Lindsay and I have been reading a book by Kitty Foth-Regner, Heaven Without Her, and we've ended up talking about it a lot. The book, which is thoroughly autobiographical while making a case for belief in Jesus, ends up being unique in a number of ways, and I'll be reviewing it soon. (Hint: We really like it.) For the time being, though, thought I'd throw this passage at you. Check the imaginative chutzpah:
I looked at the first animal [on the Chinese place mat]: Dragon... How is it, I wondered, that the ancient Chinese had chosen eleven real animals, and one mythological critter?
I remembered hearing, too, that all major cultures have dragon myths...and that ancient dragon images have been found all over the world, from Babylon and Egypt to China; they've been found on Viking ships, shown in relief sculpture in Aztec temples, and carved into bones by Inuits. And when I thought about all the dragon drawings I'd seen over the course of five decades, they blurred into just a few types of creatures.
But, of course, scientists have managed to explain these similarities away. Because, of course, the alternative is unthinkable: we couldn't possibly admit the possibility that dragons had actually lived with man, that they were, in fact, dinosaurs...
Not exactly a typical excerpt, I know. You won't find Challies talkin' up this page in his review. But that's why you're reading this blog, right? Because we make off-hand assertions like, "If you do not like dragons, you are lacking as a person." And because we endorse authors who write cerebral books with a strong creative ethos. Props to Kitty.
2 comments:
Ah, now I understand why Chesterton was so immensely sane.
Because his imagination was even more enormous than his person.
By the way, there's a great Olympics commercial featuring a dragon. Just thought I'd share that.
I think you're right about G.K. Didn't he say something about mathematicians populating the asylums while poets were the sanest people around?
I know the commercial you're talking about. It's pretty good. My only beef is that the dragon appears to be a vegan-dragon. Huh?
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