Cupboards, Vaults and Underground Tunnels: Digging into N. D. Wilson's Fiction

It's been a while since I've gotten caught up in a book in a way reminiscent of my experience with C. S. Lewis' and J. R. R. Tolkien's works. Okay, it will probably still be a while before I find something comparable to Tolkien - I'm holding out for the next world. But N. D. Wilson's got me. After reading his dancing and dizzying Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl, it was really only a matter of (very short) time before I started in on his fiction. And a whirlwind of a month or so later, I'm stuck having nothing left of his to read, and anticipating September when his next book comes out.

His fiction is written for children, with an imagination and craftsmanship that takes its readers seriously and thus can reach a wide audience, including those no longer supposed to be playing dress-up. Personally, I can't wait to read these books to my kids, should God so bless us, and in the meantime my husband and I have enjoyed reading and discussing them. Wilson is a skilled writer, very aware of what he's doing with sentences and imagery, and I found the storytelling of sophisticated enough craft to not only hold my attention, but spark it. And when it comes down to it, he spins a good yarn: exciting plot, seductive landscapes and quirky and compelling characters. Actually, his character portrayals and development are particularly successful. I appreciate his attention to creating secondary characters in such a way that one recognizes them to be significant; had a different storyteller chosen, the story could have been told from their perspectives with equal interest. Also, the adult characters aren't demoted to the characterization that seems to haunt them in much children's literature: irrelevant, boring, ineffective, unable to understand, or just plain oppressive. Thus, even if as a thirty year old you have a hard time following around a thirteen year old protagonist, you may find yourself invested in the story for the sake of the forty year old father trying to make a go of it by selling tumbleweed on the internet.

I started with 100 Cupboards, and knew after the first few pages that I was in the hands of a storyteller whose work I could respect. The initial description of the town of Henry, Kansas, was emotive and impressive. Granted, as an English major I'm particularly guilty of looking for ways in which landscapes interact with the characters, reflecting, subverting, creating them. But I think Wilson is fully aware of this too, and uses it in a very productive way. The main character of this particular series (which includes #2 Dandelion Fire and #3 The Chestnut King) is Henry, accompanied in many of his adventures by his cousin Henrietta. Yes, Henry and Henrietta. And it works. The basic premise: a kid with a pretty sheltered upbringing spends the summer at his cousins' farm and discovers a wall of cupboards behind the plaster walls of his room. And of course, they aren't for holding socks. As with the Lewis' wardrobe made from a Narnian-grown tree, so are Wilson's cupboards made from wood with a tendency to transport...

The only complaint I had against this series was the matter of pacing in a few sections. I felt the end of book one a little rushed - with the villain appearing and disappearing a little too quickly and dramatically. Book two produced the opposite reading experience for me as I felt it started a little slowly, with a bit too much "recap" of book one, but then accelerated in a fantastic accrual of events and characters. What I perceive as weaknesses of pacing are minor, and don't detract from the overall thrill and thrust of the books. And indeed, book two boasts one of the best battle presentations (in terms of pacing and attention to what is described and what is not) my husband claims he's ever read; I have to agree.

Wilson's Ashtown Buriel series seems to be progressing in an equally positive direction, but the book I am currently excited about is his first and shortest, Leepike Ridge. I think I had the lowest expectations for this one (not sure why), and so it turned out to be a surprisingly pleasurable experience. I read it in a day, following its eleven year old protagonist down a river and under a mountain. More than any of the books, Wilson nails the narrative pacing here - it's dynamic and contemplative all at once. Its world feels simpler than the other books, and yet, like the others, and like the events of the plot itself, it digs deeper. It draws on old stories like the Odyssey. It weaves in a counter-cultural view of history. And it does so in a way that will keep an eleven year old engaged and thinking and enjoying.

With the books back on the bookshelf (until I return them to the public library), what I think I value about them the most is that like with the Narnia Chronicles, Till We Have Faces and The Lord of the Rings, they continue on in the real world. Wilson has said in regards to his own writing that he seeks to open peoples' eyes to the wonder around them, to the magic that is woven into the world we live in. And it's true. He doesn't squirm around suffering and death. He doesn't avoid the beauty and danger intrinsic to life.

And I will never look at dandelions the same way again.

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Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl: an Author Acknowledgement

Is there a particular phenomenon which in all this wide world causes you to take notice and feel a certain way – almost entirely regardless of when you encounter it or how you are feeling at the time or who you are with? And when I say “take notice” I don’t just mean that you notice it, in which case any gaudy or unavoidably attention-grabbing thing would suffice. No, it might be very subtle, or common, or silent, or  yes, gaudy, but when faced with it, you cannot help take notice, pay attention, open up your ears to what it is saying. It ends up not being the focus of your attention; what it is saying does. For me, the it is standing in the snow, and feeling – realizing really – that it’s cold. I will often take my gloves off and grab a fistful, because the feeling of burning, icy, melting snow turning my fingers red and cold and eventually numb reminds me that I am alive. It reminds me that I am not numb, not really. It reminds me that I am not wholly calloused to the Voice that speaks through all of His creation, that I am not wholly dead to those non-lingual words that N.D. Wilson identifies in his book as “God’s Spoken World.”

Notes from a Tilt-a-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God’s Spoken World. This book – a poem in prose, really – made my reading experience very much like picking up a handful of snow. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that one recurring image throughout the book is the vivid recollection of snow-experiences. But mostly it has to do with Wilson’s beautiful preoccupation with uncovering the Voice of the Poet, with de-numbing our senses to God’s words, specifically His spoken world, all around us. Like the medievals (but unlike the medievals), Wilson believes strongly that this world is a book, a book revealing the Author - if we are willing to become literate (which is much more an issue of the heart than of dissecting analogies). I can’t help but quote him directly here: “In the beginning… There was a Word, a Voice. There was Artist, but there was not yet art. And that Voice said Light, and extended Himself a finite canvas to paint the only thing that could be worth painting, to paint the I AM” (186 – 187).

In reading Wilson’s book, I didn’t feel like I was being taught something shockingly new, but rather being exposed to wider and stronger and more beautiful depths of the familiar. These are the whispers and shadows of light that some of us were introduced to through the writings of Tolkien (with his mythology of “splintered light”) and Lewis (who resists the possibility that a star is simply a ball of gas, that its existence consists only in its materials of composition). These are the whispers and shadows of light that we are hopefully aware of to some degree through our own experiences. And if not there, then certainly through the words of Scripture: “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Psalm 19:1-2).

And Notes is steeped in Scripture. Not in the ways we may be used to (whether bad or good). There is no copy and paste of de-contextualized verses. There is no in-depth exegesis of a passage, a phrase, a word. But the Written Word of God pervades: it forms the base of Wilson’s theology, it permeates his assumptions, it sweeps through his anecdotes, it colours his perspective with an irrevocable dye. The fear, for some of us, is that a book which insists on God’s effectiveness to speak through every created thing will crumble into diverse mantras of  “god is whatever you understand him to be through whatever you discovered him in.” Fear not. This book is anything but flaky. And it is anything but tame – there are no half-hearted convictions here. This book insists on God’s sovereignty, on His power, on His goodness, on His holiness, on His Incarnation, on His humility in coming “to live in a trough and die on a pole,” on the reality of Hell, on the gloriousness of God, on the joy that is ours to come.

"But what kind of book is it?" you may ask
It is a book of very big ideas and very small details. There are many lists in the book. In sentences, mostly. Juxtapositions. And all are carefully crafted. The chapters start off with a scene, a recollection of the author’s, with a deeply visceral connection to the landscape or some creature therein. And there the chapter returns in closing. In between, however, the images shift. We are in places confronted with the voice of a philosopher (Plato? Nietzsche? Annie Dillard?). We are introduced to a butterfly. We are told that there are shellfish fossils in the Rockies. We are privy to lists like: “A single world combining galaxies, black holes, Jerry Seinfeld, over 300,000 varieties of beetle, Shakespeare, adrenal glands, professional bowling, and the bizarre reproductive patterns of wasps (along with teams of BBC cameramen to document them), precludes easily palatable explanations” (4-5). These lists are marvelous. They de-familiarize the familiar; that is, they prompt us to think of common things in new ways; that is, we must put some work into it. But it is invigorating work. And Notes is ultimately cohesive – it is a fitting embodiment of the paradox we see around us of the diversity and unpredictability of life, and of its unity under the creating, sustaining, reigning Lord Jesus Christ. Notes is a story, with a kind of plot, with an accrual of force and emotion, with a point. Like life.

Life. Wilson weaves within the book’s pages a provocative and humbling account of life, of this created life, and he does not hold back from dealing with the hard stuff: death, the (so-called, but much felt) problem of evil, pain, decay, Hell, Heaven, bodies, souls, laughter, language, wonder, worship. Of what is. Of what will be. Oh yes, of what will be! There is a quote on the last page (before the acknowledgments section) that I wish I could read to you, but it is on the last page and so I don’t want to read it to you. You must read it yourself. I think you’ll know which one it is.

There are so many other passages I want to share too. In fact, when I first drafted this post I had worked up my own juxtaposition of something from Barthes’ purposely provocative short essay, “Death of the Author” with one of Wilson’s statements regarding the Voice of the Author. I've obviously since discarded that idea, but I’ll end here with the quote from the latter: may its reminder of your created-ness and God’s creative authority provoke you to go find the book and read it.

“You are spoken. I am spoken. We stand on a spoken stage. The spinning kind. The round kind. The moist kind. […] The magic is real, and I stand blinking on the stage because of it. I’m real. I’m heavy. I’m matter. Cut me and I’ll bleed. But I’m not made out of anything, and if the Magician, the Poet, the Word, if the Singer were to stop His voice, I would simply cease to be” (24).

If you've read Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl, what are your thoughts on it? How did it impact you? And have you read any of his children's fiction yet?

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The Disappearance of God: a resolutely hopeful book of warnings

What’s your view on the existence of hell? Does the term “church discipline” have any meaning to you? How do we maneuver a God-glorifying balance of maintaining cultural sensitivity and relevance with Biblical truth and imperative? Has anyone ever offered you counsel, wisdom or even – gasp - warning about these things? How much warning literature do you read (aside from the Bible)? Do you read so much that you find it difficult to trust a Christian from a different church because you are afraid of uncovering heresy at every turn? Or do you read only those books which confirm a happy and calm state of mind, which don’t participate in something so archaic as fear-mongering?

Some things, I am convinced, merit warning, serious warning. It is true, some of us are so steeped in it that we honestly need to step back and spend some time actively trusting God to sustain His Kingdom-work in this world, learning to love selflessly and be less self-defensive. However, my guess is that for the majority of us, reading a book full of warnings is not something that occupies a lot of our time (unless it’s a joke column listing ridiculous warnings that are found on some products, such as “Do not eat” on an electric can opener). I’ve read a few (books full of warnings, I mean, not the jokes), and this is one which I found very appropriate and timely, and especially suitable for people for which this is the first foray into warning literature. This little book offers a useful survey of a few very significant ways in which God is “disappearing” from Western church doctrine and culture. An intentionally provocative term, “disappearance” as Mohler uses it refers to the apparent trend of rejecting the truth about God’s character and will as revealed in the Bible, and replacing it with one of our own choosing.

One of the greatest strengths of this book is Mohler’s ability to pack the basics of the issues into a concise and yet provocative study. I’ve been told that the book originated on his blog, and if so, I can certainly see this reflected in its composition and content: the chapters are short (short enough, I believe, for someone not-so-academically-inclined to read and enjoy and learn from without getting worn out or bored) and the discussions are well balanced in unpacking some pretty thought-provoking ideas while generally operating at a layman’s level of expertise. (I think some terms like “penal substitution” and “liberalism” do go undefined, but can largely be understood from the context. And if you occasionally need to reach for the dictionary or google a word, remember that so many of us easily spend forty-five minutes jumping from video to video through youtube links, that we can probably handle looking up a few definitions!) This book does assume that the reader is a Christian with some knowledge of the topics, which is a reasonable expectation; hell and sin are two such topics general to the Christian faith, and even the more specific movement of the emerging church is likely a label which most Western Christians have come across at some point. Each chapter offers you enough to be informed and properly oriented to the discussion at hand, while pointing the reader to further resources and areas for consideration. In many ways the chapters are jumping-off points. If you never have another chance to properly research the debate around the existence of Hell (aside from your personal study of the Bible and exposure to Sunday preaching), the respective chapter offers sufficient warning. However, the chapters also work to pique reader interest, and I think many readers will come away from the book wanting to further invest in equipping themselves to respond to these issues in a God-honouring way.

As is clear from above, there are a range of topics covered in the book. These include the disappearance of the Biblical concepts of hell and sin and the need for missions and preaching from Christian belief and practice. The Emerging Church movement is also discussed for three chapters and I appreciated Mohler’s conclusion: “The Emerging Church and its leaders are right to insist that substance must be preferred to superficiality. We can only pray and hope that they will remember and acknowledge that substance requires a substantial and honest embrace of truth” (95). Now, obviously I am coming from a position which is largely in line with Mohler’s own and I don’t expect that those of you with Emerging Church leanings will simply bow to each claim Mohler makes – but I think, I hope, you will find that he treats the movement and its leaders with fairness, as he attempts to respectfully but adamantly draw our attention to areas for concern. Mohler draws heavily on Carson’s book, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, and so if you have already read that, you probably won’t discover anything radically different – although, as I maintain, this book’s treatment has the benefit of brevity which makes it easier to remember.

The chapters which I really responded to the most include Mohler’s discussion of “A Christian version of Beauty,” in which he suggests that beauty is a concept in crisis, and that as Christians we must not divorce beauty from its proper relation to what is good, true and real – that is, from the glory of God. These were refreshing chapters despite the warnings, and I was particularly affected by the move he makes to suggest that “the confusion over beauty is not merely an item of cultural consternation, nor is it merely a matter of theological debate. It is a matter of redemption.” (56) Beauty and missions are related – and it’s a beautiful thing.

I also greatly appreciated his discussion of church discipline and the reality that the Western church now exists in an increasingly post-Christian culture and what our response to this should be. For those more pessimistic individuals among us (perhaps of an older generation disappointed with the direction of our culture, or of a younger generation jaded because we’ve read too much Nietzsche, or of any generation and owning a melancholy personality), the warnings of this book may not be new or shocking. However, the book is not a mere lament over change, nor does it fall into the tired rut of mourning the truism that the older must inevitably give way to the newer. If you are a younger reader, you are not excused in ignoring the book because you feel that in it you will find only the protests of the previous generation at the deviations of the following one. No, this book crosses generations, for it unites around the common grace that is given in the conviction of the absolute truthfulness of Scripture. Change itself is not the issue. Change in our attitude towards the truth of God’s revealed Word is. Our response, however, in light of the solemn warnings is not to be pessimism, and this was a point I found particularly striking. How easy to pile warning upon warning about how our culture and, more seriously, the church is turning away from the Living God and to then shake our heads and give up! It’s hopeless! It’s inevitable! We just have to resign ourselves and survive it! But Mohler makes it clear that there is no place for pessimism, and this is so refreshing in a book so (necessarily) burdened with warning.

I leave you with his words and encourage you to go out and find a copy of this hopeful book of warnings.

He writes, “In reality, we have no right to be either optimistic or pessimistic. To be either optimistic or pessimistic is to be deluded, and in some sense to deny the sovereignty of God. We cannot be pessimistic because Scripture tells us we are to be a people of hope. Of course, that does not mean that we are a naïve and ignorant people of hope who close our eyes to the reality around us. No, we find hope in something that is far more secure than anything this culture can secure.”(173)

What are we to be?

“We are to be the community of the open-eyed, the intellectually alert, the brokenhearted, and the resolutely hopeful.” (174)

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Thoughts on J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún”

 
This is the kind of book that most people will likely not enjoy unless they have a prior investment in it - and a love for Tolkien’s popular works will not necessarily be enough.
It does not continue the saga of his own Middle Earth mythology, nor delve into the background and writing process of that saga. The ‘essay’ that is found within it is not exactly ‘cutting edge’ criticism (which the editor, Christopher Tolkien, seems at times in the introduction to bend ov
er backwards to emphasize), and the poetry itself may lack the certain 'sparks’ that modern poetry readers are used to being engaged by. But it definitely has enough ‘sparks’ of its own, and, as Tolkien suggests,  “To hit you  in the eye was the deliberate intention of the Norse poet” (18).

But what will draw readers to appreciate and enjoy this publication? What drew me? Firstly, the introductory essay, or more accurately put, lecture (for it is based on notes from a lecture delivered by Tolkien on the Norse texts) is interesting to read quite simply because it represents Tolkien’s thoughts, criticism and even teaching style at a particular moment, now passed. Christopher Tolkien does a good job of including as much of Tolkien’s own writings as he can, even if they were quickly scrawled notes in pencil.

Secondly, the poetry itself is engaging, even if you are unfamiliar with the Norse and Southern Germanic mythologies and histories underlying it, as I largely am. Its sharp immediacy draws you into the action (and emotion) of the moment, and its strife-ridden characters demand empathy even as they incite both frustration and at times, awe. In addition to Tolkien's apparent desire to create a unified version of the legends (which have varying and contradictory accounts in the manuscript record), one of the other motives behind his own verse is also to explore and imitate the poetic structures, particularly in meter and rhythm, of this branch of Norse poetry. And for this reason, the poetry itself is to me engaging, in that it taught me to read in a different way, be guided by a different style, see a story through a different textual lens, so to speak – it felt a little choppy at first, but after about the first twenty stanzas came to feel natural, and rather than having the style be a barrier to enjoyment, it came to be one of the contributors. One other thing I found interesting was the gesturing towards Christian hope which was Tolkien’s own addition, of course. Tying the whole tragedy together is this repeated identification of Sigurd as “Odin’s hope,” the one who “deathless stands, who death hath tasted and dies no more, the serpent-slayer, seed of Odin” (63). This is purely Tolkien's invention since it isn't in the sources. It doesn’t seem to interfere with the mythology and factors more into the frame (although it is repeated in the text), and is subtle, in much the same way as Tolkien’s own Middle Earth mythology gestures in places towards a hope for mankind, but never names the Christ, exploring instead the tragedy and beauty of a world populated by gods and powers both strong and terrible, and, in the end, simultaneously subject to futility and persistent in hope.

For the reader of Tolkien’s other works, it is fascinating to see the connections between the Sigurd and Gudrún legends, and his own creative writings and the mythology he developed, to see the accidental growth of a story like the Hobbit (which really does draw on this Norse world), and to see the themes that Tolkien was clearly interested and developed further in the Silmarillion and the Lord of the Rings. Anyone who has read The Cihldren of Hurin or knows the tale of Turin will see definite threads tying Tolkien’s creativity with the Norse legends. Thus, this book fills out my understanding of the world of the Silmarillion, even as engages my interest in the writing process undergone in creating his mythology.

Finally, the cover is enticing (and for me, a good cover is, well, a good thing) with its wood-carvings. And each section of the text is preceding with an imprint from a series of wood-carvings detailing the Sigurd legend, from a twelfth century door from Hylestad, Norway.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book from cover to cover, including introductions, a lengthy commentary on the poems (sometimes needed to make sense of the plot!), the poetry itself, and a couple of appendices covering the origins of the legends historically and two supplementary poems written by Tolkien. Of course, I was predisposed to enjoy it.

Now that the book is done and back up on my shelf however, I must warn: it was sad.

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Thoughts on C. S. Lewis' "The Four Loves"

My long absence from this blog has been – in addition to my lack of time due to school – the result of the general purposelessness of its existence. I’m not working through a cookbook, following particular world events or assigning letter grades to animals like the panda or the musk ox. So there is nothing to drive me every week to sit down and write. I also undergo a slight existential crisis every time I push “publish.” What are the ramifications of this dispersion of my thoughts to the cyber world? What if someone reads them? Worse yet, what if no one reads them? Or, what if someone reads them but doesn’t care. Or, worse yet, what if I write them and don’t care? That, and my general perfectionism seems to surface every time I do write – I am content to chip away at a single written project rather than every week produce a neat four paragraph progression of profundity. I imagine that my writing reflects the sanctification process under which I’m going: never nearly complete, but moving in that direction. But I am determined to attempt what for me is very nearly impossible, that is, keeping a regularly updated blog; and this is partly inspired by the faithful (and interesting) blogging of my dear friend, and also by the fact that I am now done my studies and thus have the time and energy and hopefully the need for a creative outlet.

All this to say, one of the things I hope to do over the course of this summer is to read a number of books that have been sitting on my bookshelf for the past few years, and to write down a few (hopefully brief) comments about them here. And I am excited have finished the first book today, C. S. Lewis’ The Four Loves. It’s a little scary how good it felt to read through an entire book, albeit only 128 pages, in a few days, and not to have to turn around and write a term paper on it. How I enjoyed it! And for me, Lewis is always a good one to get back into since he is a good balance of readability and challenge, comfortable familiarity and thoughtful provocation.

The Four Loves

Although I have read most of Lewis’ writings, this little book had thus far eluded me. I found it at a used-bookstore a while ago and added it to my collection, but had to wait to actually pull it down from the shelf (half of it devoted to Lewis). As I mentioned above, the book is a good balance of enjoyment and intellectual provocation. You won’t find any dryads or lions bounding through the pages, but Lewis can’t escape his tendency towards story-telling, and in his elaboration on the four loves (which he divides Affection, Friendship, Eros and Charity) he explores the nuances and ramifications of these loves by many a hypothetical scene or situation. Also, he is constantly referring to works of literature and quoting briefs snippets or aphorisms from these texts (but he is obviously from a different intellectual climate since references and even the speakers are rarely appended to these quotes; this is a little infuriating, although it goes the other way when the text proves familiar to me and I feel a little flattered to be on the “in” with Lewis by recognizing his reference to Julian of Norwich and the world as a hazelnut). 
His general pattern in his chapters on the first three loves is to define what he means by them, clarify what he does not mean by them including countering certain ideas about them, highlight their goodness and beauty, and explore their perversion and insufficiency. This latter part reminds me a lot of his methods in The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters, even though these are both two completely different genres; what he does is to paint the subtleties of these loves corrupted (since it is in the subtle rather than the overt evils that much of the danger lies), and allow the reader to compare them with him or herself and recognize any of our own similar tendencies. He also spends two chapters on useful preliminary stuff, including “nearness to God” and the difference between “nearness by likeness” and “nearness by approach.” This makes it a highly practical little book, because it isn’t content to point out simply the potential for human similarity with our Maker, but also the deep need to approach God, that relational and experiential and doctrinal crux. The final chapter, on Charity, could do with a bit more elaboration, which Lewis both acknowledges and dismisses by saying “And with this, where a better book would begin, mine must end” (128).  I think he could have written a bit more, and wish he had, but there are other places to glean from his insights on Charity, such as Till We Have Faces or That Hideous Strength, and of course there are other authors. The only other negative that I might mention, Lewis can hardly be faulted for. His book shows the marks of his time, and although I am by no means a feminist, there are moments where the tone (rather than the content) of his vignettes is a little uncomfortable in its depiction of women, or at least, the female stereotype. But maybe the men will feel the same way about the male stereo-typing. Still, I love Lewis and certainly cannot let that keep me from the very good, very insightful, very edifying content of his book. It is good, I think, to hold most cultural things in loose hands, while holding onto the truth doubly tightly.

One quote I appreciated for its bluntness, as it proves both funny and convicting at once, and with it I will push “publish” on my first post in a long time. But let yourself ask the question as to whether you ever approach God in the way caricatured at the end of the paragraph.

(On Christian love towards God, largely as Need-love. Lewis here points out the absurdity of trying to hide our need of God in how we relate to Him.)

But man’s love for God, from the very nature of the case, must always be very largely, and must often be entirely, a Need-love…. I do not say that man can never bring to God anything at all but sheer Need-love. Exalted souls may tell us of a reach beyond that. But they would also, I think, be the first to tell us that those heights would cease to be true Graces, would become Neo-Platonic or finally diabolical illusions, the moment a man dared to think that he could live on them and henceforth drop out the element of need…. It would be a bold and silly creature that came before its Creator with the boast, “I’m no beggar. I love you disinterestedly” (Lewis 9, emphasis mine).

Lewis, C. S. The Four Loves. Great Britain: Fount Paperbacks, 1982.

The book which I have since taken off my bookshelf must, of course, belong to one of my other favourite authors. J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrun is up next on the reading list!

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Mutilated Frogs

There is this incredible moment in C.S. Lewis' Perelandra in which the horror of sin and evil nearly causes me to stop reading. I cringe at any rate, scrunch up my nose and close one eye so that it's harder to read the words on the page. The moment? Ransom is on Perelandra (the planet Venus), a pre-fall world, and has recently been joined by Weston, a man who we soon discover has been possessed by a demon or the devil himself with the intent of deceiving and felling the Green Lady. Not yet convinced that Weston isn't merely a mad meglomaniac, Ransom awakes, and here follows:

"Neither Weston nor the Lady was in sight, and he bagan walking in a leisruely fashion beside the sea. His bare feet sank a little into a carpet of saffron-coloured vegetation, which covered them with an aromatic dust. As he was looking down at this he suddenly noticed something else. At first he thought it was a creature of more fantastic shape than he had yet seen on Perelandra. Its shape was not only fantastic but hideous. Then he dropped on one knee to examine it. Finally he touched it, with reluctance. A moment later he drew bvack his hands like a man who has touched a snake.
It was a damaged animal. It was, or had been, one of the brightly coloured frogs. But some accident had happened to it. The whole back had been ripped open in a sort of V-shaped gash, the point of the V being a little behind the head. Something had torn a widening wound backward - as we do in opening an envelope - along the trunk and pulled it out so far behind the animal that the hoppers or hind legs had almost torn off with it. They were so damaged that the frog could not leap. On earth it would have been merely a nasty sight, but up to this moment Ransom had as yet seen nothing dead or spoiled in Perelandra, and it was like a blow in the face. It was like the first spasm of well-remembered pain warning a man who had thought he was cured that his family have deceived him and he is dying after all. It was like the first lie from the mouth of a friend on whose truth one was willing to stake a thousand pounds. It was irrevocable. The milk-wamr wind blowing over the golden sea, the blues and silvers and greens of the floating garden, the sky itself - all these had become, in one instant, merely the illuminated margin of a book whose text was the struggling little horror at his feet, and he himself, in that same instant, had passed into a state of emotion which he could neither control nor understand. He told himself that a creature of that kind probably had very little sensation. But it did not much mend matters. It was not merely pity for pain that had suddenly changed the rhythm of his heart-beats. The thing was an intolerable obscenity which afflicted him with shame. It would have been better, or so he thought at that moment, for the whole universe never to have existed than for this one thing to have happened.
Then he decided, in spite of this theoretical belief that it was an organism too low for much pain, that it had better be killed. He had neither boots nor stone nor stick. The frog proved remarkably hard to kill. When it was far too late to desist he saw clearly that he had been a fool to make the attempt. Whatever its sufferings might be he had certainly increased and not diminished them. But he had to go through with it. The job seemed to take nearly an hour. And when at last the mangle result was quite still and he went down to the water's edge to wash, he was sick and shaken. It seems odd to say this of man who had been on the Somme; but the architects tell us that nothing is great or small save by position.
At last he got up and resumed his walk. Next moment he started and looked at the ground again. He quickened his pace, and then once more stopped and looked. He stood stock-still and covered his face. He called aloud upon heaven to break the nightmare or to let him understand what was happening. A trail of mutilated frogs lay along the edge of the island. Picking his footsteps with care, he followed it. He counted ten, fifteen, twenty: and the twenty-first brought him to a place where the wood came down to the water's edge. He went into the wood and came out on the other side. There he stopped dead and stared. Weston, still clothed but without his pith helmet, was standing about thirty feet away: and as Ransom watched he was tearing a frog - quietly and almost surgically inserting his forefinger, with its long sharp nail, under the skin behind the creature's head and ripping it open. Ransom had not noticed before that Weston had such remarkable nails. Then he finished the operation, threw the bleeding ruin away, and looked up. Their eyes met."

(Lewis, C.S. Perelandra. Scribner Paperback Fiction. New York: 1996. p108 - 110)

Two brief points I would make in regards to this.

The first is the sense of sheer horror at the sight of an initially small mutilation. An abberation. A point of destruction in an as of yet, wholesom, whole and perfect line. Lewis is so skilled at writing, that the reader becomes absorbed in the world - it almost feels for those first few chapters on Perelandra that evil has been subdued even for the reader. That is, meditating upon such a surprisingly delightful and joy-filled world causes me to almost forget the injustice and sadness of ours. And this is exactly where the punch comes in. I stand shocked and horrified with Ransom when he sees that first mutilated frog. It even takes him a few minutes to decipher what it is - so accustomed has he grown to the lack of death's presence. It is a foreign thing.

And this is where for a brief instant I am able to recover the horror of evil, the ugliness of sin, the disgustingness of death. It is so easy to be de-sensitized when it is all around us. Our own sin becomes less important and offensive. "It's just a lie. Just a bad attitude. Just a grumpy word first thing in the morning." Ransom shouts at me: NO! It is a mutilation, an act of destruction that is far uglier and serious than you can ever fathom. It is as if I have taken my sharp fingernail and gouged at the soul's skin of the person I have hurt. It is as if I have arrived on the beautiful and perfect planet, expertly and lovingly crafted by the Living God, and stomped around on His frogs, twisting them into a wreck so far removed from their created form that they are barely recognizable. For a brief instant I can actually rise about the pity I feel when the reality of injustice hits me, and feel with Ransom the actual existential travesty that all evil is - from the 'smallest' cutting word to the grossest act of violence. "It was not merely pity for pain that had suddenly changed the rhythm of his heart-beats. The thing was an intolerable obscenity which afflicted him with shame. It would have been better, or so he thought at that moment, for the whole universe never to have existed than for this one thing to have happened" (109).

Taking this to a slight but still related side-note, experiencing this moment of realization of the ugliness and horror of sin (my own sin!) saves me from a pit I often fall into when thinking of injustice in the world. I can so easily start to blame God for the pain. I cry out to Him, "You can stop this! Why don't you? How dare you not? Don't you have any pity and mercy?!" If only I could see that the sheer awfulness of sin, death and mutilation is not only in the pain (thus invoking pity), but in its existence as everything in opposition to the good, holy Living God? Pity and mercy and compassion are gifts from God - unfoldings of His character! But how often I turn them against Him, as if I had more pity and compassion than He. How often I forget that even more than this pain offends the one being hurt, or myself watching, it violates the very person of God, it stomps around on His good, it claws with its fingernail at His holiness. It utterly rejects and pits itself against Him and all the joy in Him we were ever designed to experience. O may I not forget these things!

The second point I want to take from Lewis' passage is yet another feeling or sensation: that of being overwhelmed at the mutilation. Ransom goes to great lengths to kill the first mutilated frog and put it out of its misery (perhaps a foolish action), only to find - oh the sinking feeling - that a trail of mutilated frogs awaits him! This too relates. How often does the sheer thought of exposing oneself to the reality of pain, death and injustice in the world stop me from doing so. As quoted from Ever After, "I used to think that if I was to care about anything, I would have to care about everything." How can anyone of us bear that weight? How are we to expose ourself to injustice in order to engage with it, against it? Wont the extravagent weight of it all boll us over like a huge wave and crush us into tiny particles of sand?

Perhaps that is a question that cannot be answered on paper. There is good possibility that yes, the weight of it all will crush us and we will be crushed. Not ultimately, but here, on earth. Or maybe there is just as good possibility that we will share Ransom's later sentiment: "It surprised him that he could experience so extreme a terror and yet be walking and thinking - as men in war or sickness are surprised to find how much can be borne: 'it will drive us mad', 'it will kill us outright' we say; and then it happens and we find ourselves neither mad nor dead, still held to the task" (112). Maybe we will be crushed; maybe we will be sustained.

I take great hope in the fact that Lewis, the author of Ransom's world, does not leave his character alone. From the very beginning, Ransom was sent by Maleldil (...He has a different name here on earth), and in the end, he carries out what he was sent to do. How much more compassionate and gracious is the Living God: He has sent us and He will sustain us right through to the moment that He decides to bring us home. And again, how much more good and holy is the Living God: He will not let evil triumph forever, and injustice will not stomp around on His purpose for goodness and holiness to thrive - He will be seen and known. He will be glorified.

And we know that if He is glorified, all injustice will be rendered nothing.

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