A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph

“If there were a choice—and he suspected there was—a choice between, on the one hand, the heights and the depths and, on the other hand, some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now chose the heights and the depths.”

Contemplating the difference between living a life devoted to constantly plying the middle road and plotting out as safe a course as possible, Van is able to choose—even as a young boy—the life of adventure and risk. In context, he is considering the general difference between how young boys and girls experience life and interact with their own emotions, and he comes to wonder if somehow girls get more out of life by considering their emotions. This pushes him to the conviction that even though a life beholden to the joys and pains of emotion will not be a steady one, it will be one much more worth living.

“Upstairs, waiting, would be his own room, just as he had left it. Heaven itself, he thought, would be—must be—a coming home.”

Having experienced a joyful and fulfilling childhood, Van imagines his room perfectly while standing outside in the dark reminiscing about his childhood experiences. Glenmerle had provided a genuine experience of homeliness, so the idea of heaven as a kind of homecoming was perfectly natural to him.

“If we were caught up in love, we were no less caught up in beauty, the mystery of beauty. Essentially we were pagan, but it was a high paganism. We worshipped the spirits of earth and sky; we adored the mysteries of beauty and love.”

The beauty that he had come to desire and marvel at as a boy was also the uniting force binding him with Davy. They had a mutual desire to experience the beauty of life and the wonder of nature and the outdoors. It was initially what pushed them together upon first meeting and what continued to drive them, for example, to pursue a life on the sea. While not being traditionally religious at the start of their marriage, they are able to call their lifestyle a worship of beauty and nature.

“We talked deeply, not about the already-settled matter of secrets but about justice between lovers and about how to make love endure. What emerged from our talk was nothing less, we believed, than the central ‘secret’ of enduring love: sharing.”

The relationship between Van and Davy is marked by their desire and willingness to be totally devoted to each other and to their love as a real, practically tangible, truth. Their conclusion that the secret to love was sharing was a commitment to allowing their existence to be totally for the other and entering into every space of the other: the good, the bad, the dark, the light, the joyful, and the sorrowful. To ensure that love endured, rather than dimmed to black, they vowed to be wholly committed to sharing their very personhood.

“The failure of love might seem to be caused by hate or boredom or unfaithfulness with a lover; but those were results. First came the creeping separateness: the failure behind the failure.”

The desire of Van and Davy to be wholly united in love and totally devoted to unity and cohesion was meant to be a remedy against any unwelcome and unconscious separateness that could cause their ultimate separation or division. They realized that separation doesn’t happen all at once in dramatic ways, but it happens slowly over time, bit by bit; their desire for total union and sharing was designed to prevent this from ever happening.

“From the first our ship was named Grey Goose. Not only wild nature and a water bird, but a lover: the grey goose, if its mate is killed, flies on alone for ever.”

Viewed anthropomorphically, the grey goose is a natural symbol of monogamous love. The grey goose—devoted to its mate to the point of never taking another partner—was a natural choice for Van and Davy in their desire for total mutual sharing. In a bit of true-to-life foreshadowing, it also looks ahead to when Van will have to go on alone, without Davy, never marrying again.

“Christianity was something I wanted nothing to do with. How could anybody believe such rubbish?”

Van and Davy were both raised without religion at a time in America when Christianity was still the overwhelming majority religion. To the author, Christianity seemed too small and too parochial, unable to represent the grand vistas of beauty he considered to be the epitome of transcendent human experience. There was nothing worth believing about it, though at the time, he was quite unfamiliar with what Christianity actually taught.

“Davy and I called ourselves agnostics, but we were really theists. A creator seemed necessary, a creator with an immense intelligence embracing order. Apart from reason, the one quality that we attributed to this creative power was awareness of beauty.”

Van and Davy fell into a niche philosophical position of being outwardly skeptical and agnostic—unknowing—about the existence of God but inwardly convinced that there must be a necessary, transcendent existence that gave order and being to the world. The order and beauty they found so evident in the natural order demanded a cause: There was a reason there was something (rather than nothing), and there was a reason that the universe was beautiful (rather than simply unremarkable or even ugly).

“Moved as we were by the great library, by that ‘quiet disrespect of libraries’ of E. B. White’s line, we sometimes suspected that the little bespectacled scholars who crawled about in the stacks of that splendid aspiring library, writing the learned commentaries and the footnotes upon the footnotes, had forgotten what the poem meant.”

Van and Davy kept their zeal for life by remembering why they had become interested and invested in their studies to begin with: to gain a greater knowledge and appreciation for the world. They saw too many academics become too caught up in the knowledge found in the books that they forgot the ultimate reference that all the book knowledge in the world was pointing toward: the created world. The author compares it to learning all about why a poem works and completely ignoring the beauty of simply hearing and being moved by what the poem is actually about.

“These were our first friends, close friends. More to the point, perhaps, all five were keen, deeply committed Christians. But we liked them so much that we forgave them for it.”

Once in Oxford, Van and Davy finally get close to people who are committed, kind, and intelligent Christians. Never before had their circle of friends been composed of people of religious faith, so it takes them by surprise that all the best people they meet and form bonds with are Christians.

“‘I’ve been thinking that we ought to know more,’ she said. ‘Oh, good! I see you’ve got some C. S. Lewis. Thad and the others are always talking about him. Who is he, anyhow?’”

When Van comes home from lectures one day, he reveals that he had stopped by the bookstore on the way home to pick up as many books on Christianity and Christian teaching that he could carry because he finally wants to see if there is any truth or worth to what all their new friends believe. To his surprise and delight, Davy reveals that she feels the same way and is curious about this mysterious C. S. Lewis figure that all their friends seem to reference often.

“I was back in the camp of the non-believers. And now I began to resent her conversion. I did not, I thought, resent her being a Christian; I resented her acting like one. […] I wanted the old Davy back. I didn’t want her to be where I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—go. I didn’t like my new isolation.”

The risk of exploring Christianity was the risk of finally finding something that could possibly separate them. The Shining Barrier and the commitment to sharing they had made many years ago had been meant to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Van knows he is not angry about the fact the Davy has become committed, but he is disturbed by the fact that this is something to which he cannot simply immediately assent; this disparity in their feelings and beliefs in this period was a new experience of loneliness and longing for the past that Van had never yet felt in their marriage.

“I did homage to Christ as one pledges his sword and his fealty to a king. In reality, I suspect, it was not like that at all: I did not choose; I was chosen.”

Van here contemplates the curious paradox of becoming a Christian and pledging faith in Christ as God. On the one hand, it is clear that he has made a choice and entered into a new reality that he feels bound to follow on account of its truth. On the other hand, he realizes that there is a profound sense of helplessness in the sense that Christian faith is a gift of grace, and thus this choice he has made is more like feeling chosen and assenting to that election.

“In a way all of us at Oxford knew, knew as an undercurrent in our minds, that it wouldn’t last for ever.”

The Oxford days were the golden years for Van and Davy, a time of nourishment and development and joy, but they had the good sense to realize that they were in the midst of the “good old days” before they had yet left them. Realizing this, they swore to get as much out of their limited time as possible; everyone knew they were only there at Oxford for a short while, so they approached their time there with appreciation and gratitude.

“When he reached the pavement on the other side, he turned round as though he knew somehow that I would still be standing there […]. […] Heads turned and at least one car swerved. ‘Besides,’ he bellowed with a great grin, ‘Christians NEVER say goodbye!’”

This anecdote perfectly illustrates the character and concerns of Van’s new friend Lewis. On the one hand, he is relatively unconcerned with the immediate practicalities of certain things about daily existence, crossing the street in such a manner so as to make the traffic swerve around him. On the other hand, he is at the same time overwhelmingly concerned with the most important things in life, consoling a friend and reminding Van that there is no true goodbye for the Christian, there is only ever a period of waiting until their ultimate reunion in heaven.

“[T]hese people, for reasons we did not understand, were intent to shelter under the name of Christianity and at the same time to reduce the Faith to a hollow thing that required no believing beyond a mild theism.”

Once Van and Davy had left Oxford and come to their new home in Virginia, where Van would teach at Lynchburg college, they discovered that the Christian community in their new hometown was nothing like what they had experienced back in England. They found that Christianity was more of a cultural attachment that came with a vague sense of moralism and decency rather than as the ultimate truth around which one ordered their entire life.

“The Christianity we represented was sunny and joyous, with all the room in the world for humour and gaiety, and yet at the same time rigorous and glorious.”

In the same way that they found the local Christianity apathetic, they also found the Christians themselves rather dour and serious. Their experience had, up to that point, been the opposite; for Van and Davy, Christianity had represented the true joy in the world and the reason they could enjoy so much without guilt or resentment. They resolved to represent the joy and delight in the world that Christianity could deliver.

“An iron resolution built up in me, perhaps the most powerful and unswerving of all my life, that in the months ahead I would do all and be all for her; I would sustain her and hold her up with my love.”

Once Davy is diagnosed with her terminal illness, Van resolves to be the strength she needs to endure the time left and any pain and suffering she would experience. Unwilling to let her go through this experience alone, the Shining Barrier and commitment to love and sharing would give him the strength to sustain her in her weakest moments, and he was determined not to allow his sorrow and doubt to find any room in their relationship.

“She obediently did everything the doctors and the nurses told her to do: everything except to stay in bed when someone else was in need.”

Even in her weakest moments, Davy proves to be outwardly directed and concerned with the welfare of others. She had made an offering of her own life for her husband, even amid illness, and now when she had entered the hospital, never to leave again, she spent her time comforting others and alleviating their suffering even when she could not do this same service for herself.

“It had never occurred to me that I was having a right response to death by being merely, though of course immensely, sad. Grief unalloyed.”

In the contemporary world, there is a great avoidance of death and suffering, and a host of services and euphemisms have been created to allow people to avoid talking directly about death or dealing with the grief and sorrow that comes from being affected by it. Here, Van realizes that the proper response to tragedy is indeed sorrow. Just being sad, in this circumstance, is a healthy reaction and the only way he can begin to process the reality of the situation.

“And yet, after all, the clock is not always ticking. Sometimes it stops and then we are happiest. Sometimes—more precisely, some-not-times—we find ‘the still point of the turning world.’ All our most lovely moments perhaps are timeless.”

In the wake of Davy’s death, Van contemplates the timeless quality of his most precious memories. While the best moments in life are often over far too quickly, they simultaneously tend to exist in a timeless state, where time is completely forgotten and unaccounted for amid a beautiful experience.

“Pondering Lewis’s words about joy and my own thinking upon time and eternity, recalling the tendency of Davy and me to substitute the means for the end, not only the yacht for the time-free existence it was to make possible but also other glimpses of heavenly joy—joy through love and beauty—that we were allowed and what we made of them, especially the Shining Barrier, I came to wonder whether all objects that men and women set their hearts upon, even the darkest and most obsessive desires, do not begin as intimations of joy from the sole spring of joy, God.”

Looking back over the numerous loves and desires that he and Davy shared during their life together, he realizes that there were many times that they mistook “the means for the end,” viewing the means to happiness and contingent, passing goods for the source of happiness and ultimate good. Contemplating this, he starts to believe that while this is a temptation for everyone, it is simultaneously the interior desire of every human person to seek out the good and beautiful that is a sign of their intrinsic orientation towards union with God.

“That death, so full of suffering for us both, suffering that still overwhelmed my life, was yet a severe mercy. A mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as love. This is not a concept that will have an immediate appeal to everyone, not in a society that celebrates both romantic and sexual love as the great goods and hates death as the great evil.”

A purely materialistic worldview would seem to necessarily fail to see death as a mercy, especially a worldview that glorifies pleasure and shuns suffering and death as the ultimate evils. For the Christian, however, death is not the end, and thus even death can be viewed in certain circumstances as a kind of remedy—in this instance, a mercy—ordered toward the attainment of even greater goods than physical health and earthly well-being and peace.