Yes, yesterday was my birthday, and I am now a whopping 31 yrs. old. Oddly enough, it doesn’t feel any different from being 30.
For my birthday present David found a hardback copy of George MacDonald’s Lilith. George MacDonald was a mid/late 19th century Scottish author who is considered the father of modern fantasy. He was also a Presbyterian minister (defrocked because of his unorthodox teachings) and a friend of Lewis Carroll, that morphine-influenced writer of Alice in Wonderland. Interestingly enough, MacDonald (to my knowledge) never partook of any funny substances, yet his books are more tripped out than even Alice. However, unlike Alice’s adventures, MacDonald’s work always whisper (and sometimes shout) at deeper underlying meaning, and so in that sense they have that very realistic feeling that my life means something, somewhere, I just can’t figure it out right now. His works also gift every aspect of our life with spirituality, not in the pantheistic sense but in the sense that nothing is prosaic or unimportant. And so Phantastes was a source of inspiration for the young, atheist C.S Lewis to consider many things about life and eventually Christianity.
What exactly do I love about MacDonald’s fantasy? Well, I asked David that at breakfast this morning- “Why do I like George’s work, dear?” and he said,
“Becuase it’s freaky.”
Yup, that sums it up nicely.
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