God is fun!
I read some where that we were suppose to "enjoy him forever..."
I've been watching this thread, as writing is a twin passion for me along with ministry (the two are one in some respects). As Patrick implied earlier, works such as LOTR powerfully impact the moral, aesthetic, and very heart-sense of us.
Sometimes fiction, and I think of a special sort of fiction, that which enters into the mythic realm, may intuit spiritual realites in such profundity, that so-called "realism" pales before it. Arthurian legend is an example of such.
THE MIRAGE OF ARTHUR
I do not say legend as that is less
real
than a reflection of the real,
distorted or hazy as that may be
floating as it is in air
or consciousness
over the reflected
what, then, is the real
under the mirage of Arthur?
Take a king
of unique and mysterious birth
rising out of mean obscurity
to seize a sword of such unearthly power
— which none other can grasp and wield —
by it uniting disparate and warring peoples
into a unified kingdom
and by his prowess,
majesty of personhood
and true love of them
win such love from his people
they would as soon die as live
for love of him
the sword given by a woman
in whom rested the living waters
from a High Throne off-world,
from whence also was forged the blade
which had no beginning
gleaming always with the brilliance
of the child’s father
A king who died a mysterious death
and the word was
would return
and bring the kingdom again
in true and greater glory.
They live — even in this day —
who live by this
real-under-the-mirage joy,
Story-beneath-all-stories joy,
who dance and sing
in the king’s unending kingdom
while yet in Time,
for the glory of legends and such mirages
has overflowed into Time
and cannot any longer be contained
but must wash across the earth
till the whole is filled with it
even though the precious dispensing vessels
be first broken, blood like seed soaking the earth,
saints and martyrs all, for love,
for Arthur’s true image, and return.
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Love some fiction as I do, I personally prefer to write in a new genre called,
Visionary adventure, non-fiction. May not the truth of our lives following Christ, beset about by devils, en route to Celestial City, tested and refined by fiery trials as we stand visible before the world in the Global Arena of Consciousness, be as exciting and attention-arresting as make-believe stories?
Is not our very
consciousness the stuff of heroic legend, albeit containing an element of the anti-hero (Tim Keller: "more wicked than we dared to think, more loved than we dared to hope"), and yet these lives as sons and daughters of the Almighty, adopted into His royal lineage are stunningly more glorious than any legend of earth!
And from whence we came! Was it not from the monsters of the brood,
the living dead, glorious of skin-covering perhaps, but within progeny of the prince of demons in our human form.
Fiction pales before the actuality of this human condition we are in, were there but the tellers to say it. Did not Dylan intimate such, in his “Chimes of Freedom,” flashing like lightning,
strikin’ for the gentle, strikin’ for the kind,
strikin’ for the guardians and protectors of the mind,
and the poet, and the painter far behind his rightful time…
----------
THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL
will never be written
because, first, who cares
for even a great sprawling fiction
since there is not one Dostoevsky alive
to fill it with living vision
and then, again, who cares
for but another fantasy
however shot through with genius
in these archetypal days of our reality
no, a novel is a plaything
of genius, and peoples
to make up for the absence
of an epic Poet
only the actual matters
anymore, only the truth
of these our lives & this our world
has any relevance whatsoever
and it is in the works
THE GREAT AMERICAN POEM
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Art may encompass the real world, and in it to "enjoy Him forever" our
raison d'être, He the strength of our hearts, His loving kindness better than life. All this in the adventure of the ages, a grand saga of horror and glory. Our lives.
Sorry for going on so; y'all were touching upon one of my loves!