Deceptive stories

Being realistic is not opposed to taking flights of fancy. Which is why fairy stories and fantasy aren't a bad thing for children (or, I dare say, for adults).

C S Lewis: ...what profess to be realistic stories for children are far more likely to deceive them. I never expected the real world to be like the fairy tales. I think that I did expect school to be like the school stories. The fantasies did not deceive me: the school stories did. All stories in which children have adventures and successes which are possible, in the sense that they do not break the laws of nature, but almost infinitely improbable, are in more danger than the fairy tales of raising false expectations.

Which says, more eloquently than I, what I was trying to express in Fairy Tales and myth. And gives some indication of why I much prefer telling kids stories of dragons and wild things, than reading stories of children going to school.

An excellent creative writer, N D Wilson, is quoted by his father (also a writer!) on these things, on Justin Taylor's blog here. Well worth the read. Wilson's Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World is excellent to enjoy in morsels - a lot at one time could leave your head spinning!

Fairy tales

I'm in love with fairy tales. [Not like this - but I couldn't resist.] No, C S Lewis and others taught me to delight in fairy tales, and not think it childish. In fact, it often seems more serious. Here's an article with brilliant quotes from Lewis - on 'Three Objections to Fairy Tales and C S Lewis' response' from a series, 'Live like a Narnian'.

The Man born to be King

Dorothy Sayers' radio plays on the life of Christ, are currently being played on BBC radio 4 extra - an interpretation of the Scriptural gospels, a creative account. I don't really know why it was so controversial when first broadcast; I'm delighted to hear something so strongly based on the Biblical narrative. 

Herod: 'You cannot rule men by love. When you find your King, tell him so. Only three things will govern a people: fear, and greed, and the promise of security. ... Wherever I love, I find treachery. Love is a traitor, it betrays all kings. It will betray your Christ.'

The first episode is available until Tuesday 26th April: Kings in Judea.

Quote of the day: passionate voices

This little man in dirty clothes, surrounded by fishermen and whores – if he is the Son of David who has come to deliver God’s people, then God help us all: he could not raise an army if he tried. God bless this man indeed, he is destined for the cross: listen to me – the words of this song will be the pathway to his grave and the crowd that loves him now will run from him as soon as they see he offers them nothing that they want. 

[Read more, by Andy Shudall]

Story maths

Because I owe to my Mum a love of stories, and a love of maths, and the eyes to see that they really are quite connected:

[Thanks, xkcd]

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Send for the bard!

An earlier thought scribbled before 'Write the songs':

We need bards, in every generation. Singer-songwriters, poets, those who write novels for children: those who give voice to history so give the present identity. We need the kind of ballads a whole family can rip through on a long car journey, and the anthems a rugby crowd can bawl during a match. We need the stories which can be myths of identity: those which give a deeper, older, more communal sense of being than that of an individual composition of organic matter.

We don't have to see these stories as fact. But it seems a sad loss to me, that while I grew up with Odin, Zeus, Prosperine, Hercules, Mount Olympus, Valhalla, Sigfried, Odydius, the Minotaur, Icarus, Helen, Midas, and all of C.S.Lewis' more recent explorations of gods, myth and mediaeval cosmology, most children now will have lost those. I don't think they were true; they did represent that we live in a meaning-drenched universe.

[Inspired by: Bob Dylan, Martyn Joseph, a rawkous and fast family rendition of 'The Rattlin' Bog' en route to Aberdeen, the strength of The Fields o Athenry during the Eng-Ire game in Dublin, Chronicles of Narnia, the Cosmic Trilogy, & 'Til We Have Faces.]

Developed more in 'Write the songs'.

Quote of the Day: A million more mirrors

In a perceptive review of Donald Miller's latest, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Chris Brauns praises Miller's vivid writing and use of story. "He told a story to teach about story and it really worked." I've been trying to do this increasingly - teach a poem poetically, a song tunefully, an image with imagination and imagery, and the drama of doctrine dramatically. Certainly Miller seems like an engaging writer. But as his engaging style and likeable personality resonate with us, Brauns is concerned that we'll all the more readily be pulled into his content, which will also resonate with us - naturally. His concern is that the stories are all about ourselves and our little lives, without much on God's big story enacted in history to give us hope and a future. Brauns comments:

We spend too much time looking at ourselves.  We don't need a million more mirrors all pointed back at our small stories.  Rather, we need to see how our individual episodes relate in a Christ-centered way to the story of creation, fall, and redemption.

For a wonderfully clear and engaging use of story to communicate God's big story, do get hold of Andrew Wilson's God*Stories. I'm using it for church teen Bible class - but honestly anyone would benefit from it. Top writing, clarity, systematic & Biblical theology, in short chunks using Biblical stories. And that doesn't quite convey it. I picked up a colleagues copy when I was manning a stall at a summer youth festival last summer - and couldn't put it down, so that he lost it for the week, and I then bought several for myself and others.