Creating Cosmos in the Chaos of Family Life

Madeleine L’Engle said that “All art is cosmos, cosmos found within chaos.” But how do we bring this cosmos, this creative ordering, about in ordinary lives that are often a chaotic balancing act of day jobs, parenting and/or caretaking responsibilities, and other “real life” obligations?

The Enchanted Family

There is much intentionality of creating and nurturing a home where the life of Christ is celebrated through beauty, traditions, meals, art, literature and relationship. Awaking wonder at Home gives ideas of how to shape such a space.

How to Love a Creative

Peter Smith is the husband of Lancia Smith, Anselm board member and artist. Peter will share his adventures in loving his beautiful and creative wife Lancia, and what the Lord has taught him over the last 40 years from the perspective of a spouse, a father, and grand father.

From Rivendell to Rohan: Creating Art in the Time of War

They are craftsmen, poets, scribes, creators of works of beauty far surpassing human artifacts,” Humphrey Carpenter wrote of Tolkien’s Elves. “Most important of all they are, unless slain in battle, immortal. Old age, disease, and death do not bring their work to an end while it is still unfinished or imperfect. They are therefore the ideal of every artist.”

Re-enchanting Rilian: The Silver Chair & Lost Tools Enchantment

Perhaps never more than now do we need the help that C. S. Lewis offered us in the Chronicles of Narnia, particularly in The Sliver Chair, set less than a century before Narnia comes to a cataclysmic end.

Living Fearlessly

We long to re-enchant the world through the magic of story, the beauty of art, the grace of faith. But often we find ourselves held captive by anxious thoughts, nagging worries, and crippling fears.

Where the Wild Things Are

Rediscovering the Bible's enchanted (but neglected) story of Jesus and the powers. The story of the Bible is much more like LOTR, or the Narnia stories, or any fantasy series, than we've allowed for in our typical static, propositional theology. It is the story of a kingdom, a story of betrayal and rebellion filled with wild, mysterious creatures, and a great battle for the fate of the world.

Tolkien and the Function of Fantasy

Why is The Lord of the Rings so popular, both as a book and as films? Is fantasy nothing but a silly escape from reality? Or are there deeper reasons why fantasy – and imaginative narratives in general – are so appealing?

Reclaiming the Journey, Re-Enchanting the Hero

Perhaps how we understand the nature of our lives does more to determine how we live them than any other idea we adopt. We aren’t just made to give shape to our lives, though that’s true enough, our lives are given by God to shape us. The hero is made for the journey, but it’s equally as helpful to explore just how the journey was made for the hero.

Recapturing Enchantment for a World in Twilight

In this closing talk for Imagination Redeemed 2020, Lancia E. Smith, author, speaker, and founder of The Cultivating Project, considers why as Christians we must recapture the meaning of the word enchantment; why wonder is elemental in the life and imagination of every believer; and what we must do to cultivate the conditions for it in our own lives as well for the sake of the world.