the stories; written with simple, eloquent prose like drops of rainwater on a pool; alive with child characters who look up to the stars, ponder strange memories or deep griefs, and set foot on the road to adventure with trembling hearts. Some of the short stories in this collection were so beautiful they hurt. My timing in reading it is excellent – this book’s sequel also comes out this year. 

The Turning by Emily Whitman – With delightful irony, I published a podcast episode on the “Selkie Wife” folktale one day, couldn’t sleep that night, and checked out this ebook on my library app to pass the time . . . which turned out to be a selkie story! Vivid, clear prose; a main character whose loneliness, love, and determination captured my heart completely; and a perfect balance between the discouragement of frustrated desire and choosing to hope. 

Personal reflection about all these books: the stories I loved the most in 2023 involved characters with profound yearnings, deep love, exciting adventures, and courageous hope. It has been fun to trace the Gospel patterns in the fairy tales I’ve studied on the podcast, looking for what truths of Scripture glimmer in motifs, archetypes, and structure and give them their beauty.

Plays of 2023

I attended every play I could find this year, mostly classics: 

  • Les Miserables, January
  • Peter and the Starcatchers, March
  • Pride and Prejudice, April
  • The Sound of Music, July
  • The Play that Goes Wrong, November
  • A Wrinkle in Time, November
  • A Christmas Carol, December

The Play That Goes Wrong – This performance matched my sense of humor perfectly (almost): consciously and unconsciously ridiculous, full of desperate attempts to save face and keep the show going on in the midst of abject failure and total mayhem. If you’re not familiar, the premise is that you’re attending an amateur drama club’s first major performance . . . and everything goes drastically, hilariously wrong, from actors forgetting their lines to the set falling apart. Watching this play reminded me of how much comedy, and storytelling in general, depends on the interplay of timing, setting audience expectations, and either meeting or breaking those expectations. The misspoken or forgotten lines were placed so that the audience knew what was supposed to be said, and how bad the actual delivery was; props were misplaced or forgotten in a specific order, so we knew specifically what should have happened. I could have used less (or no) slapstick fighting at the end, but otherwise, thoroughly enjoyed the artful silliness of this play.

A Wrinkle in Time – Fifteen cast members in a black box theatre brought this story to life – with some people acting and an ensemble taking turns reading out loud and playing minor roles. The wonder, humor, and startling creativity of L’Engle’s work was all the more delightful as an audiobook/live drama. Adapting a story to the stage or screen often means that the author’s prose is lost, or has to be inserted into dialogue, but the read-aloud aspect of this adaptation meant L’Engle’s prose was preserved and its beauty was amplified. I also appreciated that the play didn’t feel the need to update or change the story to “fit” our current cultural moment better; it was more timeless because it wasn’t trying to be relevant. 

Podcasts of 2023

One morning in May, as I was frantically trying to write/record the first episode and get all the necessary ingredients (show graphic + RSS feed + intro segment + etc.) I woke up feeling grumpy and unmotivated, wondering why on earth I was trying to do something as hard and scary as produce a podcast. I didn’t want to – it was too difficult and too intimidating. With a startling clarity, I realized that those two things, fear and laziness, are terrible reasons for doing or not doing something – and I managed to publish the episode a few days later.

Creating podcast episodes is much harder than writing essays or stories. A few things I’ve learned: 

  • Time – I have never regretted giving myself an extra day or so to refine the content, even when it means an episode is late. I’m careful about theological topics and Scriptural interpretations, and reading a script out loud multiple times gives me the chance to realize if I say something confusing or incorrect. 
  • Examples – Finding good, interesting examples of principles and applications is one of my favorite things – and one of the hardest parts of the podcast. Talking about any subject means that you have to be well-versed in it, in both breadth and depth – so technically, I should be a master reader of retellings. One problem I’ve encountered, as I mentioned above, is the rarity of good fairy tale retellings. There are gems out there, but there are a lot of retellings that try to “fix” the fairy tales or use them to teach moral lessons. Finding good retellings, or stories in general, is deeply refreshing and gives me hope.
  • Community – Good podcasts make themselves part of larger conversations, whether or not they have one host or several. I have learned so much from the guests I’ve had on the podcast, and would like to learn more. I hope to book more guests for season 3.

Reflections on some recent podcasts: 

The Golden Bird

This episode explored some very big and deep concepts, and I wish I had given myself a little more time to ponder them. I would add one thing to the third section, in which I discussed Scriptural examples of betrayal. I went over three Biblical stories of betrayal and how they provide patterns artists could learn from: Joseph and his brothers (betrayal > repentance > forgiveness and reconciliation), Cain and Abel (betrayal > no repentance > unexpected grace), and Judas Iscariot (betrayal > no repentance > condemnation). With further reflection, I wish I had talked more about the concept of betrayal and the Christian worldview. 

The idea of “betrayal” as something bad, a wrong that demands justice, is a Christian one. It rests on several things: 

  • The idea that to break your word, your promise, is wrong – words matter to God. God always keeps His Word. This principle also applies to lying (Ten Commandments).
  • The idea that hurting someone intentionally, not in self-defense or a just war, is wrong. “Love your neighbor” – Jesus commanded – and even, love your enemy. 
  • The idea that there is no sin that will not be found out. I don’t watch a lot of gritty TV shows – cop shows or the darker dystopias – but I’ve noticed in the few I have seen that there comes a moment when a situation becomes so tangled, so full of conflicting wills, wrongs, desires, and dangers, that even the good or sympathetic characters will do terrible things. In moral gray areas, it’s not always clear if there is a right thing to do. Scripture opens our eyes to a world in which God is always watching and always good; He sees every act of evil, and He will bring justice. Applied artistically, I believe that if you have a betrayal in your story, you need to figure out how justice will manifest itself, whether or not the betrayer is caught or the betrayed person survives. I don’t believe a story should display the betrayal of an innocent person without there being some justice – or at least, the shadow of some future reckoning. 

I also spoke a little on the four rivers of Eden (in relation to Havilah and the land of gold). Andy Patton’s meditation on the four rivers of Eden examines the Hebrew words and Old Testament imagery more closely, with some delightful insights. 

The Selkie Wife

This episode became one of my favorites; exploring the paradox of the sea as a realm of wonder and chaos was especially fun. I realized, in the making, that I failed to make an important distinction between the sea in the beginning of Genesis and the sea after Genesis 3. The sea is fallen, with the rest of Creation; the presence of sin and death mean that the ocean we encounter now, physically and metaphorically, is a corrupt version of the ocean God made. That being said, I love how this tragic tale captures the loveliness, loneliness, longing, and liminality of sea stories. 

The Frog Prince

I had lots of fun planning and recording this sci-fi episode with my dad. Envisioning what a sci-fi retelling of the Frog Prince might look like allowed us to delve into our favorite themes in science fiction, the imagery of transformation, friendship, and quests, and how to make characters likable, relatable, and able to grow. 

This episode reveals that I’m more of a plotter than a pantser, to use current creative-writing jargon – I like to have some overall picture of the plot in my head. The distinction with my writing brain is that I’m a holey plotter; I’ll have a general structure in my head and a certain number of scenes, but with big narrative gaps that I have to fill in. If I were to write a sci-fi Frog Prince retelling, the filling in of those holes and editing process would probably change the entire story. But it was fun to envision how a story like this could begin. 

Looking into 2024

I’m looking forward to 2024; a year with a nice, round number, a year four years removed from certain health-related events we would all like to forget; a year that, at this moment, is untouched by shadows. Every year, since college, has brought such life changes and unique seasons that I could never guess them all, from December to December – so for all the unknowns of 2024, I will trust what I know:

Psalm 36:7 — How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

Summer of Faerie: “Housing Problems” by AJ Vanderhorst

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Spring has fallen upon us all at once this week: gray clouds have melted into clear skies, bright green leaves have filled up the woods, and the temperatures jumped from the 50s to the 80s. For me, this Memorial Day weekend is the real beginning of summer, when lawnmowers roar to life, lilacs fill the air with sweetness, and the heat of the sun fills your winter-harrowed soul.

After enjoying several creative collaboration projects with other writers for Thanksgiving and late winter, I wanted to do something fun for this summer. I toyed with a few ideas, but finally settled on a project called Summer of Faerie that was born from my love for fantasy and fairy tales. 

For this Summer of Faerie project, I gave some fellow writers from The Habit the following prompt, inviting them to contribute: 

  • Short, prose fairy tale retellings
  • Faerie/fairy tale-themed poetry
  • Creative nonfiction about fairy tales in general

I had three suggestions for these works: 

  • Consider focusing on something other than romance.
  • Consider mythologizing your own region through this work – how can your hometown or city be just as magical as a castle on a mountain or tower in the wilderness?
  • Consider how we can meditate on the Gospel through thinking about fairy tales. G.K. Chesterton argued that “conditions” of fairy tales teach us a “The Doctrine of Conditional Joy” that parallels the truth of the Bible: “A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.” (I’m quoting his weird and wonderful essay, “The Ethics of Elfland,” in his book Orthodoxy.)

Several writer-friends responded to the challenge, and the contributions so far have dazzled me. One of the first contributors was AJ Vanderhorst, who just released an amazing novel, The Mostly Invisible Boy. Enjoy!

Housing Problems

by AJ Vanderhorst

Hands holding teeth

Two parents with too many hobbies. Two parents with four crazy, precocious boys. We overlooked the low sales price. We overlooked a lot. We were a little desperate, well, more than a little. We needed someplace big and HOA-free and durable—and fast.

The missing background didn’t bother me at first and I’m a journalist at the Kansas City Star. At least I used to be. Go on, laugh. These things have a way of creeping up on you.

The house’s previous owner, a genial, raisin-skinned gentleman who gave you the impression of holding nothing back, told us the sprawling four-story place was built in 1915. We believed him. Not that we cared, because the house was gorgeous. Dwell Magazine with vintage swagger. You felt taller just standing in the shade of its colonnades. 

By the time I got around to checking, the origin story proved impossible to verify. No records on micro-fiche. No permits at KC Planning & Development—not that they looked very hard. For a while I dug around in the basement, hoping to find old documents in a forgotten corner. Believe me, there were plenty of those. 

Forgotten corners, I mean.  

When we knocked down nonstructural walls, which happened a couple times as we got moved in, I’d scan each yellowed page of newsprint while the kids sifted dust for arrowheads and shark teeth. Nothing.

Sometimes the clue you need is staring you in the face. In this case, the clue was: nothing. Absolutely nothing. 

Plenty of dirt on everyone else though. One rabbit trail through KC history gave me an inside track on the next door neighbors. They’d been accused of witchcraft in 1740, which, reading between the lines, was code for “really big jerks we don’t want at the barbecue.” That family is still here and they’re still obnoxious and I can totally see it. 

In 1911 someone’s rooster got blasted with a shotgun and buried in concrete for crowing at 4:59 instead of 5 am. I can’t help feeling neighborhood news has become a lot less interesting.

In the more recent past, I learned how mob “Boss Tom” Pendergast got his claws in the KC Code Department—and made it so crooked that today it still can’t stop citing and snickering long enough to look you in the face. 

But I found nothing on our cavernous brick house. Only the growing feeling, as I walked its wide staircases and traced the shadows of its vaulted ceilings, that it wasn’t normal. Which was fine at first. Because downtown thought our family, with its size and irrepressibility, was pretty weird too.

I formed a theory that an exasperated realtor had pulled the 1915 date out of thin air and slapped it on his deed of sale. There were no records of the behemoth’s original use. No tales of mobs it’d outlasted with its quintuple-thick walls. No reason given for its many secret crawl spaces. The deep gouges in its irreplaceable timber floors. Or its poured concrete roof. 

At the time, my most intriguing find was a sentence from an 1875 account of Kansas City’s stockyards: “The beef barons shipped their assets on the hoof, and herds of cattle, sheep and pigs overran the West Bottoms daily. This was a stark contrast to the more exotic, costly creatures that were rumored to arrive on the riverfront under cover of darkness.”

The “news” story gave me a prickly feeling behind my eyes. The feeling was hard to pin down as it scurried along my bones. I labeled it curiosity and tried to forget it. Curiosity isn’t usually so nagging. It doesn’t usually cause you to turn on extra lights and stay up late at night. 

But the story appeared next to an ad for “MAGIC medicinal TONIC for the FORTIFICATION of boys, girls and calves.” So I felt justified in dismissing it, or trying to. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I know this was my first mistake. Snobbery toward old news—news I stupidly wrote off because I could associate it with hoaxes.

Before everything happened, people often asked me for advice (free of course) about buying and fixing up old houses. Now, as the sun hangs in the middle of the sky and cocktail hour approaches, I know what I should’ve told them:

“Yeah, remodeling physical history is a nasty beast. But let’s step back. How old is the place? Is it too big? Just…Way. Too. Big? In a strange Hitchcockian way that gnaws at you slowly, offending your sense of proportion? Are there too many fireplaces? Do the quiet, twisting hallways send centipedes down your spine?”

That’s all the free advice I’d offer. But if they could afford to pay me for my time…and my scars…and my abrupt career change, I’d say:

Dragons. It just might be dragons. So point me in their direction and get out of the way. 

Business card for a Dragon Agency

AJ Vanderhorst

AJ Vanderhorst is a husband, dad and author who loves barbecue, as do all right-thinking people. His relationship with monsters is long and complicated. Visit him online at ajvanderhorst.com.