both and … (again)

Now as myth transcends thought, Incarnation transcends myth.  The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens – at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. I suspect that men have sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance from myths they did not believe than from the religion they professed. To be truly Christian we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same imaginative embrace which we accord to all myth. The one is hardly more necessary than the other.

–CS Lewis, God in the Dock

ok, so halloween was over a month ago, but …

    I just saw these pics.  Best part of the memory? 

    Ethan loved the lyon-costume more than me.

 

 

in medias res - “into the middle of things”

My appetite for transcendence is heightened tonite, after an otr event of incarnate beauty and truth.  A nite of artistic expression where, (in the words of Archibald McLeish) the poetry was not only “true, but equal to.” 

For all the funky, frenzied, fuzziness inherent in this world; one thing seems crystal clear:  we’ve been set into the middle of things.  And much like the Latin writers of old, who played with starting their story in the middle, it seems (doesn’t it?) we are at once both groping forward and straining to peer behind.

On second thought, I’m not sure it was “transcendence” as much as good ol’ fashioned (mind-blowing) talent expressing itself in time & space.  (Is there a real difference?)  But something (or is it Someone?) was, indeed, closing the chasm for me.  Bringing the beginning and the end together.  Or teasing toward that, at least.

Such coverage of terrain … truth explained and experienced, expressed while at the same time embodied … makes me all the more wary of my (less than robust) majority moments.  (The ones that leave me scratching my head at a substantial gap I know so well: what I ”know” to be true and what merely is.)

It is at the same time both hopeful and depressing to receive such glimpses of reality in full.  Hopeful.  (Wow; I hadn’t known so deeply this could be.)  Depressing.  (Wow; I hadn’t known so deeply this could be.)  Thanks Karin & Linford … I guess.

Alternative titles for JT Blog #1:

• otr overdose?  (or was it the wine?)

• (esoteric) analysis for all (time)

With consolation (regarding my blessed confusion), I remember the Word who Was.  I bet He Was fully.  (Both true and equal to.)  May we learn Him well.