As the Ruin Falls

There's a book I sometimes think of wistfully when interacting with my wife. It is called "Becoming Mrs Lewis" and it is a "historical novel" that portrays the relationship between C.S. Lewis and his wife Joy Davidman. It is a well-done and well-researched book albeit tinged with perhaps a little too much romanticism - personally I think this is the American Way, and certainly describes the manner in which so many American Evangelicals love C.S Lewis while completely ignoring many of the finer doctrinal points inherent in his writings. That aside, there is this love portrayed in the book - a sort of hero worship of the wife for the husband. (I've seen this also in a Facebook reel where a husband is working on the car in the garage and the wife simply follows him around and sits cross-legged on the ground, happy and content simply to be there.) Joy Davidman in her own way "was the equal of" Lewis's intelligence and balances it and challenges it and so on but all the while there is this respect, this interest in what Lewis has to say - I suppose you could describe it as attitude of "innocent until proven guilty".

This is not something that (from my perspective) I've experienced very often in my life, and I would venture to say never in my marriage. I will say that a couple of times I have spoken at a church that was not my own and received this kind of appreciation in the feedback: that my words had weight & value and had impact, that there was impartation in what I shared. But this does not happen at the church where I currently worship, and it did not happen at the community church where I spent approximately 20 years of my life - there were a few non-elder people there who were seen as "spiritual" who apparently received that kind of feedback, but apart from a couple of stragglers who came to me with appreciation I did not experience it myself.

Although I recognize that this narrative so far is a pity party I would not have bothered to write it down unless there was some further point to be made. And I will confess that I have had these self pitying thoughts before without any further point! Recognizing myself also in humanity across the world I believe that many husbands likewise wish for the approbation of their wives and many wives likewise wish for the approbation of their husbands. We mutually want to be appreciated and perhaps are not very good at showing it because we feel that appreciation is a zero sum game - it can only flow one way across a diffusion gradient; to appreciate another means that they are greater than onself. Yet I know this to be false and that, like Love itself of which true appreciation is merely the flower, each evidence of appreciation only increases the whole.

What I was reminded of this morning is that my wife spent many years (at least 10 perhaps more) as the secretary of a man who was so convinced of his own importance that perhaps her primary job was to write down the words that he spoke throughout the day. So she would follow him around with a notepad to collect the golden droplets that fell from his lips. This is not an isolated and perhaps inflated memory from a traumatic past, it is backed up by the solid and verifiable fact that in this community breakfast lunch and dinner meals were eaten together and were followed by a time of announcements and speaking, the majority of which was done by said person, and he tasked the "phone lady" (as we called the lady who sat in a little booth and fielded incoming phone calls) to write down in their journal the things he said at such times. He said that in future we would want this record. That posterity would want this record.  (Some years ago someone was going through the boxes of these writings in the basement of the Tabernacle building and decided they were just trash and should be burned. While this decision represents a very healthy attitude towards said writings I regret that this happened simply because I would have very much liked to read through them.)

In defense of this person (I cannot help myself, I love to think of mitigating factors) I believe that this behavior came from an "honest" belief that God had chosen this person to be "an Apostle" and to lead this people "for such a time as this" in a crucial moment of History and that, as the world system collapsed and the people of the world turned towards the light on the hill that we represented, every mundane footprint that we had made towards this thing we were building in the Alaskan wilderness would be treasured by future generations. And how much the more would "The Word" (this emphasis comes much more from the movement "The Walk" rather than "The Move") that in the main was voiced by this person - the Word that underwrote every everything we did, that shone out like a beacon towards which we marched, be appreciated? Thus, almost every morning as we finished our 20-minute devotional he would notice that he was running out of time and people would be leaving to go to their daily work and he would cry out in almost a panic, "can I buy just five more minutes from you?". And he would talk about the $100,000 value of the words he was imparting. There was this sense that if he only had a few more minutes what was being said would have the power to change some crucial part of reality. That we might "break through" (that is also Walk language). And I remember as a 19-year-old coming on stage and sitting in these morning devotionals somewhat on the edge of my seat because I felt the excitement, I felt that these people were actually going somewhere and that was exciting to me. I had not felt this in the Irish community that I grew up in. 

So here you have a girl of perhaps 16, 17, 18 years old going into her twenties actually believing the narrative that caused her only job be to follow this man around and jot down his words and do his research for what he was going to preach on and do workouts with him and sit on the sidelines in meetings with him (albeit feeling a little awkward and out of place). To make matters more amazing there were actually two of these girls scheduled as secretaries at the same time! If your whole organization and community believed in the importance of such a thing I could see it would be very natural to believe it and not challenge it yourself as a teenager and young adult. In later years the other elders told him he could only have one secretary at a time. And this was not just a 9 to 5 job, it continued into the evenings. And it was not drudgery, simply because of the sense of urgency - we're doing something great here. Eventually my wife married me and had kids and that gradually and effectively took her out of the running. 

There's a long waking up period that follows, leading to the present day where both of us look back in some awe at the the naivety and susceptibility of all of those people (ourselves included) hanging on those words which have proven over time to be empty. 

My mitigating persona wants to point out that in the wash of the gold pan that is time much gravel and dross was washed away to leave some gold which was to be found in the people themselves, in the love they had for each other. This at least is an Inherent Good, and some of the people still living there consider this to be the thing that they were "breadcrumbed" there for. This concept of bread crumbs is an important narrative in these communities: that God had to lure us into where he wants us to be by means of bread crumbs; if He showed us up front where we were going we wouldn't say yes. This comfortably explains the twisted and clearly erroneous past - it was simply what was needed to get us to this place. In other words, we don't have to abandon the complicated fabric of our lives, unraveling it all the way back to the first wrong stitches. We can explain away the errors as intentional and necessary for the greater good. - Apologies, getting caught up in philosophizing again! The truth is that in a society that emphasizes marriage, kids, family, gathering, love, togetherness, working together - these all happen to be "goods" in and of themselves. You can see this in the Mormon church which is a great example for Christians to look at - many of their family institutions are stronger and more admirable than their Christian counterparts which should be quite a challenge for those who look at their "clearly erroneous" beliefs in amazement... All that to say, where we find good, where we find "good fruit" it gets confusing because we think that means the whole package was correct.  I think this is part of why it is difficult for people to leave abusive relationships. Because the abuse is not ever the whole of the picture and there are fleeting moments where there is something more - perhaps the reason for the relationship in the first place is still glimpsed every now and then. And then of course there is the fear of the unknown, of what the wider world that you would have to step into would be like if you left. But there are no humans that are ALL bad, even the Nazis who are now held up as the architype of evil...

My theory is that a person has only so much hero worship in them and, having used it all up on what turned out to be a fraud (even if it was not a deliberate fraud), there is none left for others. In its place there blooms a suspicion of all authority, although the least suspected authorities are those most antithetical to the original betrayal. There is a trauma response to the word secretary, to the idea of being a servant or a maid, to any shade of complementarianism. I am not hereby making a judgment on these things, simply noting their existence.

I see this pattern being played out in the wider world also as the expert class struggles to maintain its ascendency against the floods of information and misinformation. It is also present in the current push back against "the patriarchy" which threatens to sweep away not only the excesses of the past but also the good inherent in "what a man is".

For my part I think that there is a trap in being appreciated too much and by default - it can go to your head - and so I can find thankfulness for the absence. It pushes me towards reality, towards the things of which it may be said "against such there is no law". True love is the only thing that sees through the lie of the zero sum game and the pity I feel for myself is simply showing me the places where I do not love truly. 

I will close this loop with a poem that I love by C.S. Lewis, "As the Ruin Falls"

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.

I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:

I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,

I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:

I talk of love —a scholar's parrot may talk Greek—

But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.

I see the chasm. And everything you are was making

My heart into a bridge by which I might get back

From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

 

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains

You give me are more precious than all other gains.