Fantasy is the refusal to grant the world its supposed finality. It is the quiet insistence that what is seen is not all that is, and that the given world (good though it is) is not yet the whole story. Where disenchantment flattens the turned earth of the age (turned by the incarnation) with a slumbering stumble of distraction, fantasy startles the gospel-seeds from the white knuckles of our non-fictioned grip on life with a shout and song about a man who died but didn’t stay that way. And there in that dirt the seeds die to resurrect—and we call it faith. For the Christian, fantasy is no idle escape but an act of trust in the God who forgives sinners and raises the dead: a humble confession that creation is charged with more than meets the eye, and that the one who died and rose again is not finished speaking that story of resurrection. Fantasy, then, is not a denial of reality but a deeper submission to it as it is, groaning for a kingdom not yet seen, yet already breaking in through the one true myth of the gospel. In this way, birdhouse cultivates an evangelical expression in our confession of the plot, the story, of history and redemption.

Here you will find theological and philosophical reflections and book reviews on imagination; imaginative writings and visual art; world-building prompts (and the occasional gift to stir the play along); imaginative exegesis that peers at Scripture with sanctified wonder; and, of course, poetry and short stories. These are our small attempts at loosening the grip of a disillusioned age. Acts of faithful make-believe that, by grace, become acts of seeing. [B]birdhouse invites you to take up your sword and go after the dragon, all the while remembering that the damsel in distress is you—and Christ has come, is come, and will come again to slay the beast.