(i) Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn makes offerings to St Dismas.
(ii) Anderson's Dominic Flandry addresses his dead fiancee, who will later be canonized, but does not think that he receives an answer.
(iii) SM Stirling's Father Ignatius converses with an apparition of the Virgin Mary.
(iv) Characters in works by Anderson and Stirling meet and converse with gods and goddesses.
(v) CS Lewis' juvenile characters meet Aslan in Narnia and his adult hero, Ransom, is addressed by Maleldil in Perelandra.
(vi) James Blish's magicians meet Satan who has become God.
(vii) Stieg Larsson's Jan Bublanski thinks about life/talks to God in the back of a church.
(viii) Giovanni Guareschi's Don Camillo not only talks to the Lord in a church but also receives explicit replies! However, I think we understand that the replies are the promptings of Don Camillo's conscience, not a literal divine voice?
(ix) Graphic fantasies are too complicated to summarize here - although John Constantine (and see here), very familiar with demons, once meets the Good Shepherd!
(x) A cartoon that someone cut out and stuck on the notice board in the Lancaster University Religious Studies Department:
a man in pajamas kneels in prayer beside a bed;
a large bearded male figure wearing a horned helmet and holding a hammer hovers above the bed;
the man says, "Oh, I'm sorry, Thor. I thought that, when I said, God," I'd get...well you know...JEHOVAH!"
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
As regards your point (i), one the things which amused me about Nicholas van Rijn was his habit of writing IOU's listing the candles and other gifts he promised to St. Dismas.
I agree in part with your point (viii). This is what I read in the last paragraph of Giovanni Guareschi's second preface to THE LITTLE WORLD OF DON CAMILLO: "And one final word of explanation before I begin my story. If there is a priest anywhere who feels offended by my treatment of Don Camillo, he is welcome to break the biggest candle available over my head. And if there is a Communist who feels offended by Peppone, he is welcome to break a hammer and sickle on my back. But if there is anyone who is offended by the conversations of Christ, I can't help it; for the one who speaks in this story is not Christ but my Christ--that is, the voice of my conscience."
So, yes, it's reasonable to think the way we see Christ speaking in the Don Camillo stories reflects how Signor Guareschi thought about the issues and problems we see in these stories. But, I would still argue that as far as the stories themselves are concerned, we should still think of Don Camillo and the Lord speaking literally to each other.
Sean
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