George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis (9)

 

 

Lewis writes, “MacDonald is the greatest genius of this kind whom I know. But I do not know how to classify such genius…It may be one of the greatest arts…It arouses in us sensations which we have never had before, never anticipate having, as though we had broken out of our normal mode of consciousness…and in general shocks us more fully awake than we are for most of our lives.” (Anthology, pages XXXI – XXXII).

 

“The quality which had enchanted me in his imaginative works turned out to be the quality of the real universe.” (page XXXVIII).

 

I have hit a wall in writing about Lewis and MacDonald because the complexities of the Preface are more than I realized at the beginning of this series. I know that some readers will be familiar with the terms and concepts Lewis uses (such as the technical term “myth”, not the popular term, but the technical term, but that others will not). I know that few readers will have read much, if any, of MacDonald – so when Lewis contrasts MacDonald’s novels with his works of fantasy, few will have a framework to see what Lewis is saying.

 

I suggest reading the Princess and the Goblin and Phantastes to get started with MacDonald. Unspoken Sermons can be read alongside his other writings, and probably read slowly, there is much to absorb. Lewis’s daily Anthology will give you exposure to short selections from the novels and sermons. The novels present a challenge for they are not particularly well written, yet Lewis not only read them, but he writes, “The novels…have yielded me a rich crop. This does not mean that they are good novels.” (XXXII – XXXIII).

 

“The great works are Phantastes, the Curdie books, The Golden Key, The Wise Woman, and Lilith. From them, just because they are supremely good in their own kind, there is little to be extracted. The meaning, the suggestion, the radiance, is incarnate in the whole story, it is only by chance that you find any detachable merits.” (XXXII).

 

In “the whole story” we “dwell in the shelter of the Most High and abide in the shadow of the Almighty (Ps. 91:1). In the “whole story” we find the incarnation of the Story set forth from eternity past and rolling out into the ages to come. In the whole we touch the radiance of Christ, drawing us into the City which has no need of the sun or moon or stars, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its Light (Rev. chapters 21 – 22).

 

To enter into the whole story is to participate in the Whole Story, to confess that we are strangers and pilgrims on this earth and in this age, looking for that City whose Builder and Maker is God (Hebrews 11). The Whole Story incarnates the Other, the Numinous, the Glory, the Shekinah, the Mythical (in the technical metanarrative sense!) – and for that very reason it does not lend itself to pithy maxims, to propositional statements of truth. Jesus says those who are born of the Spirit are those who are born of the Wind (they are born of One and the Same, John 3:8).

 

Peter speaks of “joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Paul writes of things that cannot be lawfully uttered. Dante the pilgrim finds that there are things he sees and experiences but that cannot be conveyed with words.

 

To read Hebrews Chapter 11 without joining the journey of Hebrews Chapter 11, without walking alongside Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; without spending our days in the communion and pilgrimage of the saints – without joining in the Incarnation and radiance of Hebrews Chapter 11…this is like, I imagine, a tone-deaf person hearing Mozart.

 

We are called to read John 1:1 – 18 and see the glorious Incarnation within ourselves and within one another (Col. 1:25 – 27; John Chapter 17); to read the Gospel and experience the Journey of Jesus Christ leading us to the Father, beyond the veil and into the Holy of Holies, to know the Cross and the Resurrection, to shout Galatians 2:20 and Philippians 3:7 – 16 with Paul…we are called to live the Story as the Story lives within us. And let us make no mistake, the Story is first of all about Jesus Christ, Jesus is the Story and the Story is Jesus and Jesus calls us into His Story…and into such Divine intimacy that His Story becomes our Story in Him and we become one with Him and with one another in the Incarnation.

 

Well, I seem to have gotten back on track…and while I glory in the Story of Jesus, my heart breaks that we have become men without chests, without hearts and imaginations - and that much of our Christianity has been reduced to dehydrated food packets, devoid of joy and taste.

 

I’ll close this reflection with an excerpt from Rolland Hein:

 

“…much of traditional Christian thought is romantic. The sense of the ideal in the Sermon on the Mount; the life of faith epitomized by Abraham and defined by the apostle Paul; the insistence on the primacy of the unseen as opposed to the seen; the command that Christians develop eyes to see and ears to hear spiritual realities; the love of nature because in some undefinable sense it manifests aspects of the divine; and the awareness that all worship centrally involves the imagination. All these make up the romantic spirit, and all are emphasized in MacDonald’s thought.” (Christian Mythmakers, Rolland Hein, page 70).