{"id":238,"date":"2010-03-15T05:30:54","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T12:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/?p=238"},"modified":"2016-10-10T22:02:50","modified_gmt":"2016-10-11T05:02:50","slug":"a-glimpse-of-heaven-through-mythopoeic-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/a-glimpse-of-heaven-through-mythopoeic-literature","title":{"rendered":"A Glimpse of Heaven Through Mythopoeic Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having just finished Peter Kreeft’s book Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing<\/em><\/a>, I find myself aching for the numinous:<\/p>\n

Have you ever felt it–the haunting of the world?…The haunting has been called the sense of the “numinous.”\u00a0 It is the sense that the world we see is haunted by something we do not see, an unseen presence.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kreeft goes on to discuss this haunting in the human face, romantic love, pictures, stories and music.\u00a0 I think I have lost touch with the numinous in my daily life as practical matters have begun to crowd it out.\u00a0 And yet, I can still feel it when I concentrate, though it scares me more often than it intrigues me.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Accolade by Edmund Blair Leighton<\/p><\/div>\n

I need a stronger sense of heaven.\u00a0 I need to embrace that mysterious presence that hovers just outside my realm of consciousness so that I can recall the purpose and ultimate end of life.<\/p>\n

It’s time to read some mythopoeic literature.<\/p>\n

Mythopoeic literature reminds the reader that there is something else<\/em> out there, something both frightening and awe-inspiring.\u00a0 Mythopoeic novels don’t take you out of the world, but deeper in. I used to call them “fantasy” novels, but the fantasy genre has become too corrupted by the publishing machine to be an effective term anymore.<\/p>\n

I’ve developed a list of mythopoeic novels that I’m going to begin reading in the hope that they will put me back in touch with the numinous, and lead me to a better appreciation of the beauty of heaven.<\/p>\n

Here’s the list I’ve developed for myself:<\/p>\n

1858 – Phantastes<\/em><\/a> – George MacDonald
\n1864 – \u201cThe Light Princess\u201d – George MacDonald
\n1867 – \u201cThe Golden Key\u201d – George MacDonald
\n1871 – At the Back of the North Wind<\/em><\/a> – George MacDonald
\n1872 – The Princess and the Goblin<\/em><\/a> – George MacDonald
\n1875 – \u201cThe Wise Woman\u201d – George MacDonald
\n1883 – The Princess and Curdie<\/em><\/a> – George MacDonald
\n1885 – King Solomon\u2019s Mines<\/em><\/a> – H. Rider Haggard
\n1887 – She<\/em><\/a> – H. Rider Haggard
\n1895 – Lilith<\/em><\/a> – George MacDonald
\n1908 – The Man Who Was Thursday<\/em><\/a> – G.K. Chesterton
\n1924 – The King of Elfland\u2019s Daughter<\/em><\/a> – Lord Dunsany
\n1929 – The Father Brown Omnibus<\/em><\/a>
\n1930 – War in Heaven<\/em><\/a> – Charles Williams
\n1933 – The Pilgrim\u2019s Regress<\/em><\/a> – C.S. Lewis
\n1937 – The Hobbit<\/em><\/a> – J.R.R. Tolkien
\n1937 – Descent into Hell<\/em><\/a> – Charles Williams
\n1938 – Out of the Silent Planet<\/em><\/a> – C.S. Lewis
\n1938 – Taliessin through Logres<\/em><\/a> – Charles Williams
\n1943 – Perelandra<\/em><\/a> – C.S. Lewis
\n1945 – That Hideous Strength<\/em><\/a> – C.S. Lewis
\n1945 – The Great Divorce<\/em><\/a> – C.S. Lewis
\n1945 – All Hallow\u2019s Eve<\/em><\/a> – Charles Williams
\n1945 – “Leaf by Niggle” – J.R.R. Tolkien
\n1949 – “Farmer Giles of Ham” – J.R.R. Tolkien
\n1954 – The Lord of the Rings<\/em><\/a> – J.R.R. Tolkien
\n1956 – The Chronicles of Narnia<\/em><\/a> – C.S. Lewis
\n1956 – Till We Have Faces<\/em><\/a> – C.S. Lewis
\n1967 – “Smith of Wootton Major” – J.R.R. Tolkien
\n1977 – The Silmarillion<\/em><\/a> – J.R.R. Tolkien
\n1998 – Roverandom<\/em><\/a> – J.R.R. Tolkien
\n2007 – The Children of H\u00farin<\/em><\/a> – J.R.R. Tolkien<\/p>\n

I admit it’s a purely subjective list, and I’ve read many of them before, but it’s time to delve into them again.\u00a0 Let me know if I’ve forgotten or left out any gems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having just finished Peter Kreeft’s book Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing, I find myself aching for the numinous: Have you ever felt it–the haunting of the world?…The haunting has been called the sense of the “numinous.”\u00a0 It is the sense that the world we see is haunted by something we do not see, an unseen presence.” Kreeft goes on to discuss this haunting in the human face, romantic love, pictures, stories and music.\u00a0 I think I have lost touch with the numinous in my daily life as practical...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,10],"tags":[36,47,31,128,129],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-spirituality","tag-book-recommendations","tag-classics","tag-literature","tag-mythopoeic-literature","tag-peter-kreeft"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/accolade-blair-leighton.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOucj-3Q","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3676,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions\/3676"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}