This is Episode 1 of Season 2, or rather, a teaser: The Childhood of Ilya Muromets

In a certain kingdom, in a certain land, there lived a farmer named Ivan Timofeyevich and his wife named Efrosinya Alexandrovna. For many years they lamented that they had no child of their own. It was a source of hidden grief for both, for Ivan had no son to push the plow when he got old, and Efrosinya could look to no support in her old age.

One night, a new star shone in the night sky, brighter than the sun, more luminous than the moon. The prayers of the parents were answered: a little boy was born to them. Ilya, they named him. Immediately Ivan Timofeyevich called together all his neighbors, all his friends, even those who lived in the village over the hill and past the river. He called them all to share the joy. And just to make sure they all came, he asked the great warrior-farmer himself, Mikula Selyaninovich, to be the godfather.

And so, one bright summer day, the village feasted. A pile of silver spoons lay on a trestle table set outside, and every guest gave what baptism price he could. Some gave a penny, some a handful, but Mikula Selyaninovich gave a whole golden coin. And they sat to eat food in varieties most of them had never seen before. Efrosinya Alexandrovna dressed in her finest came with a silver goblet of the finest wine and passed it to her husband, Ivan, the father of the child, and he in turn passed it to the godfather. Mikula, a mighty man, left the dregs at the bottom, then he hurled them up at the branches of the trees and intoned, “Don’t come back to earth, you drops of fine wine! Grow into ripened fruits on the branches, so that Ilyusha himself, tall and strong as a warrior, can pluck them down with his own hands as he sits astride his great warrior horse.”

At those words, Ilya woke up in his crib and screamed. The shutters flew back, the house rocked on its foundations, a wind pushed back the hair of the feasters, and they all laughed. “Too early, Ilyusha!” they said. “You can’t have your horse yet. First you must learn to walk!” How little did they know, those carefree feasters, that their words would prove to be a prophecy of woe.

Three years passed. The grass grew green in patches over the brown. The rivers overflowed their banks, but only slightly; the birches burst into their feathery tiers of early spring; and Ilyusha rode the shoulders of his godfather, Mikula, as he showed him the wonders of his glorious Russia. There he pointed at the gables and crosses of Kiev; there the towers and domes of Novgorod the beautiful; there the endless banks of the Volga, more sea than river; and there the wide and smooth water of the Dnieper.

But Ilyusha only wanted to run, to feel the dew on his bare feet, and his godfather let him. No one could nay-say the little warrior, so strong was his spirit, even in that little body of his. As the sun started its way down, Ilya finally grew tired. Mikula picked him up by the side of the road, but to do so he put down the pack he had been wearing on his back, and he forgot it on the side of the road, so filled with joy was he at his little warrior godson.

As they walked back home, the trees behind them creaked and shook, the mountains groaned, the wind wailed. A giant warrior rode through the forest on his giant horse. The tip of his helm grazed the clouds, and every time his horse shook its mane, lightning flashed and thunder boomed. This was the giant Kalivan, a name that struck fear in everyone, friend and foe alike. “Oh, my burden!” he cried, lamenting. “Oh, the heaviness of my sorrow! For what can I do with this, my terrible strength? If only there were a ring stuck into the bones of mother earth, I would pull on that ring and turn the earth itself inside out.”

The giant warrior and his giant horse turned to the road. Kalivan saw the pack that Mikula had left behind. He nudged it with a sword, but the pack wouldn’t move. Curious, the giant dismounted. The earth shook and dust came up in whirling clouds as he did, but the pack wouldn’t budge. He nudged it with his toe, he shook it with his fist, he pulled it with both hands—nothing. The pack simply would not move. Delighted at the challenge, Kalivan rolled up his sleeves and pulled. At last, the pack lifted a fraction, but he wouldn’t manage to hold it very long. It crashed back down, and the giant found he was buried down to his shins in mother earth herself.

Perplexed, annoyed, but still up for the challenge, Kalivan pulled again. It lifted up a hand’s breadth! But now he was buried in earth to his thighs. At that moment, Mikula, with Ilya still on his shoulders, came back into view, intent on getting back the pack he forgot on the side of the road. He stopped in shock at the sight of Kalivan the Great, half-buried in the dirt. “What a sight is this!” he said, and as he said, he picked up the pack and hoisted it upon to his shoulder as though it weighed no more than a feather.

“How did you do that!?” bellowed Kalivan. “I am the strongest man in the world, and yet I could not budge it!”

“Tell me, great one,” said Mikula, “for what do you use your great strength that God gave you? Do you use it for truth, for virtue, for righteousness?”

“What truth?” scoffed Kalivan. “What virtue do you speak of? All the righteousness I know is this, that I have power like no one else, that others must quail before me, that all below me are slaves to my will, for no one is man enough to stand up to me! That is my truth, you foolish peasant!”

Turning to Ilyusha at his shoulder, Mikula said, “Listen, Ilya. There is nothing in this pack, nothing save the earth herself—the honest dirt of honest labors, of honest hands—and it is stronger than all the might of all the warriors in this earth put together.” At those words, Kalivan the Great groaned from pain, but the cry was cut short, for the giant had turned into a mountain.

Ilya kept these words in his heart, or as much as his childish heart could take. But soon he would have more time than most to sit and think, for a mysterious illness struck the warrior child. The apple of his parents’ eye lost the use of all his limbs. Wide-eyed, white-faced, he sat at the window and watched and watched. He could do nothing else.

The rivers flowed on through spring after spring. Every winter, it seemed that the ice would never break, but every year, one miraculous day, some ineffable spark in the air cracked the wall of ice, and the water flowed again. But none of this would Ilya ever see, for he sat, his limbs useless, at the window, as his parents aged early, weighted down by work and toil and the inexorable task-master of grief. And their land, once a glistening Eden, became a veil of thorns and tears.

But spring still came, the waters still flowed, and one morning, after Ivan left before the sun to his thankless toil, and Efrosinya was out in the field with her husband, Ilya was awoken from a fitful sleep. “Up! Get up, Ilya Muromets! Up! Get up! Open the door to us wandering folk!” Was it real or was it a dream? “Up! Up! Get up, Ilya Muromets! What shame to lie in laziness when those older and frailer than you wait at the gates. Open them!”

And Ilya got up, and he stood on his own two feet, and they held his weight, and they even held him as he shifted into a lurching walk. The gate gave way before his fingers as though it were paper. The sun shone on his head for the first time in years. It dazzled him as he stared at the forms of three old men in traveler’s garb. Each of them held a wooden drinking vessel carved in the shape of a mallard.

“Welcome,” said the first of the old men. “Welcome, Ilya, to the world of the living! Come, drink of this mead that the bees themselves toiled over in their sun-drenched fields.” Ilya drank deeply from the first vessel. His heart filled with joy, his arms filled with strength, his soul filled with rejoicing.

The second traveler gave Ilya to drink. Ilya drank deeply from the second vessel. “What do you feel, Ilya Muromets?”

“Oh! Wonder! My arms! My legs! They fill with life as though they were a wine-skin!”

The third old traveler gave Ilya to drink. Ilya drank deeply from the third vessel. “Well, what do you feel, Ilya Muromets?”

“Ho ho, wonder! All my aches, all my pains are gone as though they never were!”

“Come back to life, young warrior. May you never again feel sickness and pain. Now go. Go, Ilya Muromets. Go to the swift river, Katchyarava. Bring us all a vessel of cold spring water.” And the young warrior did, bringing back a full bucket. The old travelers drank their fill, and they gave him to drink as well. “And what about now, young Ilya?”

“Ho ho, wonder! I feel the strength of ten men in my bones! The power of ten in my muscles!”

“Bring us some more of that cold spring water.” And the young warrior did, bringing back a full bucket. The old travelers drank their fill, and they gave him to drink as well. “Well, what about now, young Ilya?”

“My word. What strength now fills me! The power of hundreds in my blood and body! If I saw a stump in front of me, and in that stump was a ring of iron, I would pick the earth herself up and swing her around my head!”

The three old travelers looked at each other in consternation. “Oh dear. We’ve done a bit too much, haven’t we? No, Ilyusha. No man should have strength like that. Go and bring us some more of that cold spring water.” The young warrior did, bringing back a full bucked. The old wanderers drank their fill, and carefully they gave the rest to Ilya. “And, uh, how do you feel now, my warrior?”

“I feel half of my previous strength.”

“Ah! It is enough,” they said, and sighed heavily. “Now, hear our words, Ilya Muromets. Listen well to our counsel. This is a God-given gift you have, to do with as you will. You can use it to plow the earth or for some other worthy craft. If you wish, you may go to battle, for it is said that you will not die from the sword of a fellow warrior. But hear this warning as well. Go, fight all who dare raise arms against our mother Rus, but never start a fight with Svyatogor the Great. Mother earth herself groans under the weight of his walking. Don’t pick a quarrel with Krasnoiar, for his lot is it to smith the fates of men. Never raise a hand against Mikula Selyaninovich, for mother earth loves him as her own. And whatever you do, steer clear of Volga Svyatoslavich, for if he cannot best you in strength, he will outwit you; and if he cannot outwit you, he will down you with cunning.” And so saying, the old wanderers disappeared. Were they even there in the first place?

The strength flowed through Ilya like his own lifeblood, and the joy burst from him like the sun breaking through winter clouds. He turned to his father’s land. It was filled with stumps, old fallen trees, broken branches, and fissures in the badly turned earth. For Ivan Timofeyevich was only a man, not a bogatyr like his son. And Ilya went to work with a fury like winter itself in the middle of March.

The land was done, the fissures filled, the old trees were all uprooted and chopped into piles, enough to last them for years on end—and still, Ilyusha was not tired in the least, so he did the same to all his neighbors, all those who long ago had paid for the spoons at his baptism. And he finished, and he still was filled to the brim with power, strength, the joy spilling out of him like mead from a bucket.

And he turned to his own dear house. Oh, it was in a sorry state! The roof had fallen in in places, the foundations were cracked, the window-panes were dirty, and he set to with a fury, like a storm in early April. Then Ivan Timofeyevich came home, Efronsinya Alexandrovna with him. What a wonder met their eyes! A roof, newly shingled; a bucking horse decorating the cross-beam; even a new banya with a mountain of wood ready for the stove!

Then Ilya asked the blessing of his parents. They wept over him, fussing over him like hens over a golden egg, but they let him go, for his fate was yet to be made. And he went to his godfather, Mikula Selyaninovich, for counsel.

“Ilyusha, Ilyusha,” he said. “Little could I have guessed that my toast at your baptism would come out so well. Now hie from this place! Go to my brother, Krasnoiar, for a new set of mail. Then go to Svyatogor for a swords and a blessing. And then go out to the ropes, for is it not your calling to guard our great mother, Rus the bright? Who else will go to the borders and fight off the heathen? But first, a horse!” And Mikula laughed as he remembered Ilyusha’s baby cry at the baptism when he had mentioned his future warrior horse.

“Let’s go to the road, Ilyusha, past Murom city. The first trader you meet, buy a foal from him. Feed the foal, care for him for three months, take him out at night so the dew of the mountains can soak through his black post. And take him to a fence post and sit on him. If he can clear the fence post in a single jump, you have found your warrior horse, my boy.” And so he did. The foal grew, not by days, but by hours! And a great black war horse had Ilyusha, and he loved him as if the foal were his own dear brother.

Finally, he came again to his mother and father. Sensing the end of his time at home, Efrosinya wept, but Ivan blessed his son, charged him never to abuse his strength, and to remember the age-old lesson of Kalivan the Giant’s pride.

And on rode Ilya, following the sun as it set, on his way to Krasnoiar for a new set of mail. But what he was to find there and at the feet of great Svyatogor he would never have guessed—but that is a tale for another time.

I’m really excited to be back with a new season of In A Certain Kingdom. To be honest, I’ve had the most interesting conversations with people about this podcast, even more than about my novels! I’m thrilled to see how much of a hunger there is for these old stories, for the consolation they provide, for the beauty they hint at. Last season we talked a lot about the worth of stories in themselves, because, let’s be honest, too many of us have some very wrong ideas about Christianity and the imagination that I hope I’ve started to dispel.

One of the ideas I like to bring up to people who complain that Christians shouldn’t bother with stories at all or that the imagination is dangerous, well, is the fact that those people are at a bit of a disadvantage. After all, Christ taught in parables, and what are parables if not imaginative fictions? But whenever I say that to people, I always brace myself, waiting for some person more intelligent than I am to prove that, actually, I’ve got it all wrong: that parables aren’t stories and Christ wasn’t a storyteller. After all, it’s true that you don’t read about “Christ the Storyteller” in many of the Fathers.

So it was with great joy that I recently stumbled on a long section in a book I’m translating about Jesus’ parables. I think after you hear me read this section, you’ll agree with me that those of us who love fairy tales have very good reasons to do so. This is a longish passage from Volume 4 of a book called Jesus Christ: His Life and Works by Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), to be published in my translation next year by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables that, “seeing, they may see and not perceive, and, hearing, they may hear and not understand, lest at any time they should be converted and their sins should be forgiven them” (Mark 4:11-12). Luke’s version (Luke 8:10) is essentially the same. These words are part of a dialogue between Jesus and the Jews after he gave a man blind from birth his sight. The miracle itself, as it is described by John in his gospel, vividly illustrates that double action that Jesus provoked in his listeners. Those who came to him with faith received illumination. Those who came with doubt in their hearts not only did not become illumined but on the contrary only demonstrated their blindness to a greater extent.

If we pay attention to the meaning of his words as they are rendered in Mark and Luke, we can constitute as fact that he speaks the parables not to make understanding of his teachings easier for his listeners—in fact, it seems that the opposite is true—Jesus seems to be making understanding more difficult for his listeners.

At this point in my translation—by the way, this is me, Dn. Nicholas, speaking now—I thought, “Oh no. I’m about to read something and find out that parables are actually about obscuring meaning, in which case everything I said last season about the universal language of story would be wrong!” But I was happy to read the rest of the chapter. Metr. Hilarion continues like this:

The parabolic genre shares elements of both prose and poetry. As a rule, the telling is in prose; however, figurative language, short expressiveness, and axiomatic expressions used repeatedly (things like “whoever has ears to hear, let him hear”), these are elements common to verse, giving to each parable a poetic coloration. Consequently, the way people listen to parables is similar to how they read poetry. As a rule, readers don’t search for moral lessons in poems. Much more important are the rhythms, the sounds, the play of words, or other techniques of poetic mastery.

Jesus often did turn to his listeners with direct instruction, even using the imperative. (The Sermon on the Mount is a good example.) However, in parables he used a different way of telling which left a great deal more space for imagination, fantasy (yes, fantasy), and personal creative interpretation. In the parables of Jesus we see not only a teacher of morality but a poet who envelops his thoughts into flexible and multi-functional poetic forms, which, by the way, presupposed a multi-layer reception by means of the heart, not so much the head.

So you see, here we get to the good stuff. So often we Christians get stuck in the prescriptive part of our faith, the do nots and the dos. It’s especially appropriate as I’m recording this during the season of Lent, although you will be hearing this after it’s over. But you see the Christ who spoke the parables spoke them in a way calculated not to moralize but instead to allow for a certain degree of freedom of personal interpretation. Metr. Hilarion goes on:

Though narrative in form, the parable is allegorical in content. Its purpose is to transform the listener from a passive receiver of the good news into an active disciple of the one who brought the good news. It requires the personal, intellectual, and spiritual endeavors (labors) of those who listen, a personal labor to parse out its meaning, and then—only then—does it provoke the active working of the mind. Heart first, then mind. Every person must accept the parable in his own way. It seems in fact this is exactly why Jesus spoke in parables in the first place. Jesus’ choice to use parables as the primary mode of transmitting his good news is also connected with the inherent potential of the genre, which differentiates it from realistic narrative forms.

In the Old Testament, God spoke with his people in the language of command, expressed in a strictly imperative mood, often accompanied with threats of punishment. However, in the New Testament, God spoke in a different language. He no longer commands so much, respecting the free choice of every individual person. In fact, a contemporary Orthodox theologian wrote the following:

The parabolic genre has the ability to encompass a wide swath of listeners, from simple fishermen to philosophers subtle in thought. Every one of these can find something consonant with his own interests in a parable. And so the parable must have several layers of interpretation. The same words can transmit different degrees of truth. In parables the truth is not imposed. Parables are the only means of reaching that profoundly person depth of human consciousness that accepts neither coercion nor compulsion. The living, never-ending dialogue of parable with human consciousness allows it to move from a static form of communication to a dynamic, living cooperation through the characteristically unique aspect of the genre, a fluidity of interpretation that avoids direct and static meaning.

So every parable thus offers a personal reading. Its meaning reveals itself to individual people based on their own life’s circumstances, based on their own life’s unique context. Moreover, the meaning of the parable can be revealed differently each subsequent reading. This is true of individual people and entire generations. Based on the different levels of his own spiritual development, a person may understand the meaning of each parable differently. Entire groups of people may interpret their significance in a way based on their own cultural context, the specific challenges of their time, and many other factors that affect interpretation.

So, to sum it up, Jesus used the parable, a storytelling form, specifically because it is the most capable of awakening the heart to the real, pressing, and urgent content of his call: his call to love, to forgive, to live for others, to worship. And that is exactly what fairy tales do, opening up the reader to a world of potential and magic that often ends with the hero coming back home, but transformed, changed into someone better, someone deeper, and, I dare say, each of us, as we finish the tale, should be just as transformed, hopefully for the better.