Today, July 31, is the saint's day of Saint Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus (better known as the Jesuits). Jesuits have been essential to my Christian spiritual life for almost as long as I have had a Christian spiritual life. It was their friendship, support, and special brand of spirituality that made me a Catholic. One of my best friends is a Jesuit, and I am honored by that friendship.

Ignatius Loyola was a man of his time, the "Renaissance," when the rest of the world was first being explored (and exploited) by Europeans. He had a global perspective on the world, much as we do today. His metaphor of "military" spiritual discipline and project of converting Muslims and indigenous tribes is rejected nowadays, but was the inspiration in times past for thousands of lives dedicated to doing good (rather than slaughter or slavery) in remote places and with remote peoples.

But what impresses me most about Ignatius is that he was a man of stories. That is, he was a "fantasy fan" well before anyone would ever conceive of the term. In his autobiography he writes about how he loved the chivalric romances of his day, including a "sword and sorcery" fiction series starring a heroic blade-swinger called "Amadis of Gaul." After a serious injury, during his convalescence, he asked for fantasy fiction to read while he was confined to bed, and was given Christian lives of the saints instead, which he eventually found even more thrilling than his previous reading. It was these stories (which most modern intellectuals would consider another form of "fantasy fiction") which were part of the inspiration that turned Ignatius from a depressed, crippled ex-soldier into a hero of God.

I believe that much of religion and spirituality is about stories. I don't believe that "fiction" is necessarily "false." I've discussed this before at length (see ELECTRON BLUE, July 2006) but I always like to come back to it. The world has told stories about God and about heroic people ever since the world has had language, from Gilgamesh onward. Saint Ignatius had the courage to do what he did because he had assimilated the stories he read, both about action heroes and saints. As a science fiction and fantasy fan myself, I regard Ignatius as not only one of my own patron saints (whether he would consider me worthy of that patronage or not is another question) but the patron saint of fantasy fans, gamers, and other dreamers whose heroic quests exist only on paper or screens. You never know where Amadis of Gaul might lead you.

Posted at 7:32 pm | link