Having read Arthur Machen* for the first time in The Great God Pan, I am more assured than ever of the reality of evil -- of powers actively working behind the scenes, deceiving the world into believing they are not there. I tend to lavish a lot of my attention on the romantic side of the supernatural. It's nicer to think of. But it's important, too, to remember what the medievals knew all too well, which is that one does not transgress into the country of Faerie lightly, nor go without the proper talismans for protection; cross, holy water, Host.
Perhaps surprisingly, this growing recognition of the oppressive powers of evil does not drive me to despair. Rather, it serves to highlight the opposing side: the great umbrella of unseen watchers that move in the world, protecting, sowing, loving things into being. This is why horror is a particularly Catholic genre. If one can recognize a transcendental wrongness, then it is only natural that there should be its opposite. For by the lack of something do we discover its solid.
It has occurred to me, in this way, that the saints are greater than the gods. As much as I like to ponder the existence of fairies, I do have access to something far more magical: that is, the great crowd of witnesses, the mortal men and women who have gone before me, who now live in that Burning that is the presence of Uncreated One on the Throne, and who move to interact with me daily, at only my slightest inclination.
I was walking to the bus stop the other day when I beheld myself in an almost mystical vision (it wasn't, I have not yet had a mystical vision, and I think I am not the type of person such things visit, though I have met God (remind me to tell you about the Eucharist)): of myself, as a moving, breathing, living Story. God thinks of me the way I think of my characters. He has mediated on me and watches my life unfold like the plots that I pour over, tugging ever thread out of order, finally putting the unfinished tapestry aside because I cannot make it to my satisfaction. Not everyone can be a Tolkien, after all. But every person is a Tolkien's masterpiece.
Loving things into being. That's what storytelling is, isn't it? Stories are everything. Jung knew this. The ancients knew this. When they initiated people into their mysteries and reenacted the dying and rising with the corn. The King must die. The return of the King. Do, so that you might become. Enter the story. Step into the Story as God stepped into His creation, became Incarnate of a Woman. The Woman. The Man. The New Eve and the New Adam.
Story is not only what God does. It is what He is. It is what I am, too.
+JMJ+
Photo by Ben Vaughn on Unsplash
* Arthur Machen was a Welshman with a particular affinity for the Celtic Church, and that strikes a chord with me. I too am an (adopted) Cymraes with a penchant for unearthing the oldest and most localized rites of Christianity. He was convinced, against historical record and known fact, that the Celtic Church wasn't Catholic, but I'll allow some grace for the prejudices of his time and circumstance. As C.S. Lewis has shown me, it's hard to be a British person and not have some unconscious bias against the Church.
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