This phrase came to me as I continued to reflect on translogical thinking. There is an implicit dualism in the portrayal of Narnia behind the wardrobe, separate from the children’s daily lives. And it is, I think, this dualism that keeps us only making believe rather than fully believing. Reading and reflecting on Gillen’s Believing Is Seeing has led me to recognize as I hadn’t before that there is only ONE universe, ONE creation, not two, one attested to by logic—this side of the wardrobe—and one “imaginary”—on the other side of the wardrobe.
So, my next focus is getting Narnia out of the closet: reclaiming the good news as evidence-based real reality. In a way, my desire to do this has fueled all my books, even Skilled Dialogue, which is focused on communication rather than spirituality.
My first two books, Beloved’s Gift and Unwrapping Beloved’s Gift, both speak to how I pushed my childhood believing behind the wardrobe as I encountered adult logic that said what I believed couldn’t be real: there was no Santa Claus, no angels, and fairytales were only fairytales. They also tell of my reclaiming my believing as I reconnected with a long-lost friend and fell in love. The years since have been about trying to sustain that believing, which I write about in Sustaining Heaven on Earth. I have just recently realized though that I’d turned to sustaining heaven on earth only because I was still unconsciously defending all that logic said could not be. I had yet to truly go beyond logic’s constraints, until Gillen’s words awakened me to the fact that the only door between our everyday lives and Narnia is one created by logic, which insists the two are separate.
My continued loyalty to dualism is not unique. We talk about miracles (i.e., “unreal” happenings), God’s Incredible love, and the impossibility of heaven on earth in any substantive way without realizing that our wording implicitly reflects our imprisonment within logic. Not that there’s anything wrong with logic. It is a perfectly adequate tool for the 3-dimensional aspects of our world. It is, however, a totally imperfect tool for all that lies beyond those aspects. It is like taking a map for a city and using it as a guide to an entire country. That’s where Guillen’s translogical thinking comes in. Yet, while such thinking is common place in science, it has yet to be explored in relation to ordinary living vis-à-vis the Good News. Yes, Jesus thought and lived translogically, as have Christian and other mystics to an extent, but we have either left it unnamed or named it extraordinary. We’ve also associated living translogically with great sacrifice and suffering rather with love and joy.
So, while I will discuss passages from my existing books in this blog, as I originally intended, I will also talk about where I am being drawn now, how the path they map out is evolving and where seems to be leading now.