"He leads you around the crowded ballroom, then out onto the terrace. And he takes you into his arms...."
Maybe it was the shape of her face, or her half-closed eyes. It might have been her fair uplifted arms, or the dreaminess in her voice. But for a moment, I forgot she was my daughter. She was the quintessential Cinderella. She was a mythic image, a part of the True Myth (summarized here by Mike at Lord of the Kingdom):
All myths and all religions, [C.S Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien] argued, contained some aspect, some distorted reflection of the True Myth, which is the Gospel as revealed in the Bible. Myths - and especially intentionally pre-Christian myths such as The Lord of the Rings - were meant to reflect and point to the one Myth that has entered history and reality in the Person of Jesus Christ. God’s story - the Gospel - is found in all the distorted writings and imaginings of fallen people, people who still bear the image of God but are unable to apprehend or express the full meaning of the True Myth.
In every one of us, there is a person longing to be raised from obscurity to significance. We seek to break out of isolation and into relationship. In our separation from God, there is a place which desires union with Him. We long to be taken into his arms of love.
"I don't care what the directors think," one of the other fathers said to Papa Rooster. "Tonight, she WAS Cinderella." We knew what he meant. We'd seen it, too.
Just for a moment.
2 comments:
Just my kind of post too : ) Christianity is the LIVING fairy tale, for a REAL happily ever after : )
That's so wonderful.
I did my senior thesis at Wheaton about this - under Dr. Hein - looking at Lewis & Tolkien's creation accounts for Narnia and Middle Earth as they relate (dare I say contribute?) to one's Biblical understanding of God's relationship to his creation.
I haven’t thought about Christian mythopoeia theories in quite awhile. It *is* magical when those transcendent moments take shape in our lives. Real Magic, we dubbed it in class.
Post a Comment