Apples and the Re-enchantment of the World

Ineffable Love eBook Club

Friday 17^th April 2020

Welcome to the final day of our Good Omens themed week, with Alex Booer and Emma Hinds – authors of ‘Ineffable Love: exploring Christian themes in Good Omens’. Thanks for joining us!

We’re assuming our readers will have watched the TV show, but there’s probably something in here for those of your who haven’t. Join us this week as we share some extracts from the book and invite you to bring your own thoughts and creative ideas on social media!

Our book, ‘Ineffable Love’ – out now on Kindle and eBook from DLT! - is an individual study guide that explores life and the Christian faith through the lens of the hit TV show, Good Omens. We explore themes of Justice, Bodies, Power, Belief, Hope, and Love & Renewal in six chapters, through commentary on the show, Bible studies, creative suggestions for our readers and our own creative reflections. It’s full of questions to invite thought and discussion, as well as ideas for further study. Today’s book club showcases part of Chapter Six.

Chapter Six of Ineffable Love is all about Love and Renewal. In the light of Easter and of our current (and permanent!) pain and uncertainties, God knows we need some of that.

The scene from Good Omens we’re discussing today shows Adam making the most of the last days of summer.

A question to our readers: Childhood – with its lack of personal admin and relatively low responsibility! – can be a time of great imagination and deep thoughts. What are the things you remember thinking deeply about as a child?

If you’ve got access to Episode Six of Good Omens, have a watch from 46 minutes 25 seconds, to 48 minutes 48 seconds. We’ve summarised the scene here:

Adam is confined to his parents’ garden, leaving his friends to go to watch the circus set up without him. He’s not allowed out for years and years – or tomorrow at the earliest. Of course, if Dog were to escape, Adam would have to go after him. Adam’s powers allow Dog a route out of the garden and, token objection made, Adam races out into the fields. God tells us the summer is coming to an end; something is ending that can never be re-lived. Adam steals an apple – he can’t see what the fuss is about. ‘There never was an apple that wasn’t worth the trouble you got into for eating it.’

***

Emma considers the poem ‘Pax’ by D.H. Lawrence:

‘All that matters is to be one with the living God

to be a creature in the house of the God of Life.

Like a cat asleep on a chair

at peace, in peace…’

Pax – D. H. Lawrence

Emma writes:

The journey of the saving of the world is drawing to a close – Adam has restored Aziraphale to his bookshop and Crowley to his car, Anathema and Newt are on their path to marital bliss, the armies of heaven and hell have retreated and Adam has his father back. Why then, should there be a sense of melancholy pervasive in the moment when Adam gleefully flees his back garden to follow Dog on further adventures? God says:

‘Something told him that something was coming to end. Not the world, exactly, just the summer. There would be other summers, but there would never be one like this. Not ever again.’

We might wonder: Is that really a bad thing? After all, Adam’s summer has been full of darkness and pain and the appearance of the literal embodiment of Satan. That’s enough to give anyone nightmares. Why then, should there be a sense of mourning? It is perhaps not because Adam will miss the darkness of his dreams, or the spontaneous appearance of Death but that perhaps he will miss a way of seeing the world that has been previously open to him but shall now be closed. Adam may keep some of his powers, for instance, the power to make trees dissolve so he can escape his garden, but he will grow and become more human with time. The magic of his summer, of being a child with a child’s self-belief and a child’s view of the universe, will fade. With that, comes a peculiar homesickness, a sense of melancholy that Alison Milbank calls, ‘this feeling of homesickness for the truth’.

As children, we have a particular and curious way of seeing the world. What we believe can be disconnected from reality and yet be more real to us than anything else. Consider when Adam and his friends play a game of witch hunts. For them, they accept the reality they have imaginatively created.

Just consider the way Adam and his friends are able to defeat the four horsemen by saying what they ‘believe’. For them, belief is not disconnected from reality. Belief is fact. For adults, this ability to transform the world with our words and thoughts is something we might feel homesick for, something we may catch glimpses of again in the moments when we question reality. Alison Milbank* describes how, ‘Getting up in the night as an adult can give one this same rush of reality: new sounds and creaks, objects that might move at any moment. Even our pet cat encountered in the dark is a mysterious new creature.’  The natural path of growth, the path that Adam and his friends must now go down that we all go down as we grow and mature and leave the garden, leads away from a constant state of imaginative reality. Yet, that does not mean it cannot be returned to.

(*Alison Millbank,  ‘Apologetics and the Imagination: Making Strange,’ Imaginative Apologetics - Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition ed. Andrew Davison, SCM Press, London, 2011)

J. R. R. Tolkien believed that the process of imagination, of engaging in fantasy, could be a theological exercise. In his essay, On Fairy Stories, he wrote about how there could be a ‘recovery’ of sorts when considering our imaginative capacity. It is not only an escape but a way to return to what we have lost: to see the world anew again, awash with enchantment or perhaps, enchanted once again by the Holy Spirit.

Adam and his friends will never have the same summer again, one in which the veil between earth and the supernatural was pierced and divine magic showed up all around them, or burst up from the ground of an airstrip. Yet, if they continue to pay attention, to keep their eyes and ears open and their minds open to imaginative possibilities, they might still ‘recover’ moments of insight into the extraordinary.

***

Alex writes:

We wrote Ineffable Love at the end of 2019, before we knew what 2020 had in store for us. It’s hard for me to let some of our words stand: they feel either too insensitive to the current crisis or too relevant. We’re all living in a moment that has demanded that we change, and we do not know where it will take us. We will never live this summer, or last summer, again.

My prayer for you is that your imagination, coupled with divine Surprise, brings you both love and renewal during this time. And that the world beyond the garden is one in which we draw closer to each other, and to God.

A follow up question to our readers:

There is a rich tradition of mysticism present throughout the history of Christianity. Have you ever experienced a glimpse into the extraordinary?

Get Creative!

Throughout Ineffable Love, we invite you to explore the show using your own imagination and creativity. Emma and I have written poetry and stories based on the themes we draw out from the show – you can read them in the book! If you watched Good Omens, what stood out for you?

What stories do you have to tell? How might you tell them?

If you want to share your thoughts, tweet us! @ineffablylovely on Twitter.

You can find Alex @alexbooer on Twitter and Instagram, and Emma @emmalouisePH on Twitter and @elphreads on Instagram.

***

You can buy the full version of Ineffable Love by Alex Booer and Emma Hinds as an eBook here.