writing – Christian Overtones

On John Milton’s Paradise Lost: Book 1—The Invocation of the Muse

The Prologue:

Having read the first four books (of twelve) from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and having at last begun to feel grounded with it—or perhaps at least gotten used to flights through the cosmos by Satan and the (good) heavenly hosts— it is time to return to the beginning of the poem to re-engage, reflect, and recite.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

As is the convention of the “epic,” Milton not only takes on big topics, but also saves us the effort of discerning those topics by telling us the answer in the opening lines: he will tell of the fall of humanity from grace when Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command to stay away from the forbidden tree and its fruit:

Of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste

Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,

Sing Heav’nly Muse (1.1-6a)

And so, Milton does as the great writers of epic tales had done before him: invokes his “Muse.”

For Milton, though, the muse is not Calliope, but the same Holy Spirit who gave inspiration to Moses, writer of the Pentateuch:

That Shepherd who first taught the chosen Seed,

In the Beginning how the heav’ns and Earth

Rose out of Chaos . . . I thence

Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous Song (1.8-13)

And divine aid Milton will need, for he boasts of doing one better—nay, infinitely better—than Homer, Virgil, or the writer of Beowulf, writers who told tales of the origins of a people or nation. In contrast, Milton shall narrate the event that affected not one, but all peoples and nations: when Satan succeeded in turning our first parents away from God. We await, then, “Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhyme” (1.16)

Milton prepares by reminding himself of the need to be virtuous (“And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure” 1.17-18), and thus worthy of receiving inspiration from the Muse, which will enable him to accomplish his task to “justify the ways of God to men” (1. 26). No grander goal has ever been undertaken by mere mortal writers! Note, though, the quid pro quo that Milton assumes is necessary for him to receive this inspiration. Surely, he must be good enough before the Muse will reward him with its gift. It is ironic, then, that as Milton is about to embark on a tale of unmerited grace given from God to sinful humanity through Jesus Christ, he himself must be good enough to receive the free gift of inspiration. Is he perhaps demonstrating the same vice that got Adam and Eve into trouble, namely, pride in himself and his own efforts?

Nevertheless, it is not surprising that Milton cries out to the Heavenly Muse for inspiration, for whom among us have not cried out in hope or anxiousness or frustration for a neatly arranged and quickly delivered package of interesting thoughts and clever words, a package of inspiration that provides us with the material we need to fill up the page?

On Having Read a Good Portion of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch

This writer and book are what one reads to enjoy the craft of writing, as confirmed by Tartt’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Goldfinch. Her descriptions are what catch my attention, along with her encyclopedic knowledge of furniture restoration, New York City, the art world (and what to do with a famous painting that one walks away with) and the dark shadows of alcohol and opioid dependency that drapes the directionless protagonist, Theo Decker, as he struggles through his teen years and early twenties, trying to find meaning and get on with his life after his mother is killed by a terrorist bombing of an art museum which Theo somehow survived but nevertheless carries with him through claustrophobia and anxiety when he is unable to avoid small spaces or large crowds. Tartt does not seem to be trying quite so hard to sound encyclopedic, though, as she did in her first novel, The Secret History, published in 1992. The result is a greater smoothness in her work:

Individual pedestrians floating up strangely isolated and lonely before my eyes, blank faces plugged into earbuds and staring straight ahead, lips moving silently, and the city noise dampened and deafened, under crushing, granite-colored skies that muffled the noise from the street, garbage and newsprint, concrete and drizzle, a dirty winter grayness weighing like stone.

Page after page of wonderful prose—Tartt’s novels are monstrously large, with The Goldfinch clocking in at 771 pages—but unlike the time I spent slogging through Middlemarch, reading The Goldfinch has been the literary equivalent of enjoying a Toblerone chocolate bar, though a good reading lamp, plush chair, cup of quality coffee, and the abandonment of everything digital are all I bring when I escape from the push of daily tasks and settle in to enjoy Tartt’s writing, the final 250 pages of which still await me.

On Creating a “Great Books” Reading Club

11 April 2026

Last week, a lady who will be a future parishioner of mine asked me if I miss being in academia. (Previous to becoming a pastor, I worked at various colleges and universities for a couple of decades as an English and Humanities instructor.)

I answered that one slice of academia I did NOT miss was all of the grading, but that I did miss the rewards of reading challenging works filled with complex ideas and then discussing them with others who have read those works as well. (One of the shortcomings of digging into great works of literature within a college course, however, is that too many of the young-adult students in the class would be so obsessed with getting good grades in school in order to find good jobs after graduation that they underappreciated the intellectual opportunities to uplift one’s mind and open new ways of understanding—and thereby better appreciating—the universe around us, which for me means appreciating the Kosmos, the orderly, nuanced, and complex everything that God has created both for His glory and for our awe.)

I also shared with the parishioner that I am fortunate to be in a Great Books Reading Club, which provides me with mental challenges from the ideas contained in the literary and philosophical works followed by rewarding discussions about those works with others who are members in our reading group.

There are only three of us in our Great Books Reading Club and all of us are pastors in a small Wisconsin town (in the United States). The other two pastors majored in Philosophy as undergraduates, while I majored in English. We all eventually attended theological seminaries, then began working as pastors, and we now make time within our schedules to meet once a month to discuss those “Great Books.”

In the past two or so years, our little group has read Plato’s Republic, Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy, and Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals; we are currently working our way through Milton’s Paradise Lost. I plan to share some reflections on these works in my future WordPress posts, thereby doing my small part to extend the discussion on what Mortimer Adler defined in the mid-twentieth century as “Great Books” participating in a “Great Conversation” about “Great Ideas” that have contributed to culture and society, and that continue to influence our ideas, identities, politics, and worldviews even today.

Stop back for more of this discussion later . . .

On Books and Ballroom Dancing

(I recently discovered an essay that I wrote at the end of 2020; since we are now finishing up 2025, this seems like a good time to share it with you . . . )

“A series circuit is a Voltage Divider. Two light bulbs on the same series circuit share the voltage of the battery: if the battery is 9V, then each bulb gets 4.5 volts.

A parallel circuit avoids this problem. Two bulbs in a simple parallel circuit each enjoy the full voltage of the battery. This is why the bulbs in the parallel circuit will be brighter than those in the series circuit.”

— https://www.bu.edu/gk12/jeff/Unit/Lesson6.htm

As my semester of teaching during this Covid epidemic was wearily coming to a close, I came to the unwanted realization that I was spending way too much of my time and energy—the very essence of my existence—on too many mundane details. Whether as a college instructor, home-owner, or fellow-manager of a duplex that my wife has owned for years, I felt as if my life had become a series of one practical task after another, each reducing the energy or enthusiasm that remained for the next one in line.

Fortunately, my brain is wired in such a way that I am continually pondering the right things to do, and the right ways to do them. This creates a good system of tracks to run on. It gets things done even when I have little interest or energy for the task at hand, which was an especially good thing this past semester when the presence of Covid forced all of us to adjust, and then re-adjust, how we did everything from getting groceries to interacting via Zoom for online chats, meetings, and classes. And we did it! We adjusted, and found ways to be productive. We found ways to get through.

But something was missing. As my church celebrated the weeks of Advent leading up to Christmas, I realized that I wasn’t feeling “joy,” that sense of simple contentment and happiness. So, I asked myself the question that I have returned to many times through the years: “What makes me happy?” If I ignore those voices in my head that keep reminding me of what I “should” be doing with my time, and if I block out what modern culture tries to sell me on, what would I include on my list of sure-fire ways to make myself happy?

As I began my “happy list,” I looked back over the years and remembered what seemed perfectly normal to me as a seventeen-year-old (and which I realize now reveals what a nerd I was in high school): I had joined the “Book of the Month” club and enjoyed reading what a panel of experts had voted each month as the best new writing that was out there. And the books really were great. To this day, I easily re-experience reading Kramer vs. Kramer, The World According to Garp, and The Girl in a Swing. At the time of my first reading, I felt sophisticated, and challenged, and happy while reading those monthly selections.

So the first thing I decided to do to get my life back on a happy track was to re-join The Book of the Month Club. My first (and only selection so far) is The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany, about an elderly aunt who takes her two grand-nieces across Italy with the goal of breaking a centuries-long curse that has kept the second-born daughters in the family from finding and marrying the one true love of their lives. It is not great literature, but it is a good story. Perhaps the quality of the writing doesn’t matter all that much because I am content when I settle into my upholstered chair and enjoy doing something that has absolutely no practical benefit other than making me happy.

A former version of my happy-list included not only reading, but also running, music, and movies. Another activity would soon follow shortly after I entered college as a non-traditional student. My first semester there—the second class I signed up for—was a ballroom dance class. I had wanted to learn how to swing dance ever since American Graffiti was on the big screen and high schools held sock hops in never-been-there nostalgic fashion to revisit the 1950s. Ballroom dancing was added to my happy-list, and never left. Later, there was graduate school, then an offer to get paid to teach other people how to Swing and Lindy-Hop and Ballroom dance, and now a long-playing Recreation Department gig teaching ballroom dancing where I now live.

In some ways, ballroom dancing is merely an escape from all of those mundane tasks that we as adults have to do simply because they need to be done. But ballroom dancing is more than that: it’s being happy, happy listening to great music, of learning some dance steps, of moving to that music using those dance steps, of being around interesting and nice people. It is also the magical transformation of your psyche that comes about on the dance floor, regardless of whether the day you just had was awful, mundane, or actually pretty good.

It’s the start of a new year; what’s included on your happy-list?