Today’s post comes from Carolyn Givens.
“You’re doing these youngsters no service, you know,” [Royal] said, looking tired himself. He got to his feet and braced as the train huffed to a sooty platform. “You authors, I mean—this world ain’t no romance, in case you didn’t notice.”
“So I am discovering,” I replied. It was, I suppose, the expected wry answer, and made my host chuckle, but now I am taking it back. I take issue with Royal, much as I came to like him; violent and doomed as this world might be, a romance it certainly is.
-Leif Enger, So Brave, Young, and Handsome
I participated this spring in a book discussion at The Rabbit Room for Leif Enger’s book, So Brave, Young, and Handsome. In one discussion session, the leader noted above quote and asked what the two characters meant by “romance.”
I had been struck by the quote when I first read the passage, delighted that the narrator reneged on his agreement that the world wasn’t a romance. I saw Royal’s statement as the classic skeptic, the one who sees “romance” as “escapism.” He is the man against whose arguments Tolkien wrote his defense of fairy-stories or romances in “Tree and Leaf.” He’s the one who looks at a science fiction story and sees only blue people and tentacles, who tells his children that they need to start preparing for the “real world” and stop playing make believe in the woods.
The narrator, Monte, on the other hand – with the benefit of the hindsight he has as he’s telling the story of his own interaction with Royal – has a different view of “romance.” He was the author of a rollicking adventure story with a bigger-than-life hero and his book had been a smashing success, but at the beginning of the novel, he’s blocked, unable to catch lightning in a bottle again. At the point in the story when he agrees with Royal, he’s a fallen hero, one who comments wryly. Yet when he narrates, he seems to have gathered the perspective that comes from experience: “violent and doomed as this world might be, a romance it certainly is.”
I see Monte’s explanation as a vivid description of a biblical worldview. We cannot avoid the reality of this world. We see its dark underbelly in everything from the news to human trafficking to the person who pushes past us in a crowd without apologizing. This world, and we people in it, are broken, cracked, and bloody.
But as believers, we have a second sight of sorts. We see this world as it once was and as it will be again. We see the “helpers” who run toward tragedy to work, the students who stand for hours in the cold to raise awareness in their community of the 27 million people in slavery around the world, the mothers and father who pour into the lives of their children, even when their spouse has abandoned the family. We know the reality of this world, but we also know its beauty, its light, and its hopeful ending.
I heard N.D. Wilson speak at a conference last year and he framed the Garden narrative in the language of a classic romance: the dragon came for the woman and the hero did not fight for her. Then he compared Adam to Christ, pointing out that Christ is the Hero who fought the dragon for his bride, going so far as to lay down his life for her. If that’s not a romance, I don’t know what is.
Even we with second sight, though, get caught up thinking like Royal. We’re jaded by the mundane. We’re worn by tragedy. We’ve twisted our language to use the words of romance to mean much less than they should. We “love” our favorite TV shows. We “adore” chocolate. We “would do anything” to meet a celebrity. S.D. Smith nods to this in his satirical short, “Jellybean Highfive and the Enthusiastic Youth Pastor.” What’s an “epic” night for today’s teenager? Well, evidently it includes pizza. (And yes, the bad writing is deliberate).
We live in a world that is a romance, a place where the voice of the Hero is calling out to the woman, wooing her to return to Him, away from the dragon’s jaws.
In his song “Don’t You Want to Thank Someone,” Andrew Peterson asks, “Don’t you ever wonder why / In spite of all that’s wrong here / There’s still so much that goes so right / And beauty abounds?” He’s right in the middle of this second sight believers have – he sees the world that is, but he also sees the world that was and that will be again. And he paints a picture of this world caught in the romance:
Now I can see the world is charged
It’s glimmering with promises
Written in a script of stars
Dripping from prophets’ lipsBut still, my thirst is never slaked
I am hounded by a restlessness
Eaten by this endless ache
But still I will give thanks for this’Cause I can see it in the seas of wheat
I can feel it when the horses run
It’s howling in the snowy peaks
It’s blazing in the midnight sunJust behind a veil of wind
A million angels waiting in the wings
A swirling storm of cherubim
Making ready for the Reckoning
We are in the middle of the greatest romance ever played out in Creation. We are living an epic of cosmic proportions. We catch glimpses of the greatness behind the veil of wind, but only through a glass dimmed by tragedy, by violence, by apathy. But don’t be fooled: a romance it certainly is.