The Man Who Was Thursday

This book by G.K. Chesterton really is tremendous. I'm not sure if I got it the first time around, or the second, or the third, even with the very competent help of my Western Classics professor, Dr. Strait.

However, I finished rereading it just yesterday, and it became so very obvious to me what it was that Chesterton was getting at-- that God is so very big that one rarely gets a full view of Him, and most times what one sees most clearly is the back of Him, which is to say we see Him indirectly, through nature and through human relationships. And sometimes that reality is so difficult to look at, so suffused with suffering and pain, that we begin to believe that's all there is, and goodness must be an illusion.

But at the same time, when we do finally get around to the Front, and we look into the face of God, He is so very good, so very loving, so wonderfully beyond any dream we could have created in our finite minds, that the evil that exists in the world comes to the point of seeming, just for a moment, illusory, or like a cruel game that we have no choice but to watch play out before our eyes.

The difficulty is that both the Good and the Evil are very real and very present. Somewhere in our gut, we know this, and in our desperate attempts to work against the Evil, we often end up fighting each other, seeing devils everywhere, and nowhere. We find when we get right down to Reality, though, that God is not only at the beginning, commissioning and exhorting us to fight whatever evil we can, whensoever we can, by whatever means we can, but He is also in the middle of it, and cannot be ravaged by it as we are. And so He can lead us on through it, by whatever magnificent or ridiculous path He chooses, out the other side, further up and further in to His Goodness which is Paradise.

I found myself on the point of tears listening as Syme, the hero, says, "When I see the horrible back, I am sure the noble face is but a mask. When I see the face but for an instant, I know the back is only a jest. Bad is so bad that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so good that we feel certain that evil could be explained... Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front--"

Dear God, yes. If we could only get around front.

White-Robed Sorrow

I wrote once about George MacDonald's book, _Phantastes_. My life was a chaotic whirlpool of grief and throbbing wounds at the time, and being the non-linear, analytical thinker that I am, MacDonald's fantastic worlds and seemingly random images of beauty, love, grief and the like touched me so deeply. Today I ran across one of the passages which meant the most to me, and I wrote the following about it to my husband:

"There's this scene where [the narrator and main character of the story] is floating along in a boat, making his way down river, and he catches a glimpse of a woman in white running through the woods alongside him. She stays with him right up to the castle. It was, for me, an image of the wounds we receive being faithful to lead us on to something else if we let them- to redemption I guess, cliche though that may sound. But one certainly cannot see it as such when the wounds are fresh and throbbing.

That scene in the book is a gift to me, because the character, and therefore the reader, is given a moment to stand back from the pain and view it somewhat objectively. To see the very thing that wounds us running along beside us in white, weeping for us, leading us on to redemption, is so very beautiful. I remember, though, that it made my heart ache for the woman in the woods. She was just a metaphor for other things, but I guess I think of her as almost a part of ourselves- the part that is wounded and has been lost in so many ways, and cannot completely enter into the joy of the present."

I need to go back and read that book again.

"As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with Sorrow for very love."

George MacDonald, Phantastes

Sidewalk Chalk

5 October 2007, 9:12 AM

"As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with Sorrow for very love." George MacDonald, Phantastes

Rain falls softly, washing
the concrete as efficiently
as a pounding storm. Sidewalk chalk
is a messy medium- crumbles and smears
skin and clothing with little or no pressure
or provocation. But the rain,

the wild and wonderful rain sends colors
running like tears down the driveway.
I watch them go, lingering with Sorrow
for very love.

Lucy

17 September 2007, 9:11 AM
The Last Battle

I wonder if their hearts were
breaking as they raced across the New Narnia?
They knew all along they'd have to leave again,
or at least they feared to hope for anything
beyond what they'd known before.

They knew, by the Lion's Mane,

as wonderful as it was to pursue Him
once more, they'd say goodbye again and weep
for loss of something so precious
again
and again
and again.

It always struck me as unfair, how the children
were drawn in, pushed back, rarely offered
much choice in the matter. At the whim of Him
who sent for and sent back, always in His time.

There was a stubbornness in them, I think,
that must needs have been torn asunder
from their persons. Especially Lucy-

I think sometimes I understand her well-

and yet in the end, she understood far better
than her elders. I wonder if her greater obstinacy
and the beatings required to sever it
made her heart softer, more open to hope
just one
more
time

that perhaps there would come a time- perhaps
this was the Time when they would come home
to Narnia and never return to that Other Place
again.

Shades

13 July 2007, ~4:30 PM
Vavin Café
Paris

A million shades of green, one of blue
as I sit listening to you read aloud from a book
I’d not have considered a year ago- I didn’t know it.
A world has opened before us since we entered
autumn and life together, and I wait to discover
the many shades of green we still have not seen
together.

Finding North Wind

It occured to me tonight to take a look back at where I was in my writing a year ago. I'm glad I did.

I was originally introduced to the writings of George MacDonald, and specifically to _At the Back of the North Wind_, by an online poetry buddy by the handle of Mahlonovich. Many thanks and much affection still go to him for bringing me face to face with my dear North Wind.

Many thanks also to George MacDonald for the gift of North Wind. She has come to mean something other to me than MacDonald may have originally intended. But that's the beauty of great literature, and an illustration of George MacDonald's singular ability to create a character whose impact is so striking, one cannot help but love her and own her meaning long after finishing the book.

FINDING NORTH WIND
17 November 2005, 8:59 PM
Edited 19 November 2006, 6:51 PM

I sat beside North Wind,
and she told me of the lands of magic
beyond the periphery of her sight.

She is full of paradox,
my dear North Wind,
for my vision is made clearer
by all she cannot see.

She comes to me as I sit
within this seeming-stagnant pool,
Yet in her presence all becomes
a living, breathing being;
bankless river ever flowing,
tripping over mossy rock and down
the sharp incline of mountain
toward emerald grass of valleys below.

I've never heard her chuckle
nor stifle a giggle,
for her laugh is thunder,
toppling the mountain whence she came.

Nor have I ever seen her
just a little cross: Beneath her rage
the very earth is set trembling.
She sets ablaze the firmament
with naught but her indignant gaze.

I've never seen a single tear
drop from her eye,
for when she weeps
the rushing river which is she
becomes a mighty torrent
overwhelming me.

I've never heard her whistle
but she ended in a song
which was as deep as it was long,
nor any smaller nor less strong
for having found its birth
within the breast of one
so small at once,
and yet again so very large!
To quantify such majesty
is far too great a task,
beyond my reach.

And quite pointless besides.

For once I had her pegged,
she simply would be off again,
tripping over hill and stone,
laughing,
weeping,
alone or in the company of princes.

It matters not to her.

She simply is,
and will not long abide
my notions of what is needful.

North Wind and some imagery taken from and inspired by George MacDonald's "At the Back of the North Wind."