A Shocking Novel: The Place of the Lion

As I said in the re-introduction to this blog, the Inklings -- C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams -- have been very influential in forming my views of reason, imagination, and literary fantasy. Williams wrote seven wild, crazy, bizarre “spiritual thrillers.” The Place of the Lion is my favorite.


A series has just ended over on my other blog, The Oddest Inkling, in which several readers wrote their responses to The Place of the Lion. Most of these readers were shocked by this book. It's extremely startling! I won't spoil or even summarize it here; please go and read the posts.

But here I just want to talk about how this book is an “island of joy,” how it trumpets the heraldry of heaven. It does so (for me, anyway) in several ways.

First, the book is visually gorgeous. There are descriptions of an enormous golden lion, a humongous multi-colored butterfly, a fire that burns in the shape of a phoenix and does not consume, a visionary mystic soaring in his mind's eye like a eagle.

Second, the events of the book are shocking; when I first read it, Williams kept smacking me upside the head with philosophical surprises. I know I'm wired differently than the average Jane (I guess): I get my kicks from the appearance of Platonic forms. (OK, I also get kicks from the appearance of, say, Benedict Cumberbatch—but that's a different post!). When a gigantic lion appeared in the sunset and turned out to be the Platonic form of strength, a shiver of heaven ran through me, lifting me into realms of glory.

Third, the spiritual lesson was hard and painful, but (perhaps therefore) also glorious. Every time I reread it, I am convicted. One of the main characters is a woman trying to be a scholar, and she has turned her studies into a kind of dry idolatry. I do that. So Williams terrifies me.

Finally, the ending soars up into heights of sweet desire. But I won't spoil it. Read it!

On "Islands of Joy" and new writers

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. —Ecclesiastes 3:11

These hauntingly beautiful lands… somehow never satisfy… —C.S. Lewis, Letters I:970

The times has come, the walrus said, to talk of names and things. The name of this blog has officially changed to “Islands of Joy.”

I wanted something less personal, less private, more artistic, and more expressive of the vision of this blog than the obscure “Iambic Admonit.” I am also bringing on a few new writers and focusing the content a bit more. The name is inspired by C.S. Lewis, who is perhaps my greatest literary inspiration. His writing as simple and profound, imaginative and rational. He is the master of the perfect analogy, and a storyteller of consummate skill.

Throughout his entire life, Lewis has haunted by “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction… I call it Joy” (Surprised by Joy).

“Islands of Joy” are moments of sehnsucht or sweet desire evoked by art, poetry, music, or nature. A line from Tennyson, a phrase by Wagner, a glimpse of Turner, or a sudden wind across a field of wheat—and the soul springs up, yearning for something more, but not sure what it wants. It wants to possess the beauty: to ingest it, devour it, assimilate it. It wants to become that beauty. It wants to make more beauty. And it wants to know Who made that beauty in the first place, then be united with Him.

This desire shot through C.S. Lewis's heart, a painful, glorious yearning, at the sounds of certain words, the sight of a distant landscape, or the strains of sublime music. He tried a wild variety of words for this experience throughout his life: It, Romanticism, heraldry of heaven, intense longing, sweet desire, enchantment, the Blue Flower, the dialectic of Desire, immortal longings, divine discontent, the authentic thrill, the heraldry of heaven, inaccessible longings, ice-sharp joys, unfulfilled desire, and Sehnsucht. He finally settled on “Joy,”

So a lot of the content on this blog is inspired by or related to C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and the other Inklings. The primary writer, Sørina Higgins, is a Charles Williams scholar: please check out her other blog The Oddest Inkling, all about Williams. All the other writers enjoy the works of the Inklings, some as fans, some as scholars.

Here on Islands of Joy you will find book reviews, film reviews, articles on Inklings themes, and other Inklings-related posts. You will also find discussions of any arts that take our fancy at the moment. There is plenty of analysis of Doctor Who.

There is another Lewis connection, too. He lost his mother at age nine, and later wrote: “With my mother's death all settled happiness . . . disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.”

In those astonishing encounters with great art, we are lifted out of the gray, dull, or stormy sea of everyday experience, shot through with a dart of longing. Those moments are bright sparks in the darkness of sin, violence, depression, and drudgery. As Chaucer wrote: We blunder ever, and poren in the fire, / And, for all that, we fail of our desire. But the desire keeps taking hold of us, sharp as swords, sweet as sex, swiftly-passing as the wind. It is a kind of wanderlust, a yearning to travel to:

The land where I shall never be
The love that I shall never see.

—Lewis Letters I:283, quoting Andrew Lang

There is a huge theme in European literature of longing for Western Islands: Atlantis, Avalon, Númenor, Valinor, Venus/Perelandra, Sarras.... I hope to write or edit a book on this topic one day.

But rare is the traveller who reaches one of these longed-for islands.

Because the whole point of the longing is that it cannot be satisfied in this life. It is a signpost to Heaven. All satisfactions here fail to satiate, because we really want God.

In the meanwhile, we alight momentarily on these islands of joy, stopping to gaze at a painting, read a poem, listen to a piece of music, or stare out at the horizon.

The Doctor Diaries III.4 & 5a: “Daleks in Manhattan” and “Evolution of the Daleks”

The Doctor Is Not Jesus!

I used to get really annoyed every time the Daleks appeared again. First of all, they're very silly. Their ridiculous computer-generated voices grate on my ears. Their pepper-pot shape drives me crazy. Their arbitrary decisions about when to exterminate and when to stand there like idiots for the convenience of the plot pushed me beyond endurance.

But then I realized why it is important that the same enemies come back over and over again and why the Doctor has to defeat them time and time again. After each encounter, he believes he has eradicated them for good. Each time, they come back and threaten humanity again.

The reason this matters is that each time they are threatening different humans.

Each human needs to be saved, each time. So he saved the earth from Daleks in 2005; well, he needs to save the world from them again in 2007, or in 5100, or in 300 B.C., because the earth contains different people every time. Some have been born and others have died in the intervening time, and he has to save them all, over and over and over.

I see two matters of thematic importance as a result. I'll post this theme today and another one tomorrow.

First, this is a major difference between the Doctor and Jesus. I blogged last time about how the Doctor is a “Christ-figure” in the literary sense. But Jesus only gave Himself once. The Doctor has to give himself over and over and over.

Now, there are a lot of things I could say about that.

I could talk about how the Doctor doesn't really die; he's always saved at the last minute. There are a few times that he does die, though, and then something wibbly-wobbly has to happen to reset time the way it was supposed to be.

That could lead me to talk about Predestination: the Way Things Were Meant To Be. Think back to Series One, the episode “Father's Day.” Pete Tyler was “supposed” to die that day, and when he didn't, the entire universe began to fall apart and everyone else was destroyed. But who said he was supposed to die that day? Did God ordain it? Did it have something to do with linear time, like a story—since he died the “first time” through that time, he had to the “second time” through that time? (we'll come back to that later).

Or I could talk about resurrection and regeneration; is every kind of regeneration/rebirth/return in literature always a symbol of resurrection? Or is resurrection just our longing for regeneration turned into a wish-fulfillment doctrine?

Or I could get into the symbolic ways in which Jesus' sacrifice is remembered over and over again, such as in baptism and the Lord's Supper. In Roman Catholic Christianity, of course, the sacrifice is literal in each celebration of the Mass: the elements become Christ's body and blood, thus enacting His death and resurrection over again for each believer. So maybe in that sense the Doctor's repetitive sacrifice is still a very accurate spiritual symbol.

Or I could talk about another important part of the Dying-and-rising-god conversation. In most other religions that have a Dying-and-rising-god (besides Christianity, I mean), the god's life cycle is tied to the cycle of the seasons: he or she dies and rises every year, and the resurrection is connected to the regeneration of plants in the springtime. So another argument against Christianity is that it is just another permutation of these seasonal cycle myths: after all, Easter is celebrated in the springtime. The opposite argument is possible, too: that all the other seasonal cycle myths are wish-fulfillment and Christianity is the real thing that happened just once, historically.

Which brings me back around to where I started. Jesus died just once, in an efficacious, substitutionary atonement with eternal consequences. In this piece of fiction, even within the fictional world (unlike, say, Aslan, whose sacrifice occurred only once), the Doctor's sacrifices do not stick. He has to do it over and over and over again.

Of course, that's also just necessary to keep the show going. If he went back to the beginning of time and did something so huge that it destroyed the Daleks, Cybermen, Carrionites, Sycorax, and Weeping Angels all in one go, there wouldn't be any story.

Come back tomorrow to read about the other theme this brings to mind!

The Doctor Diaries III.3 “Gridlock”

New-new-new-new-new-new-new-new-new-new-new-new-new-new-new Old Story

As you know by now, I am “reading” Doctor Who through two sets of lenses: English-teacher glasses, and Christian glasses. I'm looking at them as I look at carefully-crafted works of literature, searching for literature devices, structure, cultural significance, mythical resonance, and theological implications. That's how my mind works. Sci-fi is a perfect venue for communicating the deeper truths about humanity, because it can use the wildest physical metaphors imaginable, not being restricted by a particular set of historical events or a narrow segment of current science. Sci-fi also taps into the most profound traditions of fantasy and mythology, which means it uses the collective human imagination's most enduring archetypes to communicate emotionally and spiritually.

And “Gridlock” employs what I believe is the most profound archetype of all: the Christ-figure. The entirety of Doctor Who is arguably “about” how the Doctor is a symbol of Christ, so I know I will come back to this idea again and again. I would like to deepen, clarify, and enrich my thoughts on this point, so I would love it if somebody wanted to debate with me about this. In the meanwhile, “Gridlock” makes its christological references very obvious, so it's a good place to begin delving into this idea more deeply.

Let's go through a few of the background ideas first.

There are only a few plots in the world—only a handful of narrative shapes that stories can take.

Here is a list of “Master Plots,” and here are the Seven Basic Plots. I'll talk about a few that came into my mind before reading those lists.

There's the Cinderella plot, in which someone goes from rags-to-riches either literally or figuratively. I think that Hobbit-like plots, in which a small person achieves great things, is a variation on this theme. I think that the making-of-a-hero story (Batman Begins, Man of Steel, etc.) is another such variation.

There's the Rake's progress story, the slow downward trajectory of a bad person—or even an ordinary person—getting gradually worse.

There's the Tragic Hero's demise, usually in a kind of recognition-and-reversal arrangement, on the classical model of Oedipus.

There's the basic Marriage Plot, moving characters towards pairing off, often involving mistaken identity, miscommunication, and disguises before the resolution.

They can be combined, such as the common union of the Cinderella plot with the Marriage Plot.

There are a few other patterns. Can you name some?

And there is the ubiquitous Creation→ Fall→ Redemption story, which is also the Birth→ Death→Resurrection story. It could be argued that this is the oldest, most wide-spread, and most powerful plot arc. It might be the most common. I don't know whether it occurs more frequently than the others, or in more permutations. But I do know that when combined with a strong, admirable main character, especially when that main character chooses sacrifice, it is one of the most moving.

Now, I'm a Christian. And Christianity is a narrative religion. We base our faith on a Story. On a double-layered story, actually: it's Creation → Fall → Redemption and Birth → Death → Resurrection. It's historical, divine, and personal. It's linear and cyclical, universal and individual.

The ubiquity of the Creation→Fall→Redemption/ Birth→Death→Resurrection narrative could present a problem to Christian belief, especially because it occurs in so very many other religions, including ones that appear to have developed before or independently of Christianity. In other words, if this is such a common human story, what makes the Christian one any more likely to be true?

Or let me approach that question another way. How can the Christian story and all these other stories be so similar, if there were no obvious cultural or literary imitations from one to another?

There are lots of possible answers.

1. Somebody came up with a Birth→Death→Resurrection story way back in the beginning of human history, and it got passed around by word-of-mouth from culture to culture, so all the others are just copying that one.

2. There is something in the human imagination, perhaps something like Jung's “collective unconscious,” that makes us all love the same stories, regardless of our culture, education, reading, or anything—so we all come up with the Birth→Death→Resurrection story, independently.

3. The early Christians and the writers of the Gospels were copying one or more of the older stories.

4. Jesus' Birth→Death→Resurrection really happened, and it's just a coincidence that this pattern resembles so many earlier stories and stories from other cultures.

5. God planned all along that Jesus' life would follow that pattern, so He planted the Birth→Death→Resurrection story into the human imagination, intending for lots and lots of poets to tell the story all over the world before Jesus came and acted it out for real, so that then people would be primed and ready to accept it.

6. There is something so inevitable about the Birth→Death→Resurrection pattern that the universe just has to follow it. That is the way things are, on the personal level, in history, and on the divine scale. Even if Jesus' life had not happened yet, it would eventually have to happen just that way, because Birth→Death→Resurrection is the only way things can possibly unfold.

So there are some possible answers. Can you suggest some others?

Numbers 1, 2, and 3 are the most commonly believed in American culture just now, I would say.

#5 is C.S. Lewis'.

#6 is Charles Williams'.

I suggest that #2 is Doctor Who's.

Now, let's finally talk about “Gridlock.” In every episode, the Doctor does something self-sacrificial to save someone else, frequently to save everyone else. He is willing to die, over and over and over, that others may live. Obviously that's based on the Christ-pattern, whichever of those interpretations you accept. Usually the Doctor's selfless love goes un-interpreted. But in “Gridlock,” the association becomes as clear as it can be without a character yelling out, “He's like Jesus!”

It's made clear by the music. As everyone's driving along, year after year, stuck on the motorway, they get a musical interlude on the radio, and they all stop to listen to hymns. Specifically, they listen to “The Old Rugged Cross,” whose lyrics are just about a clear a statement of the Gospel as you will find. When the song first started playing, I cringed, thinking that of course this was going to be parody, mockery. I was certain the screenwriters would be making fun of the characters for their archaic, meaningless faith. While that potential was there, however, Martha's and the Doctor's reactions led to a much different reading.

They take the hymn seriously. Martha starts to cry. She even sings along. 

And then later, Martha made the statement that created an explicit analogy between Jesus and the Doctor. She shouted to the residents of New New York: “You have your hymns and your fiath. I have the Doctor!” In other words, they have the same thing (literarily speaking).

I hope to continue digging into this idea as we proceed, and to point out some of the important differences between the Doctor and Jesus in my next post. Please stay tuned.

Desolation and Creation Speech

Speech for sale! Are you interested in a talk about spiritual problems and their connection to creativity? I would be delighted to talk to your church, college, high school, arts group, homeschool group, etc.  It is a speech I gave last night at Baptist Bible College in Clarks Summit, PA, entitled "Desolation and Creation." It was a much expanded version of this article I wrote for Comment. 

Here is an audio/screencast recording of the speech as I presented it last night. I could do it again just like that, or I could make it a more lively interactive presentation with live performances/readings, or I could present just part of that long talk, or I could provide a closer literary analysis of a few pieces. Contact me if you want to discuss this! 

 

Here is a summary of the material I covered: 

Many shadows lurk in the corners of the human mind; there are many valleys of darkness the soul may stumble through. These bleak phases have haunted human beings for at least as long as they have known how to record their thoughts.The wild varieties of desolation, depression, and despair have frequently haunted artists. Yet, for as often as artists have lain silent and exhausted through long periods, stifled under the weight of darkness, as often have others turned their pens or brushes against the shadows, describing the grief, capturing the elusive twilight, or setting the night raging through their works. What makes the difference? When both are plunged into a dark night of the soul, what shuts the mouth of one and sets free the songs of the other?

I do not know.

But here are some stories of people who overcame the darkness or at least captured it in their works.

TAXONOMY: catagorizing kinds of darkness. Discussion of the DSM, the manual for diagnosing and labeling mental and social illnesses. Confusion between “spiritual desolation and creativity” vs. “mental illness and creativity.” Artists and mental illness. Kinds of spiritual darkness.

I. MELANCHOLY

II. ACEDIA

III. DOUBT 

IV. Charles Williams and THE SCHISM

V. DESPAIR (Franz Liszt's “Czardas macabre”)

VI. DESOLATION

VII. THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

The “God gene” and the doubt gene.

Providence and choice, or, How to read the signs.

Darkness from external circumstances

Makoto Fujimura's Zero Summer

Bruce Herman's The Crowning

Nietzsche: “one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.”

Desolation and Creation

I recently wrote an article about what happens to creativity when the artist goes through a time of darkness, whether depression, spiritual desolation, or religious doubt. This was perhaps the most difficult piece I have ever written. You can read the whole article here. I would love your comments.

I also want to thank several people who helped with this piece.

First, Rebecca Tirrell Talbot worked patiently and kindly with me for a year and half (I think; was it that long, Becky?) on a paper about Gerard Manley Hopkins, Charles Williams, and desolation. It was Becky who first taught me about Ignatian spirituality.

Next, two of the great artists of our time, Bruce Herman and Makoto Fujimura, for their willingness to talk about desolation and to point me to paintings of theirs that fit the theme. Thank you, Bruce, for sharing the image of The Crowning
with me; it is very powerful. (I have already written, in my 2012 retrospective, about how Bruce has helped me in the past with a sense of vocation and inspiration.)

The members of Ekphrasis: Fellowship of Christians in the Arts workshopped this piece very helpfully for me at one of our meetings. Thank you especially to Sharon Barshinger Gerdes (Director of Players of the Stage), Abigail McBride, and Jim Femister. That was an extremely useful session, and as you'll see, I rearranged the content of the piece a lot after we talked about it.

Brenton Dickieson, intrepid Pilgrim in Narnia, gave generously of his time and talent to comment on the piece more than once when it was in progress. Brenton, thanks for your editorial eye!

Mezzo-soprano extraordinaire Nadine Kulberg gave valuable musical advice and listened to me babble incessantly about writing this article. My mother also listened for hours and recommended books on the subject. Rosie Perera shared some reading ideas, too.

Finally, my kind editors at Cardus, Brian and Dan, were patient and long-suffering with me while I wrote this. Thanks, gentlemen, and I hope I can write for you again in the near future.

Anybody have any ideas what I should write about next?

2012 highlights of faith-and-arts

This has been a very dark year. It has been the hardest season of desolation in my adult life, personally, professionally, and spiritually. Yet there have been many very bright spots in the arts scene -- not so much on the "faith" side of things, but that is a different story. Actually, I have written a little bit about that side of the story in an article entitled "Desolation and Creation" that's supposed to appear in Comment soon.

But here I want to dwell on the bright side, reveling in the artistic blessings I have received or seen this year. I hope you enjoy this list. What artistic blessings can YOU count this year? Would share some of them in the comments below? Thank you, and Happy New Year!

* The year started out very brightly indeed with the release of my first full-length book of poetry, entitled CADUCEUS. Here, here, here, here, and here are some excellent reviews. The book was well received when it was received at all, but like most poetry nowadays, got little attention. Although it is now out of print, you can get copies on amazon. [Do you own a copy of Caduceus? Leave a comment telling me what you think of it!]

* Many delightful events followed the publication of Caduceus. The community college where I teach generously hosted the book launch party, which was a beautiful evening of roses, refreshments, Choreologos, fellowship, and poetry. You can watch the video of the whole reading and of the Choreologos here (although I think I read too long, so I recommend skipping to the end -- thanks to Jim Femister for the video recording!).

* I was able to offer several "Poetry, Dance, & the Patterned Glory of the Universe" events; this is a really fantastic, fun presentation of the techniques of poetry, along with music, visual arts, and dance.  I have written about the best of these events here, and here is a video of one of the dances. Thank you to Betsy Gahman for calling an English Country Dance at one of these events; to Betty Barbour for playing the violin; to Nadine Kulberg, Sharon Gerdes, Marian Barshinger, other members of POTS, Ian Bridgeman, Emily Graham, Zach Kunkel, Mark Dobson, and Kitty Eisenmann for dancing and reading! [Were you at any of these? Did you dance? Leave a comment!]

* A variety of different venues gave me the opportunity to read from my book. One evening, I led the writers' group at Redeemer Presbyterian Church's InterArts fellowship in New York City, talking about the "priestly" or vicarious role of writers who can be a voice for the voiceless. I read and talked about Arts as outreach at College Church's missions night in Northampton, Massachusetts. I gave a reading and talked about the influence of Hopkins and Lewis, at King's College in the Empire State Building. I gave a reading at my alma mater, Gordon College, in Wenham, Massachusetts, and another in a great little art galley hosted by the Lehigh Valley Arts Council. [Were you at any of these readings? If so, what did you think?]

* In the midst of these readings, I was given an hour in heaven -- a glimpse of what fellowship may be like in paradise. The great artist Bruce Herman, professor at Gordon College, invited me to his home studio in Gloucester, Massachusetts. There, under the unfinished glory of his Four Quartets, he served me tea, homemade toast, and honey. He noted a flaw in one of the paintings and went over to touch it up. He discoursed eloquently about T.S. Eliot, inspiring me by his wide reading, deep understanding, and profound commitment to excellence. We sat and talked about art, painting, poetry. He asked many questions about me, and inspired me to make some new commitments to my own dreams. Sadly, circumstances since have forced me to postpone some dreams and give up on others, but I will never forget Bruce's brotherly, godly concern and council, nor will I lose the image of his masterpieces exposed in their fragmentary state, glowing with spiritual fervor, layered with meaning, colored by grace. [Thank you, Bruce!]

* Another paradisiacal sort of experience in the arts was the IAM regional leaders gathering at the end of February. I have already blogged about that, so let me just say now how encouraging that weekend was, and how much I have enjoyed keeping in touch with some of the hard-working artists and arts promoters I met there. Here are the websites of some people I met: composer Kent Smith, illustrator Matt Crotts, Mark Sprinkle of the BioLogos foundation, Christopher Bennett Gaertner of the band Avodah, and of course all my great current and former editors at Curator. Here is Makoto Fujimura's current project -- the same Four Quartets in which Bruce Herman's works will be shown. Here is an interview I did with Christy Tennant on IAM Conversations. [Thank you, IAM! Readers, please consider joining IAM or giving them a gift to continue their work.]

* Another amazing blessing came out of that IAM weekend: Shann Ray's shocking, unforgettable, serious short story collection American Masculine, which I reviewed on amazon. It's a powerful book, and I recommend it highly to those with strong stomachs and without faint hearts. Shann and his wife were wonderful friends to meet there at IAM.

* ...and one more new friend, with another amazing new book: Carrey Wallace's debut novel The Blind Contessa's New Machine is a remarkable jewel of a story. I reviewed it here. [Get it! Read it! Give a copy to a friend!]

* Also in February, I attended a glitzy opening party for the newly renovated Allentown Art Museum and its debut show, "Who Shot Rock-n-Roll?" Photographer Nienke Izurieta came with me, and we enjoyed great fellowship. Lydia Panas also had an exhibit of her portraits running at the same time. It was a swanky party and an exhilarating show. I also wrote an article partially inspired by the third exhibit that was running at the time, here--about hair salons and art.
[Thank you, Nienke!]

* Later in the spring, when my Caduceus energy was running down, Nadine Kulberg, mezzo and Ivan Tan, pianist, gave a performance of Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin at LCCC. The literary club, Xanadu, hosted this event, which included readings of some German poetry and a brief introduction to the tradition of art song and Romantic poetry.  It was very well attended! [Thank you, LCCC, for this event! Anybody who was there, please leave a comment sharing your memories of this concert.]
 
* A big literary and social adventure unfolded in May and June. I took a three-week trip (generously supported by professional development funding from LCCC) to Seattle, WA; Upland, IN; and Chicago, IL, for research, conference presentations, and visits with friends. Some highlights include the Avatar exhibit at the EMP museum in Seattle with Leila Hepp, reading an unpublished Charles Williams play at the Wade, watching fellow researcher Brenton Dickieson make an exciting discovery about C. S. Lewis, and attending a poetry slam with the daddy of the poetry slam movement, Marc Smith in a sleazy club in Chicago. Whew! You can read some reports about these adventures here, here, here, and here. 
[Thank you, Leila & Becky, for hosting me!]

* Later in the summer, we spent a nice weekend in Newport, RI, looking at the mansions, enjoying the beauty of architecture. We got some ideas for our own (ahem) little "mansion," if we ever get back to working on it. [Did you know that The Great Gatsby with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow was filmed in Rosecliff? Are you going to see Baz Lehrman's new Gatsby in May?]
 


* Ekphrasis meetings continued on the first Monday if every month, replete with hilarity and detailed critique. One high point came in July when Sharon Gerdes, artistic director of Players of the Stage, performed an original series of 7 monologues that were sort of spiritual autobiographies in short, tight, emotionally packed character sketches. [Thank you, Sharon, and thank you, all Ekphrasians -- I love you!]

* The Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival was in fine feather this summer, but I was a bit out of it, so I didn't see all the shows, and I didn't review them this year. Next season, I hope!

* Xanadu, the literary club at LCCC, continued to thrive this year. I had the great pleasure of advising the club along with fellow members of the English faculty Katie Hostetter and John Nardone. Here you can view the most recent issue of the magazine we created, which looks gorgeous thanks to Kitty Eisenmann's fine design work.

* Nadine Kulberg also performed in the gorgeous opera Adriana Lecouvreur in New York's Lincoln Center in October, another glorious and heartbreaking musical event! [Do you need a mezzo? Give Nadine a call!]

* This was the year I got addicted to Sherlock and Doctor Who! I've always been a theoretical Doctor Who fan, but lack of cable, limited internet access, etc. have always kept me from indulging. This year I decided to (ahem) abuse my faculty library privileges a little bit to get the dvds. Don't tell! But, wow. British TV just rocks. I am in love. Seriously, dangerously. Whew!

 * Then, of course, there was The Hobbit. The movie itself was not a highlight -- you can read my reviews here and here -- but I had TONS of fun getting ready for it!! I wrote a a href=http://www.curatormagazine.com/sorinahiggins/packing-for-an-unexpected-journey/>prep article
, listened avidly to the Tolkien's professor's podcast, went to the midnight showing with a few friends. stayed up all night in a diner writing one review for Curator and another review for Comment, gave a lecture at Penn State, then took 222 people to see the movie. Whew. And now I'm involved in a financial dispute with the movie theatre, which accidentally double-charged me the enormous cost of the group showing, and is making a huge fuss about refunding the money. But that is also another story.

Sproul on Art #5

Sproul on the Arts Report #5

R. C. Sproul: Recovering the Beauty of the Arts

“Music: The Handmaiden of Theology”

In our adult Sunday school class, we are watching a series of lectures by R. C. Sproul on the Christian and the arts. I'm summarizing them and writing my responses. Here is an index to these posts. Today's post is a summary.

As a follow-up to his talk about music's influence in the previous talk, Sproul began with a long, fascinating discussion of jazz. In order to lay the foundation for explaining the beauty of jazz, he gave a fairly detailed music theory lesson about major and minor scales, intervals, and chords. His point was to show how jazz operates rationally, within structure, that it is highly complex, and that it follows a definitive mathematical pattern. The essence of jazz, then, is freedom within form.

His next move was, I thought, smooth and sophisticated. He took that background about harmony and used it to evaluate “pop” music. He pointed out that pop music restricts itself to 3 chords, and that is has a lack of complexity. Classical music, on the other hand, is far more complicated. It has a richness, a depth of content, and has endured the test of time. Sure, there are simple compositions within the Classical tradition, but intentionally so: artful, sophisticated. Pop music tends to be simplistic: unintentionally so, simple out of ignorance and lack of training, and ends up being boring. Unlike pop music, the more I listen to it, the richer it becomes.

This led him to an excellent line: Eat meat, not milk—in music!

This is not to say that there is never a place for very simple music in worship. Sproul pointed out two: he thinks we should use very simple music with children, and with “primitive people” out on the mission field.

Then he made a very strong point: he asked, What should be enhanced by our growth in the knowledge of God? Our understanding of music! We should always keep enriching the music we use in our worship.

Coming back around to concepts of classical standards for evaluating music, he brought in Jonathan Edwards' ideas about the “sweetness” and “excellence” of worship, the idea of Religious Affections: Edwards thought that conversion itself was an aesthetic experience.

Then he summed up the “Worship Wars” with a sweet one-liner: The Worship Wars are not about good music vs. bad music; they're about good music vs. mediocre music. Um-hm. (Although he didn't mention BAD music!)

Finally, he finished by explaining the title of this talk: Martin Luther said that music is the “handmaiden of theology” because music can teach Biblical truth.

Sproul on Art #4

Sproul on the Arts Report #4

R. C. Sproul: Recovering the Beauty of the Arts

“The Influence of Music”

In our adult Sunday school class, we are watching a series of lectures by R. C. Sproul on the Christian and the arts. I'm summarizing them and writing my responses. Here is an index to these posts. Today's post is a summary.

Sproul started out by talking in a general sense about the fact that music has a strong impact on our moods and behaviors. He said he has been often very moved, in an almost mystical way, by the mysterious power of music. Then he said he wanted to apply the “Classical, objective” principles—proportion, harmony, simplicity, and complexity—to music.

Then he went off on a discussion about pitch, talking about people who have perfect pitch (he claimed it's not natural, that it's developed). Then he mentioned Plato, who was very concerned about the power that music had to influence how people act. He said that music creates social interactions. He talked about dance rhythms, and about the story in the OT when David's harp-playing soothed King Saul. He said there are cases when animals and even plants have shown a response to music.

Then he shifted to talking more specifically about the negative influence of music. He told the story of two murders, young men who killed their parents. Each of these killers said that he was addicted to porn and involved in satanism, and that he had started down that road by listening to heavy metal music. Sproul also said that “rap celebrates violence and unrestrained sexuality.”

Then Sproul went on to distinguish between “music” and “noise,” saying that music is much more sophisticated. He talked about the four elements of music: MELODY, HARMONY, RHYTHM, and TIMBRE. He finished by getting a bit technical, talking some music theory to explain some elements of Western harmony and the progressive harmonies of jazz.

Sproul on Art #3

Sproul on the Arts Report #3

R. C. Sproul: Recovering the Beauty of the Arts

“Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder”

In our adult Sunday school class, we are watching a series of lectures by R. C. Sproul on the Christian and the arts. I'm summarizing them and writing my responses. Here is an index to these posts. Today's post is a summary.

Sproul began by talking about “subjective” vs. “objective” standards for art. I've been fumbling with some ideas of subjectivity and objectivity in one of my responses, too, but in a different way. Instead of turning to “science,” as I'm trying to do, Sproul turned to “Classical” culture. First he spent some time denigrating our current culture, claiming that it denies objective truth and absolutes. Well, sure it does, but James K. A. Smith and others have written about the positive side of postmodernism, poststructuralism, relativism, and pluralism for the Church, so I don't think we should get too exercised by this anti-objectivism. But anyway, I'm supposed to be summarizing, not responding.

Sproul went on to say that obviously there are subjective responses to works of art, and personal preferences for one work or another. But, he said, the question is about NORMATIVITY vs. RELATIVITY, and that the question turns on the word “ought”: Is there an art that Christians OUGHT to appreciate?

He did not answer the question outright. Instead, he talked about the words “value” and “ethics,” saying that traditionally, we have though about the ethics of a choice, which is objective, and now we think about the value of a choice, which is subjective. That seems a bit simplistic to me—but let me proceed.

He added to this question another one about “Art Appreciation”: Should we transcend our personal preferences?

Then he reframed the question as a difference between CHAOS and COSMOS: chaos is unintelligible, disordered; a cosmos is a place with an inherent, systemic, knowable order (the kind articulated by empiricist and rationalist philosophies). Then he talked about logic and chaos theory, which both as “Is there an order?” Both presuppose a formal, rational, harmonious structure. He mentioned Plato's Academy, over the door of which was a sign reading “Let none but geometers enter here,” meaning that therein the study of Form was pursued in its mathematical relationships.

So then he introduced Aristotle's Classical “Primary Necessities for Order,” suggesting that they were thus the objective standards by which we can judge Art:

1. PROPORTION
2. HARMONY
3. SIMPLICITY
4. COMPLEXITY

Sproul on Art - Report #3

Sproul on the Arts Report #3

R. C. Sproul: Recovering the Beauty of the Arts

“Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder”

In our adult Sunday school class, we are watching a series of lectures by R. C. Sproul on the Christian and the arts. I'm summarizing them and writing my responses. Here is an index to these posts. Today's post is a summary.

Sproul began by talking about “subjective” vs. “objective” standards for art. I've been fumbling with some ideas of subjectivity and objectivity in one of my responses, too, but in a different way. Instead of turning to “science,” as I'm trying to do, Sproul turned to “Classical” culture. First he spent some time denigrating our current culture, claiming that it denies objective truth and absolutes. Well, sure it does, but James K. A. Smith and others

have written about the positive side of postmodernism, poststructuralism, relativism, and pluralism for the Church, so I don't think we should get too exercised by this anti-objectivism. But anyway, I'm supposed to be summarizing, not responding.

Sproul went on to say that obviously there are subjective responses to works of art, and personal preferences for one work or another. But, he said, the question is about NORMATIVITY vs. RELATIVITY, and that the question turns on the word “ought”: Is there an art that Christians OUGHT to appreciate?

He did not answer the question outright. Instead, he talked about the words “value” and “ethics,” saying that traditionally, we have though about the ethics of a choice, which is objective, and now we think about the value of a choice, which is subjective. That seems a bit simplistic to me—but let me proceed.

He added to this question another one about “Art Appreciation”: Should we transcend our personal preferences?

Then he reframed the question as a difference between CHAOS and COSMOS: chaos is unintelligible, disordered; a cosmos is a place with an inherent, systemic, knowable order (the kind articulated by empiricist and rationalist philosophies). Then he talked about logic and chaos theory, which both as “Is there an order?” Both presuppose a formal, rational, harmonious structure. He mentioned Plato's Academy, over the door of which was a sign reading “Let none but geometers enter here,” meaning that therein the study of Form was pursued in its mathematical relationships.

So then he introduced Aristotle's Classical “Primary Necessities for Order,” suggesting that they were thus the objective standards by which we can judge Art:

1. PROPORTION
2. HARMONY
3. SIMPLICITY
4. COMPLEXITY

Sproul gets novels wrong

Here is an index to these posts about Sproul on the arts.

Yesterday morning's lesson by R.C. Sproul was deeply disturbing. I can't remember whether a church service has ever left me weeping with fury before. I believe that it was just exactly the wrong lesson for our particular church to hear.

Sproul wrote off the entire genre of the modern novel as, and I quote, “vulgar, salacious, and obscene.”

I beg to differ. Sure, there are novels that fit this description. And there are portions of others that contain material of that nature. So, although he didn't say this right out, he seemed to be implying that Christians should ignore and avoid an entire genre, an entire body of cultural creation, because of some content in some of the works. This seems to me a dangerous kind of Christian ghetto-ism. In another talk, he said, “Rap music celebrates violence and unrestrained sexuality.” Certainly not. Some rap songs and some rap artists celebrate violence and unrestrained sexuality, but others point out the horrors of just those things, and others celebrate good messages, such as victory over addiction.

My experience suggests that the majority of “conservative,” “evangelical”—or, as a fellow Ekphrasian calls us, “flaming fundamentalist”—Christians need to hear just exactly the opposite message. I have observed that some of my fellow church-goers tend to be already too afraid of the “worldly” influence of movies, music, and fiction. So even though individual Christians may need to be counseled against consuming cultural products that are not good for them, I strongly believe that the majority need to be encouraged to engage more and more—to engage at all!—with what is being written right now.

Here is a tangent. The pastor shared with me that he has personally known people who became addicted to pornography and ruined their lives, and who first encountered “salacious” material in novels, even in “high” “literary” novels such as Lady Chatterly's Lover, and then they sought out worse and worse material. Well, if he says that happened, I'm sure it did. I tend to think that someone who is so driven to seek out the naughty bits of books will abuse any material he comes across, and that the blame is to be laid on that reader rather than on that text. And I am certain that such a response is the exception, not the rule.

But to use such a case to write off an enormous body of valuable work is going too far.

Furthermore, there is this silly idea among Christians (I was deceived by it myself for a long time) that what is new is therefore bad.

OK, another little tangent here. Tolkien believed in a kind of reverse evolution, a de-volution, if you will, in which everything was decaying from its original perfection and gradually getting worse and worse. I can see that value of that as a working theory. But it seems to go against theological principles, taught by my reformed church, about original sin. I have been taught to believe that people have always been just as bad and will always be just as bad. No earthly utopia is possible, but neither will humanity get so bad that they will be nearly wiped out by another Noah's Flood again, until the end of the world. So then how does it make sense to say that today's novels are worse than literature of the past? It doesn't. It's not an accurate description of literary history, either. At one point Sproul said that the ancient Greeks did not allow murders to take place on stage, because they had a moral sensitivity against that. My theatre-director friend and I said to one another right after, “Lysistrata?” Not much moral sensitivity there. And then she told me that later on, in the Roman theatre, slaves were actually murdered on stage to depict the murders in the story. That puts The Hunger Games in perspective.

So obviously I think that Sproul was wrong in writing off The Novel as a genre that Christians should read and write. I've got two novels cooking on the back burner. A young Ekphrasian is sharing a marvelous novel with us, chapter by chapter, each month. So, bring on the novels!

Now I'm going to talk about a few categories of novels that Christians may possibly want to consider reading. Please stick with me here, because I'm going to ask your help with something directly at the end of this post.

Here are several categories of novels I recommend Christians consider reading.

I. First, there are novels that contain very disturbing content for the sake of making an essential point or teaching a powerful moral lesson, such as Lord of the Flies, 1984, The End of the Affair, The Road, The Age of Innocence, Crime and Punishment, or The Picture of Dorian Gray. I think Christians who have the stomach for the violent content really should read these, because they teach important lessons about the horrors of war, society without restraints, voyeurism, lack of respect for human life, gender inequality, corruption, etc. So adult Christians should read these, think about them, write about them, and converse about them with one another and with their non-Christian friends. What other novels would you add to this first category: disturbing with a good moral lesson?

II. Second, there are novels that contain content that should be troubling to a Christian, and which do not use that content to teach some moral lesson compatible with Christianity, and yet which should be read by Christians because of what they reveal about culture, or because of the impact they are having on society, or because of the conversations they could start, or simply because they are so well-written and -structured that to skip them would be to miss out on a great artistic blessing. Possession by A. S. Byatt is my current favorite example of highly-skilled craft; The Da Vinci Code might be an example of a cultural conversation (although that's a bit out-of-date now). I'm not sure if The Blind Contessa's New Machine by Carey Wallace should fit here or elsewhere: it's written by a Christian, yet contains an extra-marital affair, so “my kind” of Christians would be offended by it, yet it's a jewel-perfect example of the novelist's craft, and not to be missed. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, the anti-Narnia series for children, is so well-written and influential that Christians should be familiar with it in order to appreciate its literary power and counter its spiritual evil. I would say all of Ayn Rand's works fit here. What other novels are contrary to a Christian worldview, and yet are important for us to read for craft or for cultural conversations?

III. There are also those that reveal actual problems in the world, whether historical or contemporary problems. I'm thinking of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe; Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton; Beloved by Toni Morrison; The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini; Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi (actually haven't read this one yet); All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque; A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway; The Jungle by Upton Sinclair; or What is the What by Dave Eggers. Which do you think are the best social-exposé novels in this category?

IV. Finally, there are novels that are main-stream, popular, recent, acclaimed, and so forth, that are purely edifying. These have very little potentially offensive content, and they serve to enrich the lives of readers.

Obviously in their time the works of Charles Dickens served as powerful exposés of social injustice. Jane Austen's painted a portrait of an idealized society based on mutual respect. Jane Eyre dramatized Providence in action. Those of the Inklings translated theology into imaginary worlds to help present doctrine in a fresh light, embodied in characters and places to make them palatable again to jaded readers.

And now?

Well, here is where I really want your help. I asked the pastor if I could put together a list of ten or so very recent novels that are edifying, and share that list as an antidote to Sproul's unbalanced viewpoint. But I want to start slowly. I don't want to scare anyone off of novels,so I'm trying to compile a list of the best recent novels that, say, a 10-to-13-year-old could read without encountering troubling content, so that I can share this list with my fellow congregants as kind of “baby food.” I would hope I could follow up with some “solid meat” later. For right now, then, I'm looking for recommendations of more books like these: 
 

the Harry Potter series

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2004)

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (2004)

My problem is that I've only recently started reading recent works! What about The Help? Have you read that? How is it? Good writing? Any questionable content? How about books by Joyce Carol Oates? Have any of you read The Greek Passion? How is it? Or have you read recent/later works by Brett Lott, Annie Dillard, Ron Hansen, Shusaku Endo, Edward P. Jones, Eevelyn Waugh? What do you think? 

Finally, I plan to do a later follow-up list of works that are a little more mature, but still just really, really edifying overall, like Unveiling by Suzanne Wolf (2004). Suggestions for this list?

OK, so, what other novels can I add to my “baby food” list? What others should I add to my “first solid meat” list? Remember, for the first list there can't be any content that would be potentially offensive to the conservative mind (which pretty much just means sexual content; violence is usually OK to some extent, and dangerous ideas are hardly a problem at all), and the overall message has to be consistent with the most obvious Christian teachings. Oh, and I think that realism is preferred over fantasy, which I know is a weakness of mine, so “realistic,” edifying, recent novels are what's wanted!

That's where I have to start. I hope I can go from there.