Alison Milbank

I plan to be re-enchanted every morning. That is, I put myself in a place and a frame of mind in which I can be re-enchanted. This belief and practice comes from several sources. Go with me as I bring them to light.

In his essay “Talking about Bicycles,” C.S. Lewis explains that there are four ages in our attitude about things: unenchantment, enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment. Lewis uses a bicycle as his example. Unenchantment is the time in one’s childhood prior to knowing that bicycles exist. Enchantment happens as one dreams of riding a bicycle and learns how to ride one. Disenchantment takes place when a bicycle becomes merely a mode of transportation. Re-enchantment occurs when we are again (from time to time) “transported” into the realm of our first exhilaration of “bicycle-riding.” (Present Concerns, 67ff)

Certainly marriage is a more pertinent example. Unenchantment is the time prior to being attracted to the opposite sex. Enchantment happens during adolescence when one dreams of “having and holding” that special person. Disenchantment takes place when one’s spouse ceases to be the person of one’s dreams. Re-enchantment happens when we again (from time to time) are “transported” into the realm of “beholding our beloved.”

Our relationship with God is another case in point. The four stages are certainly identifiable. Enchantment happens when one has a vision of the beauty of God that leads to an intimate relationship with Him. Re-enchantment occurs when we again (from time to time) are transported into the realm of our first delight in the beauty of God.

Human beings are naturally in the state of disenchantment. That is, we are not always having beatific visions of God, of one’s spouse, or (even) of bicycles. Yet we try to regularly re-enchant our world. For example at Christmas time and on birthdays, “we take off the price tag and wrap a commodity in tissue paper to remove it from the world of market-value and exchange; we turn it into a present, and thus restore it to the sacred: we enchant it, as it were.” (Allison Milbank, Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians, 118)

This world is also a disenchanting place. Sadly, it doesn't take long for my re-enchantments to be broken by daily flopsam and jetsam. Yet the world is an enchanted place because it is filled with God’s presence. We need eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to understand. We can put ourselves in the frame of mind in which re-enchantment can happen. That is what I endeavor to do every morning.

For me, the possibility of being re-enchanted is enhanced by reading something of the Christian mythopoeic writers. A short list of those mythmakers includes George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton, Charles Williams, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis. All of them invite us to go to a place where re-enchantment can happen.

Alison Milbank in her book Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians explains how the re-enchantment process works. She observes that fairy-tales are enchanting. I will use the well known example of Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as my example.

According to Milbank, Fairy-tales work in us in four ways. First, they estrange us from the familiar. In LWW Lucy is transported from mid-twentieth-century England to the land of Narnia. As we travel with Lucy and her siblings, the myriad ways Narnia is different than our world become obvious.

Fairy-tales also engage us in that alienation through fear and the grotesque. As we enter Narnia with Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy we experience their fear as they enter a strange and wonderful world. One of our first glimpses of the grotesque comes when Edmund “happens upon” the White Witch. She is both intriguing and enticing. It doesn’t take us long to be drawn in and to accommodate to the strangeness of that world.

Fairy-tales restore us to the real by enchantment. Lewis wants his readers to become enchanted in the world of Narnia. As soon as one adventure ends we are eager to start another.

Fairy-tales allow us to receive the world back as a gift. Lewis certainly hoped that, once we have inhabited the land of Narnia, we will forever view our world differently. I can attest that Chesterton’s response to fairy-tales is also mine. “It was good to be in a fairy tale. The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom.” (Milbank, 121)

So how can I be re-enchanted every morning? I have long been enchanted by the fairy-tales of MacDonald, Chesterton, Williams, Tolkien, and Lewis. They have taken me to the perilous realm and back again. What’s more, there are many accomplished scholars and writers (my latest discovery was Alison Milbank) who have also gone into fairyland. They serve as marvelous tour guides as I am open to re-enchantment. Their good writing is nearly as enchanting as the masters about whom they write.

I plan to be re-enchanted every morning. To one degree or another (with a little help from caffeine and my favorite classical music station) it happens.… (más)