Spring is the season when impossibility becomes possible.
Just when winter seems interminable, life bursts out of
what seems dead. The hard earth cracks open,
buried seeds thrust toward light.
What looks like an ending reveals itself as a beginning.
Tolkien called moments like this AU catastrophe, a sudden joyful
turn when all else seemed lost. It marks the best scenes in so
many great stories. The stone rolls away.
The king returns. Death itself dies, but here's
what we often miss AU Catastrophe isn't just the
climax of the story, it's the pattern of reality itself.
Every seed that falls into the ground, every winter that gives
way to spring, every small death that leads to resurrection
participates in the great story. The sudden joyous turn isn't and
out of nowhere miracle. It's the shape of how God works
in the world. Again and again, in 10,000
places this spring, we'll explore what it means to live as
people of U catastrophe, not just believing in Easter as a
past event, but recognizing its pattern everywhere.
We'll learn to see resurrection not as escape from the material
world, but as its consummation and fulfillment.
We'll discover how Christ's incarnation, death, and
resurrection didn't innovate a news story, but brought the
original story to its turning point.
The pattern which models the coming hope in the face of
seemingly hopeless situations surely has power to reset the
spirits of anyone encountering A frightening diagnosis, a
devastating disappointment, a loved one's death.
But this is what resurrection looks like.
Seeds dying and rising, small acts of faithfulness becoming
eternal. The material world shot through
with glory and everything, Everything turning towards the
sudden joyous turn of Easter morning.
Welcome to the Imagination Redeemed podcast where we follow
the great stories further up and further in In Pursuit of the
Life of Christ. Hello, everyone, and welcome to
the Imagination Redeem podcast. I'm Sarah Howell, one of your
hosts, and today we are with Caroline Williams, our own
Associate Editor and Outreach Coordinator.
Hello everyone. We are now in that liminal space
between winter and spring. Sometimes it feels like the hope
is growing and we're moving towards spring and sometimes it
feels like the winter will. But that is Lent.
Lent is here and Easter is coming.
This year it's April 5th, but we're getting ready for this
season focused on one of our favorite concepts here at the
Anselm Society. And that is the spring's theme.
It's you catastrophe and the sudden joyous turn.
Caroline, have you heard the term you catastrophe before
coming to the Anselm Society, or what's your relationship with
that word? It's kind of a weird one.
It is a weird one, I would say yes, but very much within
circles that are adjacent to the Anselm Society.
I think it's something that we all love to talk about.
It did help me put words though, to why spring is my absolute
favorite season of the year. Always.
I was looking back at childhood journals the other day and my
most exuberant journal entries were always when we were putting
the garden in and it was springtime.
And it makes me chuckle to this day 'cause I think I knew before
I even had words to put to why why it made me so excited.
And I think that really is the big reason why you catastrophe
matters is because it's not just good storytelling, but like
you're saying, it's literally the pattern of reality that you
intuited as a child every year that gave you such hope.
I know we said in our fall preview that the fall is kind of
my version of that. I love, I love fall, and I
really struggle with the spring. So really.
Yeah, I really do. I honestly thought that you
catastrophe was only the coin term for what specifically
happens in The Lord of the Rings when the ring is destroyed.
Like, I didn't realize that it was a pattern at all.
I thought it was completely isolated to Tolkien made-up this
word for the way that he ended his story.
And that's what it is, right? It's the you.
Catastrophe is that moment in the story when everything truly
seems lost. And then there is a sudden
joyous turn that happens. And it's surprising, but also
feels right. Yeah, it's, it's the part that
you're waiting for and hoping for.
It's not just good storytelling, it's the pattern that we
experience in in seasons and in our own lives.
And I mean, we've all had those seasons where it just feels very
long and very wearying. And you end up living out that
rhythm in ways that maybe we would choose not to.
I was reminded this week of I know it's not the exact
Chesterton quote, but the paraphrase of it that says
children know that Dragons exist and fairy tales don't tell them
that the Dragons exist, it just tells them that the Dragons can
be killed. It when you put those two
together, the arcs of the fairy story and the great story, you
see the, the, the parallel, right?
You have the status quo in a fairy tale that you have a
monster arise. Then you have to have a hero
arise to conquer the monster. The monster is slain and then
there's a new normal. But the new normal is better
than the status quo at the beginning.
And that's creation, fall, incarnation, the hero coming,
redemption, the monster slain and consummation.
It's not just where we were before.
It's something even better. It's a a marriage between God
and his earth. Yeah, yeah.
And I think it's very human to need constant reminders of that
and I love that we have those reminders both in nature and in
these stories. I think children get it a lot
faster than we do though. And I experienced this with my
kids just this week because they are big fans of the original How
to Train Your Dragon movie, very attached to it.
My 5 year old will watch and rewatch it and we'll actually
get tears in his eyes at the test flight part of the movie.
And so being the mom that I am, I was very reluctant to let them
watch the second movie because no spoilers, but it's just, it's
more sad and I held off on letting them watch it for a
while. But he finally wore me down.
And so I tried to prepare them as best as I could for watching
a story that was just going to be a little bit heavier and was
in the background doing housework things while they were
watching it, keeping an eye on him.
But he asked me to sit down and watch it with him again and very
specifically wanted me to sit down and, and experience it with
him. And he started the movie right
before the bad thing happens. And the part where it genuinely
seems like all hope is lost. And of course I start crying
because I, I think I get it for my dad.
I cry at movies every single time.
No shame and I think my 5 year old knew that too and wanted to
sit and just feel all the emotions with me.
But then there's that point where hiccups bond with
toothless just breaks through the control of the evil and love
and forgiveness conquers what was horribly tragic in the
story. And my 5 year old just turns and
locks eyes with me and says I knew you'd like that part too
and gives me this hug. And I just, it broke me in the
sweetest and best way because he for whatever reason, he wanted
to experience that with me and he found relief and comfort in
watching that story arc. And I think again, like I just
said, children know and are very into it towards what those types
of stories tell us about the big story and their own lives and
what is true. And it was just a really
beautiful reminder for for all of that.
So. Beautiful.
I remember trying to watch How to Train Your Dragon 2 when I
was pregnant and it was so emotional for me.
I had to stop halfway through. So again, I guess we're just
showing how this pattern is, is really hard for me because I
often see the very buried seeds and I don't recognize where it's
hard for me to have the courage to make it to the point in
spring where the seeds thrust towards light.
And so that's kind of the theme that we'll be covering in all
sorts of ways. We'll be exploring this pattern
not only in stories, but like you're saying, Beaconer calls
it, our instinct. For you, catastrophe is our
intuition of truth. We'll also be looking at this in
the pattern of Scripture and how God's people through church
history have experience, experience this pattern of
ultimately, when we're in the already and not yet, it's
faithfulness in this long defeat season where we might be seeing
a lot of seeds being buried and we have not yet had the full
resurrection of the body when Christ returns.
And so we are in that liminal space on the meta narrative,
just as we are in the liminal space of winter and spring.
What does it look like for us to live expecting the sudden joy's
turn, especially as someone who loves the season so much?
Love that question. It's one that I'll probably be
asking and exploring until the day I die.
I think it gives us a place to live.
That's not being naive and what I like to call Pollyanna.
I love Pollyanna as a child. But it's not naive, it's not
putting your head in the sand, It's not ignoring very dark
realities that we've all experienced either just in
general or what it means to live in a fallen world or in very
particular seasons of life where you're dealing with very hard
things that seem like they might never end.
Kind of like winter for you where you live.
But neither is it resigned pessimism.
And I think that's the other trap that we can fall into is,
is thinking that if we are paying attention and if we are
honest about a lot of the realities that we're facing, our
only correct response is to be downhearted.
And that's so sad to me because it misses the most beautiful
part of what Christianity gives us in a hope that can hold joy
and weeping together. I loved the work that y'all did
on the podcast last spring with the theme of hope and despair
because a lot of those episodes really got into the grittiness
of the dangers of despair and a hope that is strong enough to
hold us and believe like Julian and Bar, which says all should
be well. So I would encourage listeners
to go listen to Last Spring as we build up to the spring
because a lot of these episodes really just lead so beautifully
into what we'll be talking about this year.
Yeah, we'll do our best also to link in our show notes to the
pertinent episodes from the spring season so that when you
listen to this one in March about fairy tales, you might
want to go back and think about the Red Cross Knight.
And how while that story is a story of triumph, the part that
we focus on last March is the moment of despair when if the
story ended there, it would have been a dark fairy tale story.
And yeah, And so in that sense, every good fairy tale has a
point where if you stopped in the middle, it would become a
dark fairy tale story. But I guess I'm getting ahead of
myself and we might as well jump in.
Why not? To a little bit of an episode
preview for you all, just to whet your guys's appetite.
But this March, during the season of Lent, we'll be
thinking about that meta narrative that we see within
good storytelling, specifically with fairy tales.
We'll start with talking about dark fairy tales, how those dark
stories prepare us for hope, just like Ash Wednesday prepares
us for Easter. And then as we move towards
Easter, which is very early this year, at the end of March, we'll
be thinking about the Cinderella story.
And throughout cultures that have no contact with one
another, yet still have the story, What is that universal
appeal? Does it show some sort of
instinct for you? Catastrophe as our intuition of
truth. And then after that, in April
and in May, we'll be thinking a little bit more about what this
means for our physical lives. Now that we've looked at the
pattern in story, what does this mean for the pattern of our
reality? And so we'll start with our
literal physical reality. And that their singular physical
fact that changes everything is that Jesus's body rose.
And so the body is in itself you.
Catastrophe embodied, life affirmed forever, right?
And so with that as our beautiful linchpin, our climax,
our turning point, we'll focus more into May on what does it
look like for us to be living in the already and not yet the
difference, like you were talking about, Caroline, between
optimism, pessimism, and hope. And we'll be drawing a lot on
church history for this because we have the great cloud of
witnesses that have come before us.
And So what does it look like to train ourselves and have your
catastrophe as that training manual?
We'll look a little bit at the church calendar itself, but also
just the rhythms that we go through.
And so again, we'll focus first on narrative, then we'll move
into what does this mean for our physical life because of what
the incarnation in the resurrection has done for us and
to us. And then therefore, what do we
do with that? And so that's a little bit of a
sneak peek of what we'll be focusing on what time of the
seasons. But beyond that, there is still
so much richness. Caroline, are there things
beyond the podcast that you think it would be important for
our listeners to know about, whether it's on our sub stack
and what just keep an eye out for and just other resources
that you have been thinking about?
Yeah, so I did chuckle internally as she was saying we
will be putting these things in the share notes because she
means me. She means and I love, I love
putting the things together on Sub Stack and I.
I've seen, I've seen some lists and some ideas from Brian and I.
I'm very excited about the pieces and the resources that
will be going up there and elsewhere and also what the
amazing Gatherings team will be doing locally in Colorado
Springs. It is a sadness in my life that
I do not live locally to Colorado.
I wish I could be there and attend a lot of their spring
gatherings, but such is life. And regarding the stories and
literature this spring, I know I'm going to be trying to read
the line, The Witch and the Wardrobe to my boys at some
point this spring. And Sarah actually just
mentioned The Light Princess by George McDonald, which I have
not read, so I will be going to find that and reading it myself.
I am so excited for you to read that story.
It is amazing. I'm hoping that it becomes one
of our opening stories for April.
It's it's. I highly recommend it to
everyone, especially if you have kids, because it is such a
beautiful and rich deep story that's pretty accessible and
short. The allegory is pretty on the
nose, but that doesn't take away from its depth, so you can't go
wrong. I'm really excited to kind of
dig in more into the dark fairy tale stories I'm in, pushing
myself to see why it matters because there that's something
that's interesting about if I do fall towards the resignated
pessimism, I often think that the way I can combat that is to
actually look at the darkness, because it's only when I look at
the darkness that I have the the eyes to begin to desire to see
the light. But if I stay in the Gray, this
lukewarm place where I'm not willing to enter in, I can't
ever get to the end. I know, I know, because hope is
scary, right? But I think that's the lesson I
learned in holding my 5 year old back from an experience he
clearly needed watching that movie.
I was trying to keep him in this, you know, not expose him
to the sad story. And he needed to to go there and
see the sad and then experience the ending of the movie.
I'm excited to start noticing more this year you catastrophe
moments in the stories that I already love, but also paying
attention to the spring itself. I'd really encourage our
listeners to do those two things too.
Is there anything else, Caroline, that you would
recommend doing as as we prepare and as we enter into the season?
The season, yeah. Well, I do think after talking
today, I'm going to add the essay by talking on fairy
stories to these show notes. So those should be available to
you if you're listening to this episode.
That's a great place to start reading that with what Sarah was
saying about noticing those moments and stories get started
there. And we will be keeping you
updated on new episodes, of course, on our social media,
also on our sub stack. So subscribe to the sub stack
and subscribe to the podcast, obviously, wherever you listen
to your podcast so that you don't miss them and stay tuned
for new episodes and share with your friends.
If you have friends who you know love stories and get excited
talking about this stuff and love the church calendar and get
excited about spring, like me, the conversations you can have
for coffee and around a dinner table about these things can can
just add so much both to your relationships and just to your
to your daily life. So if you have friends who you
think would be excited about this, definitely share it with
them. So thanks, Caroline.
I'll leave you guys with this final thought.
Spring is coming. The hard ground is about to
break open. The seeds are about to rise and
we are going to explore together why this pattern, The sudden
joyous turn is not just a narrative device, but the very
shape of the universe God has made.
The Imagination Redeemed podcast is a production of the Anselm
Society. It's easy to see this world as
disenchanted and to give up hope that there's more.
But you were made to see the world with the eyes of heaven
and to live a bountiful life that participates in the life of
God, like in the great stories. To help make the show possible,
go to Anselm society.org/podcast 25 and make a donation.
The Anselm Society is a place where you can come in and
experience that beauty, joyful celebration, and ancient wisdom
and go out renewed, bringing that life to your vocation,
home, and church. Learn more at anselmsociety.org
and join us next time as we pursue a renaissance of the
Christian imagination together.