The Golden Rose and the Crimson Dragon: Part I

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived an king and queen in an ancient, spindly castle. They were good and just rulers, and the kingdom flourished under their reign. One day, however, a fearsome dragon with gleaming red scales flew over the castle walls and set fire to a particularly elongated parapet. As servants, courtiers, and knights ran about excitedly, no one noticed the dragon make off with the king’s youngest and fairest daughter, Lady Belinda, who had come outside to watch the blaze. When the hubbub subsided and Lady Belinda was nowhere to be found, the king and queen commissioned the worthiest knight of their kingdom, Sir Buckingham, to recover Lady Belinda and slay the dragon. If Sir Buckingham returned successful, the king and queen promised him the hand of their daughter in marriage.

But unbeknownst to the king and queen, the crimson dragon was not a dragon at all—it was the magical façade of an evil sorcerer, Lord Welkinshire, who had long coveted the power and prestige of the king. Disguised as a dragon, Welkinshire winged to his lair deep in the in the wilds of the Weatherford Mountains, where, using his dark arts, he turned Sir Buckingham to stone and cast him into a doorless room where Lady Belinda was chained to the wall. As one by one the most stalwart knights ventured into the distant mountains, Welkinshire meted them the same fate. Soon, the kingdom was left with none but its most cowardly knights, and they too marched tremulously to their demise in the sorcerer’s lair.

Unfortunately, through bribery, guile, and a great deal of good acting, Lord Welkinshire had long ago wormed his way into a high position within the king’s confidence. Once all the knights had vanished and the kingdom was left defenseless, Welkinshire planned to reveal his true identity, vanquish the king and queen, and claim the kingdom as his own. However, on a cold, rainy evening just before the sorcerer was about to consummate his plan, a fair-chinned stranger on a bedraggled white horse appeared unannounced at the castle gates. He introduced himself as Albert, prince of the neighboring kingdom, and explained that he had come on a quest to free Lady Belinda from the clutches of the crimson dragon. During the journey from the neighboring kingdom, the dragon had attacked and destroyed the prince’s entire retinue; Albert himself, however, had forced the dragon to retreat after a valiant struggle. The king and queen were overjoyed: finally, here was a warrior who, despite his youth, had been able to defeat the dragon. They gave Albert abundant blessing and ample provisions and sent him on his way the next morning.

Albert had asked to travel alone, but the queen insisted that he take with him Frusty, a trusted dwarf who, in his younger days, had guided many a knight on a victorious quest. They made a strange pair: the blond, lanky prince in knightly regalia riding alongside the squat, coal-haired lump of gray rags. Frusty’s miniature pony made the contrast all the more ridiculous, and Lord Welkinshire stifled a dignified chuckle as he watched the castle gates shut behind the two adventurers.

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After the pair had traveled in silence for some time, Frusty spoke. “Have you settled on a plan of attack yet?”

Prince Albert glanced sharply at the dwarf before responding. “We head east, toward the Weatherford Mountains.”

“And once we reach the mountains?”

“The dragon is clever; he will notice our presence long before we discover his. If we do not find his lair immediately, he will come to us.”

“Foolish,” grunted the dwarf loudly. Albert blinked twice and hung open his mouth. “What if the dragon comes on us in a narrow pass, where there is little room to maneuver?” Frusty continued. “If the dragon finds us first, he will stage the battle on his own terms. Have you thought of that, eh?”

The dwarf peered upward with a smirk, but Albert regained his composure. “Why do you refuse to address me with the respect that my station deserves?” he asked.

“Ah, forgive me, sire,” Frusty responded, his voice cracking as he spoke in obsequious falsetto. “Too delicate for a little common speech? Can’t survive without your regal title?”

Albert’s cheeks flushed. “No, but—but you have no right to speak to me like this!”

“Now listen here.” Frusty’s smirk was gone, and his temper was rising. “I may be your servant on this quest, but I am not your nursemaid. I can’t coddle you and call you ‘sir’ and ‘highness’ and bring you caviar on a silver platter. When you’re on a quest, you have to get used to living without a few of those”—the smirk returned—“conveniences. The sooner you get used to that, the better.”

Albert stared stonily ahead. “I do not understand,” he began loftily, “why the queen should have chosen to saddle me with such an impudent dwarfish cur.”

Frusty grinned wickedly, exposing several rotten teeth. “That’s just what I mean,” he said. “You speak to me like that, you can’t be offended when I follow suit.”

Albert did not respond.

When night fell, the prince and dwarf made an uneasy camp. While he prepared the meal, Frusty told Albert to pitch the tent. Dinner conversation was stilted; Albert curtly rebuffed Frusty’s attempts at further planning. When the meal was over, Frusty informed Albert that he would be the first to take watch. Albert protested that they were still in friendly territory. “You can never be too vigilant,” the dwarf responded. Albert’s watch was uneventful; he shook Frusty perhaps a little too roughly when his shift was done. The prince embraced his pillow gratefully, but moments later a tent pole gave way and the tent collapsed on top of him. Frusty smirked.

To Remember the Exodus

Yesterday afternoon I read in Exodus about the parting of the Red Sea--an act of deliverance so glorious and incredible that this video can't even begin to capture it (though it gets some of the majesty). The Israelites respond in song. "Who is like You, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?" Then, even before the chapter has a chance to end, they complain that God's deliverance is insufficient and that they would be better off in Egypt.

Yesterday morning Pastor Carne preached a sermon about the purposes of suffering--to sanctify and refine us for the ineffable purposes of God's glory and love. I responded with quiet thanksgiving. This will help me to better deal with my illness! I thought. Then, even before 36 hours had a chance to pass, I was complaining heartily about how circumstances were not meeting my own selfish desires.

When I got up today, I could barely understand how the Israelites could forget so soon. Now I realize that I did the same thing, except more quickly.

So now I must claim the same grace that the Israelites claimed again and again in the wilderness. If today's sin was motivated by forgetfulness, now I must remember--remember God's grace, God's faithfulness, and God's goodness--and be thankful. For indeed, there is much to be thankful about. I can be thankful for the parting of the Red Sea as an expression of God's personal favor toward me, because if the sea had not parted and Israel had been destroyed, Christ would not have been born and I would not have been saved. I can be thankful for the invisible seas--smaller, perhaps, but nonetheless important--that God has parted so that I may attend this particular school with these particular friends and this particular church, all of which have challenged and encouraged me greatly in my spiritual growth. I can be thankful for God's protection in the past, both spiritually and physically, and the fact that every pore of life now glistens with purpose and the reflected glory of God.

Epitaph

An honest man and a good citizen, he lived beloved by all who knew him and died in friendship with his God. May he rest in peace.

Jeremiah Donovan
Kinsule, County Cork, Ireland
d. February 22, 1861, at 63 years old
Buried in Augusta, Maine

Fall Break 2012

November 2, 2012

I’m kicking myself because I know I should be in bed right now. I have to get up early for church tomorrow, and it’s already past 11. But maybe it’s worth staying up to write about this. We’ll see.

At any rate, I know it’s worth staying up to fold my laundry, because if I don’t my button-down shirts will get wrinkled. So that’s what I was doing, not too long ago, in the doorway of my dorm room. There’s nothing much to do when folding laundry, and I was just getting thoroughly bored when I noticed an unusual sound, as if someone nearby was boiling water. But no one was around to boil water. I wondered if someone had left a faucet on by mistake, so I stood up to go turn it off--but as soon as I crept into the hallway, the sound disappeared. All I could hear was the gentle roaring of the air filters. I was curious now, and unsure if my ears were hallucinating, so I padded softly toward the two rooms next to me. The door on the left was closed, but the one across from it wasn’t. That door stood enigmatically ajar; inside, the blinds were down, the lights were off, the TV was dead, and the beds were empty. But I could still hear something: a new noise this time, like a crude Stone Age wheel crunching clumsily around a maypole. It was eerie—standing at the edge of the bright hallway, listening to the air filters whirring and a perversely unidentifiable sound crawling from uninhabited gloom.

I bent down to listen, and let my eyes adjust to the dark. Aha--the clumsy wheel, if that’s what it was, must have been part of my wingmate’s refrigerator. I stepped out of the room and headed back down the hallway, only to hear the boiling water again as soon as I reached my own doorway. I put my ear to our refrigerator: the water was boiling, if that’s what it was doing, inside. Mystery solved. I finished folding my laundry.

Not too much later, I realized that I was only able to hear those sounds because the wing was so uncannily silent. As a matter of fact, the wing is still uncannily silent. It’s fall break, and most of the campus—including all but two of my wingmates—have flown off to campaign for Romney or to visit family, leaving their rooms vacant and their wings desolate. Both my roommates have gone: Stephen is campaigning in Indiana and Kevin is debating in Vermont. Rather than join them, I have stayed behind to study and rest. (Writing this, I think, falls under the category of resting, although right now, sleeping might be a more effective use of my time. But I can’t break off in the middle now that I’ve started.)

I do need the study time, I suppose—that was the primary argument I used against Stephen’s pleas for me to join a Student Action Team (which team, my roommate scolded, I should have joined if I really wanted to change the world, save the country, and support the causes I believe in). On second thought, I should phrase my words more firmly: I know that I need the study time. I have a Critical Dialogue paper due in class the day after break ends; I have my first research paper due one week after the break, and I only started the research this evening. I also told Stephen that my relatives would very likely invite me to spend the break with them, and at the time that was true. Aunt Alissa invited me to come up yesterday, the day before break started; however, I told her that I had contracted pinkeye and what with copious amounts of sleep (for recovery) and studying, it didn’t seem like this weekend was the best time to see them after all.

So, my fall break is turning out to be somewhat miserable. I’m stuck in an abandoned campus with mucus trickling out of my eye, working on a paper that I should have started a week sooner—and I’m alone. Of course, there are other people around, but it doesn’t feel right to sleep in an empty room with three beds, or walk through the empty hallway of an empty wing. I should be enjoying the solitude (I seek it often enough during the rest of the year) but instead I’m finding it discouraging. It adds to the weight of worry for my health and my schoolwork.

I have been seeking an antidote—some sort of spiritual solution that will buoy me over the crests of my autumn angst. Of course, I know the answers: God is in control, He will provide for me just as He has in the past, and He will give me the strength to be diligent. But somehow, the principles I’ve learned in the past never quite seem to apply to the present day. That’s why I sat down to write—why I’m still writing right now. When I started about an hour ago, I was hoping to find the antidote just by writing about the situation, to discover El Dorado in the clicking of the keyboard. And in some ways, that’s happened. The act of writing this short essay has encouraged me, though I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it’s because when I start writing, choosing the right words and stringing them together in careful sentences to best communicate my message, I have to acknowledge that God is doing much the same thing with the entire world. Mucus and loneliness are not exceptions.

But as soon as I get up from my computer, my El Dorado is going to crumble into digital dust and blow away with the breeze from my open window. I know this from experience. In reality, nothing much has changed: I still have pinkeye, I still have too much to do, and the wing is still empty. And on top of this, I’m now going to bed about an hour later than I wanted. So what now? Has writing this done me any good at all?

Nothing around me has changed, true. But now I know my task is to remember—to hold on and remember—that God has purposefully put me in this place for the next couple days, and if I pray, He will strengthen me to flourish in it. And if going to bed late is the price of that remembering, then somehow I think it’s worth it.

Two Paragraphs

So, what do you all think of these paragraphs? I wrote them a while ago as the start of a story that I intended to be a reworking of the Faust legend in the context of college. I re-discovered them this afternoon and thought that you all might enjoy them.

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Unfortunately for Josiah, the hands of the clock remained stubbornly still. This particular course—Freshman Writing Seminar 101—was one of his least favorites so far, and he had desperately hoped that time would accommodatingly accelerate. Only five minutes? It felt more like an hour.

Professor Herthrab droned on. “Now, a subject always—and this rule has no exceptions—a subject is always followed by a verb.” The professor’s voice grated against Josiah’s ear like a saw cutting through Styrofoam. Josiah had been a competent writer in high school; now, listening to the professor dole out grammatical minutiae in painfully obvious increments, he began to wonder why the Inquisition had not realized more quickly the power of grammatical water boarding. He was not alone: his classmates slumped behind their desks, their faces as expressive as Neanderthal undertakers. Josiah began to wonder how he would survive the rest of the semester.

Surprised By Sadness

When I read Philippians 2:25-30 recently, I was surprised to notice a theme of sadness. Not only had Epaphroditus been distressed (v.26), but also Paul is dealing with multiple layers of sorrow (v.27). In v.28, Paul tells the Philippians that by sending Epaphroditus, he will become less sorrowful: even though Paul's emphasis is certainly on the word "less," the point remains that Paul was still dealing with at least some level of sorrow. The whole situation reminds me of Phil. 1:30, where Paul tells the Philippians that he is suffering and speaks of "the conflict" that is in him. These sections of Philippians reveal that Paul is struggling with pain and suffering on a deep, personal level.

The underlying strata of sadness surprised me because I typically picture Paul as a non-stop happiness machine. There's a reason for this stereotype: in the verse immediately after the sorrowful section, Paul commands the Philippians to "Rejoice in the Lord." (Incidentally, this is what I forgot to do a few days ago, when I was exhausted, too busy, and dealing with a computer breakdown apocalypse.) Obviously, Paul wouldn't tell the Philippians to do something that he himself wasn't doing--and we know from 1:18 and 2:17-18 that Paul is indeed rejoicing. This suggests two things to me.

First, whereas happiness and sorrow are opposites, joy and sorrow can apparently coexist. This seems to imply that there's some sort of difference between joy and happiness, and that superficial bubblyness is not the goal. Second, when I am confronted with days that are full of sorrow, my responsibility is not to deny the pain; rather, it is to rejoice in the Lord. I don't know exactly how you can rejoice in the midst of pain, but I'm pretty sure that it's something we can't do by ourselves. It takes a lot of prayer.

Frankenstein: Is Life an Adventure?

In Western Lit class, we recently finished Mary Shelley's work Frankenstein. The book itself is rather different from the cultural conception: Victor Frankenstein is the name of the scientist, not the monster, and the book focuses on Frankenstein's internal struggles rather than the creature's wickedness. During one somewhat tangential scene in the book, I was struck by what happens when Frankenstein finally tells law enforcement about the monster. The magistrate, understandably, has difficulty believing in the existence of Frankenstein's monster:

I trembled with excess of agitation as I said this; there was a frenzy in my manner, and something…of that haughty fierceness which the martyrs of old are said to have possessed. But to a Genevan magistrate, whose mind was occupied by far other ideas than those of devotion and heroism, this elevation of mind had much the appearance of madness. He endeavored to soothe me as a nurse does a child, and reverted to my tale as the effects of delirium.

The magistrate can only tolerate the ordinary; adventure does not fit inside his worldview.

The relationship between Frankenstein’s and the bureaucrat’s view of reality intrigues me. Frankenstein’s view is, of course, the most appealing to my literature-loving soul. Adventure, valor, daring feats of heroism, life-threatening perils, sudden and miraculous salvations—this is the stuff of which life is made. Or is it? The magistrate has a valid point: taken at face value, real life seems to be a prosaic succession of insignificant events, far removed from the romantic idealism of literature. For example, I can testify that I have not recently uncovered the ruins of Atlantis deep within the Mariana Trench, or been kidnapped by a desperate gang of murderers, or discovered a long-lost brother who is really the crown prince of Lichtenstein. Instead, I have sat in my dorm room and studied. Where is the adventure in that?

Let me increase the complexity of the question by incorporating the spiritual dimension. Ephesians 6 tells us of an ever-raging spiritual battle, and battles—especially invisible ones, at that—are quintessentially literary material. Colossians 1 tells us that the world is held together by the work of Christ, in whom God is seeking to reconcile the twisted world to Himself; God’s involvement in the turmoil of creation is a concept that challenges the imagination’s power to comprehend. These are adventures that we know are taking place around us—they belong not only to the realm of fantasy but also to the world of real life. Why, then, does life often seem prosaic?

I have wrestled with this question for a long time, and I’ve always given myself the same answer: adventures are almost never glamorous, and they never seem like adventures to the people inside of them. When we look back from Heaven, I think we will understand better what an incredible adventure the ordinary, God-fearing life truly is. Until then, my challenge is to live my life as a divine adventure, even when the adventure seems hopelessly hidden behind the everyday. If I do not consciously strive to focus on the purpose and adventure that God has placed behind all of life, I may miss the opportunity to participate in the heroic feats of valor that He opens up for me, just as the Genevan magistrate missed the opportunity to participate in Frankenstein’s chase. I know that I miss these opportunities all too often, and I pray that God will develop in me the courage and focus necessary to experience His adventures.

What are your thoughts on this? How do you see (or not) our lives as divine adventures?