A Holiday Reflection

This post has nothing to do with libraries, archives, or special collections. Or, it may have everything to do with my life as a curator and how I perceive, or partially perceive, this world. I see through a glass, and darkly. Indeed, this may be the first time I have published something as personal as this in this space. But something moves me to do this, if for no other reason than to say out loud, and thus share with you, a thing that makes up part of my inner life--and thus informs who I am, not only as a librarian, but as a human being.

Not all who might read this will share its faithful underpinnings. They may, in fact, reject it completely. And yet, I write this knowing that something must be said, something done on my part, to counter the bitter darkness, division, and evils of this age. This is but a small piece of what is a much longer pilgrimage. I am on a path, one that favors the light, even as it moves through shadows and mist.

What follows is a hint at what I believe and why I am so passionate about things such as my engagement with the scholarships committee in my professional association, or of libraries and librarians as activists for social justice. This meditation is part of a much longer series of writings I've shared over the years with a group of close friends and family. Consider it a gift, or at least a wish, from a friend.

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“If you’re younger than 35 years old, you’ve never seen less sunshine during our meteorological autumn (September through November) than you saw in 2018. You might impress your friends with that fact at your next party.” — Ron Trenda, Minnesota Public Radio meteorologist, in the MPR Updraft blog, December 2, 2018

It was the first Sunday in Advent, the first evening of Hannakuh when this perception surfaced, triggered by a friend’s injury. Now, later in the week, having experienced it firsthand, the same thought remains: it is difficult to watch someone suffer; even more so to observe suffering in the lives of family or friends. We don’t normally associate an observation of affliction with the holiday season. Rather, it is a time of lights and singing, of joy, hope, and anticipation. And yet, here I sit, wondering about suffering and my relationship to the sufferer.

This particular misery has nothing to do with a time of year or arising from a seasonal affective disorder. On the other hand, a recent posting from the Minnesota State Climatology Office doesn’t help lighten the load: “September through November 2018 was quite gloomy across Minnesota. In fact, looking at solar radiation records at the U of M St. Paul Campus Climate Observatory it was the least sunny meteorological autumn since 1983.” No, this hardship is something greater, a ubiquitous human condition—assuming, of course, the existence of some capacity for compassion in the observer.

My attention is drawn to this anguished relationship. Since this is the time of year—between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day—when I traditionally read works by or about C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, or other “Inklings” (including, for me, Dorothy L. Sayers), I am reminded of Lewis’s marriage to Joy Davidman, his writings on pain and grief, as well as his thoughts on “subsititution.” As Andrew Stout described it in a 2016 article, the practice of substitution as developed in the literary works of Lewis’s friend, Charles Williams, depicts a metaphysical “character of a universe in which individuals can consciously and intentionally ‘bear one another’s burdens’ of fear, anxiety, and possibly even physical sickness or pain.”

By examining writings of Williams and Lewis, Stout compares and contrasts Williams’s willingness to embrace substitutionary practice with Lewis’s more cautionary approach. He concludes: “Though acknowledging the effectiveness of Williams’s use of the practice, Lewis’s appropriation of substitution would indicate that it is too much to presume on the mystery of God’s ways to turn this principle into a technique or discipline to be practiced intentionally.” Near the end of his article, Stout focuses on Lewis’s relationship with Joy Davidman’s illness and death, events indicative of Lewis’s thinking on substitution.

Lewis wrote to Sheldon Vanauken in November 1957 and noted that “the cancerous bones have rebuilt themselves in a way quite unusual and Joy can now walk,” observing that this event coincided with an apparent attack of osteoporosis on Lewis’s part. Lewis was not satisfied to view these gains and losses of health as merely coincidental: “The intriguing thing is that while I (for no discoverable reason) was losing the calcium from my bones, Joy, who needed it much more, was gaining it in hers. One dreams of a Charles Williams substitution! Well, never was a gift more gladly given; but one must not be fanciful.” (Collected Letters III. 901)

Lewis’s final remark, “one must not be fanciful,” confirms the thought that substitution should not be seen as an intentional spiritual discipline or practice.
Stout makes a final observation, in a marital context, on the practical limits of Williams’s beliefs by quoting from Lewis’s A Grief Observed:

There’s a limit to the “one flesh.” You can’t really share someone else’s weakness, or fear or pain. What you may feel may be bad. It might conceivably be as bad as what the other felt, though I should distrust anyone who claimed that it was. But it would still be quite different. When I speak of fear, I mean the merely animal fear, the recoil of the organism from its destruction; the smothery feeling; the sense of being a rat in a trap. It can’t be transferred.

It may not be transferred, but in some way it can still be shared. The Apostle Paul urges me to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” A quick glance at some online sources tells me that commentators and theologians are not quite sure what Paul meant by the phrase “the law of Christ.” I have neither time nor space here to investigate possible interpretations of the phrase. Allow me, however, to share a brief story as a way to suggest that “the law of Christ” involves love.

While vacationing with family in Little Falls, my siblings and I played in the backyard. I don’t recall the exact game, but think it was some form of tag. A small two-story playhouse or shed was next door. My sister Lenore was on the upper level and while reaching or throwing something, lost her balance and fell face-down to the ground. She suffered a serious injury and was taken to the hospital. Later, during a meal, her twin, Lynette, was so upset by her sister’s hurt that she became ill at the table. It struck me then, with an intensity of feeling that remains to this day, that Lynette loved Lenore so much that together they somehow shared this awful pain. One might chalk this up to internal distress or biological realities of being a twin. But I think it was more than that. What I witnessed was not a substitution in the sense of Williams, but a bearing of one another’s burden and the essence or fulfillment of the law, more in line with what Lewis felt and believed. As it is written: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind....Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

In A Grief Observed, Lewis points to something (and Someone) beyond a faulty or suspect spiritual discipline. He guides us toward a reality many of us celebrate in this season of Advent, to a life that begins in anticipation and, ultimately, to something much greater. Lewis writes:

And then one babbles — ‘if only I could bear it, or the worst of it, or any of it, instead of her.’ But one can’t tell how serious that bid is, for nothing is staked on it. If it suddenly became a real possibility, then, for the first time, we should discover how seriously we had meant it. But is it ever allowed? It was allowed to One, we are told, and I find I can now believe again, that He has done vicariously whatever can be done. He replies to our babble, ‘you cannot and dare not. I could and dared.’

He could and dared. As I write these last words, listening to resurrection assurances embedded in the funeral service of President George H. W. Bush, these lyrics from an anthem float my way. May they bring you peace and hope and light during this special season of the year.

The King of love my Shepherd is, | Whose goodness faileth never, | I nothing lack if I am His | And He is mine forever.... Perverse and foolish oft I strayed, | But yet in love He sought me, | And on His shoulder gently laid, | And home, rejoicing, brought me....

Keeper