Wesley W. White October, 2002
Roguery or Miracle?
Nuala Dhomhnaill lives in Dublin with her Turkish husband and four children. She writes poetry; poetry that blatantly exposes the heart of Celtic Christian spirituality. Here is one of her best.
Annunciations
She remembered to the very end the angelic vision in the temple: the flutter of wings about her – noting the noise of doves, sun-rays raining on lime-white wall – the day she got the tidings.
He – he went away and perhaps forgot what grew from his loins – two thousand years of carrying a cross two thousand years of rows that reached a greater span than all the spires of the Vatican.
Remember O most tender virgin Mary that a man came to you in the darkness alone, and roguery swelling in his eyes.1
This is a piece that wrestles with humanness and divinity. Was the impregnation of Mary miracle or base roguery? Was it the one? Was it the other? Was it both? How are we to account for the fruit of his loins: two thousand years of carrying a cross, two thousand years of smoke and fire?
The opening of the poem recalls the annunciation in terms of an “angelic vision.” By the end, the act itself is in view, and is purposefully ambiguous. The phrase, “that never was it known,” could refer to the ugly truth (hidden to all but Mary) that rape is the honest explanation. Or it could invoke Christian history that has never treated it as such, but has accredited it the grandest miracle of all. Either way, the poet leaves us in the curious (sometimes uncomfortable) domain of “maybe.”2 Maybe it was the one. Maybe it was the other. Maybe it was both.
Maybe is often where the transcendent God and human imaginings meet. Maybe does not disdain ambiguity. It happily probes into the mysterious and willingly acknowledges the limitations of human finitude.3 And maybe is a realm that Celtic Christian spirituality freely enters and happily embraces, even if, in so doing, it sometimes slips beyond the boundaries of orthodoxy.
Maybe God Appreciates Maybe
Transcendence is, after all, an aspect of God that we must take seriously if we are to do justice to the Bible. God is beyond us. The preacher of wisdom (Ecclesiastes 11:5) reminds us that, “Just as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones are formed in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God who makes all things.” The truth of the matter…that we do not know everything, especially in terms of God, throws us into the domain of maybe. Transcendence, among other things, invites us to speculate possibilities and invites us into the freedom of simply saying, “maybe.”
The world of maybe is not afraid of the Infinite. People who embrace maybe are happy to reside in “the middle of things,” as long as they are free to contemplate the extremes of “Nothing” and the “Infinite.”4 In so doing, God is all the more honored as the true subject of knowing; not merely the object of human scrutiny. People who enjoy the region of maybe are glad, rather than reluctant, to concede that such a subject is progressive. They are not satisfied with static epistemology, but are forever asking more questions with an eschatological purpose in mind. In the end, God delights in the air of provisionality with which certain doctrinal formulae are thereby entertained, for in certain respects, such an attitude does greater justice to his immensity and more fully recognizes how far beyond the finite he actually is.5
Celtic Christianity celebrates the reality of the maybe by accentuating the mystery of God. It does not turn to certainty as the only, or even the most reliable benchmark of orthodoxy.6 Rather, it resorts to riddle, to ambiguity, and to imaginative approaches to a God who cannot be restricted to the finite. The Celtic knot is perhaps the most obvious example. Infinity, perpetual motion, eternity, inter-connectedness, and Trinitarian theology are all evoked by artistic design, not by propositional statement.7 St. Brendan (484-577) creatively referred to these ideas as “the music of heaven” that finite musicians could only imitate.8
Mystery is, in fact, incumbent in any serious journey toward God, according to Celtic sensibility, because there are substantial qualities of God that are hidden. Pascal undoubtedly intones a vibrant Celtic conviction when he writes, “If there were only one religion, God would be clearly manifest. If there were no martyrs except in our religion, likewise. God being thus hidden, any religion that does not say God is hidden is not true, and any religion that does not explain why does not instruct. Ours does all these.”9 Isaiah 45:15 is behind it all: “Truly, You are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, Savior!”
For this reason, in the Celtic mind, God must be sought out. “You will seek Me and find Me,” says Jeremiah (29:13), “when you search for Me with all your heart.” Furthermore, such seeking is not so much demanded as it is pleasing to God. “Without faith it is impossible to please Him,” says the writer of Hebrews (11:6), “for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” The Celtic conception of a literal journey, a pilgrimage to find and experience God, is based on a text like this.10 The journey is meant to be arduous and adventuresome for the pilgrim. It is meant to be pleasing to God. Maybe God delights in being somewhat mysterious.
The Human Side of Maybe
Perhaps, then, faith itself is better conceived of in terms of an ongoing journey, rather than static propositions that are argued and won. Maybe invigorates an attitude of seeking, from the human perspective, even though besieged by unknowns. It has little to do with winning and losing. The journey is more about seeking itself, and may include as much pain as pleasure.11 For the Celtic pilgrim, the journey must include the exacting requirements of repentance, but it also moves toward resurrection and rebirth. Coming to the “sure things and true” evokes an ascetic quality that is equally as vigorous as any mental subjection to God’s sometimes perplexing ways.12 Both are necessary as part of an expanding, seeking faith.
One question which must be entertained, then, is how does faith grow? The human side of maybe answers by daring to risk everything to God’s providential care. For the Celtic adventurer (faith as adventure?), even the likelihood of death is not too high a risk and should not be approached in a calculated way. Dallas Willard’s description of the “sea of trust” is a prime example. Hermits shoved off into the sea in curraghs without oars, or any provisions, trusting the winds and currents of God to take them where they would. If death was the outcome, what of faith? Under such conditions, the ultimate sin of unbelief was unearthed and brought to the fore.13 Maybe thus heightens an awareness of sin on the human side of the equation. “God give me a well of tears,” cries the pilgrim, “my sins to hide; for I remain while no tears fall unsanctified.”14
On the other hand, maybe liberates the imaginative elements that ought to accompany the journey of faith, and so increases pleasure. Celtic spirituality gives full license to the power of imagination, and prefers expressions of faith that lean heavily upon the use of symbol, metaphor, and image, as opposed to philosophical and logical explanations.15 Appeal to the imagination was historically necessitated, no doubt, by common Celtic respect for oral tradition, creating a dependence on memory. Nevertheless, the fine arts, liturgical expressions that appreciate all the bodily senses, and especially poetry flourish in such a fertile environment 16
Even serious sacramental practices can be subjected to creative imagining. Nuala Dhomhnaill, again, describes an occasion in which the priest is guilty of dropping the blessed host to the ground, from which emerges “a patch of marvelous grass.”17 “Those who eat the god,” writes Brendan Kennelly, “digest the god’s language to increase their substance, deepen their shadows, and the eaten god is happy, finding Himself in blood.”18 If nothing else, imaginative freedom of this kind raises some doubt as to the advances of Reformation and even Counter-Reformation history, both of which tend to reduce mystery to academic formulae and foment tragedy rather than joy. Even when it hints at myth, Celtic spirituality, on the other hand, exults in mystery and freely explores it with all the tools of human imagination.
Further, although the journey of faith in pursuit of God often embraces the pain of loneliness, it need not and should not be undertaken alone. There is no discrepancy here. The human side of maybe freely acknowledges the reality of loneliness without falling prey to the incipient theological dangers inherent in strict individualism. The believing community in Celtic perspective is indispensable in the way it directs pilgrims to certain paths and not to others.19 Kenneth Leech, in fact, suggests that the believing community is tangibly involved in the progress of pilgrims in the person of a “soul-friend,” who acts as navigator, counselor, confessor and mentor.20 “A man without a soul-friend,” said St. Comgall (516-601), “is like a body without its head.”21 Soul-friends need not accompany, but they do guide and they do represent the core convictions of an entire community that always hovers in the background no matter how remote the terrain.
Maybe in the Balance
It should not be thought, however, that maybe is the only or last word. Such a notion would leave us all adrift in the equally dangerous oxymoron of absolute uncertainty in terms of God. Celtic sensibilities are likewise in tune with the real presence and action of God in both mundane and supernatural circumstances that are at the heart of the Incarnation itself.22 Immanence is not only attractive, but an essential part of the story of God. Stanley Grenz reiterates the distinctively Christian concept of the relational God who is “active within the universe, involved with the natural process and in human history.”23 The Apostle Paul could, in the same breath, speak of the unknown God who is yet “not far from each one of us,” and in whom “we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:23-27)
Acknowledging the mysterious God, therefore, need not deteriorate into simple mysticism. Postmodernism rightly reacts against the meaninglessness of what Francis Schaeffer refers to as “a level of mysticism with nothing there.”24 Mysticism of this type (not mysticism generally) ends up exacerbating an already great degree of existential despair and simply promotes faith in faith, rather than faith in God who does have mysterious qualities.25 Schaeffer is correct to warn against this type of “manipulated semantic mysticism.”26 Meaning, on the other hand, can be had in grappling with the unavoidable (and wonderful) mysteries of God as he actively involves himself in all the affairs of humanity and in all the perplexities of his creation.
The Christian scriptures themselves, especially various passages in the New Testament, demand the maintenance of a proper balance between the transcendent and immanent aspects of God. This balance is suggested in the comparison of several critical theological arguments contained in the Pauline epistles. Following a typically lengthy discussion, for example, of the reasons behind the hardening of Israel (described as a “mystery”) in Romans 11 (verses 25-34), the Apostle appeals to the unsearchable judgments and unfathomable ways of God, and concludes with an astounding quotation of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah (45:15), “For who has known the mind of the Lord?” In contrast, however, the Apostle cites the same quotation (for quite different purposes) in I Corinthians 2:16, but there includes a crucial addendum: “For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.” The grammatically emphatic haymeis (“we”) must be noted. The preceding argument infers those who are “spiritual,” as opposed to those who are only “natural.” But the essential question is, “What does it mean to have the mind of Christ?” If nothing else, it must include some insight into the ways and purposes of God.27 Beyond that, the debate properly ensues. Mystery and insight. Both are included. Both have their place.
Keeping Maybe in Mind
What new worlds (or perhaps old worlds re-discovered) can the world of the maybe open up for the church generally, and for new church-planting ventures in particular? Maybe invokes something of the transcendent, the mysterious qualities that heighten our awareness of all that necessarily distinguishes the Creator from creation. What does this world say to the emerging culture—a culture which is increasingly hesitant about foundationalist approaches that leave at best an unappetizing taste in their mouths? Celtic spirituality, perhaps, offers some suggestions.
Firstly, Celtic traditions amplify the attractiveness of that ring of honesty that resounds when communicators of the Christian message freely admit that God is not easily known. There is, conversely, a hollowness to evangelical pronouncements that infer that such an undertaking is simple and undemanding. Communicators gain solid ground when they happily balance what can be known of God with what is mystery. They gain even more when communication becomes less of a monologue and more of a dialogue in which wrenching questions are welcomed, even in public forums, and in which differing opinions are respected.
Celtic approaches might also challenge us to encourage high-risk ventures in the journey of faith. Literal pilgrimages may be in order, even pilgrimages that run the risk of ascetic extremes. The “sea of trust” need not be disdained as foolhardy or assessed in terms of tempting God. In some ways, authenticity is affirmed when the bar is set high. Postmodern inquirers are far less convenience-oriented than their forbearers, and rise to the challenges of seeking. There are biblical certainties and answers, to be sure, but perhaps people get to know God better in the seeking itself. Especially when it asks something of them.
And what of resurrecting a Christian appreciation of an imagination set free? Can we become children again (Matthew 18:3), delighting in the possibilities of “Elfland”, as Chesterton suggests, rather than defaulting to the ethical commandeering so rampant in the adult world.28 Celtic spirituality gives as much credence to the poet, the artist, the dancer, and the bard as it does to the theologian. It unabashedly entrusts the message of the gospel to the powerful resources of the fine arts and does not hesitate to appeal to all the senses even in liturgical contexts. Celtic spirituality trusts that God is sovereign even over the highly subjective realm of the imagination.
Finally, as we pay attention to Celtic Christian ideas, we will work hard to cultivate communities of faith that abound with “soul-friends.” In the midst of the loneliness that ensues in seeking the sometimes hidden God of the Bible, we will nevertheless experience the joy of discovering that we need not “go it alone.” There is someone beside us. A real person. A real body with a soul that resonates with our own. Churches can hardly program this, but they can cultivate an environment in which soul-friends flourish. And they can advocate that such a friend is essential in anyone’s journey toward God. They will read much into Jesus’ statement, “No longer do I call you servants, but friends.” (John 15:15)
Maybe then, the world of the maybes need not be approached with fear. The place of unknowns can be entered and explored with anticipation, and not alone, but with friends, fellow pilgrims on the journey to know and love God. This community of friends can liberate our imaginations, motivate high-risk steps of faith, and set us free from the tyranny of manufacturing easy answers to hard questions about God. We can adventure on in the journey together, not timidly, but with great exuberance.
Notes
1 Oliver Davies and Fiona Bowie, Celtic Christian Spirituality: An Anthology of Medieval and Modern Sources (London: SPCK, 1995), 217-18.
2 The idea of a “world of the maybe” is suggested by Erwin Raphael McManus in, An Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church God had in Mind (Loveland, Colorado: Group, 2001), 58-59. “Hypermodernism,” says McManus, “is the world of the maybe. Not just objective maybe, but the subjective maybe. Not the maybe of the outside world, but the maybe of the inside world. Too many of us have subdivided the world into what exists outside of us and what exists within us. So many of the philosophical discussions around postmodernism address the issue of objective truth and reality. Is it noble? But I think that in some ways we’ve been naïve. The objective maybe is born out of the subjective maybe. The loss of confidence in knowing the outside world is a result of a loss of connection to our inside world. We don’t simply see the maybe, we live the maybe. For those whose lives are secured in a sense of absolute truth, whose most comforting metaphor is that God is our rock and our foundation, this can be extremely frustrating. And frankly, the church sounds so certain about everything. There seem to be no maybes at all. We act as if we have it all down. We’ve got all the answers. If you’re confused, just come to us because we have it all mapped out. Sometimes it’s as if there is no mystery to God or the gospel, yet Paul speaks of it as a mystery. And last time I checked, the God of the Bible is still the invisible God.”
3 Andrew Marvell (See, Andrew Marvell, The Complete Poems [Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1972], 103-104) superbly expresses the frustrations of finiteness in his work entitled, A Dialogue between the Soul and Body. Here is but the first stanza.
O, who shall from this dungeon raise A soul, enslaved so many ways, With bolts of bones, that fettered stands In feet, and manacled in hands. Here blinded with an eye; and there Deaf with the drumming of an ear, A soul hung up, as ‘twere, in chains Of nerves, and arteries, and veins, Tortured, besides each other part, In a vain head, and double heart?
It could be argued, of course, that this is but an harkening back to the old (and ever-present) gnostic heresy that ridicules the corporeal and lauds the spirit. In the end, however, Marvell dispels such fears by bringing the two together in a doxology of holism. It is a brand of holism that finds joy in perplexity and delights in mystery.
4 The importance of appreciating the extremes of the nothing and the infinite is suggested by Blaise Pascal: “For in fact what is man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up. What will he do then, but perceive the appearance of the middle of things, in an eternal despair of knowing either their beginning or their end? All things proceed from the Nothing, and are borne towards the Infinite. Who will follow these marvelous processes? The Author of these wonders understands them. None other can do.” (See, Pascal’s Pensees, trans. W.F. Trotter [Everyman, 1947], 17-18.) Bryan Appleyard, in Understanding the Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 14, relates the lack of appreciation of the infinite to the way science has left the human self emaciated: “This exclusion of the self from explanations of science is a complex and profound matter that has implications that will surface again and again in this book. Here I will simply say that it cuts scientific man adrift from his moorings. Artistic expression over the past 400 years, the age of science, persistently returns to the man alone, lost and searching for something, though he is seldom sure precisely what.”
5 For an excellent treatment of the importance of differentiating between God as subject an object, see Stanley J. Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 49. The relationship between a progressive theology and eschatological concerns is likewise addressed by Grenz. See his, Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 197, 343.
6 This kind of emphasis on transcendence, therefore, rightly points up the inherent weakness in what Grenz refers to as “foundational epistemology,” that postmodern thinkers have been questioning for some time. We must, indeed, question the way in which notions of transcendence can square with “grounding the entire edifice of human knowledge on invincible certainty.” See, Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 30, and W. Jay Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1998), 78-79.
7 The significance of ambiguity, fluidity, and abstraction in Celtic artistic design is highlighted by Oliver Davies and Fiona Bowie, Celtic Christian Spirituality, prev. cit., 5. A brief explanation of the Celtic knot is offered by Ian Bradley, The Celtic Way (London: DLT, 1993), 5. For an engaging plea for the resurrection of imagination, see Thomas Howard, Chance or Dance? (New York: Lippencott, 1969).
8 Brendan Lehane, The Quest of Three Abbots: The Golden Age of Celtic Christianity (New York: Lindisfarne Press, 1968), 99.
9 Blaise Pascal, Pensees (London: Penguin Books, 1995), 74.
10 Ian Bradley, The Celtic Way, prev. cit., 80-83, captures the essence of the Celtic pilgrimage: “The Celts themselves were well aware of the difference between genuine peregrinatio and escapism to which they were prone as race. The Book of Lismore, a medieval Irish compilation of the lives of the saints, distinguishes three kinds of pilgrimage. The first, leaving one’s country in a physical sense but with no inner change of heart, is dismissed as a waste of time and energy. The second, earnestly desiring to leave everything familiar and comfortable behind and embark on a life of pilgrimage but being forced by pressing duties to remain at home, is recognized as a worthy calling. The third, leaving one’s country for God and forsaking a life of comfort and ease for one of austerity and virtue, is regarded as the highest calling of all. This stress on the importance of the inner journey of repentance, resurrections and rebirth brings us to the heart of the Celtic idea of pilgrimage.”
11 Pleasure and pain are both components of the pilgrim’s journey. Mortification is necessarily unpleasant, but it yields a spiritual and bodily sensitivity that is fully commensurate in the payoff. Brendan Lehane highlights loneliness as one of the more common experiences of the Celtic pilgrim. But it is in loneliness that she or he finds God. See, Brendan Lehane, The Quest of Three Abbots, prev. cit., 70.
12 St. Columbanus (543-615) understood the journey as a hastening towards death in which “the sure things and true” come into focus. See, T. Finan, ‘Hiberno-Latin Christian Literature,’ in J. Mackey (ed.), An Introduction to Celtic Christianity (Edinburgh: 1981), 73. There is a sense in which the journey is as much an inner reality as it is material. The repeated act of repentance is critical to both if resurrection and rebirth are to be more than doctrinal. See, Ian Bradley, The Celtic Way, prev. cit., 80. The one thing Brendan, Columba and Columbanus had in common was the commitment to the search; the search for the unworldly, for refuge, for the place of blessing, for purification, for God. For all of them it entailed traveling through the desert. See, Brendan Lehane, The Quest of Three Abbots, prev. cit., 3.
13 Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1988), 129. Brendan Lehane also draws attention to this practice in the Celtic tradition. See, The Quest of Three Abbots, prev. cit., 73. He notes, however, that St. Brendan considered this practice foolish and unnecessary. It should be noted that a similar type of forced exile was mandated as a severe civil punishment for a serious crime. The hermits, however, likened it to the criminal treatment of Christ himself. See, The Quest of Three Abbots, 110.
14 Quoted in, “The Impact of Christianity,” in Early Irish Society, ed. Myles Dillon, trans. James Carney (Nottingham, Nottingham University Press, 1968), 113.
15 Ian Bradley contends that this preference is essentially “the ability to invest the ordinary and the commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternity.” See his, The Celtic Way, prev. cit., 84.
16 Stress on oral tradition no doubt points back to pre-Christian druidic influence and to the highly respected role of the bard in Celtic history. It resulted in “an indebtedness to poetry, mythology and imagry.” See, Oliver Davies and Fiona Bowie, Celtic Christian Spirituality, prev. cit., 6, 12. It also bespeaks an approach to the transcendent nature of God. Mysterious aspects are subjected to very human means of expression, in imaginative use of words, in artistic design, and in exciting the physical senses in a liturgical context. Davies and Bowie (ibid., 12) go so far as to contend that “the poetic tradition, then, was one of the principal ways in which a distinctive spiritual sensibility was maintained in Wales.” For more on this, see also, George G. Hunter III, The Celtic Way of Evangelism (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), 70-74.
17 Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, “Marvelous Grass,” from her Selected Poems: Rogha Danta, trans. Michael Hartnett (Dublin: The Raven Arts Press, 1992).
18 Brendan Kennelly, “Sculpted From Darkness,” in his, Breathing Spaces: Early Poems (Belfast: Bloodaxe Books, 1992).
19 According to Stanley Grenz, the one presupposition that may be basic to Christian theology is the backdrop of the believing community. It satisfies a hunger for family values (in the open rather than restrictive sense) that is both non-foundationalist and a “decidedly postmodern” hunger. But it also shapes “conceptions of rationality,” and, in a sense, accounts for the “loss of certitude,” as it is happy in the realization that “various communities may disagree as to the relevant set of paradigm instances of basic beliefs.” See, Stanley J. Grenz, Renewing the Center, prev. cit., 201.
20 Kenneth Leech, Soul Friend (London: DLT, 1996), 116. For a good description of the Celtic role of the soul-friend, see Ian Bradley, The Celtic Way, prev. cit., 73.
21 Brendan Lehane, The Quest of Three Abbots, prev. cit., 107. Some contend that this statement is better attributed to St. Brigid (450-525).
22 John Macquarrie refers to this aspect of Celtic spirituality as “an intense sense of presence.” Human beings have the potential of being God-intoxicated, “embraced on all sides by the divine Being.” See, John Macquarrie, Paths in Spirituality (London: SCM Press, 1972), 122-24. Celtic Christian belief, according to Bradley, also emphasizes Incarnational theology to the degree that the presence of Jesus can be tangibly experienced, “encircled by him, upheld by him and encompassed by him.” See, Ian Bradley, The Celtic Way, prev. cit., 33.
23 Stanley J. Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 81. Pannenberg’s description of God as “the power of the future” may serve to counter atheistic criticism, but it does little for contemporary Celtic practitioners. See, Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Idea of God and Human Freedom, trans. R.A. Wilson (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973), 110.
24 Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1968), 56. Schaeffer disparagingly discusses such an approach to mysticism in terms of “the jump on the new theology,” that is “no more than a jump into an undefinable, irrational, semantic mysticism.” I deliberately turn to Schaeffer, not because I concur with all his conclusions, but as a premier example of thoughtful evangelicalism in the modern era. It must be kept in mind that he is also an exemplary product of strict foundationalism which postmodern thinkers rightly continue to challenge.
25 Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, 62.
26 Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, 84.
27 Gordon Fee suggests that, contextually, Paul has in mind, “the thoughts of Christ as they are revealed by the Spirit,” noting the Apostle’s use of the LXX in which “mind” translates the Hebrew ruah, most often referring to “spirit.” Fee, as well, notes the importance of the emphatic “we.” See, Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 119-20.
28 See, G.K. Chesterton, “The Ethics of Elfland,” in Orthodoxy (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw, 1994), 45. Chesterton suggests that Elfland is the world in which the imagination is free to envision possibilities within the seemingly impossible. It is a world in which faith is ignited by imagination.
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