Write in your heroes; hold onto your myths.
Why imagination matters and how G.K. Chesterton claimed that conviction in my heart (with help from C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkein).
“In the fairy tale,” G.K. Chesterton writes, “an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.”1
If you’re going to read any series of books this year, it should be G.K. Chesterton’s Heretics and then Orthodoxy.
If you’re going to read any other series of books it should, of course, be Ten Silver Coins, which I wrote as a way to spark adventure, hope and imagination in young audiences and the young at heart.
Myths are stories passed down that focus on histories. They usually involve supernatural beings or events.2 But is myth an art form, even the greatest? C.S. Lewis suggests it just may be. Why? Because myth:
Produces works which give us (at the first meeting) as much delight and (on prolonged acquaintance) as much wisdom and strength as the works of the greatest poets…. It arouses in us sensations we have never had before, never anticipated having, as though we had broken out of our normal mode of consciousness and ‘possessed joys not promised to our birth.’ It gets under our skin, hits us at a level deeper than our thoughts or even our passions, troubles oldest certainties till all questions are reopened, and in general shocks us more fully awake than we are for most of our lives.3
If you’ve read Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, then you’re aware of what he means. Likely the proof of his point has burned like a hot coal in your imagination. The series has surely gotten under our skin and audiences have been shocked awake by the stories (the series has sold 200 million books, been adapted to stage and screen, and continues to trouble our certainties and reopen questions about what we believe).
A culture hungry for myth
Look at our media landscape. Fifteen of the top twenty highest grossing films of all time are myths. While that doesn’t mean that these films are the highest art, they do show how hungry people are for these types of stories.
People want to be shocked awake, to meaning. And I believe we need stories that awaken people to faith.
If you’re a fan of Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien and have read about their friendship, you may have come across a mythic anecdote in which the author of Narnia was nudged by the author of The Lord of the Rings into the realm of personal faith.
The two ruminated on the mythic nature of the Christian story, concluding that the story of the gospel is a myth and fairytale—one that happens to be true.
Tolkien said it this way, in a letter to his son Christopher:
Of course I do not mean that the Gospels tell what is only a fairy-story; but I do mean very strongly that they do tell a fairy-story: the greatest.
Man the story-teller would have to be redeemed in a manner consonant with his nature: by a moving story. But since the author of it is the supreme Artist and the Author of Reality, this one was also made . . . to be true on the Primary Plane.4
Myths matter. And they can pave the way for important truths.
A shout out to an intellectual hero of mine
This week in my week-by-week release of Book One of Ten Silver Coins, I introduce a character called Mr. Kay who Jill first meets in a painting. It turns out he has a connection to her mother and he can move in and out of time.
The Chesterton-like character appears briefly and serves as a guide. He helps Jill understand that time—if you can call it that—reveals many secrets. And that there’s ways to travel to many different worlds.
That’s something Chesterton himself did, through thought-provoking essays, poetry and books. It was fun to shout out to him in my own attempt at myth-making.
If you or someone in your life needs to be shocked awake with a story that gets under your skin, consider a fairy tale.
Chesterton, G.K. Orthodoxy (1908). Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press, 2001.
Check out the etymology of the word and its meaning. It’s super interesting.
The Lewis quote is taken from an introduction to George MacDonald’s Lilith (1895), WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1999. Emphasis added.