Category: Art

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Come into the Garden

I’ve had an on-again-off-again relationship with gardening: on in April, off in August. I suspect this is common; everybody gets excited about a clean patch of black, soft soil, and ecstatic when the first bean plants poke their brave little necks into the sunlight. For the first few weeks I run out to see how much has sprouted, how much has blossomed, how much has—oh joy!—matured into edibility.

A Work in Progress – From Now until October

Each plant has its own personality. I don’t like peas that much, but plant them anyway because I love how they twine their little tendrils around the wires, like a baby instinctively closing a fist around a finger. And the way pole beans blindly seek something to climb on—you can see them feeling the air, reaching, joyfully wrapping (or collapsing if you don’t get around to putting up that fence. Cornstalks don’t need no support from you—they provide their own, thank you very much.

Then comes July.

The soft ground is baked to slate gray, leaves are drooping and changing color, and bugs are gleefully sharing the produce. Squash bugs don’t even share—they destroy. The first time I saw a full-size tomato worm I almost screamed. (The first hint of tomato worms is that the top branches of the plant are stripped. Color that was on the plant is now inside the worm, which why you can’t see them until—suddenly!—you can.)

Summertime is travel time, too, so the weeds took advantage of my absence to come out and play. By the time I get back, they’ve established themselves as master. It’s too much to keep up with! The garden seems to reflect my discouragement in every drying leaf and misshapen bean: we give up. Just put us out of our misery.

But I’m not giving up. This year will be different. Two main reasons, which I hope will provide the formula for a successful garden:

 p/p + m2 = S (i.e., success)

 P is for preparation divided by pickup. In all the years we’ve lived here, we haven’t owned a truck. Who needed a truck, with a trusty station wagon and a rusty trailer? The station wagon is long gone and the trailer is a pain to hook up and haul around. So this year, this pickup:

Not a beauty, but she runs!

Which makes hauling manure and compost a snap. (Unloading it is not so snappy, but getting it someplace to unload was the real challenge, now solved.)

M is for maintenance x maintenance. Once we’re all planted, one hour/day should keep the weeds down and the produce up. Maybe some extra watering at sundown, if needed. Bugs are a given, but if I ride herd on them maybe they won’t ride herd on me. No travel plans either, so no big gaps in the maintenance continuum.

Wishful thinking? Well, we’ll see.

If the main point was food for the table, no cost/benefit analysis would stand for it in these days of plenty. Gardening is about exercising dominion over creation, as humans were created to do. I suspect that’s why it strikes a chord in so many hearts—at least the hearts of those who don’t have to do it.  (Subsistence farmers may just as often have their hearts broken.) It’s a skill and an art and takes a bit of time and experience to learn. I hope I’ve put in enough time and experience by now because I don’t have much left of either.

This summer, I hope to walk into the garden in the cool of the morning, with a touch of the same wonder felt by the first gardeners.  Their experience went awry, giving us thorns and weeds and earning our bread by the sweat of our brow. But a new day was on the way:

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn.

G.K. Chesterton

Gardening is an act of faith. There’s always another dawn, another spring, another Easter—until there isn’t. When all those things cease, we’ve reached our goal and can happily lay down our trowels and rakes. Unless there’s gardening in heaven, too. I wouldn’t be surprised.

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The Divine Drama

This year my intention is to read the Bible all the way through chronologically (a Back to the Bible reading plan). It’s been a while since I’ve attempted anything so ambitious, but so far, so good. The first few months are pretty straightforward: Genesis 1-11 followed by Job, and after that straight through up to I Samuel, where they start throwing various Psalms at you. Kings alternate with prophets, epistles with Acts, gospels dance together, etc.—should be interesting.

What strikes me this year, and not for the first time, is the presence of God. He is the main character, but somehow it’s easy to overlook just how active he is, how generous, and how much there. He inhabits the story even before there is a story. He is the director, but also the principal actor. He thinks and acts and feels, grieving in his heart over every intention of man’s heart.

If history is merely the unfolding of a preset plan, why grieve? He’s not just watching or directing, he’s participating. He makes a covenant “with every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth”: from bacteria and paramecium to every last man and woman. Each individual life is in his hands but their species is secured “while the earth remains.”

After Genesis 3, and after the flood, the story continues with an abiding tension, as is proper to any drama. The gulf between God and man is fixed and no one can cross it. With the story of Job, the frustrating adage of every parent and sage is born: “Who ever told you that life is fair?”  Job’s chief lament is that he’s arguing with the inarguable. No one can speak for him or answer for him. The “Almighty” (used singularly, rather than “Lord Almighty,” only in Job) seems to stand far off and involves himself only to torment: “What is man that you make so much of him?”

Job wants to make something of himself before God. He dreams of a relationship restored, while his friends insist that’s impossible. They’re sticking to a mathematical calculation of rule and reward, as legalists have done ever since. But Job is haunted by the idea of an advocate (the seed, the serpent-crusher, the redeemer). And he’s right to imagine so. God is not an abstract ethos. He is present. He is involved.  He storms upon Job’s third act and takes over the narrative. Does Job want an answer? Here’s the answer: not a proposition, but a presence that will continue to dominate as prehistory gives way to ancient history and a pagan from Ur is called out to be a wanderer.

The drama continues . . .

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Who Invented Writing? And Why Does the Bible Not Care?

From this . . .

The answer to the first question is, nobody knows.  It’s apparently a Sumerian invention, adapted by the Akkadians and picked up by all Middle Eastern cultures.  The Phoenicians get credit for developing the first alphabet (22 letters), but it was really a mashup of Egyptian and Sumerian.  The Hebrews weren’t far behind, and the Greeks invented vowels.  Most of these cultures had some kind of origin story: writing as the gift of a god or demi-god.  In the “Phaedrus” dialogue, Socrates tells of the god Theuth, who talked up his invention to the Pharaoh as an aid to wisdom and memory.  The King was not impressed; he perceived the written word not as an aid but as a crutch:

By telling them many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.

That’s a good description of pretentious windbaggery, and may be one reason why the Bible makes no mention of how writing was invented.  Nobody writes anything in Genesis.  In Exodus, there it is: Ten Commandments written by God himself and a Torah written by Moses (who was, after all, schooled in all the arts of a sophisticated culture).  Written words are a medium for the Word, but not, strictly speaking, the Word Himself.  (Remember, Jesus never wrote anything—recorded for us, that is—except some mysterious words in the sand.)

. . . to this . . .

While the slow and tortuous development of writing went on, God spoke—to Noah, Abraham, Jacob, finally Moses.  With the alphabet in place, he instructed prophets to set things down, not for their own erudition and proof-texting, but to let his people know what he was like.  Like all technologies, writing is a double-edged sword, though more subtle than most: by it we pass down vital knowledge, and by it we’re burdened with conceited pedagogues.

Writing is a tool, not a talisman.

Of course God knows that.  Knowledge is a means, not an end.  Writing is a tool, not a talisman.  It sets us free from immediate practical application and the limits of an individual mind, creates a place for the expression of ideas in a world of “things.”  It also makes us think we know more than we actually do, when what it’s actually doing is setting the table for genuine knowledge.  God doesn’t need it; his words endure even when no on

. . . to this?

e listens to them.  But our words are airy and fleeting.  Like rain, they fall and evaporate on the heads of our hearers.  Good words can bless, and evil words can hurt, but that depends on who hears them and what frame of mind they’re in.

Writing is our one shot at making our words endure past the hearing.  But the Pharaoh’s words to Theuth—actually Socrates’ words—hold just as true today: reading and understanding the content represented by a pattern of words on a page makes us think we know the content.  We don’t really know anything unless we live it out.  That’s why the Bible puts such importance on doing: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers [or readers] only.”  “He who hears my words and does them is like a man who built his house on a rock.”

Writing is a tremendous gift, no question.  I make my living by it.  Like all gifts, though, it’s not to be worshiped or exalted for its own sake, only for how it brings us closer to God.

 

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Why Time?

The whole creation project hangs on it.  For anything to be created, there has to be the possibility of it not being created.  Anything that “comes to be” must come to be in time.  God is not an exception because he is automatically excluded; he doesn’t “come” to be; he just is.  Even describing him as eternal, as the classic confessions do, is inadequate.  Eternity has direction; it always goes forward (for everything except God), and going forward requires a sense of time.  Before creation, no time, though our minds are not able to grasp it.  We can’t even speak theoretically of it, without words like before, when, pre-, post-, or during barging into the conversation—try it.  We have to take God’s timelessness on faith because there’s no other way to take it, and yet no other assumption is possible.  His first creation was time.  Then imperishable spirits, then perishable matter.

He could have stopped with angels, with countless multitudes spun from his glory, giving back his praises, alive in endless bliss.

So why didn’t he?  Why does his Spirit hover at this turning called “the beginning,” brooding over darkness?  Why does the word come: “Let there be light”?  (Especially from one who already is light?)

How about this: He wants to tell a story.

To time he adds space: three actual dimensions to hold actual objects.  The first objects are foundational: earth and sky.  From there he builds up to relational and consequences and progress—things stir, grow, feed, reproduce—die? (Maybe not yet.)  A fabric of cause-and-effect covers the earth like a mat.  Sun meets bud—more flowers. Root meets earth—more grass.  Bull meets heifer—you get the idea.  What’s needed now is a willful being who will make real choices with real consequences, who will act and be acted upon, whose actions will form a coherent narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

We call that a story.

Someone told me once, God loves a good story.  Don’t we all?

Some theologians speculate that Satan did not fall until after the creation of humans.  He rebelled not because of a desire to usurp the throne, but because of revulsion at being expected to serve these puny beings.  Humans were the prime cause of his defection, not the Almighty.  I don’t know if that’s true–Isaiah 14:12 suggests there’s more to it.  But it’s an interesting thought: what if Satan didn’t become part of the story until there was a story?  Then he assumed an antagonist role, infiltrated earth, told the biggest whopper of all time and bound himself to the consequences.  What if?

One common complaint about God—if he’s just up there somewhere, entertaining himself with our misfortunes like some Game of Thrones fan, then I want nothing to do with him.  But to say he loves a good story doesn’t mean we are a mere diversion.  It means that Story itself is far more significant than we ever thought, a grand sweeping narrative that is as much for us as it is for him.  It shapes us, makes us, and in the next life it will amaze us forever.

And it all began with Let there be . . .  Which may be another way of saying, Once upon a time . . .

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Envy Is No Fun

What are you good at?  That’s where the green-eyed monster* will get you.

I used to make ice cream from a recipe and process I developed myself: a time-consuming project for special occasions.  I liked to say it was the best in the world because who could prove it wasn’t?  Many years ago I was at a picnic where someone brought a bucked of homemade ice cream.  I even remember the flavor: maple. Reader, it was not anywhere as good as mine, and that’s an honest objective judgement.  Even so, I was surprised and a bit abashed at how much I resented the praise heaped upon that unassuming tub of inferior dessert.  If only I had thought to bring my world-record peach!  I was like Mrs. Smith giving Mrs. Jones the stink eye at the county fair because of the former’s purple-ribbon-winning strawberry-rhubarb pie when Mrs. Smith’s blueberry pie clearly deserved it.

Envy.  It’s miserable.

Later, when I was more mature with serious ambitions of publishing a novel, any new fiction writer who accomplished that feat, with warm  accolades in the New York Times Book Review, was like a stab to the heart.  Especially if they were close to my own age, like Carrie Fisher.  She already had fame, fortune, cool friends—why did she have to go publish a novel and get it optioned for a movie when the world was waiting for my masterpiece?  Or, in less confident moods, how dare she be a better writer than me?  I wouldn’t have changed places with her (even without knowing what we know now), unfortunately for me at the time, the world was full of talented fiction writers.  And, even after I managed to publish a few novels, the world remained full of more popular, and more well-reviewed, and more awarded-winning novelists, and I knew some of them personally.

Envy is misery.

Now past my fiction-writing stage—probably—I still feel the old familiar twinge over Christian writers more shared, liked, and retweeted than me, especially over subjects I’ve written about.  Very silly, on a par with the county pie-judging competition.  Worse than silly, actually—it’s a clear violation of the Tenth Commandment.  I can say my bouts of envy are less much less frequent and of shorter duration.  Sanctification always has its effect, however slowly.

But it’s better to shortcut the process, and Psalm 73 (of Asaph) is just the ticket.  Old Asaph put his finger on the problem: “As for me, my feet had almost stumbled.  My steps had nearly slipped.  For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw their prosperity . . .”   I mean, look at them!  What do they know of struggle?  Maybe they won second runner-up in the Miss Radian Baby pageant but after that it was red carpet all the way.  What couldn’t I do with all their advantages?  My cheeks hurt from insincere smiles when they announced their latest award; my hearty Congrats! over their latest book deal was wrung from a heart of lead.

“But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went to the sanctuary of God . . .”  There I learned that my problem wasn’t them.  My problem was me.  They have their own issues to answer for, but “when my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant: I was like a beast before you.”

Ouch.

An actual beast can be forgiven for a narrow focus and limited perspective; not me.  When I try to squeeze my life into a self-focused cheering section, I’m like Nebuchadnezzar clawing for grubs and snails.  Nevertheless

I am continually with you [whether I feel it or not]; You hold my right hand.

You guide me with your counsel and afterward you will receive me to glory.

Now, that’s perspective!

It’s also the only lasting cure for the misery of envy: recognition, repentance, worship.  Repeat, repeat, repeat, until it becomes a habit.  I’m still prodded by the green-eyed monster from time to time, but the prodding is more like peevish pokes.  Some of this improvement may be due to age—time’s running out and I have more important things to worry about.  But I also have much better things to anticipate.

_____________________________________________

*Othello, Act 3 Scene 3.  Another phrasemaking point for Shakespeare.

**Two tips: use a mixture of whole milk (custard) and heavy cream, and whip the cream to soft peaks before you add it to the custard.  And don’t skimp on the rock salt.

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It’s the Day after Easter, and We’re Still Alive

Brad’s Status is a quiet little movie that didn’t get much attention, partly because the title does not roll trippingly off the tongue.  But not because of poor production values or mediocre script.  It wanders into places most movies don’t touch and ends up hanging between comedy and tragedy, where most plots would have made up their minds long before then.

Brad Sloan (Ben Stiller) is living a comfortable west-coast life in a spacious home with a pretty, preoccupied wife (Jenna Fischer).  He owns a nonprofit fundraising organization and she teaches at a university, and together they’ve raised a musically-talented son who will soon be leaving for college.  Cue mid-life crisis!

Sure enough, as the big 5-0 rapidly approaches, Brad can’t help thinking of his four college buddies, all of whom went on to be more successful than he: the architect, the super-rich hedge-fund manager, the political pundit, the early retiree cavorting on the beach with swimsuit models.  And Brad?  The idealism that led him into non-profits leaked out a long time ago.  His friends are showing up in magazines and on book jackets, and what’s he got?

I spend so much time inside my mind, puffing myself up . . . and tearing myself down . . .

The action takes place over a single weekend when Brad and his son Troy fly to Boston to visit colleges.  Tufts is Dad’s alma mater, but Troy is thinking about Harvard, because there’s a particular music professor he’s interested in.  Also, one of his friends from high school is going there now.  This is like a gateway of significance to Brad: his son, a Harvard man!  He charges past Troy’s vague ambitions (the kid is not sure what he wants, besides music) and starts pulling any strings he can find to score an interview with the admissions counselor.  This involves getting in touch with some of the old gang, and in the process he’ll discover that their lives (big surprise) aren’t quite the success he pictured them to be.

But what about his life?  At the same time he’s hoping to peg his future value on Troy, Brad is trying to justify the past, or accept it, or regret it.  Like a middle-school kid, he takes his cues from his peers, tearing himself down seconds after puffing himself up, envying and resenting his wife, admiring and lecturing his son, reaching for the beauty and meaning that’s just outside his grasp–until it turns and meets him.

He has ducked out of a dinner date with his political-pundit “friend,” and shows up at a concert Troy is attending.  Two college girls that Brad met during the course of the day (one of them Troy’s high school friend) are soloing on flute and violin.  For the first time all weekend, Brad isn’t scheming or regretting.  He’s listening.

I sat there and just listened, and let myself really feel the life inside me.  The music was beautiful.  The girls were beautiful.  I could love them and never possess them.  Just like I could love the world and never possess it . . .

I still did love the world.

Later that night, in their hotel room with his son asleep in the bed beside him, Brad lies awake.

I tried to imagine the future . . . I kept saying in my head, We’re still alive.  I’m still alive.

We’re still alive.  Why?  What are we doing here?  It seems so random sometimes, the choices we make and the paths we walk down, usually without a great deal of thought.  But at the center of each life is one fat wad of ballast called self: what I want, what I need, what I have to have in order to be fulfilled.

Jesus said, “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.  He also said that we must lose our life in order to find it.  He lived a life so big we can all find ourselves within it, if we let go.  We’re so accustomed to holding on, our fingers lock in position, but surprise can pry them loose.  That’s what happens sometimes when the world wraps its arms around us and squeezes us tight, and status updates seem like dusty little points on someone else’s timeline because we’ve found something to genuinely love.

Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it, and sometimes that starts with realizing we’re still alive.

_______________________________________________

Note: Brad’s Status is rated R for language

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What Is “Color”?

Close your eyes and count to three.   Then open them and focus on one stationary object.

Where’s the light coming from, and how does it reflect off the object?  Where are the shadows?  What is the object’s depth—could you calculate it in inches or feet?  How accurate do you think your calculation is?  How are you estimating it?  Would the object still be recognizable if you reduced it to two dimensions (in other words, if you drew it)?  Can you imagine how the object would appear if you are looking straight down at it from above?

Finally: What color is it?

Are you sure?

These appear to be questions about perception, but actually they are questions about philosophy.  In fact, one of the very first philosophy questions is, if we perceive the world around us through our senses, can our senses be trusted?

The “Problem of Color” has plagued both scientists and philosophers for centuries—or that’s what Mazviita Chirimuuta says, in a provocative piece called “The Reality of Color Is Perception.” At first the title proposition seems obvious: Why, sure.  Light reaches our eyes in wavelengths and the brain perceives those various frequencies as color.  But . . . does that mean there really is no such thing as “color”?  That color is not a real property of the things we see, but it’s all in our head?  Or does color consist of some objective quality of the light? What is color?

Scientific theories tend to lean in a subjective or objective angle.  Color is either a brain phenomenon or it’s a light phenomenon.  But there’s another theory, the “relationist” theory, that  sees it as both.  Janus, the Roman god of time, serves as a metaphor because he looks both forward and back—the two-faced god.  Likewise, color relates both to the objective world and to the individual mind.

Ms. Chirmuuta likes that idea: “This is a common thread in scientific writing on color vision and it has always struck me that the Janus-facedness of color is its most beguiling quality.”

She goes on: “Indeed, I argue, colors are not properties of minds (visual experiences), objects, or lights, but of perceptual processes—interactions that involve all three terms.”  In that way, color perception is the same kind of process as consciousness itself.  “[C]onsciousness is not confined to the brain but is somehow ‘in between’ the mind and our ordinary physical surroundings, and . . . must be understood in terms of activities.”

Let’s say then that color is mind, object, and light.  Three perspectives, one phenomenon that we associate with recognize lilacs, sunsets, oceans, autumn.

Consciousness is mind, world, communication.  Three perspectives, one process.  St. Augustine, without the benefit of an electroscope, defined vision as eye, brain, correlation.  Three perspectives, one capacity that most of us never think about.

Object, word, meaning.  Frequency, ear, music.  Father, Son, Spirit—is anyone seeing a pattern here?  Maybe I’m just being philosophical, but once you’ve adopted a Trinitarian Creator you see Him echoed everywhere.

In the comments section below the article, one snarky responder calls out “the arrogance of philosophers who don’t know their place as they are just pseudo scientists filling the valleys and cracks of ignorance until real knowledge makes them obsolete.”  As for that plaguey problem of consciousness: “all philosophy has to offer there is confusion as well which will try to persist after inquisitive scientists have solved that puzzle too.”

Might be a long wait.

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Air-Tasting

We hear the best things in life are free–how many of us actually believe it?  But it’s true that the most vital things in life are free, such as blood, oxygen, and grace.  The five senses are free, too: how often do you pause to appreciate them?  Especially at the turn of the seasons, when the air can be as rich as wine . . .

The best time comes at dusk.  That’s when the essence of day rises to the top, to be poured off over the cusp of nightfall.  That’s the time to open a window or grab a chair on the porch: clear your head, close your mouth, and breathe.

Each season has its particular character, tone, and finish.

In spite of its reputation for softness and its penchant for pastel colors, I find the Spring vintages to be least subtle.  Spring has a full-bodied, even rowdy character, given drama and depth by rising sap and the mellow dollops of spring peeper.  The damp, earthy tones of spring can overbalance the concert—an embarrassment of riches that may cloy.  It’s an immature vintage, but at least it’s lively.

Summer is more complex than any other season and, in its way, more insinuating.  It owes much of its appeal to the uprush of coolness after a hot day: the sort of dramatic, built-in contrast that could make even cream soda taste riveting.  But even without the drama,  summer has enough singular virtues to shine: the fresh-cut grass varieties are ravishing; the post-rains deeply satisfying.  The dew-at-nightfall labels can be a tad overdone, except for those who enjoy sweet.  Of course, those sticky, clinging vintages that don’t lighten up at the end of the day should be outlawed.  Fortunately, those are few (at least where I live).  More than any other season, summer air links us to childhood–common to all varieties is the lingering aftertaste of chasing fireflies in the field.  This reminiscence  is the virtue that covers a multitude of sins.

Autumn is smoke and frost and nostalgia: a sudden chill that links youth with age, new beginnings with old melancholy.  It’s far more suggestive than the other seasons, yet after all these years I find it a bit of a tease; a complex blend that may appear to mean more than it actually does.  The dusty finish can be a bit too dry, for those of us who have many more autumns behind them than ahead.

But to my taste, the finest and purest vintages are the Winters.  Remarkably consistent, yet never repetitive, best enjoyed through a window raised a couple of inches in a slightly overheated room.  The draft created by a well-stoked wood stove draws it in like a steely stream.  Like the summer varieties, winter owes some of its appeal to contrast.  After the palate has been stifled in wood and artificial heat all day, winter air sweeps in fresher than fresh, cleaner than clean, an exaggerated, sparkly essence with no hypocrisy whatsoever.  Here at the end of the yearly cycle, the master of the banquet gases through the glass and murmurs in awe, “Truly, you have saved the best until last.”

Love surrounds us, not only in objects but in spaces.  Air: what could be cheaper or more abundant than fresh air?  We’d find out if it were ever cut off; then there would be nothing so dear.  But even poured out lavishly from the storehouse of heaven, how rich it is, how sweet, and how divine.

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That Hideous Strength: Denouement

Denouement is not a common word in everyday conversation, so for a long time I didn’t know how to pronounce it.  It’s day-noo-MAHN (go easy on the final n).  This is the resolution of the story, or (according to my dictionary), “the events following the climax of a drama or novel in which such a resolution takes place.”  As we saw last week, the turning-point climax of THS arrives at the end of chapter 12, but the dramatic climax, which sees the defeat of Belbury, is yet to come.  That defeat is not in doubt, though.  It’s like the history of redemption: the denouement in which we’re living has plenty of drama, but the turning-point climax came with the Resurrection.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THEY HAVE PULLED DOWN DEEP HEAVEN ON THEIR HEADS

13-1 This may be the most difficult chapter of the whole novel for the contemporary reader.  I had to skim over whole paragraphs the first time I read it, because of all the references I didn’t get.  But there are also some interesting ideas that have affected my thinking.  I’ve mentioned elsewhere that The Once and Future King was one of the formative books of my youth, and the lovable, backwards-living, eccentric figure of Merlin framed my conception of the Arthur legends.  This Merlin is the polar opposite of of that one.  But if there was such a person, I have no doubt he would be much closer to Lewis’s version: a creature of Celtic paganism and early Christianity, with ties to the old spirits of earth.  He lived at a hinge in time, which Paul indicates in his message to the Athenians: “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent . . .” (Acts 17:30, see also 14:16).  Lewis, drawing from Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man, makes a distinction between “good paganism” and “bad paganism” in pre-Christian societies, the good leading eventually to Christ and the bad leading to demons.  Merlin is of “good pagan” stock, and in fact a Christian—but very, very strange.

It’s interesting to compare his description of the moon with Filostrato’s in 8-3.

13-3  His accusation about Jane is disturbing to me.  Can God’s plans really be thwarted by human will?  We find ourselves at the intersection of destiny and choice, a question that has plagued philosophers, theologians, and even scientists since the beginning of time.  In Perelandra, Ransom decides that God’s ultimate will can’t be thwarted, but he holds several paths in mind.  If humans flub one plan, there will be another–but usually more difficult and with more painful consequences.

13-4  “Time is more important than we thought.”  No kidding!  Anyone who attempts to write serious historical novels must come up against the fact that the past is, if not utterly lost to us, then permanently out of reach.  All our efforts to reconstruct it are tenuous at best, and if time-travel ever became practically possible we would soon learn how inadequate our efforts were.  Dimble’s observation about “things always sharpening and coming to a point” is useful for all ages.  He’s applying it to Merlin’s time, when a man could (supposedly) be semi-pagan and still justified, vs. the modern age, when people can no longer plead ignorance and must choose sides.  But I think the statement has lots of applications: political, social, economical, spiritual.  Vague principles come into sharper focus as a crisis approaches, and casual alliances no longer apply; people have to take sides.

13-5  Merlin learns that his pagan powers are no longer lawful (the image of his firelit face next to the bear’s–their earthy elemental kinship–is one of those literary pictures that will stick with me forever).  As the inhabitants of St. Anne’s were profoundly discomfited by his presence, now Merlin learns how out of his element he is.  The taint of corruption about him, due to his magic, is precisely what makes him useful to the cause.  He is not totally sanctified.  As Ransom says, “a tool (I must speak plainly) good enough to be so used, and not too good.”  Upon learning his calling Merlin’s response is a bit like Christ’s, sweating drops of blood in the garden.  Is there any alternative?  Any other principality or power that can be called on to help?  In the seventh paragraph from the end, notice his appeal to those who are not part of Christendom yet observe the “Law of Nature”—he’s talking about the Way, or the Tao, Lewis’s subject in Part Two of The Abolition of Man.  But all earthly powers are to some degree under the sway of that Hideous Strength.  Only powers beyond the earth can help now, and Merlin will contain them.  Like an old wineskin filled with new wine, he will last only long enough to serve their purpose.  And then he will lose his life, but save his soul.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: “REAL LIFE IS MEETING”

14-1  After almost a whole chapter devoted to St. Anne’s, we now go back to Belbury.  Mark’s conversion at the end of ch. 12 was real–he has no desire to go back, though it’s to his advantage to play along.  Frost’s dissertations in this chapter are easy to skim because he quotes people who were very consequential in Lewis’s day but almost unknown today.  (Lewis had several arguments with Waddington, either in public correspondence or in footnotes.)  However, the idea that “Existence is its own justification” carries on today in philosophers such as Richard Rorty and Peter Singer, and catchphrases like “Whatever is, is right.”  Thomas Huxley, whom Frost quotes in the fourth paragraph, was an early defender of Darwinism who, contrary to Frost’s interpretation here, denied that evolution provided any ground for morals whatsoever.  That didn’t stop his own grandson Julius (and subsequent deep thinkers) from trying to theorize morality from evolution.  Frost represents the dead end of such attempts.

The paintings in the room where Mark begins his training range from the obviously perverse to the slightly “off”—which are more dangerous?  Do you recognize any art styles?  In the 12th paragraph from the end, he recalls reading of: “things of that extreme evil which seem innocent to the uninitiate . . .”  Chesterton again, The Everlasting Man, ch.6.  A pure heart and mind would be unaffected by these evil things (“to the pure all things are pure,” Titus 1:15), but Mark isn’t there yet.  At least he recognizes the danger, and is soon delivered from it by a most unexpected circumstance.

14-2  Another difficult-but-rewarding section.  If you have no patience with Lewis’s interplanetary mythology, okay, but notice that Jane still has her hang-ups and preconceptions that Mrs. Dimble is untroubled by (Titus 1:15 again?).  Jane is not that different from present-day feminists who see sex as a power struggle; she may have some idea that her new “spirituality” has freed her from it, but the vision she sees in the Lodge says otherwise.  The sensual woman in the flame-colored robe is easily understood as some sort of fertility goddess, but where do the dwarves fit in?  Clearly, they’re all laughing at Jane, but further illumination will have to wait.

14-3  Tolstoy wrote a chapter of Anna Karenina from the POV of a dog—here’s a stream-of-consciousness from Mr. Bultitude.  He, and all mammals, occupy a territory inaccessible to humans: pure quality, “a potent adjective floating in a nounless void . . .”

14-4  Mark has been having his own encounters with an earthy soul—a common tramp who shares certain characteristics with Merlin and others with Mr. Bultitude.  Imagine how Mark would have reacted to him before his turning point in Chapter 12, and you can see some concrete effects of his altered attitude (it’s not quite a conversion—not yet).

14-5  Things are “sharpening and coming to a point” (as Dimble observes in 13-4) for Jane.  She can’t exist in a spiritual vacuum for much longer; she’ll have to declare, either for Christ or for Ashtoreth.  Which means necessarily that she will have to deal with her humanity, her place in the world. She’s been seeing herself as mostly a cerebral creature, a woman “without a chest,” made up of approved influences and pride and self-importance.  Her conversation with the Director sets her up for “real meeting,” not just with God, but with her real self.  Left to ourselves, we don’t know who we are; it’s impossible to disengage the true self from nature, nurture, and community.  But God knows.  Jane’s experience is hinted at in Colossians 3:3-4 and I John 3:2.  Earlier her world was unmade; now she herself is remade by meeting the One who knows her fully.  (Lewis was deeply impressed by Martin Buber’s I and Thou around the time he was writing That Hideous Strength.  The title of this chapter comes from Part 1, sec. 13, where Buber writes, “All living is meeting.”)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE DESCENT OF THE GODS

The narrative will pick up and move faster from this point to the dramatic climax (at last! sighs the patient reader).

15-1  “The gods” of this chapter are not only the ruling spirits of our solar system (the “Fields of Arbol”), but pure qualities proceeding from our creator: Meaning, Charity, Valor, Age and Time, Festival Joy.  Notice the “inconsolable wound” that wakes in Merlin at the approach of Venus: this is a stab of what Lewis calls “Joy” in his spiritual autobiography Surprised by Joy: the inborn longing that no earthly remedy can satisfy for long.  Try listening to Holst’s The Planets before or during a reading of this section.

15-3  Both Frost and Wither are beginning to unravel.  How?

15-4  In 14-5, Jane was told she would soon have to take a stand.  This is the point where Mark will have to take a stand—his literal encounter with the cross.  Note the “non-religiousness” of his conversion, which reflects Lewis’s account of his own conversion in Surprised by Joy.

15-6  Jules, the figurehead director of the N.I.C.E. who imagines he’s the real director, has been mentioned twice before; now he makes his appearance (remember the rule of three).  He’s also a product of modern education, a character who might have been a decent-enough reporter or hack writer if he’d been brought up with traditional values. As it is, he’s mostly a fool.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: DINNER AT BELBURY

16-1  Recall Ransom’s observation to Jane in 14-5 that the demons hate their own minions as much as they hate us.  This chapter will bear that out.  The confusion of languages obviously recalls the Tower of Babel; the release of the animals suggests the Fall, when man and nature were set against each other.  The plot to conquer nature has failed.  Soon the earth itself will rebel . . .

16-3 – 16-6 Each of the Inner Ring meets a fate appropriate for him—how?  Do they all get a chance to repent?  When?  Might Romans 1:14 have some relevance here?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: VENUS AT ST. ANNE’S

17-2  The fashion show compliments 14-5 and the idea of our true selves being hidden: each woman has her dress picked out by the others; a dress that, once chosen, compliments qualities that they themselves didn’t fully appreciate.  Why is the least said about Jane’s dress?

17-4  “Britain” vs.  “Logres”: Lewis may get a little carried away here, with his idea of national “hauntings,” (any ideas as to what an American haunting would look like?), but the point is that humanity has had narrow escapes throughout history, some of them obvious and some not.  There will always be a Logres, until Christ returns.

17-7 and 17-8  Mark and Jane are reunited.  Recall that the novel began with their separation, and the narrative has pegged itself to their increasing distance.  But there have been intriguing parallels throughout.  They were each admitted to their respective Inner Rings in chapter 6.  Jane was introduced to “the Head” of St. Anne’s, and Mark to “the Head” at Belbury, in chapter 7.  Jane encounters the same holy fear at the beginning of ch. 11 that Mark encounters at the end.  Jane’s true conversion in 14-5 is closely followed by Mark’s in 15-4.

Their final meeting involves a mutual descent: Jane coming down from her pretensions and Mark from his arrogance; she in her festival garments and he most likely naked.  The world has been re-enchanted for them; they’ve rediscovered the magic of the commonplace.  What happens next?  A lot of baggage to work through, but remember Lewis called this “A modern fairy-tale for grownups.”

And so: “They lived happily ever after.”

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That Hideous Strength: Climax

To catch up with the reading, see the Introduction, Setup, and Development.

Climax?  Isn’t it a little early for that?  Most of us have the idea that the climax is a high point of the story (as the word would seem to suggest), after which nothing is left but tying up loose ends.  But there’s another way to understand climax, in literary terms: it’s the point at which all the crucial decisions have been made.  We’ll come to that point at the end of Chapter 12.  The “high point” of the story will indeed wait until the fourth quarter, but it will be the working out of the characters’ choices, not the forcing of them.

CHAPTER NINE: THE SARACEN’S HEAD

9-1  Saracen means “Arabic,” referring to Alcasan’s ethnicity.  Saracen was also the inclusive name given to Muslim groups who occupied the Holy Land and fought against the Crusaders.  Poor Alcasan barely has the distinction of being a character in the story, and he’s not one now, as we’ll discover.  These scenes with “the head” are the closest Lewis ever came to horror literature, but notice they are all experienced indirectly; narrated or mediated by a character rather than by direct action.  He will take us into that forbidden chamber, but not yet.

9-2  No attribution has been found for the line quoted in the first chapter about “an inflammation swollen and deformed, his memory,” so Lewis himself could be the poet.  Great line, underscoring Mark’s clash with cold reality.  “They would kill him if he annoyed them; perhaps behead him.”  Notice how the N.I.C.E. has become they, but Mark does not yet identify with another us.  He’s between stools now, literally damned if he does and damned if he does not.  Notice how his “modern” education has not equipped him to deal with an unambiguous crisis.

9-3  A reader may be excused for feeling a little impatient with Lewis here; breaking off an exciting narrative to attend to MacPhee and his annoying discursions.  On the other hand, it’s rather clever of the author to introduce the subject of supernatural beings by means of a hardboiled skeptic. MacPhee’s background is worth noting: he’s the descendant of Scottish Covenanters who were deported to Ireland by James I as a way of getting rid of them, and also helping to civilize the “wild Irish.”  That’s why Northern Ireland is Protestant.  As a native of Belfast, Lewis no doubt had Covenanter blood in his veins.  He seems to have had some respect for the Scottish Calvinists who demanded proof in the word of God (like MacPhee’s uncle), but would probably fault them for lack of imagination and sympathy.  (G.K. Chesterton, one of Lewis’s spiritual guides, had no regard for Calvinism whatsoever.)  When Jane asks, about the eldila, “Are they perfectly huge?” she’s remembering her experience with hugeness in 7-2. ~ The poem Camilla quotes is by Charles Williams, a good friend of Lewis and member of the “Inklings” circle. ~ Logres derives from the ancient Welsh name for the England of King Arthur.  Arthur is probably one of the “perhaps about six” humans who never died but were taken straight to Heaven.  We can account for two more (Enoch and Elijah)—does the Bible preclude there being any others?

9-4 This strategy session produces no clear strategy, to MacPhee’s disgust, but we finally know what we’re up against.  “Science” proposes to join with “magic,” new power with old power, to surround and ultimately crush humanity.  Even in the midst of apocalyptic concerns, squabbles over authority and chain-of-command pop up.  The Director’s question about personnel (“Were you all under the impression that I had selected you?”) raises an interesting question about choice and destiny.  No one in the company can say either that they came freely or that they were compelled to come in; rather, it was both.  Lewis says this about his own conversion, in Surprised by Joy.  Recalls Jesus’ reminder to his disciples that their wills are not entirely their own: “You have not chosen me, but I chose you.”

9-5  The Director ponders.  It’s worthwhile to ponder with him, but if you get swamped by obscure references and vocabulary, the relevant point is that science and magic are not that far apart (more on this later).  Historically they were joined at the hip: “one was sickly and died; the other was strong and throve,” he wrote in The Abolition of Man.  Both were born of the same desire, “to subdue reality to the wishes of men.”  However, in reuniting with magic at this late date, science may be getting more than it bargained for.  “What should they find incredible, since they believed no longer in a rational universe?”  The Inner Ring is at the point that the inhabitants of Babel reached in Gen. 11:6: “They are one people, and they have one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do.  And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”

Even if you don’t follow the entire sequence of thought, it’s helpful to understand a few terms: Numinor belongs to the world of Tolkien; it refers to the fall of the Second Era in Middle Earth mythology.  (Tolkien was another member of Inklings* and Lewis was very familiar with his progress on The Lord of the Rings.)  The lost continent of Atlantis was one inspiration for Numinor. ~ Elan vital = life force. ~ Panpsychism: the belief that plants and inanimate objects, as well as humans and animals, enjoy some form of consciousness. ~ Anima mundi = world soul.

CHAPTER TEN: THE CONQUERED CITY

10-1  Mark is at checkmate: stay at Belbury, and descend to levels he doesn’t want to go; leave Belbury, and face conviction for murder, followed by hanging.  Take a moment to notice the wallet, a plot element with which Lewis has employed the Rule of Three: the first mention (4-3) introduces the object when Mark mentions to Straik that he has lost it.  The second (6-2) reinforces that loss (and reminds the reader about it) when Mark frets to Captain O’Hara about money.  The third mention springs the trap.  We know, though Mark doesn’t yet, that it’s a deliberate frame-up.  He’s also slow to recognize that guilt or innocence has no relevance whatsoever—no more than left or right, right or wrong, truth or falsehood.  The Inner ring has moved “Beyond Good and Evil” (to borrow a title from Nietzsche who foresaw this very thing).

10-2  At least Mark is finally and permanently alerted to his danger.  We want to cheer when he strikes out at Wither, but wait–Wither isn’t really there.  His mode of being has altered in a way we’ll learn more about later.  He is no longer a “person,” in any way we would understand.  But Mark, by contrast, may be on his way to becoming one: note carefully the last paragraph.

10-3  It will take a while, though.  He hasn’t a strong enough character to take a firm stand for either side.  Dimble has acquired that strength, but has to struggle with his own self-righteousness because of it: “trying very hard not to hate, and to despise, and above all not to enjoy hating and despising . . .”  This is a temptation for a lot of Christians (I’m one of them); how easy it is to look down on weakness or foolishness from our lofty perch!  Like we’re the ones who have it all together.  Our best antidote is I Cor. 6: “For such were some of you.”  Dimble ends up doing the right thing, but Mark is undone by indecisiveness.  Unable to make up his mind to take a genuine risk, he has his mind made up for him.

10-4  Dimble’s self-examination while driving home is another good reality check for Christians: if we feel ourselves getting carried away with outrage (and there’s plenty to outrage us these days), we should ask a similar question: “Is there a whole Belbury inside of you?”  The Brother Lawrence quote–“Thus shall I always do . . .”–is found in The Practice the Presence of God (ca. 1650), a collection of letters and meditations.)  Belbury is on the move elsewhere, as Dimble discovers when he reaches home and finds everyone in a state of high anticipation.  Finally the King is on the move (this, I believe, is the first use of the name Maleldil in THS) and Dimble is wanted for an expedition.

“It was an age, not a man, they were going to meet”

CHAPTER ELEVEN: BATTLE BEGUN

11-1  And about time! as MacPhee might say.

The fear that Dimble, Denniston, and Jane experience, each in their own way, while searching the wood has the same root: a fear of the noumen, or spirit world, which exists alongside our own and yet is so completely different (huge, as Jane perceived it) that to touch it is something like stepping through a trap door.  Dimble realizes that all ages still exist there: “it was an age, not a man, they were going to meet.”  Jane’s world is still being unmade (cf. 7-1); “it now appeared that almost anything might be true.”  Is she coming closer to God?

11-2  Miss Hardcastle’s account of shadowing Mark shows how little she understands the opposition.  Wither and Frost have a better idea what they’re up against, but their sources are not infallible either.  Their discussion once Miss Hardcastle is dismissed reveals that Frost really did have access to Jane’s mind—or his superiors did—when she dreamed about him.  But shortly afterwards her mind was closed to them.  Why, do you suppose?  What happened to Jane around that time?

And what do they propose to do with Mark?  What knowledge might they share with him that even Filostrato doesn’t know?  What “desire” in him might they appeal to?  (Wither’s stated wish to “to receive—to absorb—to assimilate this young man” reminds me of Uncle Screwtape.)  We haven’t seen much of Frost so far, but he will come into sharper focus.  He seems to be much more defined personality than Wither–until the last few paragraphs of this section, when we realize that both men have given up themselves in service to a “higher power.”  What desire might have led them to do that?

11-3  Mark alone.  Impending death can certainly wipe the lens of one’s perspective—if God is merciful.  Mark undergoes a kind of “Pilgrim’s Regress”: looking over his life’s ambitions and seeing them for a sham .  Notice the series of trivial steps, small compromises, and pygmy power plays employed to build up his ego, even from boyhood.  He’s not going forward yet, but that’s because he must first go all the way back: “You must be born again.”  As someone (I think is was Frederick Buechner) said, “the gospel is bad news before it’s good.”  The bad news is about us, and to see ourselves as we are is amazing grace.

CHAPTER TWELVE: WET AND WINDY NIGHT

12-2 and 12-3  Recall Mr. Stone from 5-1, an organization man who got on the wrong side of the powers that be and is desperate to redeem himself.  Obviously, Belbury and St. Anne’s are seeking the same prey—who will get to him first?

12-4  and 12-5  It’s interesting to compare these two conversations.  Frost with his “macrobes” and Ransom with his “unities” are talking about the same supernatural reality, but in his explanation to Mark Frost takes the reductionist approach, breaking all human responses down to meaningless reflexes.  Meanwhile Ransom, discussing the spiritual realm with his little band of followers, builds up a hierarchy of response reflective of God himself.  Frost would decrease, Ransom would increase, the significance of human life.  Does Frost know he’s talking about demons?  If so, he doesn’t care; names and distinctions have become meaningless to him.  But for Ransom and his band, a vague, unknown power is about to take a name—and a personality and distinctiveness they would never have imagined.  The knock on the door, and what they see when the door crashes open is one of the most striking literary scenes I’ve ever read.

12-6  We know without being told that the stranger pounding on the door at St. Anne’s is Merlin himself.  Any guesses as to who is ensconced at Belbury?  (We saw his little campsite in 11-1.)  Unintentionally, Frost and Wither provide us with some savory comic relief here.  But note Wither’s comment that he knows “the look of a Master . . . One sees at once that Straik or Studdock might do; that Miss Hardcastle, with all her excellent qualities, would not.”  Wither is wrong about the stranger, but right about Straik and perhaps Mark as well.  But why would the Fairy not do?  And “not do” for what?

12-7  We’re on Mark’s side now, or he’s on ours, but what happens almost at once?  Idolatry—seeing himself as the hero—weakens his resolve and makes him easy prey.  What’s different now is that for the first time he sees it: the true dimensions of the struggle.  It started with self-knowledge in 11-3.  Also, for the first time, he knows he can’t overcome his enemies alone.  “All that could in any sense be called himself went into that cry . . .”

And the last corner has been turned.  Whew!