104 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY “principles” that we can use in a variety of settings at our discretion; we distill a “moral” that we use as a slogan on a poster or as a motto on our desk. We are taught to do this in our schools so that we can pass examinations on novels and plays. It is no wonder that we continue this abstracting, story-mutilating practice when we read our Bibles. “Story” is not serious; “story” is for children and campfires. So we continuously convert our stories into the “serious” speech of information and motivation. We hardly notice that we have lost the form, the form that is provided to shape our lives largely and coherently. Our spirituality-shaping text is reduced to disembodied fragments of “truth” and “insight,” dismembered bones of information and motivation.10 Tolkien’s wonderfully odd lecture “On Faery Stories” elucidates several reasons why good stories are so nourishing. Near the end of the essay he highlights elements of Recovery, Escape, and Consolation that good fairy-stories bring to the reader. While Tolkien is clearly addressing a specific genre of stories with his essay, I think the elements apply more broadly-speaking to the wider effects of good stories in general. What Tolkien means first by Recovery is how it helps re-orient us to what we already know, but which might have become dull or commonplace. “We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity.”11 Consider the way grace, mercy, and forgiveness, for instance, can be seen and appreciated afresh by an encounter with Les Miserables.12 Or think about how Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River can revitalize your perspective on faith and devotion as you get lost in its story.13 C.S. Lewis described how Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings has this type of revitalizing or revivifying effect which is also true of great myths and stories in general: “The value of myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity.”14 Second, Tolkien describes how stories provide a means of escape. Immediately it is tempting to discount Tolkien, given the negative association with escapism. However Tolkien anticipates this objection, turning it on its head. Whereas we tend to associate escapism with frivolousness, a kind of avoidance of reality, Tolkien says that we actually need to escape the corruption of a fallen world. Rather than
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