The Rock That Is Higher

by Madeleine L'engle

  Sometimes I cause my own grief when I discover that, unwittingly, I have made a human being into an idol, and when that person behaves like a human being and not an idol, I feel that my trust has been betrayed. No. It is I who have been the betrayer by refusing to allow for the normal fallibility of flesh and blood. The grief is genuine, but the result must be my farewell to the idol and my discovery of a human being who, on occasion, can be a Christ-bearer for me, as we are all meant to bear Christ for each other.

  Another deception of cheap grace is the confusion of integrity with self-fulfillment. It is sad that integrity, as I have mentioned earlier, has become for me a questionable word. Integrity has little to do with self-fulfillment; but it may mean holding to a position that is not popular, but which you believe, after deep prayer, is where Jesus would want you to be. It may mean refusing to make needed money by means which are not quite honest. It is not pandering to self. To love another is an act of self-abandonment. To weep with another is an act of self-abandonment.

  In my church, the Episcopal church, less and less is demanded of us. Where no demands are made on us, the human psyche withers, and when a cause for grief comes we aren’t able to cope with it. I have been deeply grieved at the number of church leaders who have left their wives and children for a younger woman, and particularly grieved when someone says tolerantly, “Oh, he’s just going through a mid-life crisis.” Does a mid-life crisis give us permission to fulfill ourselves at the expense of others? Wouldn’t it be worth it to work through the crisis to the place where we could accept ourselves as no longer young and, instead, rejoice at our maturity? It’s often more complex than this, and the only response is loving prayer.

  Unthinking tolerance and permissiveness lead us to shallow lives, and emptying pews, and nowhere to go in time of grief. When I was in college I had a friend who was a brilliant young man. I remember walking across campus with him while he intoned, “I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,” which was my introduction to T. S. Eliot. First he told me that there was one infallible test of whether or not you’re in love with someone: can you use the same toothbrush? Then he went on to give me the one infallible test that shows you whether or not you trust your priest: would you want him or her at your deathbed?

  How many of us, laymen as well as clergy, are willing to be at a deathbed, to go through death with someone? I believe that this, too, is required of us, all of us, not just those ordained. It was a special grace that I was allowed to share the death of my husband. It helped prepare me for the other deaths I have subsequently shared and which are costly grace, but grace indeed. Sharing death is part of the road to the Resurrection.

  There was no joy in that jolly clergyman who came to see me in ICU and told me to call him any time. He was so embarrassed at simply seeing me full of tubes that I don’t think he could have coped with a deathbed. And that is grief—especially for him.

  When Jesus needed to mourn—when he learned that his cousin John had been beheaded, even his disciples were insensitive to his needs, and people kept crowding in, demanding miracles, refusing to leave him alone.

  After several major miracles he managed to get away, to be alone with his Abba, and this is a message for us. When Jesus needed to be alone with the Father, to pray, to grieve, to be refilled (not fulfilled), ultimately he left, walked out, whether his friends and disciples liked it or not. When he walked out, were there a number of the lame, the halt, the blind, who felt he had failed them? He walked out, anyhow.

  To find himself by losing himself in the Creator. God’s demands are always more important than the demands made on us by people. God’s demands are to be heeded. There is no permissiveness whatsoever about this.

  The search for grace, costly grace, involves the acceptance of pain and the creative grief which accompanies growth into maturity. Don’t be afraid the pain will destroy the wholeness. It leads, instead, to the kind of wholeness that rejoices in Resurrection.

  No one dares to grieve who does not dare to love, and love is always part of costly grace. It has been said that before we can give love we must first have received love, and indeed love is a response to love. To be a Christian and not to be a lover is impossible. We cannot grieve in any healthy way in total isolation—solitude, yes, but not isolation. Grief, like Christianity, is shared by the entire body. Nothing that affects one part of the body does not affect it all.

  But in thinking about love and grief we must be careful not to confuse either with that sentimentality which is part of cheap grace. The kind of loving grief I’m talking about involves acceptance of the precariousness of life and that we will all die, but our wholeness is found in the quality rather than the quantity of our living. Real love, between man and woman, friend and friend, parent and child, is exemplified for us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ who offered us and still offers us the wholeness of that costly grace which gives us the courage for healthy grief.

  We live in a time where costly grace is what makes life bearable; more than bearable—joyful and creative, so that even our grief is part of our partnership in co-creation with God.

  The world around us is full of racial tension; the problems of starvation across the globe grow greater with each year; the planet is still torn apart by war; the result of our technocratic affluence is an earth depleted, an air polluted, and a population suffering from more mental illness, suicide, and despair than our country has ever known. So perhaps we finally have to accept that the great do-it-yourself dream hasn’t worked, and we’ve been dreaming wrong, dreaming nightmares. The original dream had to do with a wholeness which touched every part of our lives, including grief, and it had to do with grace, costly grace.

  The extraordinary thing is that it is not we who pay the price of costly grace, but the all-loving God who set the stars in their courses, who created us, and dwelt among us. For love of us, God is the one who pays. What a story!

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  —

  I was grateful at Christmastide to have time for these thoughts, away from the busy schedule which never seems to let up in the city. Here, at night, I can listen to the silence which is broken not by sirens and taxi horns but by the creaking of a house that is about two hundred and fifty years old. It was built by hardy folk. They didn’t have the machinery we have to make things easier. Men and mules did the work. The wood for our house didn’t come from a lumberyard, but from the great forest that surrounded the original village; it must have taken incredible strength to have felled the tree that is our roof beam.

  And those who built had to be hardy spiritually as well as physically. The doors at Crosswicks are Cross-and-Bible doors. The hardware is H L—Help Lord—and they needed help. The weak survived neither the long, cold winters nor the heat of summer. Women and infants died in childbirth; grief was a daily companion, but it was also part of their spiritual life, their pattern of creation.

  Every time there is a major death in a family the patterns change. I knew such changes after the death of my father, my mother, my husband. One of these changes is that Crosswicks now belongs to my son and daughter-in-law, and this is right and proper. There is no way I could have kept the old house myself; I would have had to sell it.

  But the pattern is different. There are things I know that no one else knows. There are four pine trees now three stories high that I planted as baby pines one year with a friend, who was dead a year later. Another smaller pine came from an actor friend who was my mentor. These pines mean people to me. They are part of my story that I don’t need to force on anybody else. There is more than enough memory for us all to share, and it is part of growing older that some of the memory that is pertinent for me is not for the younger generation, and that is simply the way of life. It is a gentle grief.

  Some memories we share. The big salad bowl at Crosswicks, made from the bole of a tree, came from Tallis, who was
Bion’s godfather as well as my friend. The portrait of Bion’s great-grandfather, after whom he is named, hangs on the wall over the piano. Bion and Laurie are gathering their own Crosswicks memories, special to them. My children have asked me to write down as many stories as I can (“Who is the man in this portrait?” “Romulus Saunders, the first Madeleine L’Engle’s father.”), and I’m trying to do so, setting down the stories that I think will be vital for them. It is not easy, because the world we live in and the life we live has changed so radically during my lifetime that some things that were normal for me are unrecognizable to them.

  I think of the people who built this house, and of their vocabulary, much of which has gone out of daily usage—words such as mortification, which nowadays bring to mind sour-faced people who think of any kind of fun as sinful. If they have a choice of two things to do, the unpleasant one has to be the right choice, because whom God loveth he chastiseth, and the pleasanter choice has to be wrong. Ouch. If God loves us he punishes us? He’s so angry at our sin and depravity that he punishes us anyhow?

  The word mortification also conjures up visions of medieval monks or nuns in their cells, mortifying themselves by flagellation with lead-tipped whips. When Hugh and I were first making Crosswicks our home, we found in the cluttered garage just such a whip, called a cat-o’-nine-tails. Hugh went white with anger at the thought of how that whip must have been used, and disposed of it promptly.

  Such things are a distortion, a perversion of what mortification really means. True mortification is to die to that within us which is selfish and self-willed, that which keeps us from each other and from God.

  In one of my etymological dictionaries mortify, from the Latin, means “to make dead.” But the dictionary goes on to explain this further, by quoting the Bible, from the Book of Kings (KJV): The Lord mortifieth, and quickeneth. The Lord makes us dead and then brings us to life. Any mortification that does not quicken us to new life in the Lord is not true mortification. Baptism is an icon of mortification.

  The times I have been closest to God I have been least conscious of my own self, yet these are the times I have been most fully myself. Some have been times of grief. I remember one time when I was a child, visiting my grandmother in the South, and we had been to a funeral. That evening we sat out on the porch and listened to the ocean rolling in to shore, and I sat in my grandmother’s lap, and she sang to me “Jesus, Tender Shepherd,” and I knew that despite the nearness of death I was loved and that love was stronger than death. I wasn’t old enough to articulate this, but children know intuitively more than many of us are capable of accepting as adults.

  And mortification includes joy. In The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, at my mother’s death at ninety, in her grandson’s arms, I grieved deeply because she was a remarkable mother and I loved her, and I was also full of joy because her life had been full and rich, and we had been able to keep her at home to die, surrounded by those she loved. There were many, many cousins to phone. Some of them shared the joy and grief. A few were appalled that I sounded joyful. “How can you?” they asked. I replied, “She was ninety and it was time. There was nothing ahead for her but further sliding downhill. I am grateful beyond words to God for taking her.” And that gratitude and grief and joy mortified me, got me out of the way.

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  —

  We are told to mortify our bodies. What does that mean?

  Not to abuse our bodies, either by over-deprivation or over-indulgence. Paul, in his letter to the people of Corinth, is very specific on the subject: Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.

  An awesome responsibility—we are to care for our bodies. Because they are temples of God’s Holy Spirit, we are to honor them, to enjoy them. Right now part of honoring my body is to exercise it. I must walk at least half an hour a day, walk briskly. After the accident it still isn’t always easy, but the more I walk, the easier it gets. When I can, I swim, exercising my whole body without putting stress on any part of it. I am trying to eat healthily, a high-fiber, low-fat, low-sodium diet. That part is fairly easy, because I’ve been trying to eat that way for years. I am trying to keep off the weight I lost at the time of the accident when I could not eat; my present weight is better than the weight I carried before the accident. This is mortifying the body that it may be quickened to new life.

  In that new life I am newly aware of the total interconnection of all of me, body, mind, and spirit. I remember that I could not return to my beloved discipline of Morning and Evening Prayer until my body was able to accept food. I am still not completely healed from the accident of more than six months ago. My energy level is still low. And so, sometimes, are my spirits. And again I feel the Holy Spirit cautioning me to be patient. If my body is still bruised, so is my psyche, and psyche and soma are interrelated. Be gentle, the Spirit says. Be patient.

  I try. And I think of James Clement (in The Love Letters and Certain Women) telling about the making of cider in the winter, when it is put outdoors to freeze. In the center of the frozen apple juice is a tiny core of pure flame that does not freeze. My faith (which I enjoy) is like that tiny flame. Even in the worst of moments it has been there, surrounded by ice, perhaps, but alive.

  A friend told me about a clergyman who warned her that when someone is ill their faith must be clear and strong, otherwise it is inadequate. First, I wonder how much severe illness that clergyman has endured. Secondly, I think he misses the point of our interrelatedness. There are times when we are too ill to pray for ourselves, but we know the comfort and wonder of the prayers of others. Even when my prayer is at its strongest, I am still in need of the prayers of my family and friends as they, I believe, are in need of mine. Thomas More said, “Pray for me as I pray for thee, that we may merrily meet in heaven.” If I thought my prayer had to be pure and perfect at all times there wouldn’t be much merriment in my heart. But God lovingly takes whatever prayers I can give, even if all I can do is hold on to the name of Jesus. It is God’s love that is adequate, not mine, and that love cannot be completely buried.

  I remember a story about an event in Red Square in Moscow that took place not long after the terrible days of the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the atheist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The people of Moscow were called to a gathering in Red Square. There they were addressed by one of the new leaders, who spent well over half an hour proving to the populace that there is no God. His factual arguments about the nonexistence of God were incontrovertible, and the mob of people standing in Red Square was silent and subdued.

  Then a priest who was standing with the people asked permission to say three words. Permission was granted, and he stood in front of the packed square, raised his arms, and cried out:

  “CHRIST IS RISEN!”

  And the entire mob responded joyfully, “He is risen indeed!”

  The truth of faith was far greater than the rational arguments of atheism, and we have seen the truth of that faith resurrecting itself again in Moscow in recent months. Christ is risen! That joyful news cannot be suppressed. In Russia, in the USSR, it was forced underground, but it did not die. Those who know the truth that Christ is risen are forever changed by it. That is our story, and with it we live.

  Exactly a year before the failed coup in August 1991, I was in Russia, going to St. Isaac’s Cathedral, rejoicing in the harrowing of hell, feeling the excitement of the church once again becoming visible and audible and thoroughly alive. One of the great evenings was in Odessa, at the Cathedral of the Dormition, for the Feast of the Dormition. Dormition means falling asleep, the word so often used for death in the Acts of the Apostles, and here it refers to the falling asleep of the Theotokos, the Mother of God.

  The story is a charming one. Mary, in her old age, is i
n Ephesus with John. When it becomes apparent that her mortal end is near, all of the disciples, with the exception of Thomas, are miraculously translated to Ephesus, where they bid farewell to Mary. She dies and is buried. Three days later Thomas finally arrives and is desolate at not having been on time. He begs to be allowed to see the body of the Mother of his Lord, and the tomb is opened. She is not there.

  End of story. No explanations. Just great rejoicing.

  The liturgy for this feast is extraordinarily beautiful. The cathedral, which holds three thousand, was jammed. We Americans were given places of honor near the iconostasis, the great screen of icons that separates the sanctuary from the nave. We were also given some chairs, because the kindly Ukrainian priests knew that many Americans (I’m one of them) can’t stand for four hours. There was a choir of about two hundred fifty people, but every once in a while one of the priests, beautifully vested in pale blue, would conduct the entire congregation, and then three thousand voices rose in magnificent harmony, music which had not been forgotten during seventy years of repression. The truth was still there, shining and glorious.

  The next morning the Divine Liturgy was celebrated, and we returned to the cathedral. The Orthodox Church does not yet practice open Communion, so we knew that we would not be receiving the bread and the wine, but the liturgy is so rich that we felt in no way deprived. In any case, in the Orthodox Church it is not the custom for worshipers to receive at every Eucharist; one does not take the bread and the wine unless one has just made one’s confession. But being there in the presence of the elements is joy enough. The priests have long spoons that they dip into the wine and then put into the mouths of those who are prepared to receive. The holy bread is passed among the people, and we were deeply moved because the babushkas who surrounded us saw to it that each one of us was given some, breaking off pieces of bread to hand to us. Although the emphasis is very different from that in the Episcopal Church, or, indeed, most Western denominations, the reality was universal; there was no division; we were one. Christ is risen, and we belong to that risen life.