shookfoil

I am preparing for a sermon I am to give this Sunday on imagination and faith and their opposite, cynicism. As part of my preparation I was reading J.R.R. Tolkien's "On Fairy-stories" and came across the following passage. I love the image and its meaning invoked by the "Mooreeefoc" story. It conveys precisely what I hope to this Sunday when I preach on seeing the world made new by seeing the world and its story through the eyes of faith. And it conveys also precisely how I felt when reading Marilynn Robinson's book Gilead; she helped me to see the ordinary world around me as charged with meaning. In a sense, she and Tolkien and the Scriptures, of course, together have challenged me of late to see the world sacramentally. And that is to have one's vision of it renewed.
So I thought this post might happily tie together the previous post and the next to come after my sermon. Tolkien begins by addressing the antidote to a cynicism that results from loss.

Of course, fairy-stories are not the only means of recovery, or prophylactic against loss. Humility is enough. And there is (especially for the humble) Mooreeffoc, or Chestertonian Fantasy. Mooreeffoc is a fantastic word, but it could be seen written up in every town in this land. It is Coffee-room, viewed from the inside through a glass door, as it was seen by Dickens on a dark London day; and it was used by Chesterton to denote the queerness of things that have become trite, when they are seen suddenly from a new angle. That kind of “fantasy” most people would allow to be wholesome enough; and it can never lack for material. But it has, I think, only a limited power; for the reason that recovery of freshness of vision is its only virtue. The word Mooreeffoc may cause you suddenly to realize that England is an utterly alien land, lost either in some remote past age glimpsed by history, or in some strange dim future to be reached only by a time-machine; to see the amazing oddity and interest of its inhabitants and their customs and feeding-habits; but it cannot do more than that: act as a time-telescope focused on one spot. Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else (make something new), may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds. The gems all turn into flowers or flames, and you will be warned that all you had (or knew) was dangerous and potent, not really effectively chained, free and wild; no more yours than they were you.

The “fantastic” elements in verse and prose of other kinds, even when only decorative or occasional, help in this release. But not so thoroughly as a fairy-story, a thing built on or about Fantasy, of which Fantasy is the core. Fantasy is made out of the Primary World, but a good craftsman loves his material, and has a knowledge and feeling for clay, stone and wood which only the art of making can give. By the forging of Gram cold iron was revealed; by the making of Pegasus horses were ennobled; in the Trees of the Sun and Moon root and stock, flower and fruit are manifested in glory.

And actually fairy-stories deal largely, or (the better ones) mainly, with simple or fundamental things, untouched by Fantasy, but these simplicities are made all the more luminous by their setting. For the story-maker who allows himself to be “free with” Nature can be her lover not her slave. It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.

Within the first few days of my arrival to Bainbridge Island I was invited by a contingency of lay members here at the church to take the ferry over to the city in order to hear a lecture by Anglican Bishop, Biblical scholar, and first-century historian N.T. Wright. The lecture was being delivered at Seattle Pacific University and was part of a series entitled something like "The Gospel and Contemporary Culture." We got there early, which turned out to be fortuitous, since by the time the lecture was to begin the audience filled the room to beyond capacity. Officials had to set up speakers in the spacious foyer for the overflow. This Bishop was beginning to seem more and more like some English rock star. I was a little bit disappointed to see that I was not at the next evening's lecture, which was to be: "God, the tsunami, and 9/11: the new problem of evil." Instead I was treated to a voice joining the conservative chorus of those seeking to debunk Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, not a topic I care too much about. But on that note Wright was more than up to the challenge; I doubt many other debunkers have quite the credentials and scholarly ability of Bishop Wright. He thoroughly demolished the historical and literary offenses (amongst many others) of Dan Brown's work. Perhaps the most interesting and unique contribution of Wright to this topic, however, was his treatment The Da Vinci Code as a "lightning rod." Wright contended that Dan Brown did not start a zeitgeist, rather he gathered to a flashpoint those energies and philosophies already embedded in Western culture, mainly having to do with neo-Gnosticism. So Wright jumped off that platform and engaged in a thorough diagnosis and critique of modern culture based on the popularity and inner-workings of The Da Vinci Code. I thought it might be helpful to write about this now since this lecture has recently been posted and you can find it here. (Once you open the pdf you'll have to scroll down to page 22.)