Real Life Fiction

Ok, I'll admit it: I'm reading the Twilight series. I like to justify my actions by attributing them to a commitment to staying up to date with teenage interests, or simple investment in the rising contemporary culture, but while these thoughts are true, the fact of the matter is that once you get past all the "smoldering," the story is actually pretty fun. I started the first book as a distraction from all the heavy school reading I had to do, and now I'm on the third, Eclipse. I love reading because if you've resisted having your imagination dulled by the dullness of the remaining strands of modernity and the absurdness of the currently reigning postmodernity, then you can quietly leave your own world for a while and enter into the life of the story. When these stories work as escapes for me from the rigors of work or school it can often be hard for me to come back to real life once again. However, this has been becoming less and less the case with the books I read lately.

A few months ago, after a year or so of hearing people croon on and on about the movie Avatar and the overwhelming beauty of Pandora, Linds and I broke down and watched it. It was very entertaining, and the world the movie created was fun, but as I watched I was reminded of a quote from ol' Clive Staples Lewis that said something like "If we ever saw how glorious we really are as creations of God, we would be tempted to bow down and worship humanity" (can anyone help me with a reference here?). While it is good and right to get caught up in our imaginations in the colors of Pandora, the intensity in Forks, WA, the clarity and passion of Middle Earth, all those adventures from a long time ago in that galaxy far, far away, our enjoyment of each of these worlds should point us back with wondrous eyes to the people we are and glory of the creation around us.

It would certainly be more exciting if Linds were a vampire/werewolf, if we were being watched by the Volturi, and pursued who knows what else, but the excitements of that life and the intensity of that relationship have been helping me to open my eyes more to the adventures of my own life and the intricate passions I share with Lindsey. As Tolkien once said, "A good story is just the truth writ large," and as I read more stories I am finding myself delighting more and more in the truth of the story God has set ME in.

The woods over my back deck have no vampires in them, and I don't pop-corn into a mammoth wolf when I get mad, but even the bark of the trees is beautiful enough to spark entire worlds in the mind of the careful observer, and the passion I feel for my bride could inspire epic sagas that could even do naught but shadow the truth they strive to reflect.

I do love fiction, but fiction inspires an even deeper love for the True story that God has set me in - not to mention the characters that go with it!

"If you want people to hear the truth, tell them. If you want them to know the truth, tell them a story." - Eudora Welty

- Drew