This post is linked to Wordless Wednesday.

At first, I thought I would. It seemed to promise a systematic look at fantasy stories. But ultimately  A Landscape with Dragons is too alarmist for me. O’Brien makes lots of sweeping claims about the decay of children’s literature and the collapse of culture, and his prescription for parents is vigilance. He offers a scale by which Christian parents should preview our children’s books:

• Material that is entirely good*.
• Material that is fundamentally good but flawed in some details.
• Material that appears good on the surface but is fundamentally flawed.
• Material that is blatantly evil, rotten to the core.

(*Note: “Good” is a moral category in this scale, not a literary one.) O’Brien offers his own “analysis” of a wide array of children’s books and movies. There is more plot summary than analysis, and the analysis is primarily aimed at raising the alarm that this or that book contains disturbing “symbol inversion.” Here are a few samples of the tone:

[These films'] impact must be understood in the context of the much larger movement that is inverting the symbol-life that grew from the Judeo-Christian revelation… This is an anti-culture pouring in to take its place.

In the new juvenile literature there is a relentless preoccupation with spiritual powers, with the occult, with perceptions of good and evil that are almost always blurred and at times downright inverted. At least in the old days dragons looked and acted like dragons.

The loss of our world of symbols is a result of a deliberate attack upon truth, and this loss is occurring with astonishing rapidity. On practically every level of culture, good is no longer represented as good but rather as a prejudice held by a limited religious system (Christianity). Neither is evil any longer presented as evil in the way we once understood it.

There is, probably, some truth in O’Brien’s observations. Certainly I found myself nodding in agreement with some passages. What alienates me are the extremist terms, the sweeping scope, and the nostalgia he offers as an appraisal category. It sounds more like what Wendell Berry calls the “‘ain’t it awful’ conversation.” I find it hard to take seriously.

What seems most troubling to O’Brien is the fact that the meanings attributed to symbols slip and slide. It’s not so much that evil things, like murder, are now being seen as good. It’s that the symbols are changing, and this to O’Brien is dangerous. For instance, as the title indicates, one of the symbols he discusses is dragons, and the fact that there are a number of friendly dragons that have surfaced in literature. If the dragons went on being destroyers and thieves and murderers, and were still presented as heroes, I’d be concerned. But they’re not. The “friendly dragons” in the books I know of are, well, friendly — not greedy or murdering.

This isn’t a problem for me, but it is for O’Brien, who thinks a dangerous cultural incoherence is happening: “The purpose of dragons in literature, and of the fascination children have for them, is to arm the soul with an ever-developing discernment of spirits.” However, he writes,

Something is happening in modern culture that is unprecedented in human history. At the same time that the skills of the mind, especially the power of discernment, are weakened, many of the symbols of the Western world are being turned topsy-turvy.

I’m not sure what to do with that. “Unprecedented in human history” always provokes my skepticism. Also, the emphasis seems off-center… Symbols are mere signs of some invisible reality. They, like all signs including words, can evolve over time. Languages are always changing. Why is it so scary that certain symbols may be used differently in different eras — as long as the notions of good and evil aren’t changing?

For Christians, it’s worthwhile to think of how Jesus was not recognized by some because he came in a package they didn’t expect. I think we need to be cautious about how much uniformity we demand of literary “packaging.” It’s not that I’m casual about the absoluteness of scriptural teachings. But I don’t see why we need to insist that they must always be packaged in the same literary trappings for all time.

Really, no one gets off without a grim shake of the head in this book. George MacDonald is too universal. Madeleine L’Engle is classed as a “neo-pagan.” That Hideous Strength is brilliant, but then Lewis has to go and put Merlin in there — how confusing for children! (As if it’s a children’s book…) This was written before the vampire craze, which I’ve steered utterly away from, and the Harry Potter craze, which I tasted and found wanting. Surely they’d make out poorly in these pages too.

And maybe there is something worthwhile accomplished through this kind of dissecting and labeling. But I just seem to take a more relaxed approach. I know there is something in almost every book to make you think, “That’s not right…” Isn’t that one way books are like life? They can provide insight into profound truths, but they also force you to think and reconcile. There are things I am doing to prepare my children to read well (see last few paragraphs). But pre-reading, and trashing, every story they pick up isn’t the way I’m going to go about it.

O’Brien writes, “A child’s hunger for literature (visual or printed) is his quest for a ‘more real world’. He needs to know what is truly heroic in simple, memorable terms. He needs to see the hidden foundations of the world before the complexities and nuances of the modern mind come flooding in to overwhelm his perceptions.” I would agree with this, actually, and I wouldn’t propose dishing up moral confusion for my children’s pleasure reading. I believe in laying a good foundation.

But how to go about it? There is something too grim, and frankly, too fearful, about O’Brien’s approach. If we believe God has created us in his image, with an inherent restless desire for Truth and for reconciliation with him, what is O’Brien so scared of? I don’t buy the notion that my role as a parent is to hide from my children all books that don’t match my worldview. But I do believe there are stages of maturity, stages of readiness for processing certain aspects of experience.

O’Brien’s book reinforces what most of us probably already know: there are plenty of problematic books out there. I don’t really feel reading this has helped me to know how to deal with that. All I know is that I want to cultivate open lines of communication so the kids can bring me the things that disturb them in what they read. I want them to have a foundation of good stories, which I’m trying to lay in these years when I have more control over their reading. And I want to make sure that they have a solid foundation in biblical stories and concepts against which to measure what they read or hear elsewhere. Beyond that, I still don’t really have a plan.

Meantime, I aspire to be like Corrie Ten Boom’s father in The Hiding Place, who responds to the young Corrie’s questions one day about “sexsin” this way:

He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads, and set it on the floor.

“Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?” he said.

I stood up and tugged at it… “It’s too heavy,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.”

So there it is, an amazingly too-long, and perhaps not terribly coherent, book engagement. As is now obvious, this book got me thinking about lots of different things. Some of it I really liked. But the panicky tone eventually prevented me from absorbing it very fully. The next book on my list will, hopefully, provide an interesting contrast to this one, as it’s about how to read “Christianly” — how to read with love, and not just how to “murder to dissect.”

This is way too long, but still, I want to conclude with a passage from A Landscape with Dragons that I really liked. It concerns the value of reading, and of the detachment it provides. Better to end on a more positive note, in the hope that someone else may read this book and share their thoughts:

Most of us do not learn about the nature of reality through theology, philosophy, or higher mathematics. But all of us readily grasp the language of parable drawn from the universal human story. The forms may be dressed in elaborate costumes and enact impossible dramas, but they enable the lover of tales to step outside of himself for a brief time to gaze upon his own disguised world. What is the value of this temporary detachment? It is an imaginative withdrawal from the tyranny of the immediate, the flood of words and sensory images that often overwhelm (and just as often limit) our understanding of the real world. A rare objectivity and insight can be imparted regarding this world’s struggle for spiritual integrity.

Different stories lately have left me aware of “good witches” and “wicked witches” in fairy tales, and I haven’t thought through how it relates to my worldview. I think of stories as telling truths in disguise, so “It’s just a story” doesn’t cut it — in fact, it undercuts the real power that stories have.

Michael O’Brien argues that “good magic,” for the Christian reader, corresponds to the work of the Holy Spirit, “bad magic” to that of Satan. He writes,

Magic has been used traditionally in fairy stories to give visible form to the invisible spiritual powers. But a crucial distinction must be made between the use of ‘good magic’ and ‘bad magic’ as they appear in fairy stories, because for us in the real world, there is no such thing as good magic, only prayer, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and abandonment to divine providence. ‘Good magic’ in fairy stories represents these very realities, symbolizing the intervention of God in the lives of good men put to the test. It is actually a metaphor for grace and miracle, the suspension of natural law through an act of spiritual authority, culminating in a reinforced moral order.

Bad magic in traditional stories represents the evil power that the wicked use in order to grasp at what does not rightly belong to them — whether worldly power, wealth, or even love…

This is food for thought that rings true to me, whether I think of The White Witch (Goudge), The Wizard of Oz (Baum), LOTR (Tolkien), Narnia (Lewis)…

What do you think?

“Who did that?” he demanded.

“Ben, my oldest boy,” said Nadine…

“It’s damn good,” said John Adair, almost with violence.

“But the drawing –”

“Faulty, of course, he’s had no teaching. But he’s got it — the light.”

It’s a conversation between artist John Adair and Nadine Eliot, returning in this second book of the trilogy Elizabeth Goudge began with The Bird In the Tree. They are discussing a painting of her son Ben Eliot’s, but they could just as accurately be discussing Pilgrim’s Inn, for in some ways it’s a flawed book.

The characters are way too smart and perceptive to be at all “realistic.” Instead of taking place in the world I live in, where people misunderstand a look, a gesture, even an overt statement, this tale takes place in a superhuman dimension of highly aware and well-read people, well-versed in classic paintings and acting and literature, quoting Shakespeare to one another. Worse, it seems obvious that Goudge couldn’t figure out how to get her story across without intruding her narrative on her characters. At times, they seem like mere puppets voicing beautiful but implausible speeches to one another.

Yet as John Adair says of Ben, “She’s got it — the light.” Despite its technical weaknesses, it develops an imaginative and spiritual vision that’s deeply nourishing. Goudge tells a story in her autobiography of a similar experience in an art class where she had painted a flawed picture, but one the teacher held up as an example of sure inspiration; it captured the feel of faerie, he explained. This book captures the feel of a corner of the world rich in history and redemptive power. I loved it.

At the center of the tale is George and Nadine Eliot’s purchase of the Herb of Grace, an ancient pilgrim’s inn (or maison dieu) in which people used to stay when they came on pilgrimages to the nearby monastery. It’s a story about getting to the heart of things, be they marital failures or nervous breakdowns or artistic technique or traumatic pasts. Everyone in this novel is broken or wounded and in need of healing in some way, and they find it while at the Herb of Grace.

Like other Goudge stories, in this one getting to the heart of human problems is intertwined with getting to the heart of architecture. The richness of the past flowing through to the present as a redemptive force is made most literal in the uncovering of the Herb of Grace’s history, where we learn the source of the mysterious but unmistakable spirit of graciousness, safety, and welcome it extends to all who come there. The 16th-century origin of the building, and the tales about its original Cistercian host, are traced in various physical artifacts and places rich in meaning that the Eliots discover in their first months there. At the heart of the house is a chapel, a symbol of consecration and love, that renders in architecture what must happen in the hearts of those who come there if they are to find new life.

Elizabeth Goudge hasn’t yet failed to evoke places I desperately wish I could visit. Her descriptions seem to hit a nerve in me, perhaps because they awaken a certain nostalgia and yearning, and perhaps because they are unabashedly spiritual. There are no places that are merely physical, no times consisting merely of the present, and no people who exist without reference or connection to others. Goudge acknowledges the dark aspects of this fallen world, but reinforces the hope that there is more in it than meets the eye — enough to satisfy the deepest longings of the heart.

Even though it’s usually a mistake (grin) … do movies made out of books make you want to read the original?

**********

Short answer: no. I can think of some movies I’ve seen before I read the books — or before I even knew there was a book: Alice in Wonderland, The Yearling, The Wizard of Oz. Then when I was older: A Room with a View, The Remains of the Day, The Children of Men. But it’s not like I watched the movies and thought, “Oh, I’ve GOT to read this!”

Ironically, the only movie I did have that response to — “I would really love to read the book this is based on” –I haven’t gotten around to yet: Freedom Writers.

Probably I’ll go read some other responses, and it will jog my memory and remind me of book/movie combos I’m forgetting. But for now, this is my answer.

A few thoughts on audiobooks: I have mixed feelings about them, but it’s heartening to see that they do not replace reading. The girls have listened to The Silver Chair before, yet they want to hear it again. Older Daughter can’t really abide the slow pace of a chapter or two a night; she has to take it to bed and read ahead. She doesn’t mind hearing it again the next night — in fact, she wants to. So maybe the audiobooks have ignited a hunger for stories in a way that doesn’t replace independent reading, but inspires it.

One more observation. I have tried to read The Hobbit aloud before and failed dismally. It’s one of those books I can read alone, but I don’t seem to have the patience to read it aloud. (This is regarded as a major character failing by my oldest.) I was excited to find an audiobook version at the library, and it has been playing around here for the last few days, to everyone’s delight. Listening, I realize that there are a few distinct advantages:

• I’m learning that the best reading is unhurried. Maybe it’s because it’s at bedtime, but I tend to speed-read when I’m reading to the girls. How much more the magic unfolds when this reader takes his time!
• Professional readers do the voices fabulously. I have a repertoire of maybe three voices, and I tend to forget which voice belongs to which character.
• This reader does all the songs. I can do Frances the Badger’s songs, but I’d never have the patience for Bilbo Baggins’s!
• Audiobooks never tire. I do. Especially if I’m reading after lunch or in the evening. My mind starts to get fuzzy, and I’ll start “reading” lines that aren’t there. “What??” Older Daughter will ask sharply. Hallelujah for the cd player that never lapses into dreamland with its eyes open.

Last but not least, I wrote about our viewing of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I haven’t shared our experience of the second movie. My 9-year-old and 6-year-old daughters and I watched it together a few weeks ago.

Once again, the girls surprised me by sticking with it almost all the way through. They left during the spooky scene where Nikabrik and Caspian conjure the witch. I was just as glad.

Older Daughter said that one of her favorite parts was when the eagle lifted the sentry off the roof of Miraz’s castle and put Edmund down in his place. She also liked the battle. I’m pretty sure Younger Daughter liked Reepicheep the best. Every time he appeared, she chuckled affectionately. She has a tender heart and cried a little at the beginning, when the Pevensies figure out that they’re in a decayed Cair Paravel.

I always find the mythical animals disappointing in the movies, but the girls really like them. “Now I can picture centaurs,” Older Daughter explained. It bothers me that the centaurs can’t seem to run… They do everything in slow motion, and have strange faces and accents. But the kids didn’t notice any of these things.

The whole talking animals thing inspired hours of play afterward, starting that evening. One daughter, seized with the excitement and conflict of the movie battle, crept up on the hamster cage and then, suddenly, reached up her finger and tapped it in the hope of startling the hamster. Boy did it ever work. She was quite repentent when the hamster let out a sustained shriek of terror.

So there you have it. Our first hamster shriek. Is that a measure of a good movie, or what?

I’m having a hard time with the fact that school starts next week. It’s going to be difficult to make the transition from these fantasy lands back to ancient Egypt…

As far back as I can remember, I loved Jesus. My mother and I prayed by my bedside each night, and I had a consciousness of God as a loving father. I knew Jesus as my friend. When I sinned, I asked God to forgive me. It was a very natural walk of faith.

In Sunday school one day, I learned that if you didn’t “ask Jesus into your heart,” you went to hell. I had never done this, but I didn’t feel panic. I felt embarrassment. Here my friend was waiting for an invitation, and I had been rude unawares! So I “prayed the prayer,” said the words, “asked him into my heart.”

Wasn’t he already there?

I’m not so sure the formula was necessary. But I’m sure it was damaging in some ways. For several years after that, whenever there was an altar call, I would go to the altar and say the prayer again — just to make sure. It was fear-driven. Why? Because being presented with a necessary formula suggested to me that this whole “relationship with Jesus” thing was complicated. It had hidden rules. I’d thought the Lord and I were walking in friendship together; I’d believed in his love for me, and mine for him — but I’d been mistaken. There was a secret password that had needed to be said. Maybe there were others lurking somewhere.

That sense tends to hang with me still. I wonder if I’m the only one. Anyone who looks at the Bible as a goldmine of secrets has a vestige of the same attitude…

Recently my husband invited me to listen with him to a sermon on the prodigal son. It was good teaching, but I was struck by the contrast between the way we use that story, and the way it was when Jesus first presented it. We excavate it, dissecting it for its underlying meaning. Jesus simply told it, a story on a hillside about the extravagant love of God.

Without offense to the art of preaching, and readily acknowledging that I like a good expository sermon, I have to ask whether this approach takes us closer to the heart of God — or farther away. Sometimes I wonder whether if we just gathered and read the Word together, without extracting concepts from it, its power might be more fully released in our lives. When asked why he told stories, Jesus didn’t answer, “So that they can be subjected to analysis.” He answered,

“The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. ¹²Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. ¹³This is why I speak to them in parables:
“Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand. ¹⁴In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
” ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
¹⁵For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’ ¹⁶But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. ¹⁷For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

I think that Jesus is suggesting here that stories are his optimal form because they are suggestive, not expository. It’s kind of puzzling, but there it is again: “the secrets of the kingdom.” That’s what I complained about earlier in this post. But he’s not talking about secret passwords. He’s talking about truth that transcends a fallen understanding. Those whose hearts are seeking can apprehend the truth they’re looking for. He’s avoiding giving people scripts and formulas and analyses because the “secrets of the kingdom” — God’s way of seeing things — can’t be reduced to that form. He uses stories instead.

I think that as a pre-analytical child I was attuned to “the secrets of the kingdom.” In some ways my whole church experience has subtly invalidated that un-formulaic kind of spiritual life. (I say “church experience” because it distributes the responsibility between me and the church.)

We learn to walk and talk and breathe not by reading books about it — not by appeals to the mind — but by having something innate called forth by desire. We want to move. We want to communicate. We want to live. Shouldn’t spiritual life resemble physical life in this sense? We are given the new life not by saying a formula, but by having our innate love for God called forth by desire — by a glimpse of Him, shimmering in the stories of His Word, shimmering in the eyes of His children, shimmering in the glory of His world. We don’t spend the rest of our lives reading books about walking and talking and breathing. We just do these things, and gain more skill the more we do them.

I have a great heritage and lots of great saints and praying people God has put in my path. But I have to wonder how I might be different today if my story didn’t have that chapter about learning the formula in Sunday school. My heart already belonged to God. If that had been confirmed, I wonder if my faith today would be more natural and vital. I wonder if I would have grown in a different direction, more straight and true, more confident of God’s love for me, less plagued by the self-conscious feeling that I have to make sure I’m “correct.”

I wonder if it’s too late to get back to it… or forward into it… or… something.

Here goes:

He spoke of Moonwood the Hare who had such ears that he could sit by Caldron Pool under the thunder of the great waterfall and hear what men spoke in whispers at Cair Paravel.

It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is ’soporific.’

I have never felt sleepy after eating lettuces; but then I am not a rabbit.

Peter Rabbit! Peter Rabbit! I don’t see what Mother Nature ever gave me such a common-sounding name as that for.

In the great green room, there was a telephone… and a red balloon… and a picture of… the cow jumping over the moon.

He was fat and bunchy, just as a rabbit should be; his coat was brown and white and very soft.

Once, in a house on Egypt Street, there lived a rabbit who was made almost entirely of china.

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away.

He was going to find a home of his own; a home for a bunny, a home of his own, under a rock, under a stone, under a log, or under the ground…

These last two are more obscure:

Everybody is bigger than I am. My mother. My father. My father is enormous. A robin is bigger than I am. A cabbage is bigger than I am. So is a tree. But I’m almost as big as a carrot.

“Wait, Rabbit!” said Skunk. But Rabbit ran fast down the road. “Wait, Rabbit. Rocks can’t make noises,” said Skunk.

“That rock did,” said Rabbit.

That about does it. Hop on over to Stray Thoughts to see what others are posting. I’ll be glad to clear up any mysteries about the origin of these a little later.

• There’s an interview with Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, here. It’s interesting not just as an overview of the book, but for the tone of the interviewer, who characterizes Carr as “worried.” (What’s most striking about the book is that its tone is not “worried,” though the content of the book may — should? — be worrying to readers unacquainted with the subject.)
• My pastor sent me the link to this Wall Street Journal article: “The Perils of Wannabe Cool Christianity.” It paints with a broad brush, and as my pastor noted it uses some “shock tactics” to make its point. But it is a thought-provoking bit of perspective on what my brother has called “The Hip Church.” I tend to agree, in the main, with the argument that the evangelical church is making a big mistake by stressing “packaging” to the point of changing the gospel. (I’ve even written about it before in posts like this, this, and this.)
• This New York Times article is about what it terms “velcro parents” — parents who have a hard time detaching from their children when they take them to college. Colleges are instituting practices that gently give parents the boot during freshman orientation. Parents need to detach, obviously. But I think the same mythology that exists about public school — that it’s “preparation for real life” — exists about the college campus, and it really fits neither setting. Unless college freshmen are picking up the tab themselves, it’s still a very sheltered experience. At Walmart last week, there was a big banner up that read, “Students, declare your financial independence!” It was an inducement to open a charge account with some entity or other. Unless students truly are “financially independent” — and therefore mature in the ways necessary to meet those obligations — I think they’re probably better off under the thumb of parents who love them than corporations who exploit them. No, that doesn’t mean parents should hang around and attend classes with their kids, like some of those in the article. But I’m a bit skeptical of the altruism of the university, too. So I’m still mulling this one.

Older Daughter took the video.

Did I mention that there was giggling?

Music to my ears.