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Behold, young man, and may the gods avert the omen, but you have been born into times when it is well to fortify the spirit with examples of courage.”
– Tacitus
Most of our lives would make pretty boring novels. (maybe 2020 changed that, but let’s just ignore that for the moment, yes?)
True, there is a certain drama in the everyday ups and downs, but it amounts to no more than your ordinary contemporary novel. Which is why people read and write contemporary novels. It’s relatable and shows us the important moments that do happen in our everyday lives (and that’s why I wrote this story ).
However, for those of us who read or write more fantastical and “exciting” genres, like epic fantasy, coming back to the Normal World after closing a book can feel dull. Yes, it’s wonderful that we don’t have those monsters in our world. But… you know… slaying dragons might be a bit more fun than an essay or doing dishes.
People have always written stories to give us a taste of the heroic to spice up the humdrum ordinary. Think back to Homer (life was probably pretty exciting back them, but hey. Not everyone was a demigod). Then you have a long sequence of plays and epics about extraordinary events until–
Wait. In the Middle Ages, Chaucer writes about ordinary people? What happened to exciting and mythical retellings? What happened to dragging an ordinary man through heaven, hell, and purgatory?
Turns out, there might be an instinct link between epic fantasy and our everyday life that could change how we view both the stories we read and the stories we live.
FOR THIRTY YEARS…
Let’s take a quick detour to Palestine during the first century A.D. Stop in a little village in Galilee called Nazareth, where it seems nothing out of the ordinary is occurring. There is a carpenter there, and he might be the foster father of the Son of God.
Exciting? Probably not as much as calming the sea and feeding five thousand people.
These thirty “hidden” years of Christ have been the source of endless reflection for Christians. However, let’s shift the focus a little to look at Mary. Thirty years living with the Word made Flesh. Wow. BUT… it was not all butterflies and rainbows.
On a practical level, think about the difficulty of raising God. What would she do when He acted like… you know… not an ordinary person? When He knew things other children didn’t? When He went and talked with the teachers in the Temple and taught them? And then there was the history of getting married when she was already pregnant… she had some tough situations to deal with.
Layered on top of that, you have the prophecy of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah that Mary likely knew by heart. To watch your Child grow up just knowing what would happen? Then to actually watch it happen? I can’t even imagine.
The idea with Mary is that she has compassion—literally ‘co-passion.’ She suffered with Christ. The Via Dolorosa was for Christ, but Mary walked it too. Just in a very different way, a very hidden way.
While Christ showed literally how we would have to deny ourselves and take up our cross, Mary, the first Christian, showed how our suffering wouldn’t necessarily be a literal copy of Christ’s. Crosses can be invisible. Crucifixion can happen in the soul. So can Resurrection.
The entire drama of Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection can be played out in our own lives in a hidden way. The ordinary has suddenly become the stage where the most important event of our lives takes place: being conformed to Christ.
But it’s all so hidden. The angels helping us, the demons tempting us, the saints praying for us, the grace being poured out on us, are all basically invisible. The soul fights in silence. How we spend eternity is worked out in tiny moments.
Yet, what if we could see the drama that’s really happening?
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ENTER: TOLKIEN
The fantasy genre was supposedly born with Tolkien. Anyone is free to correct me on that, as I haven’t done a ton of research, but I believe he started modern fantasy as we know it. Not fairy-tales, but fantastical worlds written as novels.
I think it’s safe to say that Tolkien did something no one else had done before. He wrote a myth for the English people, but he also wrote the first Christian epic fantasy.
How?
He took the drama of the Cross and he put it smack in the middle of a fantasy world.
Tolkien pulled the masks off the demons around us every day; he said, what if they looked like this? And what if they acted like this? And what if the Eucharist was real bread? And what if stumbling up the Via Dolorosa looks like stumbling through Mordor?
Almost every mystery of the Christian life, but especially that of the Cross, Tolkien made visible in fantasy. It’s like there was a curtain over the war in the Heavens that the Iliad subtly alludes to and Revelation talks about, and Tolkien yanked that curtain away to show us what it could look like. What it could feel like. The mystery is unveiled in fiction, yet still retains the quality of a mystery by being hidden beneath the symbolism of fiction.
As a result, it becomes easier to understand what is happening in our everyday lives. We can see and feel that invisible drama better. And we are inspired to better live it out. Fantasy becomes an analogy for us understanding our own battles and conflicts.
We realize we do know what it’s like to slay dragons.
THE HEAVENS TORN OPEN
What about the rest of the fantasy genre, particularly epic fantasy? Not everyone writes like Tolkien, and it could be argued that not every fantasy story needs to do what his did.
However, I would argue that all of them accomplish, in some way, what Lord of the Rings did.
Epic fantasy is known for heroes, often with supernatural powers, facing impossible, large-scale challenges and overcoming them. It’s that moment of struggle turned to victory that always sticks with me in fantasy. Moments in the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson, So Sang the Dawn by AnnMarie Pavese, and the Songkeeper Trilogy by Gillian Bronte Adams all contain moments like this.
Are not these moments analogies, echoes, of our own moments of facing impossible odds and overcoming them? We do not fight dragons, but we fight our vices. We may not use swords, but we use thoughts and words. Our victories may not save the world, but they may save our souls. Griffins don’t leap down to help us, but angels unseen to our eyes do.
Somewhere in every good epic fantasy, you have the drama of Good Friday and Easter Sunday relived, unveiled before our eyes in another variation, and therefore revived again in our own lives.
I don’t doubt that different genres can give you the same experience. But when I read of a hero overcoming a dragon, I realize I have my own dragon to fight, just as important, much more real now that I have encountered one through fiction.
Epic fantasy can make visible the invisible epic going on in the world and our lives. And that makes it a powerful tool… especially when you’re living in Nazareth.