A Severe Mercy and why C.S. Lewis is not over-rated

Though he did not write this book...

I've just finished A Severe Mercy probably meaning I shouldn't give my opinion about it right now since most books I just finish for the first time somehow manage to be "amazing," (at least for an hour or two) however I must tentatively state that I love this book. I don't think I'll have to take that back. There is a kind of beauty in grief that this book portrays, especially when viewed in the light of eternity.

I am often fed up with Christian views of grief and sorrow. These views often seem so full of condescension. I am reminded of Jane Kenyon's poem "Having it out with Melancholy" and the 3rd section:

"Suggestion From a Friend"

You wouldn't be so depressed

if you really believed in God

This seems to be too often the attitude, yet doesn't seem so with Vanauken. There is an admittance of grief and sorrow and all the perils of finitude in his book, yet a glorious hope even in, or even especially in this grief. It seems to be in the times of death and darkness, when we must come up against the smallness of this world, that we realize our desire for more, well... more. I am reminded of another quote, the lovely and ridiculously famous C.S. Lewis quote which so poignantly says "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." Which reminds me of the oh-so-not-over-ratedness of Lewis whose most overused quotes can still touch one even after the millionth time heard.

Maybe what I loved about this book was its focus on beauty and time. I am left reminded of why I love the arts. There is a holy yearning that no theory seems able to penetrate. It is there in everyday living, but sometimes it takes a splash of paint, dissonance and resolution, or "black squiggles on white paper" to remind us of this longing, this unexplainable hope that must be found in God and love and eternity and Jesus. I also loved this book because I was reminded of this beauty, the beauty of my faith, especially as it touches me on a more than emotional level. Vanauken's story is a story of scholars and thinkers. It can be hard for me, in the midst of all the cheesiness of some Christians, to let myself be caught up in the beauty of my faith, but it is there, the honest to God, awe-inspiring beauty, and I am thankful for books like A Severe Mercy for reminding me of this - whether or not I'll continue to find the book itself amazing after time and more readings.

Blank Verse

Ascetic silence penetrates in the

Upheaval of monotony, the kind

That makes our eyes clasp shut, or if agape,

The tendons strained against the turbulence

Of being. Hands embrace insipid air.

Still in this posture held, this oneness felt,

We look more fully toward where we've drifted,

Where through the currents of community

Our persons stayed or silently absconded.

Where might we be if our plot had turned a bend,

A different life donned on the empty shell

Of our personalities? Would we be here,

The cold air of October bitterly

Misting our faces, feet turned pale and numb?

What piece or point of us is truly ours?

What if we wrapped the soft down of home and care

Of family around us permanently,

Or in destitution, no home to draw

Us from the abyss of depair, the edge of light,

Who would we be in that particular place?

Does fate abound, the individual leave,

The mind then useless in the cave of the skull?

When do we get to choose the player played

On our blank body, and when must we resign

Ourselves to circumstance and other's whims?

Where are we in the din that shapes our breath?

Because I am currently cold.

I had almost forgotten the sharpness of the cold or the way it seems to permeate more fully than even the hotness of middle summer. My house is intensely frigid. Colder than the outside where the sun can at least get in. I have found myself these past days fleeing to the outside to sit in the pockets of sunlight to let the rays take away the edge of approaching winter. I don't want to rant about the cold, but I am not exactly looking forward to winter.

I like the idea of winter, the snow, the holidays, the blankets and scarves and thick woolen bits of clothing. Yet I find the actualization of winter mainly cold. Cold and dark. I find myself at the beginning of Autumn exclaiming that it is my favorite season, but then I realize that Autumn leads to Winter and Winter feels a lot like death.

Trust and knowledge

My mind cannot wrap around the whole of life. This may sound obvious. It is, in fact, obvious, yet each time I tell myself this, swearing I'll give up trying to curl my brain around the intricacies of life, surrender certain knowledges to the abyss of untried thoughts, I hesitate. I selfishly want every ounce of understanding I can attain in this lifetime. I want every truth that rears its ugly head and even every idea posing as truth. I don't think this is a particularly healthy desire, at least if one is attempting to cope in the world, especially considering how impossible this is, both the knowing and the coping.

I'm impatient, on top of this, with my desire. I search the minds of those around me for the shards of understandings they have acquired. I poke them, trying to let them keep their thoughts for their own, but desperately wanting them to give them up to me. I unfold wrinkles in my knowing to discover I've bunched things into knots in the process. Yet, despite this, I'm still hopelessly ignorant. I don't want to wait for time to tell, to teach.

I grow angry with knowledge, useless as if so often is. I threaten to throw it out, but its an idle threat. I love the mind's churning as it rattles my brain into anxiety. I want it to grow thick like butter, to gain richness in the painful shaking. I'm not sure why. I wish I could live in peace with the unknown, with uncertainty. So much of life feels uncertain, unstable. Each piece of understanding feels like a three legged chair. There is always something missing from the equation and I don't think that in this lifetime we can know everything in the fullness of knowing, but this frustrates me to no end.

Trust is not an easy attribute.

The Stoic's Sonnet

There is a mite of melancholy hue

In the incandescent rooms of gladness.

The acrid air of imminent newness

Impregnate with the musk of finitude.

Even in the loud crisp colors of love

People meander with a swaying limp

A desperate glaze in heightened sight; an imp’s

Mischievous ready stance – the hint of fear.

It might be best to stay untouched, intact,

To hold your poise against the curve of life,

The stoic’s stance, the cautious balance act,

Free from the spikes and falls of every strife.

Though it might be nice, it remains a sham,

A wish only, an irremediable plan.

Momentum pushes us forward.

I have often wondered how it is that people can handle life, somehow pushing forward against each ever tightening nerve. It seems we all have something to complain and weep over either silently in the dark of night, or blatantly, standing on toes for height, for volume, breathing through the belly.

Maybe we can't manage it after all. Manage being a slippery word when it comes to life. We all seem like clowns, falling over our feet, getting water squirted in our faces by flowers pinned to our other clown brother's vests. Maybe it is the sheer momentum of existence that keeps us living and not our ability to cope with what life throws at us.

We should just stand still if we desire any ease. Not try to "kick against the goads." Let life pull us along, it will anyways, and practice our balance. Things will still happen to us then, but it won't be our fault, not entirely. Then we might just be willing to let each breath in be a victory, each exhale an act of triumph.

Wallace.

I'm no good at starting blogs. I'm just not. So, instead of a horribly painful explanation of why I am trying again to blog I am just going to start with (probably) my favorite poem, at least my favorite poem currently, and the reason I've picked the name for this blog.

The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad

The time of year has grown indifferent.

Mildew of summer and deepening snow

Are both alike in the routine I know.

I am too dumbly in my being pent.

The wind attendant on the solstices

Blows on the shutters of the metropoles,

Stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls

The grand ideas of the villages.

The malady of the quotidian ..

Perhaps, if summer ever came to rest

And lengthened, deepened, comforted, caressed

Through days like oceans in obsidian

Horizons full of night's midsummer blaze;

Perhaps, if winter once could penetrate

Through all its purples to the final slate.

Persisting bleakly in an icy haze;

One might in turn become less diffident-

Out of such mildew plucking neater mould

And spouting new orations of the cold.

One might. One might. But time will not relent.

-Wallace Stevens