Scene
I wander into the tree line. Bark ages like graying hair, and dusk drains the clouds, their lifeblood lost. Shadows blend. Creatures imagined and formed creep through this wood between the worlds where visible and invisible collide. The grass rustles, and I listen. The wind fades. Footfalls. I walk faster. A branch snaps, and I pause. A howl fractures my ears. Again. Wild. A claim no silver can deny. I break into a run. The brute pants, and so do I. My feet stumble. I fall into a field stretched beneath purple. My hands bleed, and brush stings. Black shoulders emerge like mounded hills—an otherworldly hound. Its paws weigh down my chest.
(End of Scene)
Imagine if Sherlock Holmes fell into this scene. Watching the detective at work, would we fear the supernatural? Or hope that something unexplainable had broken into our world? As the mystery unfolds, our hearts would slide between dread and hope until the detective proves that a dog lurks behind a mask. But what if the hound belonged to another world? What if the beast knew our names like the monster that plagued the Baskervilles?
The otherworldly creatures that stalk our stories mesmerize us. We almost envy the haunted. What if something or someone desires us enough to break down every barrier? Someone desires you. Someone bridges the gap between the visible and invisible to pursue you, and sometimes that someone haunts you through stories.
A haunt refers to a place of residence or a frequented location like a coffee shop or a walking trail. In ghost stories, a haunt might appear as a house cluttered with spider webs. Decomposing curtains remember something that happened long ago. Despite the passage of time, the memory lingers, and a connection lies open between the visible and invisible. The verb indicates a persistent reappearance. The woman bikes around the lake every morning, and every Friday night, the man sits on the same barstool. Ghosts haunt the mansion lined with velvet wallpaper. To haunt means to dwell. The verb also connects to an Old Norse verb meaning to claim, crave, or recover. Something or someone claims the haunted. But who?
God haunts people through stories, and traces of his story tint our tales. Worlds decay, and laments crave restoration. Rebels rise, and kings return. Death crumbles, overturned. Those traces catch us like a scent once encountered but not quite remembered. A fragrance like home taps into our deepest desires. God pursues people, heightening their most basic longings through stories. He hounds people into those spaces where the visible and invisible collide, drawing them into an unannounced communion with the storyteller behind the best story.
Stories echo God’s footfalls, and partakers of stories enter his haunts. Neverland invades your dreams—second star to the right and straight on til morning, complete with pirate ships and a mermaid lagoon. A Midland song plays on repeat. You dwell in the lyrics, but something also haunts you. Something claims you. You long to hear that song in all its fullness which never quite happens, but you crave it. In one of her short stories, Flannery O’Connor introduces readers to Parker—a man haunted by the sight of a tattooed circus performer. The tattoos formed a colorful menagerie on the man’s body, a pictured Eden filled with men, beasts, and flowers. Parker never shook that glimpse into the sacred. He scrawled design after design into his skin, pursuing that inked beauty that captured his affections until he found himself pursued by an image, the image of the invisible God. That image shattered Parker with a violent grace, and the inescapability of the Christ etched on Parker’s back haunts the reader. Like Parker, readers encounter the invisible made visible, and that encounter haunts them.
Stories provide locations—haunts for heaven’s hound. People return to films, songs, and stories because they long for the pursuit. Someone lingers in those spaces. Someone calls to them and longs to claim them. In “The Hound of Heaven,” Francis Thompson chronicles his flight from God. The hound always finds the poet, even in the places most seemingly removed from Christ’s presence. Nothing sways his assailant. The poet fears that this tremendous lover will require all his loves. When the hound captures him, the poet finds everything he thought stripped away in his pursuer’s arms—all his lesser loves recovered. The brute’s shadow transforms to reveal a lover’s embrace, Christ’s embrace tied up with the violent inbreaking of his grace.
Christ haunts us through stories. We return to the pages of a favorite book, submerging ourselves in a captivating mystery. Rochester calls out to Jane despite physical separation, and we crave a communion that defies geography. Psyche longs for the Grey Mountain, and our souls taste the sweetest melancholy that cries for home. Stories awaken our affections, and Christ haunts those spaces, ready to romance us. Our wish to evade pales next to Christ’s wish to pursue. Our flight, fueled by fear, succumbs to his longing, a longing ignited by perfect love. In the midst of this haunting, terror and enchantment collide. The taste? Iron and wine. We shudder at the consummation, that violent inbreaking of grace, yet cling to his arms as he restores our loves.
So enjoy stories. Spend time in the haunts of heaven’s hound. Listen for Christ’s whisper and catch the scent of his breath. He wants to romance you. Submerge yourself in a lost world. Fight for justice alongside the gunslinger. Fall for the mountains where a mysterious being dwells. Christ claims our affections and teaches us to crave a recovered world. He teaches us to long for things like fellowship and well-tended earth. Savor those moments when he cultivates your cravings, then usher little glimpses into a recovered world into the world around you. Share a meal. Tend a garden. The meal offers a foretaste of communion. The garden, a miniature Eden. Those haunts make visible the invisible. They cast light into this broken world and envision the recovery and recreation of God’s good creation.
