I am excited to share with you that the entire Dawnbringer series has now been completed and the final volume–and a one volume compilation of all books–has been released. The fruit of many years of gestation and close to a year of writing, it feels to me, even more than any of my other books, the “child of my heart” and also perhaps the most mature expression of my theological vision, that is, the truth that the eyes of my heart see and yearn, with the sense of what has been entrusted to me by God, to communicate to others. That, at least, is what I have humbly sought to do, placing myself at the service of God in prayer and writing during this time.
On the website you will now find volume 4, “A Song for Telmerion,” available for order, as well as “Dawnbringer: The Complete Story.” They are marked as backorder, since we have not received them physically in the mail yet. But I never know how many to sell, and do not want to over-order, but I can adjust the order accordingly based on response. So if you order a copy, consider it a “preorder” which will be mailed when they come in stock. These books are also available on Amazon–and a compact edition closer to the “mass market” paperback size with small print–and you are welcome to order from there if you wish not to wait or desire faster shipping.
Below are the links to the books on this website. Further down I also take this opportunity to share a little reflection that has come in the midst of my writing of Dawnbringer, on what I believe to be a rather unexplored avenue of the thought and doctrinal exploration in the Church, namely, a “theological mythology.” It expresses my belief that storytelling, especially myth, is and should be a theological practice unfolding the rich deposit of the faith and aiding in “the development of doctrine,” alongside biblical and systematic theology, only with the unique way of manifesting the truth proper to stories and to co-creative artistic activity.
Dawnbringer Book 4: A Song for Telmerion – At the Wellspring Publishing
Dawnbringer: The Complete Story – At the Wellspring Publishing
A REFLECTION ON THEOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY
In his book The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton presents a view of history that reveals how the longings in the heart of man throughout time, and his very journey through all the ages of our world, center upon Jesus Christ. It is he who reveals man to himself in revealing the true face of God, and it is he who unveils for us the true depth and beauty of our dignity and destiny—rooted as it is in the paternal love of the heavenly Father, who looks upon each one of us with incredible tenderness and cherishing delight, with a love that is neither dimmed nor obstructed by our sins, our foibles, and our brokenness, but rather stirred simply to seek us out, that we may return at last home into his everlasting embrace, into the welcoming bosom of the eternal Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—which is our true origin and our everlasting end.
One of the themes of this book by Chesterton is myth, an exploration of the religious longings and imaginations of humanity throughout its ancient history and even up to the present.* In his exploration it becomes apparent that man is a storyteller in his very nature, and that by telling stories he seeks to make sense of the meaning of the world and of his own place within it. And most especially he seeks to approach and to comprehend in some way—or better, to enter into contact with—the mystery of God.And yet these stories that man has made, these myths, are not meant to be history in the literal sense, nor do they aim to pin a name upon the nameless divinity that man cannot but aspire toward and worship. The only name by which God may truly be called is the name by which he calls himself and reveals himself to us.
Thus throughout history myth has been a religious activity, a spiritual aspiration, a form of primal theology and philosophy—indeed a particularly vivid and important form of human thought which includes all the different facets of human contemplation in a unified whole in a way that story alone can achieve.
But with the coming of Jesus Christ, the unnameable God has entered history; he has revealed not only his name but his face, indeed his open and exposed heart. He has unveiled before us our true origin in his creative love, and he has unveiled before us our destiny to find everlasting home in his embrace; and he has connected the two together, beginning and end, by the outpouring of his redeeming gift, by grace flowing from the Heart of Christ—Incarnate, Crucified, Risen, and Eucharistic—sweeping us up into the dramatic story of his own eternal life of intimacy and joy, and granting us to participate in it, and to share it with others, through every moment of this mortal life, until eternal life is ours.
This is the great adventure, the true journey, the story that makes sense of all other stories—a story that shall not cease with the last page of our mortal existence, but rather shall commence then in fullest and freest measure. All of our wanderings in this temporal world are but like the first chapter of a great epic, a never-ending story, a perfect romance. This God has revealed to us in the story of Christ, and in salvation history as a whole, from the first creation of Adam and Eve in Genesis to the final words of the book of Revelation, and indeed in this history as it continues to unfold within us and our history until the end of time. Yes, divine revelation takes up all the aspirations of man’s story-telling, of myth, and the glimpses of beauty and truth that it bears within it, and fulfills them. For this is the true story, which not only expresses truths about reality, but is the truth, the truth of God’s eternal being wedding itself to the concrete truth of historical time, and becoming the true story of humanity and of the entire cosmos. All man’s stories, therefore, both imagined and lived, are but participations in and expressions of, this great Story in which all things are contained, and in which is found endless adventure, wondrous discovery, ceaseless play, and ecstatic joy in the abundant embrace of perfect Love.
So if mankind has long approached the mystery of God and the world through a mythological theology, through creating stories to make sense of the wonder and drama, the anguish and joy, the ugliness and beauty, of the cosmos, so since the full revelation of God in Jesus Christ—since his full entrance into the history of our world—we no longer need practice such a mythological theology. We no longer need approach God through our frail imaginings of what he might be like, giving a thousand faces to his mystery through the invention of a pantheon of gods or archetypal stories of good and evil. But this does not at all mean that we do not seek, nor need, to weave the tapestries of beautiful stories in order to unfold all the richness contained within the great events of salvation history, the richness of God’s presence and activity in our own lives, and “the breadth, length, height, and depth of the love of Christ, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:18-19).
Rather, meeting us precisely in the incarnate richness of our historical humanity, God meets us as the great Storyteller speaking to created storytellers, and, by giving us our true Story, he enables us to tell stories anew, and more deeply still, in the light of his love and his activity that ever shines upon us. Thus the religious longing, the human aspiration, and the story and thought by which man has sought to make sense of reality—in the light of God’s redeeming activity in Christ—gives way now to Christian theology and philosophy, to liturgy and life, to ethics and evangelization, and to all the beauty of life bathed in the radiance of the Trinity’s Love. But this is not all, for man remains a storyteller, even as his story is ever being told by God’s loving voice spoken within him and by his own joyful and humble cooperation. Thus man’s stories do not cease when his true story is revealed. Rather they deepen and expand. What was before a mythological theology now becomes, among many other things, a theological mythology.
Yes, we remain ever creators and imaginers, since we bear in us the image and likeness of the one true Creator. We thus yearn spontaneously to co-create, to sub-create by the light that shines within us, and to give expression to the beauty and meaning that we behold, and which touches our hearts. And when God is fully revealed to us—in the breathtakingly beautiful drama, the ravishing story that is the Gospel—this storytelling bursts open in depth and beauty. For God’s salvation does not just stir conceptual thought or study, but it also fecundates our imaginations and fires our sense of adventure; it stirs us both to think and to imagine, all as part of that flowing current of love that surges on like a river throughout every moment of our life, carried from Love unto Love by Love, unto the consummation that awaits us in the new creation, in the definitive happily-ever-after where God shall be All in all, and all shall be fulfilled in him.
I truly do believe that storytelling, and in particular fantasy, faerie story, mythology (whatever name we give to it) is and should be another theological expression of the richness of the Gospel, standing alongside theology and philosophy and unfolding it in the way that is so unique and proper to storytelling. For here anew the “Word becomes flesh,” and the mystery of reality becomes present within us in a vivid way, permeating places of our life that remain recumbent, that they may be evangelized by the light of God’s love and truth, and may shine in his light, unfolding in the dramatic story that he intends for us. And indeed, how can the heart so touched by such love, and caught up in such a story, not become a storyteller in response? And the heart does this, not merely to teach lessons or to share the Gospel with others (though this also is true) but also simply because such is the attitude and action of a child, born of ceaseless wonder at the miracle of reality and at the undeserved gift of existence, and in the abiding play that is the truest and highest activity of humanity, indeed the very nature of the everlasting life of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
