July 24, 2024
Episode #257
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David and Karen Mains discuss the backstories that form the foundation for some of the stories in each of their three books in the Tales of the Kingdom series.
Episode Transcript
Karen: Let me just remind our listeners. There are three tales of the kingdom books: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance and Tales of the Restoration. They were probably written over maybe a 15-year period. They came to being because you had preached this series when you were pastoring at Circle Church in Chicago on the Kingdom of God. I never heard any sermons on that. I was raised in conservative, very fine fundamentals churches. But I’d never heard any sermons on the Kingdom of God. And yet when you go to scripture, when you go to the four gospels.
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David: I have three dictionaries in my study. The smallest has the thousand five hundred and seventy-four pages. The longest is quite a bit bigger in terms of length and width with three hundred more pages. None of the three, including the kind of middle-sized dictionary, listed the term I was looking for.
Karen: And what term were you looking for?
David: Well, I’ll tell you just for a moment, okay?
Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.
David: I don’t know Karen if the term is one word or two, but here it is: Backstory.
Karen: Backstory?
David: Yeah.
Karen: I don’t know either.
David: Cell phone said back story is what happened to a character before he or she was introduced into the narrative. Then they said use as an alternative word, prequel. That didn’t help me at all, okay?
Anyway, our three Tales of the Kingdom books continue being given even wider and wider exposure. I know about them being put into animation. We talked about that before. Told you about the proposed episodic film series. Now Karen, new conversations. What are those about?
Karen: Being put into radio dramas.
David: Yeah.
Karen: And then we had a phone call because you have recorded these from another source. I mean, there are two inquiries about radio dramas. So, it’s just sort of taking out of life of its own. We’re not pushing this at all. It’s just coming our way.
David: As funds are needed, we sign contracts with these different producers and then they are to raise funds to be able to put together the film series or the radio series, whatever. They run into donors who say, “What’s the backstory on these stories?” They don’t know how to answer that question. So, they ask us what the back stories were. And we’re going to work with that for a couple of podcasts saying these are back stories as far as we’re concerned. This is how this all came about. Okay.
Karen: Let me just remind our listeners. There are three tales of the kingdom books: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance and Tales of the Restoration. They were probably written over maybe a 15-year period. They came to being because you had preached this series when you were pastoring at Circle Church in Chicago on the Kingdom of God. I never heard any sermons on that. I was raised in conservative, very fine fundamentals churches. But I’d never heard any sermons on the Kingdom of God. And yet when you go to scripture, when you go to the four gospels.
David: That’s Jesus’ basic message.
Karen: It’s His basic message, David. I don’t know how that got missed, but it was revolutionary in my thinking particularly because I entered it before. So, I said to you, and we’ve said this before in the podcast, but I’m just reminding people that we needed to put it into another kind of formula other than the sermon formula. And so, I started to take your theology and weave it into stories. And so, there are the three books. Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, Tales of the Restoration.
David: Okay, now we’re going back to that topic of backstories. How did this come about? Okay.
Karen: Okay.
David: What were the ways these things progressed? We had on the podcast a whole episode with Jane Allen. She said after you wrote the story about the girl called Dirty, you wrote about me, didn’t you? And that was right. You were not writing in a nasty way at all. She was able to read the story as you unfolded it. But that’s the backstory in that one. And we’ve spent a lot of time talking about. However we got a letter from Jane.
Karen: Yeah.
David: Jane lives in Colorado. Got a letter from her just this last week, I think it was. And can you read a part of that for us?
Karen: Yeah, she had come to visit us, and we were sort of doing a retrospective on her spiritual journey. And so, then she sort of wrote some more thoughts on, I think, that she had had after that conversation.
“The beginning of the adventure of meeting the Mains family was: the dark meeting the light. I could handle the darkness because that had been most of my life. I chose a lot of darkness because it comforted me. Walking from one side of the door at your house was an experience from the outside coming down to the inside of my house.”
David: A friend brought her to our house and said, “Would you possibly be able to take her in?”
Karen: “When the door opened and Karen was at the door, fear set in me. The warm feeling of goodness was like a shot in my heart. I just didn’t understand. She is walking me with loving hope. You could tell walking into the house, it felt different. Warm and loving. Being myself, I had a lot of fear and anger. But deep inside, I felt safe. The person who brought me to the Mains went downstairs to talk. I stayed up in the dining room where there was a very young boy sitting at the table.
So, I sat down and started talking with him. He held a deck of cards in his hands, and I asked him if he knew how to play poker. He said, ‘No.’ So I thought to myself, “Well, I’ll just have to teach him.’
Later in the day, I learned that he was the youngest of the children, Jeremy. Later, the Mains and my friend, Donna, came upstairs after talking. So, I was not sure what was said, but it seemed like the Mains needed my help around their home. They needed some help, and I needed a place to stay. So, this was the beginning of my stay.
Jeremy gave up his room for me, which was great. Down in the basement, well, I could be alone, and no one could bother me. Wrong. Because in the home, the Holy Spirit was everywhere.
To me, this was very frightening. I couldn’t run with all the Lord speaking to me in all of these things because most of my life I chose the dark side to survive. Jesus didn’t want that in my life anymore. I had to choose what I wanted, the darkness or the light. The battle was on.”
David: Don’t read it anymore. It’s a longer letter, but it’s beautifully written and it gives the back story of the girl called Dirty in the Kingdom Tales.
Karen: So, when Jane saw that book, she said, “That’s my story isn’t it? You wrote about me.”
David: You talk about later; she saw the story.
Karen: The girl named Dirty lived in the pig bin and that’s where she wanted to live. She was happy among the pigs, but she had an incident where she was approached by the king, or someone took her to the king and that totally changed her life. And so did it when Jane bowed her heart to Him.
David: She’s become a real spiritual trooper, hasn’t she?
Karen: She’s a spiritual trooper. It’s so wonderful to see. But to know that love and the extension of hospitality and care for her and the fact that we really needed help and she was a big help. It’s just a wonderful story.
David: Yeah, and when you read it and talked about Jeremy, that was our youngest son, the fourth of our children. And he’s with the Lord now. It’ll be fun. I think one of the things they’ll ask me is, Jane’s still walking with Jesus.
Karen: She may be there before we get there, but he’ll be on the Wonder Runner.
David: Back story. How did these tales come about? That’s what we’re kind of dealing with and going to give the other illustrations.
There were three artists who did the visual illustrations of the stories that were there. So, there are 36 artistic renditions of what the stories are about as well.
Karen: Twelve stories for each book.
David: Just some backstory on those. Jack Stockman did the first two books. And there was a woman named Diane Magnussen. And we were still in contract with a company that was publishing the book. And we never were in those contracts.
Karen: We were not in those discussions as far as one artist would be chosen. So, they pulled in another artist other than Jack Stockman.
David: And we never have had the opportunity to meet her.
Karen: No.
David: Then there is a third artist and that’s…
Karen: Zhivko Zhelev.
David: He’s from Bulgaria.
Karen: Because our oldest son held a contest looking for an artist that we wanted to do the most recent rendition of the tales.
David: The tales are beautifully done art-wise. And yet at the same time we wanted to have more international representation.
Karen: What would be called diversity now because the others, other ones had all white characters.
David: Not all white, but mostly white.
Karen: Mostly white. And we just felt that we needed to pick up and be responsive to them.
David: Zhivko won the contest.
Karen: Yes, Zhivko.
David: There are a lot of entries in it.
Karen: Say Zhivko.
David: Zhivko.
Karen: Zhivko Zhelev.
David: Yeah, we’ll see our trip to meet him in Bulgaria for another time. But I want to go back to Jack Stockman.
Karen: Okay, the original artist.
David: And he was a member of our congregation when we founded the church in the city of Chicago. We were there for ten years before we went to the broadcast.
We didn’t know this. And so, as a part of the interesting backstory is that Jack Stockman drew himself and a lot of his fellow church members into those illustrations. If you want to see what Jack Stockman, the artist for those first two books, looks like, you just look at the cover of the first book and he painted himself in that picture. There are several characters you have on the cover. And then you get to the story of the apprentice juggler. And it’s just a solo picture of the apprentice juggler doing his thing. And that’s Jack Stockman. Other people might not know that, but we know. So that’s the backstory on that.
It’s just kind of interesting. But it goes further, Karen. There are other characters through the stories. For example, everybody knows about the Enchanter. He’s the negative character. Yeah, he’s the devil character. That’s Gary Strokosch. He’s a member of the church. He’s a wonderful person.
Karen: That’s a great pediatrician.
David: Yeah, just a great man. And if you want to know who Caretaker is, Caretaker Ranger Commander, that’s one of the characters. And who is that? You remember?
Karen: That’s Jack Risley.
David: Jack Risley. Yeah, we can go through and name the people. Not all of them were members of the church that we founded in the city, but a number of them were.
Karen: It was charming, really, to have all of those representations in these books. Wonderful for the church body. You know, it was just great.
David: Some stories are based on personal experience in our lives. I’m not sure we can always pull them back and say, “How did this influence what was being written?” But as we would brainstorm before we actually started to put things on paper and then you do the yeoman’s work, one of those experiences was a story out of real life. There was an up-and-coming actress in California. Her name was Colleen Townsend. She was a generation older than us. And her face was on the front of Time Magazine, which was a massive magazine back in those days.
Karen: She’s a beautiful woman. She was a Christian woman. And they focused on her having a role now in Hollywood.
David: She fell in love with a man who was being called by God to be a minister.
Karen: Colleen Townsend Evan, she became.
David: Yeah, Pastor Evans. And early on in your life, they invited you out there to speak at the church. You remember that?
Karen: Yeah, they were wonderful. And she was beautiful. I mean, just a beautiful woman. But in every way, David, in every way, just every way.
David: And she was nice to you. I remember you coming home, and you said, “Colleen said I like Debbie Reynolds.’” You must have said that three or four times in the whole week.
Karen: Oh yeah, I can do something about that.
David: You just see don’t get cocky. You don’t look like Debbie Reynolds now. Although maybe you do. Maybe Debbie Reynolds is aged as well.
Karen: But that you know there was a wonderful connection with Colleen, and she was gracious and beautiful but very godly. So wonderful things came out of it.
David: And her, saying that was my past life. Now this is my new life and I choose to follow God. And this special calling that he has for me.
Karen: So how did her story interact with the stories in the book? The most beautiful player of all.
David: The most beautiful player of all. It’s this person who has his longing in her heart and she is called by the king.
Karen: She’s an actress and on stage but she has a longing for something more and the king calls her.
David: In fact, that’s the artwork, that story on the cover of the second of the Tales books. But that’s kind of the background on that. Did you copy the story of Colleen? No. But all those things feed in.
Karen: The things you pick up and sometimes you don’t even know your referencing that. It’s just kind of a creative spontaneous sort of thing.
David: But sometimes you do know your referencing it. I’m thinking of a story that’s in the third book called Mudslinging.
Karen: Okay.
David: You remember that? Yeah. It’s a powerful story and it’s how did the people in the story “how did they get slinging mud at each other?”
Karen: Yeah.
David: And little child gets involved in that. Well, we knew how that took place in our lives. You know there was mudslinging and it cost us dearly. A painful, painful time in our lives because people slinging mud not in the form of actual mud but in terms of lies and accusations as to us being new age. We were not to be trusted and that went all over the country.
Karen: Was in the Christian circles.
David: But big Christian circles, yes. You’re talking about major publications.
Karen: Put us in 2.6 million dollars debt actually?
David: Actually, shut down the program and put us in limbo as far as okay. What do we do now and then how do we get our reputation restored which has not been in totality.
Karen: Yeah, right.
David: That’s still a painful time in our lives but that became a chapter in the third book mudslinging. I think you handled it very well as far as how you were telling the story.
Karen: Well, David I think that is also a very common occurrence in many people’s lives. These stories have universal meaning in many ways and good storytelling does.
David: You’re involved in it emotionally.
Karen: Yeah. From literature that has common currency in people’s lives.
David: Well, nobody will ever come up with this as being part of the backstory. You discovered a book.
Karen: Right. Before I started writing that, taking what you did: your theology that you did. That’s in your theology you developed on the kingdom. So, there’s a book called The Uses of Enchantment, The Meaning And Importance Of Fairy Tales and it’s written by Bruno Bettelheim. Now fairy tales is a classic form of storytelling.
I’ll read a few little lines from Bettelheim’s book. Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss. This statement by Charles Dickens indicates that he like untold millions of children all the world throughout the ages was enchanted by fairy tales. Even when he was world famous, Dickens acknowledged the deep formative impact that the wondrous figures and events of fairy tales had had on him and his creative genius. He repeatedly expressed scorn for those who motivated by the uninformed and petty rationales insisted on rationalizing, vulgarizing and outlawing the stories and those robbed children of the important print contributions fairy tales could make to their lives just a little bit more.
Dickens understood that the imagery of fairy tales helps children better than anything else in their most difficult yet most important satisfying task achieving a more mature consciousness to civilize the chaotic presence of their unconscious.
It’s interesting to me that literary critics such as G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis felt that fairy stories are spiritual explorations and hence the most lifelike since they reveal human life as seen or felt or divine from the inside. So, it has an extraordinary place in literature, this literary form. And just seemed to me that separate stories in the three books could take on the fairy tales’ genre. They would fit together like nice suit up or something like that.
David: Well, if people want backstory, this is major. This kind of book that you would not normally pick up. I don’t know where you found them.
Karen: Some resell bookshops somewhere. I just have no idea.
David: But it’s a large book and you’ve gone through that you quote him quite often.
Karen: Yeah right. Well, he’s a child psychologist, that’s his profession; was his profession. I doubt if he’s even alive now. Yeah, it was very informative. David, I wouldn’t have a class on fairy tales as literature. I don’t believe in any of the Christian colleges have this department. So, it was a thing that feels like hand and glove like “Oh yeah that’s what this is.” And I think there’s an inward knowing that says, “Go ahead put it in that formula.” And once they decided on that the stories came and were written much easier than if I had yet not had the fairy tale formula.
David: In book two.
Karen: Which is Tales of the Resistance.
David: A big part in that story is the taxi resistance. I don’t think there’s any question in our mind as to where that image came from because we were a guest for 10 years of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters local 705 in the heart of Chicago. And right in that same complex where the taxi drivers’ union, the local wine and beer distributor.
Karen: We’ve lived in Chicago. How many years was that?
David: Yeah. Probably 12, 13 years.
Karen: So, at that time you just got around town doing that way if you didn’t have time for public transportation.
David: But the guys in charge of all of that were the Teamsters and they became our friends. I’ve told those stories on the podcast before when we say what were the back stories when you talk about Big Operator that was Louis Pike. Louis Pike was the secretary of the local 705. He was the Teamsters.
Karen: Teamsters.
David: Yeah, and part of the Teamsters were the taxi drivers. Anyway, they let us meet for 10 years while I was pastor there in that church and they followed with great delight. The growth of the church starting from nothing.
Karen: We were meeting in the Teamster Union free of charge.
David: So, when you see the references in the taxi drivers, and you see big operator in those stories. In fact, I want to read just a little bit of the second book and it’s about Big Operator who is in charge of all of the taxi drivers in the Enchanted City and he’s the one who masterminds the takeover of the taxi drivers as they rescue the orphans. In my mind this is Louis Pike as a model. He was the head of the whole thing in Chicago.
And the Big Operator was glad. His heart leaped with gladness. He knew the Enchanter would take revenge but if this be his last strategic rescue design ever, he had been at the side of his king as together they emptied the pavilion of every last orphan. He closed his eyes and listened to the taxi vanguard. His taxi vanguard honking throughout all of Enchanted City. Hark, Hark here there and everywhere. Hark, Hark. It sounded in his ears like a raucous chorus of jubilant rescue.
The king stood beside him ready to leave and to accompany the escapees into great park. The hand clasp between the two was firm and long. Their anger was gone but strangely there was no exultation just a quiet sadness. Both knew what dire consequences their defiant acts would set into motion. “Farewell,” said the king and the embrace.
The embrace of two mighty men. The orphan exodus was accomplished. Big operator watched the king disappear into the night and though he knew it was just his imagination it seemed as though a crowd of children stood all over the city clapping their hands and shouting, “Bravo.” And when the last taxi had hurried away with the last load on a whim, Big Operator bowed to the city and the applause grew louder in his heart. Big Operator had learned through the years of masterminding the taxi resistance that mighty deeds demand mighty risk. But that is worth risking all for the sake of the kingdom and the king.
Interesting how the Lord prepares your lives in different ways and ways you have no idea what he is doing. But that’s part of the backstory.
Karen: One addendum to that, too, if people haven’t read the book is that orphans in the city were taken and given to the Enchanter. And he used them to keep the power of the city going. So, it was not just rescuing them as orphans, it was rescuing them from the Satan figure that’s in the books. Those are powerful stories.
David: I already have in my mind lots of other ways of the back stories in terms of our lives affected what went into those stories, but I don’t have any more time to do them right now. We will plan on all our next visit telling you more of the back stories that we experienced and how the Lord made them a part of our lives.
Karen: So, the books if people are interested and don’t know where to get them, I just went online to see where you could order them online and Amazon does have lists of different prices etc. They are like a lot of books. And then I often go to Thrift Books, too, which is an online bookseller. And those are used books, but that’s how people can get a hold of them if they want to buy their purchase.
David: Make notes in your mind, Karen, of other ways that you see how the Lord used back stories.
Karen: Okay I’ll think…
David: This series of books together and I will do that as well and we’ll see if we can bring all those up next time. And if it takes more than next time, we’ll just give it the time because it’s again one of those ways you see the Lord work in your life and you can say, “Well just take it for granted.” Or otherwise, you can say, “The Lord used good times and bad times from one’s life to help in terms of the continuing advancement of the kingdom.”
Karen: Right.
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