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.