To Begin Again in the Great Story
Begin Again
For so you must,
or the turning of the year
will turn you
further out to tide
than you ever dreamed
of drifting.
Yet
even here, in the place
you hoped not to be—
clinging to patched and faded
life preservers which no longer
keep you afloat—
there is hope
to set your course anew.
See
how the stars appear
to lighten your way,
beckoning you deeper
through the gateway of night
as familiar shorelines
recede with the setting sun.
Now
you turn towards
the dark unknown
and watch
as ten thousand shining
possibilities come rushing
to meet you, to welcome you home.
I am not where I thought I’d be by now—as a human or a student of literature. Ever since the pandemic, I have been unable to read nearly anything except children’s fantasy books, poetry, and British mysteries. It has been a bit embarrassing to try to explain why, as a non-fiction writer, I have not read all of the glorious and wonderful non-fiction books that have come into the world over the past three years. Instead, I’ve taken comfort in the worlds that Jesus followers such as Madeline L’Engle, C.S. Lewis, S.D. Smith, Andrew Peterson, Helena Sorenson, and J.R.R. Tolkien have created. I’ve found refuge in the poetry of Luci Shaw, T.S. Eliot, and David Whyte, and have even begun to see my life and the wonders in it as poetry itself.
For the most part, I’ve released the guilt that I seem to be permanently stuck in a fiction rut—dismissing it as a relatively harmless coping mechanism that helps me de-stress. But now, at the beginning of 2023, a different conviction has begun to take shape in my mind. I’ve had a growing sense that all of the fictional fantasy stories I’ve been reading are true—truer than the many volumes of wisdom I’ve purchased that tell me how to live a better, more productive, more successful life—and that my desire to read them reflects a deeper desire to experience the ‘real world’ with clearer vision and a refreshed imagination.
In his essay “On Fairy Stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien (creator of Middle Earth) proposes that Fairy Stories do not deny reality or promote escapism in the sense that the reader is deserting reality in favor of fantasy. A fairy tale, he writes, “...does not deny the existence of. . .sorrow and failure; . . .it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” The joy and consolation that reading a fairy tale brings—the joy of seeing a world set right—is nothing less than evangelium; that is, Gospel good news. Tolkien takes this concept even farther when he argues that the Gospel is the ultimate fairy-story, embodying the good news of all other stories:
The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. . . This story begins and ends in joy. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits.
At the Advent of 2023, I thought I would be in a different place—having accomplished more, worrying less. I thought that by now I would be done with children’s literature and would go back to mature adult reading that helps me be a more informed Christian, writer, etc. But the jewels I’ve gathered from over two years of exploring other worlds through fantasy have prepared me to receive the joys and heartache of this world while living in the hope of the world to come beyond anything else I’ve read. It is true that I’m not where I thought I’d be by now—but because of how fairy-stories have taught me to see the world more clearly, I am not where I was. What a gift: to have drifted farther out to sea on tides of curiosity and joy than I ever dreamed possible, finding myself precisely where I am meant to be. Not lost, but found.
My prayer for us as we sail into this new year is that we are able to release the old anchors of guilt and regret that may yet tug at our ankles, pulling us back to shore, and instead look around in wonder with a renewed commitment to be where we are. For those practicing the Way of Jesus, we can trust that where we are is where we’re meant to be—no matter how far we seem to have drifted from our notion of where we “should” be. We can release the shadows and sorrows of yesterday and entrust to Jesus the unknown future, discovering layers of depth, meaning, and beauty woven into the fabric of the now with—in the words of Tolkien—a Joy as poignant as grief.
“Further up and further in!” With these words, C.S. Lewis describes the adventure of life after death at the conclusion of his beloved series, The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis writes,
All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now a last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes in forever and ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
(pg. 174, The Last Battle)
Somehow, in a way I do not fully understand but long to embrace, we are invited to begin living into this future reality now—knowing our lives are but the smallest line on the first page of our introduction to eternity. Every word on this page is a fresh beginning, an opportunity to begin again. As heralds of the Kingdom that is now and yet to be, may we take heart in knowing that our stories are part of a Greater Story—one which gets better and better as we journey towards Home.