Greetings!

Welcome to my newsletter for December, 2007. Please feel free to forward this to anyone you think would be interested in keeping up with me! To receive these newsletters regularly, please drop me an email or subscribe online at: http://groups.google.com/group/Mystical_Realms
. Notices of new paintings and events are at the bottom of this email.

Epiphanies =========

Some mornings, when Lorraine and I arrive at the Theology library, the lights are still off in the basement book stacks. Peering through the doors into these catacombs, all you can see is gloom; the library was once a chapel, and the basement is mostly underground. Yellow hallway lights sculpt the silhouettes of shelves, with here and there the glimmer of a gilded binding.

Anything could be in there, I'm thinking.

Advent has me pondering "all things visible and invisible". I started down this road thinking of "A Christmas Carol", and specifically the scene after Jacob Marley's visit to Ebenezer Scrooge. The latter peers from his bedroom window and perceives that the outside air is filled with ghosts clustering around those in need. These departed spirits are in torment, and, as Dickens says, "the misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever."

Most of the time, Ebenezer would not have seen these spirits...they would have remained invisible. How much of reality, then, remains invisible to us?

My sister-in-law has experience casting out demons. At Thanksgiving, she told of things she had seen when praying over those who were bound by evil. And her words mirrored those of Father Amorth, the Vatican exorcist, who has liberated thousands. I've never seen folks writhe on the floor to escape being prayed over, nor have I had doors slam as demons left my household; yet these things have happened to people that seem pretty sturdy to me.

I suppose, maybe, folks like me have the equivalent of poor eyesight. Maybe I'm colorblind to the incorporeal. And I wonder if this is a case of not having the faculty for seeing, or whether I've just got atrophied? Maybe we all could see spirits, once upon a time....

I enter the gloom of the book stacks, searching for light switches. Each burst of florescence pushes the shadows back, and over and over I have to walk forward to confront new ones. There are dozens of switches in this dungeon.

In "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader", C. S. Lewis places his protagonist, Lucy, in a precarious spot. She must go into a wizard's study, open his spell book, and find a spell that will cause the invisible Dufflepuds to become visible once again.

As she seeks the "visibility spell", Lucy is sorely tempted to utter an alternative, one that will make her more beautiful than anyone else in the world. This evil beckons, but she does not yield to temptation. And, once she finds and speaks the words of the spell she was seeking, not only do the Dufflepuds appear, but also the wizard, plus Aslan, the Christ figure in Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia".

Surprise!

I'm wondering if seeing angels and demons is like throwing light switches. With each burst of light, you get to see something that you didn't know was there. Flick! There are the atlases. Flick! There are the art books. Flick! There's a copy of "Brideshead Revisited".

Maybe we only see the things we're supposed to see.

I'm coming down on the side of atrophy; I expect my "angel vision" needs a heap more training. So, during Advent, I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for Ebenezer's ghosts. To find them, seems to me all I've got to do is flush out folks who are depressed, or ill, or in need of a helping hand, then start scouring the horizon for halos.

And the more I keep gunning for glimmers of the supernatural world... that is, the _real_ world...the more I reckon I'll be able to see through the gloom.



Have a blessed and peaceful Advent.

Nai Eru laitalyë (may God bless you),

Jef



Events =========

- A cautionary article of mine on the film "The Golden Compass" was just published in the Georgia Bulletin. It's entitled "Confounding Compasses and Malignant Myths', and can be read online at:
http://www.georgiabulletin.org/local/2007/11/29/myths/

- This seems to be a month for publication "covers", and I'm very grateful to the several editors who have seen fit to highlight my work of late. There are currently three new or very recent publications that are using my paintings as cover images. These include:

o The first-ever issue of Silver Leaves, the journal of the White Tree Fund (see http://www.whitetreefund.org/ ) will feature my painting of "Amon Hen" as its cover image (see
http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~jmu ... tolkien/195_Amon_hen.html
).
o The first-ever Heren Istarion Shire Reckoning calendar (see http://www.herenistarion.org/index.ph ... ctionid=4&id=51&Itemid=57
) features my painting of the "Tower Hills" as part of its cover image
(see http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~jmu ... kien/266_Tower_hills.html
).
o The latest (Nov/Dec 2007) issue of the St. Austin Review (please see http://www.staustinreview.com ) focuses on popular culture and includes a number of my sketches, plus one of my Narnia paintings ("The Repentance of Edmund") on the cover (see http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~jmu ... Repentance_of_edmund.html
).

- I feel greatly honoured to have been asked to develop the logo for the MythCon 39, the Mythopoeic Society's annual conference, scheduled for August 15-18th, 2008 at Central Connecticut State University. You can see the logo at:
http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~jmu ... ketch_mythcon39_logo.html
. For more information on the Mythopoeic Society or the convention, visit http://www.mythsoc.org .

- I am delighted to have been named a guest of honour at the upcoming Tolkien celebration, "A Long-Expected Party" (ALEP) in Kentucky in September, 2008. I was also asked to develop one of the logos used for the event. You can see it on my website at: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~jmu ... hes/Sketch_ALEP_logo.html
. The official website for ALEP (and registration info) can be found at: http://www.alongexpectedparty.org/ .