The Mythmakers, the Magic, and the Making of a Creative Life: A Replay Conversation with John Hendrix

Now, you have your own little group of inklings that you participate in called the Rabbit Room.

Can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure.

I'm a real fan of community.

And I think it's why I teach.

I think our work almost always gets better in community.

So even as artists, we tend to think we're these islands or we just make things on our own or we're selfish.

We spend all this time alone.

But community is essential.

Just being a human being, let alone the command that Jesus gives us to be in community with Christian brothers and sisters.

So like whether or not you're in the Christian side or the just anthropological side, we need we need people.

And so, yes, like I have I have been blessed to present and to be part of the rabbit room community.

community and also Hutch Mood over the years, the Rabbit Room annual conference.

I did Hutch Mood in England in 2019 when I was doing research for this book, which was held in Oxford and just had great memories of being there with friends who have a shared love of fairy and story and the Inklings.

And so it was almost like being in a kind of Disney world, an Inklings Disney world for a week.

So fun.

I know.

What is it? I've heard that in Oxford, wherever his C.S.

Lewis's office was, there was a lion on one side and a fawn on the other, like a statuette's outside his door is that true

there is a well you can't you can't get up to his quarters at at maudlin college but there is a there is a passage in oxford just down the street from maudlin and there's funny there's all these inkling like tours you can take along oxford and there is a uh a notable door with a lion on it and then right across from it is it is a lamppost that feels you know, very, very reminiscent of a famous lamppost.

So, you know, were these inspirations? Who knows? But it does seem kind of cool.

It's very neat.

What is it? I got to visit Oxford as a teenager once, and I guess my love of C.S.

Lewis hadn't grown to the place that it is now.

I think my experience in visiting Oxford now would be totally different than when I was 16.

Yeah.