At the Back of the North Wind

 C.S. Lewis famously wrote to his goddaughter, "...some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again..." in the dedication of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. 

I cannot say for certain if I would have ever begun to read fairy tales again were it not for having children of my own, and trying to read to them and with them as much as possible. In any case, it was because of said children that I picked up At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald during the past school year, and found to my own great surprise that it was exactly the book I needed to be reading to myself.

Every so often (quite often, actually) I had to place a slip of paper here or there at a passage I wanted to come back to later and muse over or copy down into my notebook of quotes. Here I am now in my forties and contemplating the problem of evil in those ways perhaps common to the so-called "mid-life crisis" I seem to be having, and George MacDonald had things to say to me that met me in my deep uncertainties. 

It is an interesting experience to read a story like At the Back of the North Wind as an adult, because while there will always be a part of me that experiences, for example, the Narnia books (or others in a similar vein I first read as a child) as nostalgia as well as all the other things they are, I never read this particular work of MacDonald as a child and so I experienced it only in the here and now of reading it.

My children experienced it in their own ways, and to my curiosity I overheard a conversation between a few of them in which one was claiming quite adamantly that Diamond died at the end of the book, and another was equally adamant that he was most certainly not dead but had only gone "to the back of the North Wind." Somehow I felt that that was all exactly as it should have been; it reminded me a bit of something I've been told about children within the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program: When small children in this space first recognize themselves in those sheep the Good Shepherd loves and cares for, and tell other children, those who have not yet understood the relationship that way for themselves tend to pooh-pooh the little sheep-friend making this grandiose claim: "No, silly, they're sheep, not people!" But the child who knows, well, knows.

I have long held an affinity for MacDonald despite having read far too few of his works (I admit with shame). I knew enough of him to know he had posited things I too ponder -- for one, a sort of dispensation from God to all that some might call "universalism"; certainly at the very least he became adamantly disinclined towards the Calvinism that surrounded him and perhaps that accounts for a large portion of my affinity, for I too find that doctrine loathsome. Further, it seems to me that MacDonald reacted with a nearly violent abhorrence to the theology of penal substitutionary atonement, and this is another area in which I find myself naturally drawn to his writings. ("The thing gets worse and worse. I declare my utter and absolute repudiation of the idea in any form whatever." - Unspoken Sermons, Justice)

I thought I would write out here a few passages from At the Back of the North Wind that struck me for various reasons. In particular I think I read the longer, almost Socratic bit of back-and-forth questioning, three times to myself in one evening after the girls went to bed. Perhaps these sentences will speak to someone else in reading them here, and you'll go and read the whole book and find it as thought-provoking as I did. I said to the girls several times during the course of the book, "Oh, this is the book I'll come back to and read again someday when I'm old!"

And of course, if I do, then it'll be altogether different passages that strike a chord with me in that future day, because isn't that always the way of it? I'll look back at this blog post and wonder, "Why did I jot down those passages?" and I'll find an altogether different bit that I love the most. But, here you have it - the parts that I'm pondering at the age of forty-one.

"But you're kinder to me, dear North Wind. Why shouldn't you be as kind to her as you are to me?" 

"There are reasons, Diamond. Everybody can't be done to all the same. Everybody is not ready for the same thing."
"But I don't see why I should be kinder used than she."
"Do you think nothing's to be done but what you can see, Diamond, you silly!"

* * *

"... he was dimly angry with himself, he did not know why. It was that he had struck his wife. He had forgotten it, but was miserable about it, notwithstanding. And this misery was the voice of the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond, speaking in his heart, and telling him to be good. For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds. On Mount Sinai, it was thunder; in the cabman's heart it was misery; in the soul of St. John it was perfect blessedness." 

* * *

"Her voice was like the bass of a deep organ, without the groan in it; like the most delicate of violin tones without the wail in it... it was like all of them and neither of them - all of them without their faults... after all, it was more like his mother's voice than anything else in the world." 

* * *

"Here you are taking care of a poor little boy with one arm, and there you are sinking a ship with the other. It can't be like you." 

"Ah, but which is me? I can't be two me's, you know."

"No. Nobody can be two me's."

"Well, which me is me?"

"Now I must think. There looks to be two."

"Yes. That's the very point. --You can't be knowing the thing you don't know, can you?"

"No."

"Which me do you know?"

"The kindest, goodest, best me in the world," answered Diamond, clinging to North Wind.

"Why am I good to you?"

"I don't know."

"Have you ever done anything for me?"

"No."

"Then I must be good to you because I choose to be good to you."

"Yes."

"Why should I choose?"

"Because --because--because you like."

"Why should I like to be good to you?"

"I don't know, except it be because it's good to be good to me."

"That's just it; I am good to you because I like to be good."

"Then why shouldn't you be good to other people as well as to me?"

"That's just what I don't know. Why shouldn't I?"

"I don't know either. Then why shouldn't you?"

"Because I am."

"There it is again," said Diamond. "I don't see that you are. It looks quite the other thing."

"Well, but listen to me, Diamond. You know the one me, you say, and that is good."

"Yes."

"Do you know the other me as well?"

"No. I can't. I shouldn't like to."

"There it is. You don't know the other me. You are sure of one of them?"

"Yes."

"And you are sure there can't be two me's?"

"Yes."

"Then the me you don't know must be the same as the me you do know --else there would be two me's?"

"Yes."

"Then the other me you don't know must be as kind as the me you do know?"

"Yes."

"Besides, I tell you that it is so only it doesn't look like it. That I confess freely. Have you anything more to object?"

"No, no, dear North Wind; I am quite satisfied."

* * *

"I love you, and you must love me, else how did I come to love you?"

* * *

For myself, I cannot yet say that I am "quite satisfied" in all my questions like little Diamond, but I do believe that MacDonald's book brought me closer to that place than I had been in quite some time, and at the same time, left in me the best sort of unsatisfied longing -- to read more of his writings! 

on total eclipses and having babies and other unrepeatable life moments

We packed up our five kids in the minivan a week ago Sunday evening and drove up to Vermont for the much-anticipated total solar eclipse. 

I experienced totality and even a week later, every time I think about it I sort of want to cry.

I'm so incredibly grateful that my parents had called me up some weeks back and encouraged me to make the short trip if at all possible. They had traveled to Oregon in 2017 to be in the path of totality, and shared with me their experience that it was the sort of thing not to be missed -- the next total solar eclipse that will cross New England won't be until 2079! Convinced that the 93% partial eclipse Massachusetts would be experiencing was thus cool but totally insufficient when totality was so within our reach, we planned a trip to Vermont with friends for the big event. 

Since the small hometown of one of our friends was right in the path of totality, we settled on an excursion to her hometown of Jericho, VT, with the wide open fields of her friend's farm as our viewing space. In the end five families from our homeschool collaborative made the drive up and met for the day's activities. We had a wonderful day together ending with maple creemees and then lots of texting commiserating messages back and forth as we all endured bumper-to-bumper traffic on the drive home, traffic that turned a 3-ish hour trip into 9-ish hours for us. 

I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

I keep thinking on what it is that made it so utterly, indescribably amazing of an experience. And alongside those thoughts, I periodically have strange thoughts of regret -- Did I look at it in the right ways, take it in fully? Did I research enough ahead of time to know what I should be looking for and seeing? Did I know the difference between Baily's Beads and solar prominences? Did I appreciate it properly? Why can't I remember more details? Why didn't I take more pictures? A better picture of each of my kids that day? Why didn't I take a good video? Why weren't we quieter to listen and see if there was insect activity? Did we let the kids (and ourselves, if we're honest) make way too much noise in our totality of excitement and joy? All these thoughts boiling down to this: did I do this total eclipse the "right" way?

* * *

Silly thoughts, but they remind me in a way of the ways I've felt after having each of my babies. I'd go into the big experiences with a plan, or so I thought. This time I'll labor better, I'll be more prepared, I'll stay calmer and more focused, I'll make sure things go according to plan. This time, I'll cherish the newborn moments and experience it all fully and stay present and be joyful and take the right amount of pictures but not too many because... being in the moment and all that. This time I won't let anxieties or baby blues weigh me down. This time I'll do it "right."

And each and every time, it just went the way it went. Yes, my plans and preparations played a significant role, I'm sure. But also, things we could never have prepared for just happened. The moments of birth happened, and those moments and the days that followed were the sort you wish you could bottle up and save forever. And then they're gone, and no matter how much you told yourself you'd savor it the right amount, you can't ever get that newborn head smell back again once it's faded. The newborn days will fade into baby days of equal sweetness, and those will fade into one-year-old days and into toddler days, each every bit as good as the last. But if you find yourself wishing to experience those bygone moments again, just once more to nuzzle a freshly-born head or to kiss a chubby baby tummy or scoop a toddler into your arms and feel her arms wrapped around your neck, you can't. They've slipped away, fleeting and unrepeatable.

* * *

In a strange way, to experience the total eclipse felt like a reminder of the births and growing up of all five of my babies in the timespan of three minutes. It happened so fast, it was so deeply beautiful, and then it was over. Could I chase another eclipse someday, by going to Iceland or Egypt or waiting 20 years and traveling to Montana or living to be 95? It's theoretically possible, but not entirely practical. But I experienced it this once, and in its strange and surreal beauty of mid-day twilight, it impressed upon me the fleetingness of every morning, mid-day, and twilight of our ordinary lives. 

Over lunch before the eclipse began, Nathan had shared his opinion that we should just be in the moment -- that plenty of professionals with proper equipment would take amazing pictures and we should just experience it. I have a video, purposely poorly shot -- I just recorded video on my phone without looking at it or caring what I captured; I wanted to remember my kids' reactions without missing the experience myself. It's a couple of minutes of everyone screaming "I can't believe it!" and "It's amazing!" and "I can see Venus and Jupiter!" and "I'm going to cry!" And it's somehow good enough even though it's objectively a horrible video, because we lived in the moment, and preserved something that can carry us all back to that time and place just a tiny bit. Not the same - for like looking at a picture of a baby once that baby has grown, it's not ever the same - but it's a glimpse and a memory. 

In the end, as Nathan has reminded me, we were there and we experienced it. And I don't really think you can always choose how to experience something, especially not something that happens in a matter of minutes and is, like a child and her childhood, so fleeting and unrepeatable.