Pull to Open - Welcome to Bigger on the Inside
Welcome to the adventure!
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to my newsletter! Thanks for taking the time to read my miscellaneous musings exploring stories’ hidden depths and dimensions. I’m writing from the perspective of my Christian faith, but I hope it will be of interest whatever your own beliefs and commitments - all readers are welcome!
Do drop me a line to let me know what you think of the newsletter and what you’d like to hear from me. You can leave comments on Substack and I’d love to foster dialogue and community. Or you can contact me directly on caleb@biggerinside.co.uk.
Why “Bigger on the Inside”?
A wardrobe turns out to be the gateway to the magical world of Narnia...
A 1960s police telephone box is in fact a TARDIS, a time machine in disguise belonging to the mysterious Doctor Who...
In both Doctor Who and The Chronicles of Narnia, adventure is found in something ordinary that turns out to be bigger on the inside than out. In their different modes (science fiction on the one hand, fantasy on the other), they explore a common theme - finding the fantastic inside the everyday.
These two imaginative worlds shaped my own imagination from an early age. I must have been only around five or six when my parents first read Narnia to me as bedtime stories, and not much older when I started discovering the time-and-space adventures of Doctor Who through my local library's extensive collection of novelisations of stories from the long running TV show.
Reality is bigger on the inside
The world is stranger, deeper and more fascinating than it ever first appears. That goes doubly so for people, who contain whole worlds inside themselves in their imaginations.
As a Christian, this idea of something “bigger inside than out”, the extraordinary in the ordinary has a particular resonance with my faith. C S Lewis hints at this in The Last Battle, when the way to Aslan's country is through a stable. Diggory says of the stable, “Its inside is bigger than the outside”, and Queen Lucy adds, “In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world”.
This is referring to the Incarnation, to the miracle of God becoming a human being - more than that, a human baby - in the person of Jesus, back in Bethlehem all those many years ago. The infinite became finite, so that God could reveal himself to us in personal form, and so that he could pay the price of our human selfishness, pride and rebellion against him by dying on the Cross, and rising to life so we can have new life in relationship with God.
For the Christian, not only does “bigger on the inside” echo the turning point of history where God was made flesh, it also described the nature of reality. God made a “meaning-drenched universe” (to borrow a phrase from Michael Ward's Planet Narnia). Meaning is not something that humans merely project onto a senseless universe of purposeless matter, but something we discover through both imagination and reason, that connects us to deeper realities of Goodness, Beauty and Truth.
Stories are bigger on the inside
Stories too, connect us to these deeper dimensions, whether or not the authors are aware of it. What might seem like “mere entertainment” can touch reality at multiple levels. Fiction has something incarnational about it: it captures both the particularities of specific human experience, and also through that taps into the big themes of life and death - fear and love, betrayal and forgiveness, despair and faith.
There’s always more to stories than first meets the eye. It’s worth taking the time to explore their depths, whether it's appreciating the craft with which they have been told or exploring themes buried within them.
Stories are how we make sense of the world together. Sometimes stories deliberately explore questions about life and its meanings. But even when stories are told as “just entertainment” they often end up suggesting a view of the world, giving a picture of how the world is – or how it should be – to galvanise or inspire us.
Stories help us better understand both ourselves and other people. Listening to one another’s stories is a way of loving our neighbour, growing in understanding of one another’s beliefs and values. Through unpacking what’s inside stories, we can open up dialogue about life’s big questions.
Stories are powerful. A well-told story can touch a heart, change a mind, or redirect a life. The stories that we tell to entertain ourselves are interwoven with the stories that we live by. Stories shape the world by shaping the way we see the world, and we become the stories we believe in. We are the stories we love.
The specific ‘stories’ I’m particularly interested in exploring are science fiction & fantasy, as well as children’s and young adult literature. These can also provide a window into ‘stories’ in a broader sense – the stories we tell ourselves about life, meaning, and our place in the universe, as well as the stories that shape our society culturally and politically.
Faith is bigger on the inside
A sub-theme I intend to explore through this newsletter is ‘Imaginative Discipleship’. As a Christian, I believe that the imagination is essential to the life of faith. Imagination isn’t mere flights of fancy, but how we make meaning and how we shape our heart and desires.
When Doctor Who returned to TV in 2005, the trailers with Christopher Eccleston promised adventure:
Do you want to come with me?
Because if you do, I have to warn you, it won’t be quiet - it won’t be calm - it won’t be safe.
But I’ll tell you what it will be - the trip of a lifetime!
The call of Jesus to be his disciple is similar. It’s a life that calls us to give up everything to follow him. It’s risky and costly, not cosy or safe.
But following Jesus is a life of adventure. It’s the adventure of pursuing God himself, the ultimate reality. It’s the adventure of seeking Goodness, Beauty and Truth, those deep dimensions woven into the warp and woof of reality that are signposts to him.
Following Jesus is a life of courage, of seeking to stand up and do what’s right and good, that shows love to our neighbour - where our neighbour is whoever we find in need in front of us.
Christians need to be imaginative in living out the life of the Kingdom of God here on earth, full of grace and truth. And we need our imaginations to be redeemed, transformed and discipled by Jesus Christ, shaped by the great story of the Gospel told across the whole Bible.
That’s the life that in God’s grace and kindness I’m trying to live, however imperfect and faltering I am in following in the way of Jesus. Do you want to come with me?
A note on Substack
I’m new to Substack, but I’ve been writing online in some form or other for over 20 years now. My first website was “Book Addict Central” where my teenage self wrote reviews of the latest things I’ve read, back before GoodReads and the like were a thing! Thankfully it’s long since been washed away by the digital tides of time.
My blog, which you can find at www.calebwoodbridge.com, goes back to 2004 in some form or other, though has changed name, platform and web address several times. I wondered about focusing on reviving my blog for my new writing, and I may well end up mirroring articles on there.
Personally, I’m old-school and still use an RSS reader, Feedly, to keep up with my favourite blogs and online publications, but that seems to be a minority pursuit. In terms of building a direct relationship with readers, an email newsletter seemed like the way to go. For most people engaging with long-form content today, email newsletters seem to be where it’s at right now, so I thought I’d give Substack a whirl!
I’d be interested to hear what other people’s habits are, so why not drop a comment to let me know how you keep up with what you want to read?
In the pipeline
Next time on Bigger on the Inside: what is “imaginative discipleship?”
I’m currently watching Foundation on Apple TV+. It’s intriguing but hasn’t quite succeeded in becoming compelling viewing. But I have thoughts on how the eponymous Foundation and the “psychohistory” that drives it is in many way a secularised form of the church and of the kingdom of God. There may be an article brewing…
Doctor Who is back on 31st October! I’ll be tuning in despite not expecting much from the current writing team - come back Russell T Davies, all is forgiven - wait, what, that’s actually what’s happening!?
On Friday 5th November, I’ll be delivering a lecture on The Great Dance: C S Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy and the Discarded Image of Medieval Hierarchy at L’Abri Fellowship in Hampshire. Join on Zoom, or catch the podcast afterwards - more details at www.englishlabri.org