Phantastes

I've been reading George MacDonald's Phantastes, and I just finished it today. For a long time I've wanted to read MacDonald, based on what I had heard in snippets of C.S.Lewis' writings. I believe he mentions the man in his autobiographical Surprised By Joy. I am left with mixed feelings about the work. For one thing, it was very disjointed. The main character enters Fairy Land, a place of strange, ridiculous events and creatures, and he stumbles around from one adventure to the next, barely even understanding himself anything that's happening. Every other chapter, Anados seems to be "breaking the rules" somehow and landing himself in trouble. But it's this strange thing, because he could hardly know beforehand what those rules are. For instance, at one point, there is a statue of a woman, whom he is trying to bring to life with his singing. And first his songs merely uncover her from some invisible shroud, but when she doesn't come to life, he flings himself on the statue. Instantly, the woman comes to life and says, "You should not have touched me," and she runs away. So I'm left wondering, what the hell?

This kind of thing seems to happen a lot. Some troll woman tells him not to open a closet, but he does anyway, and that's how a grave shadow enters his life and begins following him around. Every which way, people are telling him to do this or not do that, but no one ever says why, and sometimes if he listens he gets in trouble, and sometimes if he doesn't listen, he gets in trouble, and so on and on. It makes it difficult to read.

On the other hand, each of the stories in and of themselves were in many ways captivating. There was a certain spirit in the writing that made me feel like maybe I had something invested in the stories. It was a nameless quality, which I cannot describe, but nonetheless remains compelling.

So, I was thinking, as I was getting on in the story, it is quite interesting that this type of Fairy Story seems to be more and more what real life is like. I don't mean all the Fairy elements, with sprites and goblins and giants and enchantments. But when we read stories nowadays, there are certain rules which good literature tends to follow. It has a certain set-up, character development, plot intricacies, climax and resolution - all the important elements of a well-rounded novel that one would want to read again and again and again. But the Fairy story, or the Myth, seems to have a different set of rules, or is, perhaps, disinterested with rules in general. Most of us seem to want our lives to be like the former. The story starts out with a deal of set-up and character development, then our lives get messed up in an intricate web of action, and finally we come to an incredible climax, followed by a grand resolution. And the resolution justifies all that has happened before or in some way redeems it, so then we can look back down the road and say to ourselves, "Yes, it was worth it."

But what if life is more like the fairy story. We're thrown suddenly into a world that doesn't make sense, whose rules we might intuit on some level but are never fully explained nor comprehended. We go from one adventure to the next, all the while hoping that we're making our way to somewhere important, and we pick out people and events that seem to us significant and try to piece together some kind of portrait, but it just keeps going on, sometimes weaving in and out of different places and sometimes coming to very important places in life. But perhaps in life there is no climax, no resolution. Maybe we look back and we can see how some things may have led to where we are now and who we've become, but we still don't understand the rules of how we're to make our choices, but we have to live with the consequences. It's just a strange thing to me.

I especially liked the ending of the book, which seemed to give it some purpose and depth. Anados talks of all that he wanted for himself, how he went out hoping to be somebody, hoping to find and become his "Ideal." And in his adventures he learned that it is better by far to love. He says many things near the end which I find profound, but which are made more so with a full reading of his adventures:

"...for now I could love without needing to be loved again."

"I knew now that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another, yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being beloved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit, a power that cannot be but for good, for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies."

And finally, in the last chapter, he states, "I have a strange feeling sometimes that I am a ghost, sent into the world to minister to my fellowmen, or, rather, to repair the wrongs I have already done. May the world be brighter for me, at least in those portiions of it, where my darkness falls not.
Thus I, who set out to find my Ideal, came back rejoicing that I had lost my Shadow."

The book is utterly strange, and I don't know if I recommend it to just anyone. But there are gems in it worth carrying. Several times I considered just putting it down, but in the end I really enjoyed it, and I'm glad I finished it.

Activities

At this point in time, I have been getting agitated about my job. I keep pouring myself into activities, and I'm really enjoying them, but I want to be done waiting tables. It is the least fulfilling thing about my life. Everything else is exciting right now. We started playing Ultimate Frisbee every Saturday at noon, and that's been really fun. We've been doing dancing lessons on Saturday afternoon. I started playing bass for the worship team at church this weekend. A friend of mine and I are planning an Improv night, where we will be doing improv games and activities. I recently finished a shorter book called "Trumpet," and I'm planning on sending it to a publisher. It's an inspirational book that I think is really creative and I really like.

So I'm doing a lot, and I'm enjoying life with my wife and our friends here in Utah. And then I go to work, and all that excitement goes away. All that fulfillment disappears. I feel I need God's favor more than ever, but I'm in this balance between being responsible and thinking maybe I'm just supposed to trust him. I mean, I know I'm supposed to have faith - it's just figuring out what faith is telling me to do. Maybe it means I keep going to work and trust that God will keep me going until such time as other opportunities present themselves. I don't know.

Part of me hesitates to ask God for "favor," because it sounds like a televangelist or something like that, but I think the bible paints a pretty good picture of seeking God's favor. I just don't want it to sound like it lacks depth or reveals some kind of unwillingness to endure or to give my all for God.

Anyway, the point is, I try to think positive - and maybe I don't spend enough time in prayer and meditation, but I want my life to be led by the voice of God, by his Spirit's whisper in my mind, and sometimes it just feels like I'm just fumbling my way through.

People talk about living life by God's power or living on your own power. But no one has ever been able to explain what that really means to me. I mean I understand the idea, and maybe there's some truth to it. But what is the difference, specifically. Suppose God asks me to plant a tree. Don't I simply go out, dig a hole, fill in the hole with a little sapling, water it and watch it grow? I mean, is there a way to do that "On my own power" that actually looks different than doing it "by God's power?" Or say I want to tell a friend about Jesus, but I get in this attitude of not needing some extra boost from God's spirit, and I go try to speak to people "on my own power." What does that mean? It seems like what people mean when they say that is that there is some indistinct inner attitude or feeling which, felt a certain way, is centered on God, and felt a different way is relying on the self. But I don't know what that means exactly and I certainly don't know how to measure it or gauge how well I'm accomplishing it.

I get this suspicion that what we're really supposed to do is pray, ask for God's guidance and assistance, enjoy his presence, and then act. And this is what I've been trying to do, perhaps not enough of it, and I've ended up where I am now. And of course, I have a lot of things going for me. I just find that I let a lack of money control too much of my life, and I limit my thinking about what I can do and what I can experience, when God says "I can do all things"

"Through Christ."

So I'm back again at the question: what does that mean, "Through Christ?"

Till we have Faces

I just realized that I neglected to blog about the book I read a few months ago: Til we have Faces, by C.S.Lewis. I will try to dredge up my thoughts from memory with as much freshness as possible.

As usual, Lewis writes with a compelling clarity. In this case I found it difficult to see where he was going with the story, and I wondered several times if there would be a "point" to it, or if it was merely for our enjoyment, to delve into the genre of "myth" and maybe feel something. And I did not see it all coming until the very end, when it suddenly rose up and overwhelmed me.

I first came across the book in high school. During my senior year I had a study hall hour, during which I often went to the library. I found the book there and read parts of it during that hour, picking it up off the shelf several times on different days, but I never actually checked it out, though I don't know why. The story stuck in my mind, the feeling of it, the depth of it, and I didn't know why that was either, for there was nothing I could really point out about it to say, "here's why everyone must read this book." So I held it in my heart for years that I wanted to one day pick it up again and read it all the way through. There were always other books to read and other tasks to accomplish. So recently I read it, not ever having found out the meaning of the Title. Til We Have Faces always seemed odd and strangely interesting, but the full line comes in near the end of the book.

A woman in the story has a complaint against the gods, because of the sorrows in her life, and finally she faces them, and she makes her complaint, only it wasn't the carefully crafted thing she had been writing, building her noble case against them. It was the ravings of her heart that she read to them and her complaint, heard aloud, became her answer. And she reflects on it as follows:

"The complaint was the answer. To have heard myself making it was to be answered. Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, 'Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.' A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"

Somehow it took all our bitterness and suffering and put it in perspective so grand we cannot even fathom the whole truth, like Jonah whining about his vine, chastized by a god who sees ultimately greater and more. I cannot communicate here fully what this accomplishes for me, but I can say that it is a treasure to hold.