In
response to requests for additional resources and information I have opened
the Hollywood Jesus store.
-David Bruce
POP CULTURE FROM A SPIRITUAL
POINT OF VIEW
MYTH
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"Lilith is
equal if not superior to the best of Poe," the great 20th-century poet
W.H. Auden said of this novel, but the comparison only begins to touch
on the richness, density, and wonder of this late 19th-century adult fantasy
novel. First published in 1895 (inhabiting a universe with the early Yeats,
George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde--not to mention Thomas Hardy), this
is the story of the aptly named Mr. Vane, his magical house, and the journeys
into another world into which it leads him. Meeting up with one mystery
after another, including Adam and Eve themselves, he slowly but surely
explores the mystery of the human fall from grace, and of our redemption.
Instructed into the ways of seeing the deeper realities of this world--seeing,
in a sense, by the light of the spirit--the reader and Mr. Vane both sense
that MacDonald writes from his own deep experience of radiance, from a
bliss so profound that death's darkness itself is utterly eclipsed in
its light.
"I was dead,
and right content," the narrator says in the penultimate chapter of Phantastes.
C.S. Lewis said that upon reading this astonishing 19th-century fairy
tale he "had crossed a great frontier," and numerous others both before
and since have felt similarly. In MacDonald's fairy tales, both those
for children and (like this one) those for adults, the "fairy land" clearly
represents the spiritual world, or our own world revealed in all of its
depth and meaning. At times almost forthrightly allegorical, at other
times richly dreamlike (and indeed having a close connection to the symbolic
world of dreams), this story of a young man who finds himself on a long
journey through a land of fantasy is more truly the story of the spiritual
quest that is at the core of his life's work, a quest that must end with
the ultimate surrender of the self. The glory of MacDonald's work is that
this surrender is both hard won (or lost!) and yet rippling with joy when
at last experienced. As the narrator says of a heavenly woman in this
tale, "She knew something too good to be told." One senses the same of
the author himself.
George MacDonald
occupied a major position in the intellectual life of his Victorian contemporaries,
and his dazzling fairy tales earned him the admiration of such twentieth-century
writers as C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and W. H. Auden. Employing paradox,
play, and nonsense, like Lewis Carroll's Alice books, MacDonald's fairy
tales offer an elusive yet meaningful alternative order to the dubious
certitudes of everyday life. The Complete Fairy Tales brings together
all eleven of George MacDonald's shorter fairy tales, including "The Light
Princess" and "The Golden Key," as well as his essay "The Fantastic Imagination."
The subjects are those of traditional fantasy: fairies good and wicked,
children embarking on elaborate quests, journeys into unsettling dreamworlds,
life-risking labors undertaken. Though they allude to familiar tales such
as "Sleeping Beauty" and "Jack the Giant-Killer," MacDonald's stories
are profoundly experimental and subversive. By questioning the concept
that a childhood associated with purity, innocence, and fairy-tale "wonder"
ought to be segregated from adult skepticism and disbelief, they invite
adult readers to adopt the same elasticity and openmindedness that come
so naturally to a child. "I have never concealed the fact that I regarded
him as my master . . . The quality that had enchanted me in his imaginative
works turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical,
terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live." --C. S. Lewis
As always
with George MacDonald, everything here is more than meets the eye: this
in fact is MacDonald's grace-filled vision of the world. Said to be one
of J.R.R. Tolkien's childhood favorites, The Princess and the Goblin is
the story of the young Princess Irene, her good friend Curdie--a minor's
son--and Irene's mysterious and beautiful great great grandmother, who
lives in a secret room at the top of the castle stairs. Filled with images
of dungeons and goblins, mysterious fires, burning roses, and a thread
so fine as to be invisible and yet--like prayer--strong enough to lead
the Princess back home to her grandmother's arms, this is a story of Curdie's
slow realization that sometimes, as the princess tells him, "you must
believe without seeing." Simple enough for reading aloud to a child (as
I've done myself more than once with my daughter), it's rich enough to
repay endless delighted readings for the adult.
The
Chronicles of Narnia
BOXED SET: The Magician's Nephew; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe;
The Horse and His Boy; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader;
The Silver Chair; and The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis, Pauline Baynes (Illustrator)
The Chronicles
of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, is one of the very few sets of books that should
be read three times: in childhood, early adulthood, and late in life.
In brief, four children travel repeatedly to a world in which they are
far more than mere children and everything is far more than it seems.
Richly told, populated with fascinating characters, perfectly realized
in detail of world and pacing of plot, and profoundly allegorical, the
story is infused throughout with the timeless issues of good and evil,
faith and hope. This boxed set edition includes all seven volumes.
All together
in one beautiful 3 volume set are C.S. Lewis' "Out Of The Silent Planet",
"Perelandra", and "That Hideous Strength.
In the first
trip (to Mars) or Thulcandra, for example, Lewis includes a sharp and
insightful criticism of 19th and early 20th Century British Imperialism
(and materialism) through the character of a professor who has kidnapped
the hero (Ransom) in the mistaken belief that the "god" of Thulcandra
demands a human sacrifice. In the second book (Perelandra), Lewis explores
the nature of temptation and morality through the idea of a "New Eden"
on the planet Venus. At the end of the book, Lewis includes a rapturous
passage that sounds as if it were written by a medieval mystic, in which
the nature of the universe and God is explored in what is almost a hymn-like
passage. Whenever In the third installment of the series (That Hideous
Strength), Lewis brings us back to Earth and a modern morality myth, in
which a man's desire to "belong" or "fit in" is used to gradually corrupt
him and draw him into a modern evil organization.
The novel
takes place in the times of ancient Greece, when myths are still being
made, and it is interesting just to see the myth of Cupid and Psyche from
another's point of view, Psyche's older sister Orual --especially the
angry shock when she finds out how much the "true" story has been altered
by the tellers of tales. It is also interesting to see how the gods themselves
-- in this case, Aphrodite -- exist in all cultures but have different
forms, and the beautiful goddess of the Greeks can be the vengeful hag
of Orual's people. The myth structure is used to explore a number of themes:
the nature of love, the nature of the gods, and the personal journey every
person must make. Besides all this, though, there are two things that
surprised me most of all: the main character, Orual, is multi-dimensional,
and very female (even though her circumstances are different from most
women). Whether you like her actions or not, you understand them, and
you find yourself sympathizing with her even when she is being greedy
or selfish. The other characters are interesting, too. The other thing
is the way that Lewis masterfully combines the elements of myth and the
ancient, polytheistic religion, and brings them to very Christian revelations.
But if whether you are a Christian or not, you will still be moved by
Orual's discoveries at the strangely satisfying ending.
Hobbits and
wizards and Sauron--oh, my! Mild-mannered Oxford scholar John Ronald Reuel
Tolkien had little inkling when he published The Hobbit; Or, There and
Back Again in 1937 that, once hobbits were unleashed upon the world, there
would be no turning back. Hobbits are, of course, small, furry creatures
who love nothing better than a leisurely life quite free from adventure.
But in that first novel and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the hobbits
Bilbo and Frodo and their elfish friends get swept up into a mighty conflict
with the dragon Smaug, the dark lord Sauron (who owes much to proud Satan
in Paradise Lost), the monstrous Gollum, the Cracks of Doom, and the awful
power of the magical Ring. The four books' characters--good and evil--are
recognizably human, and the realism is deepened by the magnificent detail
of the vast parallel world Tolkien devised, inspired partly by his influential
Anglo-Saxon scholarship and his Christian beliefs. (He disapproved of
the relative sparseness of detail in the comparable allegorical fantasy
his friend C.S. Lewis dreamed up in The Chronicles of Narnia, though he
knew Lewis had spun a page-turning yarn.) It has been estimated that one-tenth
of all paperbacks sold can trace their ancestry to J.R.R. Tolkien. But
even if we had never gotten Robert Jordan's The Path of Daggers and the
whole fantasy genre Tolkien inadvertently created by bringing the hobbits
so richly to life, Tolkien's epic about the Ring would have left our world
enhanced by enchantment.
The
Lord of the Rings
(Illustrated Edition)
by J. R. R. Tolkien, Alan Lee (Illustrator)
A Christian
can almost be forgiven for not reading the Bible, but there's no salvation
for a fantasy fan who hasn't read the gospel of the genre, J.R.R. Tolkien's
definitive three-book epic, the Lord of the Rings (encompassing The Fellowship
of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King), and its charming
precursor, The Hobbit. That many (if not most) fantasy works are in some
way derivative of Tolkien is understood, but the influence of the Lord
of the Rings is so universal that everybody from George Lucas to Led Zeppelin
has appropriated it for one purpose or another. Not just revolutionary
because it was groundbreaking, the Lord of the Rings is timeless because
it's the product of a truly top-shelf mind. Tolkien was a distinguished
linguist and Oxford scholar of dead languages, with strong ideas about
the importance of myth and story and a deep appreciation of nature. His
epic, 10 years in the making, recounts the Great War of the Ring and the
closing of Middle-Earth's Third Age, a time when magic begins to fade
from the world and men rise to dominance. Tolkien carefully details this
transition with tremendous skill and love, creating in the Lord of the
Rings a universal and all-embracing tale, a justly celebrated classic.
The
Silmarillion
by J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (Editor)
The
Silmarillion is J.R.R. Tolkien's tragic, operatic history of the First
Age of Middle-Earth, essential background material for serious readers
of the classic Lord of the Rings saga. Tolkien's work sets the standard
for fantasy, and this audio version of the "Bible of Middle-Earth" does
The Silmarillion justice. Martin Shaw's reading is grave and resonant,
conveying all the powerful events and emotions that shaped elven and human
history long before Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf and all the rest embarked on
their quests. Beginning with the Music of the Ainur, The Silmarillion
tells a tale of the Elder Days, when Elves and Men became estranged by
the Dark Lord Morgoth's lust for the Silmarils, pure and powerful magic
jewels. Even the love between a human warrior and the daughter of the
Elven king cannot defeat Morgoth, but the War of Wrath finally brings
down the Dark Lord. Peace reigns until the evil Sauron recovers the Rings
of Power and sets the stage for the events told in the Lord of the Rings.
This is epic fantasy at its finest, thrillingly read and gloriously unabridged.
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Phantastes
