Marilylle on the Wingfold Email list (see http://www.george-macdonald.com/wingfold_email_list.htm) has begun re-posting some old items and she started with one of mine from 1998.
It’s fascinating to see this again, almost as if it’s from a more leisurely era (a different century certainly!) when personally I seemed to have much more time and space to ponder such things. What’s changed? In a word – work! The demands and stress ramp up year on year and 2007 already looks like being a corker with substantial targets to achieve. For those of you who are of faith I would appreciate your prayers. That I get the balance right between work and life, for energy and good health, and for direction for the future.
That goes a way to explaining why I have been such an occasional poster on Wingfold lately. I keep an eye on what goes on though and it’s great to see how this group has evolved into something quite mature. In the Wild West of the web such places are rare and to be valued. Everyone who participates there should be proud of the part each of them plays in keeping the fragile bloom alive. I’m sure there is a George MacDonald quote in there somewhere, something about ‘reviving fragrances’ perhaps? 🙂
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I am browsing through some old Wingfold files I put on floppies. I thought a few re-postings may be of interest. M
This one form Mike Partridge – April 1998.
I’m inclined to agree with the suggestion that the Diary of an Old Soul is, in many ways, like a modern day Book of Psalms. There is the same brutal honesty and expression of doubt and perplexity as well as faith and certainty by the writer. Somehow, in a work like this, the light and shade seems necessary if it is to be relevant to our lives. I guess I just don’t relate very well to perfection (hence the need for the incarnation of Jesus — he became like me so that I might become more like him)!
One of the things that I appreciate about MacDonald is that he never gives the impression that he has somehow “arrived” — he is on the journey with me. What he does so successfully is to give me a language and symbols that help me to make sense of my own experiences, hopes and fears. Sometimes the style (the Diary of an Old Soul is not great poetry, however profound the ideas it contains are) gets in way — it seems to me, though, that in the fantasies and the best of the stories the style, imagery and ideas all come together in a powerful and unique way.
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