Love Meets Death or Why Sheldon Vanauken Gets on My Nerves
Posted January 11th, 2008 by Michael Bennie
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I have begun to catch on that when something bothers me—a speaker, a movie, or a book like A Severe Mercy—my irritation is probably a symptom of a disease that needs healing. Like the cough that I curse for its irritating persistence, the irksome message may be precisely what I need to purge me of things putrid and get me breathing right.
In Sheldon Vanauken’s spiritual autobiography of the love he shared—and lost—with his wife, Jean Davis (“Davy”), the mediocrity of my love for God is diagnosed and exposed. A severe blow, and mercifully so.
From chapter one, this is a story about a love lost; Vanauken begins with a grief-laden nighttime visit to Glenmerle, the estate where he and Davy fell in love. “We met angrily in the dead of winter,” he begins. But almost instantly it is springtime for these magically compatible college students, bound by their love of the sea and poetry and things beautiful. Davy is “gay and sweet and eager. Straight too. And valiant.”
In their first months together, Vanauken and Davy strategically build “the Shining Barrier” for their love, a sort of “fence around a young tree to keep the deer from nibbling on it,” a defense against the “creeping separateness” they see to be love’s enemy. The Barrier, above all else, is built on sharing everything—books, hobbies, music, poems, diaries, down to code words and whistles that make them seem telepathic.
Pop psych might call it “enmeshment.” Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet might argue, “And stand together yet not too near together / For the pillars of the temple stand apart, / And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.” Yet this couple gives themselves to comprehensive sharing as a way of being “us-centered, not self-centered.”
The Shining Barrier also means total trust, a following of the other’s spontaneous impulses, acceptance of each other’s experiences and the principle of courtesy—defined as “a cup of cold water in the night.”. If ever a question or conflict arises, either partner makes “The Appeal to Love,” asking, “What would be best for our love?” and then choosing to do just that.
Moreover, the Shining Barrier is pagan. God, if he or it exists, is only the Source of the world’s beauty. In that sense, they are worshippers—bowing to beauty, of which their love is the highest form.
Their dreams lead them to live aboard a sailboat, where they hope together to escape time. In their travels, they glimpse timeless eternity in the beauty of the sea and their love.
Later, they study at Oxford, and find themselves surrounded by Christians who are joyful in their faith, yet remarkably—disturbingly—intelligent. Unable to blithely dismiss it as foolish, they decide to give Christianity a reasoned look, “to be fair.” C.S. Lewis, then a professor at Oxford, enters their story through his books and then letters to Vanauken, which are instrumental in their conversion to Christianity. At Oxford, their love for Jesus Christ and the beauty of worshipping the Author of beauty becomes the latest and most exalted thing they share.
But back home, past the honeymoon of their new faith, Vanauken sees that he is “jealous of God,” because his wife’s devotion has eclipsed her focus on them. The Shining Barrier has been breached, and it is God Almighty Who has broken through. What does their love, born in pagan lightheartedness, mean now that Love Himself is their Master?
The couple learns that Davy has a terminal disease; within months she is gone. What does love mean now? Vanauken first probes the corners of his grief with a play-by-play “Illumination of the Past.” He then tries to work out the meaning of it all. In the process, his friend C.S. Lewis suggests that Vanauken “has been treated with a severe mercy.” Vanauken describes it as “a mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as love.”
Besides being a case study on grief and loss, A Severe Mercy treats themes including beauty, time/timelessness, longing for joy, the dance of faith and doubt, conversion and much else that arises in the Vanaukens’ love story.
This reading, however, I found plenty of reasons for the book to get on my nerves. The Jane Austin-allergic male in me suffered through the sentimental account of the two privileged youths’ long chatty walks in the countryside and large breakfasts cooked by servants. My cheese-o-meter pegged whenever I came to one of Vanauken’s sonnets. I shook my head each time he tried to sound English, including affectedly British spelling throughout the book.
I was most annoyed at the self-absorption of the couple. Was it really all about them? What of social justice? Come on guys! What about building the Kingdom of God in ways that transcend your cute little marriage, syrup-sweet though it may be?
This weekend I was looking down my nose at a friend who said she misses the “relational sermons” given by her old pastors. Her current pastors actively preach social justice, which I am all about. “Relational sermons! Good grief!” I was thinking. “Who needs that? Haven’t we got that down by now? What we need is prophetic preaching calling us to live out the call of Jesus (blah, blah, blah—insert self-righteous trumpeting of my current religious focus). That’s what we should be all about!”
I have been looking down my nose at Sheldon Vanauken for the same reason—all relationship, no “big issues.” I mean, isn’t that dangerous, pagan even?
Yet maybe the converse danger I run is that of moving toward a focus on the outward changes of social justice so righteously that I neglect the core relationship that empowers me to make a real impact in Jesus’ name. Might this oh-so-relational book restore balance to my quest for doing what Jesus would do “in the real world”? And in the end is there any world more real than relationships?
Davy and Van moved from total absorption in each other to a love for each other, absorbed together in Christ. Their move was from a tunnel vision focus on their own love—a good thing, pagan though it was—to the broader focus of God’s love and work in the world.
My shift perhaps needs to be from my narrow focus on doing what Jesus taught—a good thing, yet potentially pagan without God—to my love for Him, to building a Shining Barrier for Jesus and me. How might my focus on social justice be enhanced if my real focus were on the principles of that Shining Barrier with God: sharing all with the Father, total trust in the Spirit, courtesy with Christ?
What might my life look like if I made the Appeal to Love—“What would be best for our love, Lord?”—at every crossroads? What if I knew, as Vanauken and Davy agreed early on, that my love relationship with Jesus must grow or die, that each lilactime, I would know “a deeper inloveness, more close, more dear”?
Vanauken tells the story of a love that is of God long before the lovers know God. Even in its pagan phases (a la Song of Solomon), the book offers a vivid picture of intimate relationship that is us-centered, not self-centered. And by its end, the journey of intimacy leads to Love Himself; it goes from “us” to “us and God” to “God and us.”
Honestly? What bothers me most about this book is the distance I have yet to travel on that journey.
Michael Bennie works to promote the happiness of his four princesses (his wife, 4-year-old, and twin 3-year-olds) who rule the mountain cabin he calls home (you can read his parenting blog here. In his time off, he is a counselor at Arroyo Valley High School in San Bernardino, CA.
A Severe Mercy is available from Amazon.com.
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Comments
Hey Mike,
Great review. I'm sorry I missed that book. It was the only Book Club book that I missed. I think I was doing my tour of duty in surgery at the time. I do remember hearing snippets of it and thinking along the same lines as your peeves. Maybe it is a man thing, all this girly relationship (Jane Austen) stuff is just hard to palate. Thanks for showing it in a larger context.
John
Would someone please, please explain how ond can have a "relationship" with an abstract idea? If Christians believe that no one has seen God, and none of us, either, has seen Jesus, how do we maintain a relationship when all we have is what others, often thousands of years ago, described as their idea of God, or Jesus?
Do we also get to create in our own mind what these names mean? Is there some magic way? Can one have a relationship with the omniscient God?
Can one have a relationship when all that we can ever know about Jesus was written by those who neither saw nor heard him?
Maybe there are those who claim to have a "relationship" with Moby Dick, or Hamlet; after all they were creations of a writer's mind.
Do you also have a relationship with David, or Solomon, simply by reading what has been attributed to them?
Seriously, I am always somewhat befuddled by the casual use of such terms which, in any other context would be completely irrational. Is Christianity an irrational idea, then?
Elaine--I just read an interesting essay (actually the intro remarks to a debate with Sam Harris) that gave me something to think about in terms of what is irrational. Some things aren't irrational; they're non-rational. He says:
"Faith is not in conflict with reason. Faith does not conflict with scientific truth, unless faith claims to express a scientific truth. Faith can neither be affirmed nor denied by scientific, historical or philosophical truth. Sam confuses the irrational—which he sees as part of faith—with the non-rational. There is a reality that is not a product of rational deduction. It is not accounted for by strict rational discourse. There is a spiritual dimension to human existence and the universe, but this is not irrational—it is non-rational. Faith allows us to transcend what Flaubert said was our “mania for conclusions,” a mania he described as “one of humanity’s most useless and sterile drives.”
You'll also find his comments on the writing of the Gospels.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070523_chris_hedges_i_dont_believe...
Mike--thanks for this review. I haven't read this book in several years now, but it was very transformational when I did (and I think I should dust it off again).
At the time, I credited this book with keeping me a Christian.
Hi Elaine - I really appreciate that you asked that question. Sometimes I think we can get caught up in terms knock around without thinking what they really mean.
I experience my relationship with God through his interaction in my life. The difference between God and Hamlet/David et al to me is that God is alive and well - an active being. While a lot of how we understand God is through abstract ideas: love etc - he himself isn't abstract. While God is beyond my complete understanding, he has joined humans (in Jesus) because he seeks this relationship us. He has come down to our level so that we can understand him as fully as we can. The Bible isn't just a bunch of individual stories but a more over arching story of God's interaction with his people. I can learn to trust him, to say "he is someone I want." Only when you know someone you can trust them. This is life's ultimate question, is God someone you want to be a part of your life? Is he someone you feel you can trust? For me the evidence (through the Bible) is clear.
I am currently reading "Lord, I have Questions" by Dan Smith I think it breaks this whole issue down nicely piece by piece if you're interested.
Hi, Elaine...
I can't answer for anyone else, but it seems to me that it would be impossible to pray to God and not consider that to be a relationship. I would also add that during the dreadful despair I experienced for several months after learning my son is gay, I had a strong sense of God really going through that time with me. And my spiritual growth as a result of that experience is something that has confirmed my faith in God.
You said: " all that we can ever know about Jesus was written by those who neither saw nor heard him," but the Gospels of Matthew and John were written by disciples who had seen and lived with Jesus, and Mark is believed by some scholars to have been the account of Peter, as written by Mark.
I appreciate Elaine calling us on our use of the word "relationship."
I hear a lot of "salvation by relationship with Jesus."
Then we are told that relationship is built by prayer, Bible study, and sharing the gospel.
Talk about salvation by works!
I understand the New Testament to teach the historical and theological facts about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
The NT then calls us to have faith in this Person and his historical facts.
I have never found "relationship" to be the 'bottom line' in the NT; rather, "faith."
We are saved by grace through faith--not through relationship.
But "relationship" talk is the psychological currency of our time. It's not surprising that such terminology ends up being used in churches.
As Elaine points out, a "relationship" with an unseen Person is too subjective to be the foundation for a spiritual life.
Faith in an objective, historical Person, and his saving works, is to be preferred.
Thanks, Roy. In any other circumstances, for someone to claim to have regular conversations with a historical figure, there would be a strait jacket waiting for him. It is psychological jargon that cannot be clarified and demonstrates a paucity of words; an impossibility when describing the ineffable.
The Hymn "In the Garden" comes close to the relationship
concept in Christianity that has persisted for years. I think the words have been put to secular used--an made a parody more often than not.
The word relationship has been used to discribe sexual mischief too often to make it cogent for expressing a spiritual experience. Tom
I do hear you Elaine--it's always bothered me when we talk about a "personal relationship" with Jesus as if he's your new BBF who you can text on your way home on the bus. It's misleading and trivializes the actuality. I always hated that very trite song, "Call him up, call him up; tell him what you want."--not just for its theology but for the idea that God's just a phone call away. I know some people have that feeling that God is always talking to them, but I've never had an easy path with that. I hear and see God through the people in my life and only very, very, very occasionally have that experience of a thin place where I actually sense something divine.
This is an extremely refreshing conversation. Thanks for starting it, Elaine. Like Daneen, the phrase "personal relationship" has seemed way too easy to me. (Although the "personal" bothers me more than the "relationship." The Bible records at least as many stories of God calling groups, communities, movements, nations, churches, generations, etc. as individual persons. Jesus even teaches us to pray, "OUR Father..." rather than "MY Father.") And like Elaine, I think we have gone way too far with the idea that a relationship with God is just like a relationship with a human being; perhaps my review leans toward that error. We need to be clear just how different it is, and not make people (including Daneen and me--and Elaine, I'm guessing) feel unspiritual when we don't have the "walks with me and talks with me" experience. With the Incarnation as a core belief, Christians are especially vulnerable to the temptation to make God into our own image, and this oversimplification of relating to God is...well, one incarnation of that temptation. That said, I would remind Roy that despite never using the R word, the Bible gives us an abundance of relationship language--"father, friend, bridegroom, master, teacher," just for starters. Elaine is right, no words do justice to humankind's "fumbling towards ecstasy" (a Sarah McLachlan song title http://www.sarahmclachlan.com/discography/lyrics.jsp?song_id=100), our search for, flight from and overall response to the divine. What I got out of this reading of A Severe Mercy was a deeper look at the ways that the "God as Lover" lens might apply--not to say that "Lover" is the only or even the best paradigm that is out there for God.
I'll bypass Elaine's question since there've been a lot of interesting answers and I've been involved in other online discussions where it's been talked to death (suffice it to say I think it's possible and even necessary to have a "relationship with Jesus" but for baggage-related reasons, the language of "relationship" in religion puts a lot of people off), and return to the book you're reviewing.
This was my absolute favourite book when I was a teen and young adult. I must have read it about 50 times and it played a major role in shaping both what my view of a loving marriage should be, and what a relationship with God should be.
Recently I went on a mission to re-read a lot of my old favourite books to see if they stood the test of time, and I could not find my copy of A Severe Mercy (still looking). I'd be interested to know how it resonates with me today, now that I'm 12 years into a happy marriage that bears no resemblance to their "Shining Barrier" ideal -- that ideal had, even by the last time I re-read the book maybe 15 years ago, come to seem rather insular and stifling to me.
The biggest thing for me as a woman reader looking back at the book is the extent to which Vanauken never realized or acknowledged the inequality in their relationship -- that is, he believed it was a relationship of absolute equality and only in retrospect did he recognize that he had been exercising a "veiled but loving headship" all along. Of course to a modern feminist reader his "headship" was never veiled, loving though it may have been. I suspect on rereading it I would find Davy more of an object of pity than admiration as I once did. But I guess I won't know until I find the book and read it again.
The disciples had a real life relationship with JESUS, the Son of Man, according to the Gospels.
Never, never, was it said that there was a relationship with God. All those accounts are from ancient Hebrew stories and to take them literally destroys their original intent.
Elaine: you are very honest and brave to ask a very important question. I think it is only possible to have any faith/relationship/connection to Christ via the Holy Spirit. Anything else is an illusion no better than having a relationship with the big white rabbit, Harvey.
Gerhard, they say "fools rush in" but it was also a little boy who noted that the emperor had no clothes.
I'm afraid I'm having a hard time understanding your self-described "male" criticisms Michael. This is a truly profound book with challenging and in many ways disturbing insights into the possibilities and limitations of human love and the radical demands of Christian conversion. And from start to finish there's nothing "cute" or "syrup-sweet" about it. The Shining Barrier (the pagan phase of Sheldon and Jean's love) is in fact an austere, rigorous, and relentlessly demanding moral code infused with the couple's tragic sensibility and their militant defiance of a sneering and loveless world. Don't forget that the Barrier is, among other things, a suicide pact; if one dies the other follows. The things you find "annoying" in the romance of these two people--the fact that their idea of a great date was a long walk in the country, that they had servants, or that Sheldon wrote love sonnets to Jean--also seem to me to be largely reflections of the time period with little to no bearing on the literary merits of the book or the relevance of its themes. I'm glad, however, that the book at least left you no longer at ease with your own unease. I look forward to your next review on one of the many excellent works from the oevure of Jane Austen.
Michael, really enjoyed your review. I wouldn't have given the book a second thought, but I like the way you grew introspective and used your own honesty to contrast the relationship. Amazon, here I come.
Point taken, Mr. Osborn. The Shining Barrier should not be written off as an easy infatuation, any more than suicide bombers should be called cowards. I just think the thing that the Vanaukens were willing to die for seems narrow--but what else could be expected of them? They dedicated their lives to the Highest Good they had yet known, their pagan love. The story is really about their transition from that to what was higher still, the Source of their love. I just got bogged down and critical as I took in all the love story at the beginning, and in the end saw what this critical spirit said about me. I agree also with your critique that my affective response of annoyance had little or nothing to do with the literary merits of the book. I suppose I wrote a review that reflected more my internal dialog during this reading of the book than an attempt to critique something far beyond what I could ever write. PS: Maybe you can teach me how to enjoy Jane Austen; you have taught me, at least, how to spell her name!
Michael, I enjoyed your review. As a female who loves Jane Austen, I chuckled in agreement with your pet peeves since I find Vanauken's effusion of their love insufferable too. Trudy used the terms insular and stifling to describe it, and that's my reaction as well. Van and Davy might be the only couple who are so completely compatible that they could share absolutely everything. For most every other person, their formula would be prescription of an unhealthy relationship, one that is all consuming and exclusive.
I must admit that I'm only one third way through the book. So far I have only the vaguest idea of Davy as a person. She's kind of idealized, but also unreal in that Van sketches her mostly in abstract, rather than vivid depictions. Maybe because their love was so all consuming that they were merged as one, that one cannot distinguish the individual from the couple. It's rather unsettling. I want to know Davy better, but she's kind of lost in the "we."
Michael...wonderful analysis of the impact of their love story. I wrote to Van Auken sometime ago and thanked him for "sharing" his book with me. He wrote back and in several terse sentences told me that he did not share anything. Rather jolted, I never wrote back, afraid perhaps that I was in the presence of a far greater intellect that I had previously thought, and that it would be too painful to try again to engage him, speak to him...make another silly comment. Later, I chalked up his response to me as perhaps an attempt to mercifully correct me or maybe, that of a tired older man. I allowed him to be grumpy. In honor of their love I wrote a song entitled, "Glenmerle" set to the style of a celtic dance. I think they would have enjoyed it.
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